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Burt Reynolds’ Longtime Sidekick Alfie Wise Dies at 82

Wise shared the big screen with Reynolds in ten movies, and also supported him behind the scenes as an assistant.

Alfie Wise, who acted alongside Burt Reynolds in The Cannonball Run, Smokey and the Bandit, and numerous other films, has died at 82. Wise’s longtime fiancée Stephanie Bliss told The Hollywood Reporter that he died July 22 of natural causes at a VA hospital in West Palm Beach, Florida. The actor first shared the screen with Reynolds in 1974’s The Longest Yard. Over the next twenty years, he appeared with Reynolds in The End, Hooper, Starting Over, Paternity, Stroker Ace, City Heat and Heat. Their partnership extended beyond the screen—Wise also served as Reynolds’ assistant, according to the Reporter. When Reynolds died in 2018 at age 82, Wise told The New York Daily News, “He loved his friends, and he really kept us very close. His films were like an ongoing block party. I think the audience caught on to that. You always knew you were going to have a great time with a Burt Reynolds movie.” Wise and Reynolds also collaborated on the small screen, including on the crime series B.L Stryker, and a 1991 installment of Reynolds’ sitcom Evening Shade. An Altoona, Pennsylvania, native, Wise graduated from Penn State and served in the U.S. Navy, where he produced shows on his ships before moving to Hollywood.