He also appeared in numerous surfing documentaries, worked as a photographer on the 1967 film “Surfari” and was the stunt double for James Mitchum in the 1964 film “Ride the Wild Surf.” In 2010, he and his son Jed launched a surf apparel line.
It was the towering waves he caught, coupled with a blunt but friendly manner, that made Noll’s reputation.
From the early 1950s through the 1960s, he traveled from Southern California to Mexico, Australia and the North Shore of Hawaii’s island of Oahu in search of the biggest waves.
It was in October 1957, at Waimea Bay on Oahu’s North Shore, where he led a handful of surfers to a place where the waves can reach three stories high in the winter. The bay was said to be impossible to surf, and residents claimed nobody had tried since a young California surfer, Dickie Cross, had been killed there in 1943.