Daughter of Daring: The Trick-Riding, Train-Leaping, Road-Racing Life of Helen Gibson, Hollywood’s First Stuntwoman

O’Meara’s (Girls Make Movies: A Follow-Your-Own-Path Guide for Aspiring Young Filmmakers) colloquial, engagingly written biography recounts the life and times of Helen Gibson (1892–1977), an action rider, vaudevillian, and actor in both silent and sound films. Born Rose Wenger, she grew up as a tomboy, was married to rodeo champ and later cowboy film star “Hoot” Gibson from 1913 to 1920, and reflected an era of greater participation by women in multiple endeavors in the budding film industry. She appeared in most of the 119 episodes of Hazards of Helen, the longest-running adventure serial, from which she got her stage first name. Gibson often transgressed expectations of the usual melodrama roles for women by saving herself from calamities, resulting in actual hospital stays, instead of awaiting a man to rescue her. She formed the soon-bankrupted Helen Gibson Productions in 1920, worked for Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey from 1924 to 1927, and returned to Hollywood as a stunt double in feature films and with billed performances, including in John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.