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

Reading Glasses podcaster O’Meara (The Lady from the Black Lagoon) recounts the trailblazing career of stuntwoman Helen Gibson (1892–1977), born Rose August Wenger, in this high-flying biography. O’Meara suggests Wenger’s decision to join a traveling Wild West show as a cowgirl when she was 17 reflected the early 20th-century “New Woman” movement’s push for women’s equal participation in public society. In 1911, a film producer noticed Wenger’s troupe during a performance in Venice, Calif., and hired them to appear as extras in westerns. Wenger married fellow rodeo rider Hoot Gibson in 1913 and, after he fell ill, replaced him as actor Helen Holmes’s stunt double in the western serial The Hazards of Helen. After Holmes exited the role in 1915, Wenger changed her name to Helen, took over starring duties, and continued to perform such stunts as leaping from an airplane onto a moving train and escaping from a speeding car before it careens off a cliff. Gibson’s death-defying feats astound, and O’Meara provides perceptive context on the era’s gender politics. For instance, she notes that the careers of Holmes and Gibson both suffered by the 1920s, when moral crusaders began censoring women roughhousing on film. It’s an enthralling tribute to an early Hollywood pioneer. Photos. Agent: Amy Bishop, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Feb.)