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Daughter of Daring : The Trick-Riding, Train-Leaping, Road-Racing Life of Helen Gibson, Hollywood's First Stuntwoman
Overview
From LA Times bestselling author Mallory O'Meara, the story of America's first professional stuntwoman, Helen Gibson, who rose to fame during a time when women ruled Hollywood.
Helen Gibson was a woman willing to do anything to give audiences a thrill. Advertised as "The Most Daring Actress in Pictures," Helen emerged in the early days of the twentieth-century silent film scene as a rodeo rider, background actor, stunt double, and eventually one of the era's biggest action stars. Her exploits on motorcycles, train cars, and horseback were as dangerous as they were glamorous, featured in hundreds of films and serials--yet her legacy was quickly overshadowed by the increasingly hypermasculine and male-dominated evolution of cinema in the decades that would follow her.
Award-winning author Mallory O'Meara presents her life and career in exhilarating detail, including:
- Helen's rise to fame in The Hazards of Helen, the longest-running serial in history
- How Helen became the first-ever stuntwoman in American film
- The pivotal role of Helen's contemporaries--including female directors, stars, and stuntwomen who shaped the making of cinema as we know it.
Through the page-turning story of Helen's pioneering legacy, Mallory O'Meara gives readers a glimpse of the Golden Age of Hollywood that could have been: an industry where women call the shots.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9781335007933
- ISBN-10: 1335007938
- Publisher: Hanover Square Press
- Publish Date: February 2025
- Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.05 pounds
- Page Count: 384
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Hollywood film historian Mallory O’Meara specializes in recovering the lost feminist history of filmmaking. O’Meara’s celebrated 2019 biography of Milicent Patrick, original designer of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, uncovered the true story of how Patrick’s achievements in cinema were co-opted by male coworkers. In Daughter of Daring: The Trick-Riding, Train-Leaping, Road-Racing Life of Helen Gibson, Hollywood’s First Stuntwoman, O’Meara tells the thrilling story of Hollywood’s first and best stuntwoman.
In the early years of Hollywood, Helen Gibson starred in hundreds of silent serial pictures, eponymously known as The Hazards of Helen. Gibson jumped onto trains and out of planes, and took rodeo tricks to an entirely new level of daring and general badassery. Unlike today’s stuntworkers, Gibson wore no safety devices and had no mentors; all she possessed was a love for adventure and a drive to be something other than a domestic drone. What’s even more remarkable about Helen Gibson’s story is that she wasn’t unique. The 1910s in Hollywood were something of a golden age for women writers, directors, producers and actors.
O’Meara’s great achievement in Daughter of Daring lies in capturing this brief chapter in Hollywood history, before the studio system and censorship board asserted control over the film industry and marginalized the achievements of women like Gibson, Helen Gardner, Lois Weber and Marion E. Wong (director of the first all Chinese American made film in 1916). Establishing the parallels between the suffrage movement, the “New Woman” era and the Wild West cowboy shows that gave Gibson her start as a stuntwoman, O’Meara provides a well-researched guide to a heady cultural moment for women in film.
The experiences of these artists continue to reverberate today: Women and filmmakers of color still struggle for a seat at the Hollywood table, and the #MeToo movement of the 21st century uncovered scandals and abuse that echo what O'Meara's subjects endured in the 1920s. O’Meara is not only invested in film history but also in its future. Entertaining and educational, Daughter of Daring will attract and inspire readers of all ages.
Hollywood film historian Mallory O’Meara specializes in recovering the lost feminist history of filmmaking. O’Meara’s celebrated 2019 biography of Milicent Patrick, original designer of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, uncovered the true story of how Patrick’s achievements in cinema were co-opted by male coworkers. In Daughter of Daring: The Trick-Riding, Train-Leaping, Road-Racing Life of Helen Gibson, Hollywood’s First Stuntwoman, O’Meara tells the thrilling story of Hollywood’s first and best stuntwoman.
In the early years of Hollywood, Helen Gibson starred in hundreds of silent serial pictures, eponymously known as The Hazards of Helen. Gibson jumped onto trains and out of planes, and took rodeo tricks to an entirely new level of daring and general badassery. Unlike today’s stuntworkers, Gibson wore no safety devices and had no mentors; all she possessed was a love for adventure and a drive to be something other than a domestic drone. What’s even more remarkable about Helen Gibson’s story is that she wasn’t unique. The 1910s in Hollywood were something of a golden age for women writers, directors, producers and actors.
O’Meara’s great achievement in Daughter of Daring lies in capturing this brief chapter in Hollywood history, before the studio system and censorship board asserted control over the film industry and marginalized the achievements of women like Gibson, Helen Gardner, Lois Weber and Marion E. Wong (director of the first all Chinese American made film in 1916). Establishing the parallels between the suffrage movement, the “New Woman” era and the Wild West cowboy shows that gave Gibson her start as a stuntwoman, O’Meara provides a well-researched guide to a heady cultural moment for women in film.
The experiences of these artists continue to reverberate today: Women and filmmakers of color still struggle for a seat at the Hollywood table, and the #MeToo movement of the 21st century uncovered scandals and abuse that echo what O'Meara's subjects endured in the 1920s. O’Meara is not only invested in film history but also in its future. Entertaining and educational, Daughter of Daring will attract and inspire readers of all ages.