Hey everybody, this is a bonus extra episode as part of our mini-series on Millicent Patrick and Mary Blair, although this actually isn't about either of them. In the last episode, I interviewed Mallory O'Mara about her book The Lady from the Black Lagoon. At the end of the conversation, I asked her about her latest book, Daughter of Daring. It's about another trailblazer in Hollywood, the stuntwoman Helen Gibson, who became a star over 100 years ago.
I thought this was so fascinating, I wanted to share it with you. When I was a film major in college and they started showing us silent movies, I expected them to be dated and corny. I couldn't believe how cinematic they were. Back then, movie cameras were fairly lightweight and portable, so the actors could do amazing stunts. And those silent films were edited with a brisk pace that feels kind of modern. Once talking pictures became all the rage.
Everything changed. The shots were much longer, and the cameras were pretty static. Hollywood movies weren't that action-packed again for another 40 years. Mallory says it was in that wild world of silent cinema that Helen Gibson became a star. But her life was already pretty wild before then. So Helen, when she was a teenage girl, literally ran away with the rodeo when she was a little girl in the early 1910s, early 1900s in Ohio. Her and a friend of hers, she was...
15 or 16 years old working at a cigar factory. And the two of them on their day off went to go see a rodeo that had come to town. She was in Cleveland and she saw the rodeo riders and just sort of fell in love and went up and talked to one of them.
Cowboys and asked if that show was was was hiring and he said no but there were plenty others and he told her to go get build more build more magazine and look in the back and see which shows were looking for writers and uh there was one the 101 rant show they were such a big traveling rodeo and wild west show that they were looking for
sort of any riders that they could get of any gender, and they were happy to train them. So Helen and her friend went down to Oklahoma and applied and did the training. And her friend was not very good at being on horseback and went back to Cleveland, but Helen stayed. And she was incredibly talented. Most of it was because she was so fearless. Like she truly, truly was one of the bravest people I've ever, ever written about. And she...
That lack of fear translated really, really well on horseback. She trusted her horses. She trusted herself. And because of that confidence and that fearlessness, she was able to attempt and nail really cool tricks. And that's what brought her into the rodeo scene. She very quickly became became one of their their star trick riders. So then tell me about like, you know, how or what kind of stunt work was she doing?
The 101 Ranch show, the traveling version, went all over the country. And she did that for two years. And after the end of the second year, they ended the tour in November in California, in Venice Beach. You know, this was the very early days of Hollywood.
Westerns were becoming a very popular type of movie. It was very easy to make. People loved them. And so there was a studio up past Topanga Canyon that was very excited to see that an entire Wild West show had... parked in Venice Beach for the winter and hired the entire company to be...
background writers and and background uh actors helen fell in love with it she she loved it because here she was the thing that she really loved about writing wasn't just the excitement but she loved the element of performance so horseback riding and doing trick riding.
Literally at like performing it for for the camera was so enticing to her. And she also loved L.A. And so when the West show decided to to decamp and go back to the ranch, she decided to stay because she wanted to try to make it in Hollywood. So, I mean, I haven't watched many silent Westerns, and I'm imagining in most of them the man is the hero and the woman is like the damsel in distress. What kind of stunt work is she doing?
Well, for the Westerns, she starred in a movie called Ranch Girls on a Rampage, which sounds very modern for a movie that was that came out. And I believe it was 1911. There were cowgirl writers. I think a big part of it was Annie Oakley when Buffalo Bill brought.
Annie Oakley into his show she became such a huge star that audiences also wanted to see female writers as well in cinema but she she stayed in the background for quite a long time she didn't become a star until the rise of a type of movie called
Which are really exciting because, as you just said, we think of all male stars. But back in the 1910s, these these serials, which were essentially serialized, they were sort of a weird in between between television and film because they were serialized.
short like between 15 and 20 minutes long films that would come out you know either once a month or once a week at in theaters that was like one story but all the big stars of those movies were women so how so like could you describe a little like like tell me about some of her best known stunts and characters during that era
So, I mean, she was most known for The Hazards of Helen, which is known as the longest running serial at the time. I believe it was 119 episodes, which is an incredible run and would be an incredible run even today. But she became a huge star. She started as the stunt woman.
for the original Helen of the Hazards of Helen because Helen Gibson's name is not... helen gibson but when she became the stunt woman for the hazards of helen the original helen decided that she wanted to leave they said all right they wanted to give her the job but they made her change her name to helen's to keep it wait what was her name before then
It was Rose Wenger. That's so interesting because you've been calling her Helen the whole time. Yes. I refer to her as Helen because just like Millicent, Helen is the name that she made. You know, she was born Rose Wenger, but... Helen was the sort of was what's what she crafted. You know, it was her career. It was she she made Helen Gibson into I mean, Gibson was not her last name either. It was.
She was married to another rodeo star whose name was Hoot Gibson. So it was sort of Helen was the was the thing that she chose. And so I respect her wishes and call her Helen. She was so talented at stunts and because it was so similar to her, to what she was doing on horseback, jumping off of things and jumping onto things. And the work translated very, very well that, yeah, when the original Helen decided.
to to leave the hazards of Helen she stayed on and it also helped if you look at the two actors both Helens they could be sisters they're almost identical they're the same height the same hair color same eye color not that it mattered in the silent film times but the two of them looked like they could be like fraternal twins. So she was the sort of perfect person to take over this role. And I mean, she was massively famous. I mean, you could buy Helen Gibson merch. She had her name up in lights.
she had tons and tons of fans i mean she was a big money maker for for the studio that she worked for at the time which was called calum she was a star And so tell me, I know that she did a stunt where she went from a roof to a moving train that was kind of similar to the famous Michelle Yeoh stunt.
There's a lot of stunts that Michelle Yeoh has done that Helen Gibson did. The really famous one that Michelle Yeoh did, which was driving a motorcycle onto a moving train. Helen Gibson did that just in heeled boots and a dress. She drove drove a motorcycle up a ramp onto a moving train. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty. Again, we have this idea of what things were like back then. And they're they're actually a lot more modern than we believe them to be.
What would be a typical plot of a Hazards of Helen series? So a lot of these serials followed the same sort of formula. It was like, you know. Woman gets tangled up in some sort of wacky adventure and has to save herself. And Helen's character in The Hazards of Helen, she was the operator at this railroad depot. And so every episode, it was like something was happening.
with either robbers had taken over a train or there was a child that needed to be rescued on the train line. Something was happening with the trains and Helen's job is to keep the trains running. So she had to fight bad guys, sometimes physically, often physically.
actually or uh thwart people who were who were uh taking over the train stealing a train setting the depot on fire you know it was always some sort of some sort of wacky over the top thing was happening at the railroads it's funny i mean i When I discovered Hong Kong cinema from the 80s and 90s, around the same time that I was a film major and looking at silent films, and I couldn't believe how similar they were in terms of the stunts. I mean, people have no idea of like how these were, I mean.
even more dangerous than Jackie Chan stunts, what they were doing back then. In two different episodes, she jumped from a plane onto a moving train. moving train, not just a train, a train that was moving. And in thinking about how, you know, nowadays to do a stunt, even, you know, even the king of stunts, Tom Cruise, he has CGI, he has wires, he has an entire crew of people who have meticulous...
planned the stunt and rehearsed it. And he has all the padding and all the safety and all the help that is possible. And Helen was doing very similar things. Her process was literally just lying in bed at night thinking that would be cool and telling the producer. Very rarely did she practice these things. There was no padding, no safety gear. She didn't even have health insurance for a big chunk of the run of that show. And she just did them. I mean, she did injure herself quite a bit.
a few times, but she had nothing but moxie and made all these stunts happen. So you mentioned Hoot Gibson. Tell me about their relationship on and off screen. It's a pretty interesting marriage because it started out as a marriage of convenience. Rahoot was another rodeo star and they had been sponsored by the same benefactor.
Because what some people would do back then is they would find a radio star and they would sponsor a tour for them where they would, you know, this this rider would go to all these different rodeos all around the country or all around Canada, and then they would split their winnings. And the same guy.
sponsored both Helen and Hoot. And they went on these different rodeos and they became really close friends. And they got back to a rodeo in Oregon. And it was such a huge event that there were no lodgings available.
for married couples. And the two of them realize, they're like, well, we're traveling all the time. Why don't we just get married and then we'll have... priority when it comes to getting hotel rooms and in rooms at the inn so that's what they did they got married at that rodeo and they they got a room at the local hotel and they stayed married for quite a long time uh they were both rodeo riders who were trying
to get into hollywood and became background actors but the problem was that helen became very famous much sooner than hoot did and he was extremely it was a similar situation to millis and patrick he was extremely jealous of her and it poisoned their marriage do they i mean do they get divorced
Oh, yes. And the frustrating thing is the woman that he married after Helen was also named Helen. So she also became Helen Gibson. And going through the archives and sorting the two of them out was a nightmare. So what was the trajectory of her career? after those serials and then after she split up with Hoot? She jumped from serials to Universal Studios and was making feature films for quite a long time. But after the war, when Hoot came back and he became...
They both were at Universal. This is World War I, of course. Oh, yes. They were very keen to hire a veteran for the PR element of it all. And their current... male rodeo star or like cowboy star at the time was kind of like his star was on the on the decline and they really liked Hoot.
But the problem was at that point, the two of them, even though they were still married, they were fighting so much that Universal realized they couldn't keep them both on. And because they were grooming Hoot to be their new star, they let Helen go. And she went on to...
create her own production company. She had a very, very interesting career arc after that, but she worked for a very long time. Her last movie was The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. She was doing stunts at 69 years old. Wow. What kind of stunts was she doing on that film? In her last movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, she drives a team of horses. I mean, I saw that movie a long time ago. Was it obviously a woman who was doing that in that scene?
It's very background. It's hard to see her. She went from being a star to the last chunk of her career, she was mostly doing like background roles and stunt roles. So she's not very visible in a lot of this stuff. But she was there. She was doing it. It was it was.
quite a run for her career. Just jumping in here to explain that The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was directed by John Ford in 1962. It starred John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart. John Ford began directing movies in the days of silent cinema. But he redefined the Western as a genre, beginning with his 1939 movie, Stagecoach, which also starred John Wayne.
I don't know if John Ford chose the stunt people on his productions. He probably didn't. But he did work with the same crew over and over again. So somebody liked Helen Gibson because... She did work on multiple of his films. She also worked on Stagecoach. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, she had a really, really incredible career. Wow. So did she inspire? Have other female stunt performers said that she was a big inspiration?
Yeah, I mean, right now there's a really incredible award ceremony called the Action Icon Awards. And there is a Helen Gibson Award for someone whose career is legendary. Wow. The one thing I will add about Helen and the thing that was very exciting is especially after working on Lady from the Black Lagoon, where I was writing about this one woman who did this one thing and was sort of really struggled, especially because of her gender.
The cool thing about writing about Helen Gibson is that for a brief period when Hollywood began, I mean, it was an industry almost run by women. Helen had tons and tons of contemporaries. Like I said, all of the top action stars in those movies during that time period were women. You know, there were tons of female directors. There were more female screenwriters than there were male screenwriters. It was such a refreshing thing to research for me that after like...
you know, pawing through scraps for Millicent to be able to write about this time period where there were, I mean, there was just tons and tons of women doing incredible things. So it's something I write about quite a lot in the book and is very, very fascinating.
And especially nowadays, there were more women working in Hollywood back then than there are now. I had heard that. I had heard that the very early days of Hollywood was incredible in terms of the opportunities that were available to women in the very early days.
Yeah, it's a magical, magical time period. And I was very excited to be able to write about it. And especially in the conversations that have been in the film industry over the past 10 years after Me Too happened, you know, there's this idea that... you know oh yeah we got to get more women doing things and that's great but a lot of people don't realize that that's not a new thing like women have a legacy in this industry you know they didn't
pop out of the ground in the 90s you know women like women really paved the way the whole film industry was built on the back of female creators and female audiences as well. It was an industry completely shaped by women. I hope that people get as excited about it as I am. Mallory O'Meara's new book is called Daughter of Daring. We'll be back next week with the story of Mary Blair.