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Daughter of Daring

The Trick-Riding, Train-Leaping, Road-Racing Life of Helen Gibson, Hollywood's First Stuntwoman

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0 of 2 copies available
Wait time: About 6 weeks
0 of 2 copies available
Wait time: About 6 weeks
From Los Angeles Times bestselling author Mallory O'Meara, the exhilarating story of America's first professional stuntwoman, Helen Gibson, who worked during a time when women ruled Hollywood
Helen Gibson was 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, producer, performer and stunt double for iconic stars of the era. Her exploits 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 action films in the decades that would follow her.
In this fast-paced and feminist biography, award-winning author Mallory O'Meara presents Helen's 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 and overlooked role of Helen's contemporaries—including female directors, stars and stuntwomen who shaped the making of narrative film.
    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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      • Booklist

        Starred review from February 1, 2025
        Just as she did in her stellar biography, The Lady from the Black Lagoon (2019), O'Meara evokes a bygone Hollywood era in this look at the life of stuntwoman Helen Gibson against the backdrop of Tinseltown's earliest days. A young daredevil from Ohio, Gibson got her start in the rodeo before finding her way to Hollywood in 1911, where women were very much a vital part of the foundation of the new film industry, in front of and behind the camera. Gibson found work as a stuntwoman before taking over for actress Helen Holmes as the lead of the popular serial The Hazards of Helen. Gibson performed breathtaking stunts that even today are considered risky, such as running on top of a speeding train and riding a motorcycle onto a moving train. But an ill-fated venture into producing her own movie left Gibson bankrupt and broke, leading her to leave Hollywood for the circus before returning to her work as a stuntwoman just as women's power and prominence in Hollywood eroded in the face of censorship. Both a biography of Gibson and a sharp-eyed look at the evolution of Hollywood and women's involvement in it, O'Meara's third popular history is witty, wise, and winning.

        COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • Library Journal

        January 31, 2025

        Award-winning O'Meara (The Lady from the Black Lagoon), cohost of the podcast Reading Glasses, tells the untold story of the United States' first professional stuntwoman, Helen Gibson. Calling herself "the Most Daring Actress in Pictures," Gibson worked in hundreds of silent films and starred in The Hazards of Helen. Prepub Alert.

        Copyright 2024 Library Journal

        Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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    • English

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