From*LA Times*bestselling author Mallory O'Meara, the untold story of*America's first professional stuntwoman, Helen Gibson, who set*groundbreaking precedents for women in HollywoodHelen Gibson was a woman willing to try anything. 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 the first-ever published biography of Helen Gibson, 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 stunt double in American film and the first stuntperson to jump from a moving train
- 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 shines a light on the unsung history of Hollywood stuntwomen and the crucial shifts they brought to women's visibility and work in cinema.
