National Network for Equitable Library Service

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.