cbr18 Bingo Wheels (train)
Having lived in Los Angeles for some 50 years now, one of my favorite things is taking tours of Old Hollywood. We aren’t talking about the studios, but Hollywood of the silent era, where everything was filmed right out in the streets. You can still see where most of the Harold Lloyd films were made, and of course the stairs from the Laurel and Hardy short The Music Box have their own historical landmark to this day.
But Helen Gibson’s tale goes a couple of decades before that. This was the day of the Nickelodeon, when movies were 5 to 20 minutes long and cost a nickel to see. Los Angeles had become the place where they were all filmed (a pretty rural location at the time) and the primary audiences were women. Housewives could pop in and get a quick treat for very little cash as they went about their daily routine. And surprisingly enough, nearly all the new-born industry was run by women as well.
Helen had gotten her start as a teenage trick rider, out of Cleveland (!), on the Buffalo Bill Rodeo circuit. They toured the US for most of the year, but then holed up somewhere for the winter months. In this case it was on some ranches on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Movie folks stopped by to look for some riders for their serials, their main bread and butter at the time, and there was 17 year old Helen. In no time she demonstrated her fearlessness and skill by perfecting the art of jumping from a galloping horse to a moving train. Her serials, in which she starred under her name as was the custom then, were hugely popular, and she kept upping the difficulty level with faster horses and trains. She never missed, and was never injured, other than an occasional sprained ankle.
But then the big money boys came to Hollywood, the studios started, and the women were all shooed out of town. The age of the serials was over. But Helen had spent all her money on a ranch of her own and plenty of animals. What to do? Thus the start of her second career. Stuntwoman extraordinaire.
A fascinating look at the beginnings of one of America’s defining industries.
