Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story

 

The first question most of us will ask beforereading Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story will be: until recently, werethere any Hollywood stuntwomen? Author Mollie Gregory confirms our suspicionssoon enough. From the 1930s through the ‘70s their numbers were few. Sometimes,during those decades, stuntmen dressed as women to stand in when a femalecharacter drove off a cliff.

 

However, the latest title in the UniversityPress of Kentucky’s Screen Classics series pulls a surprise right at the onset.In those early freewheeling motion picture years, stuntwomen not only werecommon but many early movie actresses did their own stunts. Nowadays, driving50 miles per hour doesn’t seem like much to brag about, but a century ago,given the rattletrap cars and the bumpy roads they traveled, seeing MaryPickford behind the wheel was a thrill. Others stars of the 1910s lived moredangerously on camera, including Ruth Roland walking on the wing of a biplaneand Helen Holmes leaping for dear life onto a fast moving train.

 

As Gregory reminds us, women were moreprominent in all aspects of filmmaking in the early days. One might add thattoday’s Hollywood feminists still haven’t caught up with their sisters from thesilent age.