Daughters of Daring: Hollywood Cowgirl Stunt Women by Chris Enss
Nonfiction, Historical Biography
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2.6.26
Pages: 264
Rating: 4.5 stars
Format: Hardback
Source: Globe Pequot
Sellers: Amazon
ADD TO: GoodReads
GoodReads Synopsis:
Discover the untold stories of the bold women who rode harder, roped faster, and stole the spotlight in early Hollywood.
Since the famous “first” western movie, The Great Train Robbery, starring Broncho Billy Anderson, made its debut in 1903, cowboy heroes have continued their easily won dominance—but little has been written about the cowgirl stars and their fans. Young women looked up to independent cowgirl characters played by Barbara Stanwyck and Dale Evans in the 1940s and 1950s. Who were the stars before these women? Surprisingly, Hollywood was well-populated with leading cowgirls and real cowgirls. Early Hollywood actresses and stunt women kept the cowgirl spirit alive. They performed every conceivable feat of horsemanship and displayed professional skills coupled with their best efforts and devotion. For some of these working women, the financial rewards for their daring and athletic prowess were at least reasonable.
Daughters of Daring is the story of more than a dozen trick ropers, bronc busters, and bulldoggers turned actresses who, like the early ranch women and rodeo competitors, had pluck and charm. These women performed their own stunts, riding horses at breakneck speed, firing guns, and capturing outlaws. Cowgirl actresses such as Ruth Roland, Helen Gibson, Texas Guinan, Marin Sais, Anne Little, Marie Walcamp, and Evelyn Selbie received top billing above the cowboy and his horse in hundreds of films. This is their story.
Sophia Rose's Review:
I saw the magic words, ‘cowgirls’ and ‘stunt women’ all in the same title. There was no way I wasn’t going to read Daughters of Daring by new to me western women’s history author, Chris Enss.
Daughters of Daring captivated me from the moment I spotted the title and read the exciting, enticing blurb, but I wasn’t far into the introduction before I settled in for an engaging, fascinating journey to the past and met some courageous, tough pioneering women for their time and place.
I was expecting Daughters of Daring to begin with Hollywood and stunt women, but Chris Enss took women doing stunts in entertainment back to the days of the late eighteen hundreds when women were entertaining in western traveling shows shooting, riding, and stunts of daring-do for live audiences. Of course, the most famous was Annie Oakley in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, but there were several other shows and several other women of diverse races as performers. Chris Enss included mini bios of five of these gals who came from various walks of life and parts of the country to ride, shoot, and bust broncs and bulls as well or better than their male counterparts. Next, there were the Silent Film stunt gals, of which there were six bios, followed by the six cowgirl stunters of the Talkies.
I had not heard of any of them save Annie Oakley and I was blown away with their abilities, of course, from diving a horse into a pool to driving and wrecking a wagon in a rollover to fight scenes, bronc and bull-riding- and all for the lowest pay, the longest hours, and no real insurance when they got busted up from a stunt.
However, the really deep-hitting moments of the books were not their careers, but the hard and often tragic lives they led. They shared a career, but what came before and what happened in their private lives were as diverse as their personalities. My heart broke for several of them who sometimes only had this hard-bitten job and something in them that loved what they did. One gal tried for love three times and another gal was at the top of her game when she died in an operation. Several of them lived with constant pain from the stunts and died in abject poverty.
I really appreciated the way Chris Enss brought them to life in her Daughters of Daring and I appreciated how the greater history of women, women working in western entertainment and Hollywood was also brought out. It was a fascinating and often moving read.
Author Bio:Chris Enss is a New York Times bestselling author who has been writing about women of the Old West for more than thirty years. She has penned more than fifty published books on the subject. Her work has been honored with nine Will Rogers Medallion Awards, two Elmer Kelton Book Awards, an Oklahoma Center for the Book Award, three Foreword Review Magazine Book Awards, two-time winner of the Downing Journalism Award, and a Willa Cather Award from Women Writing the West for scholarly nonfiction. Enss’s most recent works are The Doctor Was A Woman: Stories of the First Female Physicians on the Frontier, An Open Secret: The Story of Deadwood’s Most Notorious Bordellos, and Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Cowgirls of Rodeos and Wild West Shows
Sophia’s Bio:
Sophia is a quiet though curious gal who dabbles in cooking, book reviewing, piano-playing, and gardening. Road trips and campouts, museums and monuments, restaurants and theaters are her jam. Encouraged and supported by an incredible man and loving family. A Northern Californian transplant to the Great Lakes Region of the US. Lover of Jane Austen, Baseball, Cats, Scooby Doo, and Chocolate.
As a lifelong reader, it was inevitable that Sophia would discover book blogs and the joy of blog reviewing. Sophia is a prolific reader and audiobook listener which allows her to experience so many wonderful books, authors, and narrators. Few genres are outside her reading tastes, but her true love is fiction particularly history, mystery, sci-fi, and romance. Though, sorry, no horror or she will run like Shaggy and Scooby.
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