Helen Gibson

American actress
the New Zealand educator

Helen Gibson (born Rose August Wenger; August 27, 1892 – October 10, 1977) was an American film actress, vaudeville performer, radio performer, film producer, trick rider, and rodeo performer; and is considered to be the first American professional stunt woman.

She was born Rose August Wenger in Cleveland, Ohio, one of five girls to Swiss German parents, Fred and Annie Wenger. Her father had wanted a son, and encouraged her to be a tomboy. Helen saw her first Wild West show in Cleveland in the summer of 1909 and answered a Miller Brothers 101 Ranch ad for girl riders in Billboard magazine. They taught her to ride, and she performed in her first 101 Ranch Real Wild West Show in St. Louis in April 1910. She was quoted as saying: "(I) was already practicing picking up a handkerchief from the ground at full gallop. When veteran riders told me I could get kicked in the head, I paid no heed. Such things might happen to others, but could never happen to me, I believed. We barnstormed all over the US and the season ended all too soon. I was sorry when I had to go home, and could hardly wait to open in Boston in the spring of 1911."

When the Miller Arlington Show suddenly closed in 1911, it left many performers stranded in Venice, California. Thomas H. Ince, who was producing for the New York Motion Picture Company, hired the entire cast for the winter at $2,500 a week. The performers were paid $8 a week and boarded in Venice, where the horses were stabled. They rode five miles each day to work in Topanga Canyon, where the films were being shot. In 1912, she made $15 a week for her first billed role as Ruth Roland's sister in Ranch Girls on a Rampage. Like many of the cowboy extras, Helen continued to perform in rodeos between pictures. At the Second Los Angeles Rodeo in 1913, she was featured in the Standing Woman Race, and so impressed one of the investors that he offered to finance a tour of rodeos for her, paying all expenses and splitting the winnings. At the investor's ranch outside of Pendleton, Oregon, Helen worked his horses every day, and learned new forms of trick riding. In Pendleton in June 1913, she met Edmund Richard "Hoot" Gibson (1892 1962). They began working together, and at a rodeo in Salt Lake City, they won everything – the relay race, the standing woman race, and trick riding, in addition to Hoot winning the pony express race, but the promoter of the rodeo skipped town and they did not get a cent of the prize money.</blockquote>

Considered the longest serial in history, the 119 episodes of The Hazards of Helen are stand alone stories, instead of chapters. The highly successful series had begun with Helen Holmes in the lead role for the first 49 episodes, but Helen Gibson was given her chance to replace Holmes for two pictures when she took ill, and starred in A Test of Courage and A Mile a Minute, for $35 a week. The Kalem New York office personnel were so impressed by her work, they instructed Glendale to keep her on when Helen Holmes and her husband, Hazards of Helen director, J. P. McGowan, left to form their own company. Now rechristened 'Helen' by the studio, she proved to be a capable actress, and after making several more pictures she wrote a story for a one reeler that was built around a risky stunt. To catch a runaway train, she would detach a team of horses, ride them "standing woman", and then catch a rope dangling from a bridge and use it to swing from the horses and onto the train as it came under the bridge. Kalem rewarded her by raising her salary to $50 a week. One of her best stunts appeared in this serial: traveling at full speed on a motorcycle chasing after a runaway freight train, Gibson rode through a wooden gate, shattering it completely, up a station platform, and through the open doors of a boxcar on a siding, with her machine traveling through the air until it landed on a flatcar in a passing train. The trick was to undercrank the camera and execute it all with flawless timing. By then Kalem, a producer of single reel films, was in decline, and rather than risk financial failure producing feature films, ceased production in 1917 and was sold to Vitagraph. Universal offered her a three year contract at $125 a week for two reel, and five reel pictures until 1919; among these were two 1919 John Ford films, Rustlers and Gun Law. Her Universal contract ended with the winter of 1919 and she signed with Capital Film Company for $300 a week, but Capital was already losing money and went out of business in May 1920. Hoot Gibson, who had joined the Army tank corps, returned during Christmas 1918 and Universal gave him a contract to appear in two reel Westerns. He found his wife had become a very successful movie star while he was away, but his ego could not handle it, and the couple separated in 1920. Census records for 1920 indicate that they were living separately; Hoot Gibson listed himself as married, and Helen listed herself as widowed.

In 1920, Gibson created Helen Gibson Productions to produce her own starring vehicles. The first was to be No Man's Woman, a Western melodrama about a kind hearted dance hall hostess rescuing a rancher's child. The money gave out before the picture was finished, and it bankrupted Gibson personally. A year later, the film was released by another studio with a new title, Nine Points of the Law. In March 1921, the Spencer Production Company hired Gibson to star in The Wolverine (1921). They were so pleased with her performance, they put her on the payroll at $450 a week. However, before shooting began on her second picture, her appendix ruptured, putting her in the hospital battling peritonitis. The studio replaced her.

Gibson continued to take character parts and extra work until 1954, when the couple moved to Lake Tahoe for health reasons. After trying unsuccessfully to sell real estate, they returned and bought a home in Panorama City, in the San Fernando Valley. Gibson suffered a slight stroke in 1957, but it did not prevent her working as an extra in film and television. Her last role was in 1961, John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, for which she was paid $35; she was 69 years old. She retired in January 1962, on a Motion Picture Industry pension of $200 a month plus social security. The couple moved to Roseburg, Oregon, where she spent her later years fishing and giving the occasional interview. Helen Gibson died of heart failure following a stroke in 1977 aged 85.