Daughter of Daring - by Mallory O'Meara (Hardcover)

About the Book

"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."--

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"Both a biography of Gibson and a sharp-eyed look at the evolution of Hollywood and women's involvement in it, O'Meara's third popular history is witty, wise, and winning." -Booklist, starred review
"A rip-roaring story of Hollywood's first stuntwoman....dusts off Gibson's remarkable legacy." --Christian Science Monitor

"Colloquial, engagingly written biography recounts the life and times of Helen Gibson... Practitioners in women's and cinema history and general readers will appreciate information about this trailblazing pioneer." -Library Journal

"High-flying biography.... Gibson's death-defying feats astound, and O'Meara provides perceptive context on the era's gender politics ...It's an enthralling tribute to an early Hollywood pioneer."--Publishers Weekly

""Entertaining and educational, Daughter of Daring will attract and inspire readers of all ages." --Bookpage

Praise for Mallory O'Meara

"An insightful, entertaining feminist history." -USA Today on Girly Drinks

"Thorough, and thoroughly entertaining... Provoking both thought and laughter." -Publishers Weekly, starred review on Girly Drinks


"Fun facts abound in O'Meara's volume... A unique, entertaining resource to bolster culinary and women's studies collections." -Library Journal on Girly Drinks


"This is a book that should be on any beverage alcohol enthusiast's shelf."-American Whiskey Magazine on Girly Drinks


"An exhaustively detailed yet breezy history set against the arc of overall women's rights around the globe." -Kansas City Star on Girly Drinks


"Mallory O'Meara has put women at the center of a global history of alcohol. ...A whirlwind tour of the role women have played in what we drink, and how, when, and why we drink it."
--AMY STEWART, author of The Drunken Botanist

"Girly Drinks is anything but--a raw shot of boozy history that stings as well as it soothes!"
--PATTON OSWALT


"Cheers to Mallory O'Meara and her serious yet seriously entertaining treatise."
--JEANETTE HURT, author of Wisconsin Cocktails and Drink Like a Woman


"Thanks to [O'Meara's] persistent efforts, The Lady from the Black Lagoon pulls Milicent Patrick and her considerable accomplishments out of the murky swamp of overlooked history and back into the light." --New York Times Book Review on The Lady from the Black Lagoon

"Engaging and compelling." --Los Angeles Times on The Lady from the Black Lagoon

"Chatty, impassioned... O'Meara is a dogged researcher and a fierce partisan." --Maureen Corrigan, NPR "Fresh Air" on The Lady from the Black Lagoon

"Captivating and exhaustively researched...This is a fascinating slice of Hollywood history with a feminist slant." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) on The Lady from the Black Lagoon

"This is a book that O'Meara was born to write, and she seamlessly meshes her own life story with that of her heroine... a riveting, sincere Hollywood saga that will quickly win your heart." --BookPage (starred review) on The Lady from the Black Lagoon

"An incisive criticism of the erasure of women in Hollywood." --Bustle on The Lady from the Black Lagoon