One of Hollywood’s First Stuntwomen

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

On a warm spring day in 1921, more than two thousand women gathered at the Fox Hollywood Studio to film the all-female chariot race for the silent picture the Queen of Sheba. As the story centered around the ill-fated romance between Solomon, King of Israel, and the Queen of Sheba the majority of the cast were dressed in Biblical garb. The women who were to be driving the chariots were adorned in colorful tunics, leather helmets, and tall, period style boots. Each were focused on the four-horse team fastened to a yoke and attached to the vehicles.

Western cowboy actor and director Tom Mix belted out instructions to the camera crew to standby to begin filming and then prompted the drivers to take their places. Among the skilled chariot drivers was World Champion All-Around Horsewoman Lorena Trickey. Trickey caught the attention of studio head, William Fox during preproduction talks for the picture. He’d read an article about the twenty-eight-year-old’s talent in the saddle and believed she would be a perfect stuntwoman. In addition to setting records in relay racing, she was also an accomplished Roman style racer. In Roman riding the rider stands atop a pair of horses, with one foot on each horse. Before the shoot was over, Mix would call on Lorena to give a demonstration for the cameras.

Not long after filming had completed on the Queen of Sheba, the rodeo star lent her expertise to a picture with Mary Pickford entitled Through the Back Door. Pickford played a young woman who moves to America from Belgium just prior to WWI to search for her mother. Most of the horseback riding stunts in the picture were performed by Trickey.

To learn more about cowgirl actress and stuntwoman Lorena read

Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West