Meet Olive Fuller Golden Carey

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Daughters of Daring: Hollywood Cowgirl Stunt Women

She could out-ride the cowboys, outshine the leading ladies, and leap into the Pacific before anyone yelled “Cut!” Meet Olive Fuller Golden Carey. She was thrilling audiences long before stunt doubles were a thing

When the five-reel western drama A Knight of the Range premiered in early 1916, critics praised silent film cowboy and cowgirl actors Harry D. Carey and Olive Fuller Golden performances. Audiences were dazzled by the equestrian tricks never-before seen in motion pictures. “Stunts that are inconceivable of execution are performed before the all-seeing eye of the camera,” a review of the film in a Hollywood magazine read. “Lovers of riding will miss the treat of their lifetime if they fail to see Western stars Carey and Golden work their magic on horseback. Golden is one of the prettiest and most popular of film favorites.

Olive Fuller Golden learned to ride in upstate New York where she was born on January 31, 1896. Before becoming an actress and stuntwoman, she was a rodeo performer specializing in trick riding and roping. At the age of sixteen, she traveled to Los Angeles where she became an original stock player for director D. W. Griffith – along with Mary Pickford, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, and future husband Harry Carey. She appeared in her first major film in 1914 entitled Tess of the Storm Country starring Mary Pickford.

Olive excelled in stunt work and was unafraid to try even the most outrageous feats. In the picture The Inner Conscience, she played the part of a runaway wife who had to escape her husband by jumping out of a boat sailing around Catalina Island. While rehearsing the scene of her character’s drowning, cast and crew members who didn’t know she was acting jumped in to save her.

Critics were consistently impressed with Olive’s riding skills and often pointed out her ability in their reviews noting that “her feats of horsemanship never fail to thrill us to the core, and we have nothing but admiration for the daring rider, who performs remarkable stunts on the backs of treacherous cow ponies.”

In 1916, she signed a contract with Universal and it was during this time she made the acquaintance of an up-and-coming director named John Ford. After the studio hired him to direct pictures, he cast Olive and Harry Carey in many of his films. The first picture she did with Ford was The Soul Herder in 1917.

Olive and Harry Carey were married on January 5, 1920, and shortly thereafter she decided to retire from motion pictures and helped manage her husband’s career and raise a family. After Harry’s death in 1947, she decided to come out of retirement. She appeared in a number of movies including Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The Alamo, and Two Rode Together. The most memorable film in which Olive appeared was Ford’s The Searchers in which she played the mother of Vera Miles and her real-life son, Harry Carey, Jr.

Olive passed away in March 1988, after a brief illness at her ranch in Carpinteria, California. She was ninety-two.

To learn more about Olive Carey and other stunt women like her read

Daughters of Daring: Hollywood Cowgirl Stunt Women.

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