Stunting Into Stardom
WINNIE BROWN, nameless and unknown, has doubled for all the stars, but now she’s to be a star herself
By Adela Rogers St. Johns
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from Photoplay, December 1922
Originally, I had planned for this short article by Adela Rogers St. Johns to be the basis of my recent “How’d They Do That” piece. But, once I started researching Winnie/Winna Brown, I realized that the films I was able to find evidence she worked on are either presumed lost or are inaccessible—so, her stunts are un-gif-able!
To compound the lack of gif-ability, the Frances Marion project discussed in this article never came to fruition AND assertions that Rogers St. Johns made about Brown’s “discovery” are incorrect.
You can probably understand why I chose a different article about silent stunt performers to analyze!
Despite all that mess, Brown seemed like such an interesting character, I wanted to profile her anyway. My commentary on the article will be highlighted like so and following the article you’ll find a working filmography that I’ve compiled and annotated citations.
Let’s learn about one more of those overlooked, underappreciated dare-devils of silent cinema!
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WINNIE BROWN!
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First things first: Winnie Brown was also known as Winna Brown. Over the course of Brown’s career, which started sometime around 1913, she was variously referred to as Winna and Winnie (possibly shortened from Winona).
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Maybe you never heard tell o’ Winnie Brown.
Maybe that name doesn’t come inside your recollection at all.
But I want you to know about Winnie Brown. For the days of the old west, the picturesque old west that held more color and more fascination than any part of this country has ever held, is disappearing. And Winnie Brown is one of the last of its real inhabitants.
Winnie Brown, the greatest living cowgirl. The best stunt rider and broncho buster and horse wrangler that ever put on chaps. The idol of the real cowboys. The winner of rodeos and exhibitions from Cheyenne to Oklahoma.
READ on BELOW the JUMP!
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I don’t know Brown’s rodeo record, but I do know that she competed in or performed at rodeos in New Mexico, Arizona, and California. One of which, in Los Angeles, was committed to film for When Quality Meets (1915). Yes, they did actually “shoot the rodeo.”
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Winnie Brown, to whom the motion picture fans owe so many thrills and whose face has never been seen before a camera. Who has done some of the most daring and difficult scenes the silversheet has ever recorded but whose name has never appeared on the screen.
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Brown’s film career may have begun in New Mexico or California—she was an active part of both rodeo scenes by 1913. Later in this article, Rogers St. Johns claims that Frances Marion “discovered” Brown. However, it was another woman film pioneer, Dot Farley, who most likely gave Brown her first break.
Sometime round about 1913, a film unit was formed by Farley and Gilbert P. Hamilton called The Albuquerque Film Company, associated with Warner. They produced shorts and features—most of them starring Farley and based on her original scenarios. From contemporary news items, it seems like Brown was part of the crew from the start—not solely as a stunt performer, but also as an actor and prop master.
In fact, in one of their 1914 releases, Reuben’s Busy Day, Brown is the feminine lead:
Production still featuring Brown in Reuben's Busy Day from Moving Picture World, 14 November 1914
It’s no great mystery why, if you were printing a puff piece repackaging a reliable woman stunter as a fresh, new star, you wouldn’t want to talk about how she had already been a featured player nearly a decade prior!
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But who at last is to come into her own and play not only the “stunt scenes” but the whole star part of a real cowgirl in a real western story.
You remember, maybe, times when you’ve seen the serial star race her horse alongside a train going 40 miles an hour and then leap from her saddle to the rear rail of the observation car—or maybe jump her pony down a 100-foot cliff.
Ten chances to one, that was Winnie Brown.
Perhaps you have sat in your comfortable theater seat and seen the persecuted ingenue jump from the ninth story of a burning building—actually jump right out into space where no net was visible.
Winnie Brown!
And the lovely star who rode, perhaps, a whirling, threatening jam of logs down the dark and dangerous rapids of a great river—
That, too, was Winnie Brown.
Photo caption: Frances Marion, who discovered Winnie Brown, is shown at the right, discussing stardom with the stunt girl. Miss Marion is now making the first Winnie Brown picture
The most daring, reckless, skillful double, the movie game has ever known, that’s what, Winnie Brown has been.
There’s hardly a great star in the game today for whom Winnie Brown hasn’t doubled. There’s hardly a piece of wild and death-defying business that Winnie hasn’t performed.
Yet to her audiences she has been nameless, faceless, unknown.
When she has gone to see herself upon the screen it has been in the clothes and under the name and mask of some other woman. The credit for her work has gone elsewhere.
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There’s a charming news item that floated around in 1923 of Brown being an unexpected double for the uber-glamorous Pola Negri in Bella Donna (1923). While Brown was very well-suited to perform the horse stunts, she struggled with the fancy costume. She supposedly remarked:
“I’m more scared o’ them dresses ‘n I ever was o’ any stunt.” from Photoplay, May 1923
Pola Negri in a production still for Bella Donna
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“That don’t matter none,” said Winnie Brown, turning her fine, dark eyes on me, “I got the mazuma. An’ don’t say too much about the doublin’ part. Most o’ these here stars don’t like for folks to know they use a double. An’ o’ course it ain’t their fault most o’ the time they do—it’s the company makes ’em. If I bust a coupla o’ ribs or a laig or two, it don’t make no difference. I got a swell doctor and he fixes me up cheap. But if one o’ them fancy stars gits mashed up or her face scratched, it costs the company a whole wad o’ spondolicks.
“Most o’ the girls I’ve doubled for would have been willin’ to tackle it themselves all right, only the company wouldn’t hear to it, and besides, those skirts ain’t got the trainin’.”
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Some of the stars Brown was reported as doubling for in addition to Negri are Priscilla Dean (in Siren of Seville (1924)), Norma Talmadge, Lois Wilson, Colleen Moore, Bebe Daniels, Corinne Griffith, and Marie Prevost. So far, which films starring most of these women Brown doubled for are still a question mark for me. Horses were Brown’s obvious specialty, but she also performed automobile and train stunts as well as the odd aquatic bit. That cowpoke had the range!
Siren of Seville is extant but not easily accessible at the moment, but these production photos on alamy caught my eye. Unfortunately, Brown and Dean actually resembled each other, so you add that with the fact that Brown would be made up as Dean to double for her, and it’s honestly kind of hard to tell if it’s Dean or Brown in these photos. So, Imma include them nonetheless.
Behind the scenes photos from Siren of Seville
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Winnie has donned the grease-paint and become a western leading lady.
Winnie is going to play the leading role in a real western picture, written specially for her. You are going to see a real cowgirl in action. And there are more real stunts in this picture than were ever written into one script before.
“Reckon she’ll have to have a double herself, ‘fore she gits through,” said Soupstrainer gravely.
Frances Marion is the discoverer of Winnie Brown. Miss Marion, for a number of years scenario writer and director for Mary Pickford, and now scenarioist for Norma and Constance Talmadge, discovered Winnie when she went to look at some horses. And she decided to give her a chance on the screen.
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As I mentioned earlier, it was more likely Dot Farley who “discovered” Brown, so this doesn’t necessarily have the ring of truth to it. Marion’s husband was Fred Thomson, who was also a cowboy stunter. It’s likely Brown and Thomson worked together before 1922. Marion herself had given Thomson the boost to stardom while she was collaborating closely with Mary Pickford in 1921. The project hyped in this article was intended to co-star Brown with Thomson. It was to be titled “The Law of Life” and was initially slated to be directed by George Hill.
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So Winnie Brown has become a motion picture actress.
“Do you like it?” I asked, when I had climbed to a seat beside her on the rail fence.
“Reckon I do. Course I’m scared plumb to death. Long’s I can stay by a hoss, I’ll git by all right. I’ve always wanted to take a chance on actin’.”
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☕ Appreciate my work? Buy me a coffee! ☕
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Working Filmography for Winna/Winnie Brown:
The Prairie Trail (1913, short) [source(s): Variety, 31 October 1913]
Campaigning with Custer (1913, short) [source(s): Motion Picture Story, December 1913]
Reuben’s Busy Day (1914, featured role) [source(s): Moving Picture World, 14 November 1914]
Captain Courtesy (1915, character role: “Indian Servant”) [source(s): The Billboard, 10 April 1915; Variety, 16 April 1915; Moving Picture World, 17 April 1915; Motography, 24 April 1915; Moving Picture World, 25 January 1919; Motion Picture News, 1 February 1919]
Aunt Matilda Outwitted (1915, possible character role) [source(s): Moving Picture World, 5 June 1915]
When Quality Meets (1915, character part) [source(s): Motion Picture News, 5 June 1915; Motion Picture News, 19 June 1915; Moving Picture World, 10 July 1915]
The Law of Life (1923, unfinished) [uncompleted Frances Marion, Fred Thomson, George Hill production. source(s): Motion Picture News, 5 August 1922; Photoplay, May 1923]
Bella Donna (1923, double for Pola Negri) [Photoplay, May 1923; Pictures and the Picturegoer, June 1923; Picture-Play Magazine, September 1923]
The Eagle’s Feather (1923, character role) [Camera, 23 June 1923]
The Siren of Seville (1924, double for Priscilla Dean) [Le Film, April 1926]
Maybes:
Even Unto Death (1914)
Any of the films made by the Albuquerque Film Company involving Dot Farley between 1913 and 1916 likely featured work from Brown in some capacity. While this film is noted on Brown’s imdb page, I couldn’t locate a contemporary source that named Brown or described a feminine role of Brown’s type.
Hearts and Saddles (1917) and/or A Roman Cowboy (1917)
When Tom Mix left Selig and signed a contract with Foxfilm in 1917, some of his first films there were reportedly shot at Brown’s ranch in Silver Lake, California. These were Mix’s first two films for Foxfilm and may have been fully or partially shot on her property. Whether or not Brown contributed to the films beyond leasing her property to Fox remains to be seen, but it’s probable. Brown is quoted in an article in Photoplay from November 1927 stating that she stunted for Mix in the past, though the stunt she mentioned involved a train trestle and neither of these films contain train stunts (based on their copyright descriptions preserved by The Library of Congress).
Also potentially filmed on Brown’s ranch:
One Touch of Sin (1917) Moving Picture World, 20 January 1917 [implies this was shot at one of Fox’s “west coast studios,” followed by the news item about Mix moving in]
Fires of Conscience (1916) Motography, 23 September 1916 [mentions Silver Lake locale]
As yet unidentified work:
A Tom Mix film where a woman performs a stunt on a train (potentially jumping from a horse onto a moving train). Since Brown previously worked in New Mexico and Mix was working all over the west (including NM) before 1917, there are a lot of possibilities here. [Photoplay, November 1927]
Double work for Norma Talmadge, Lois Wilson, Colleen Moore, Bebe Daniels, Corinne Griffith, and Marie Prevost
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Citations Chronologically (with minor annotations):
“Film Flashes” in Variety, 31 October 1913 (The Prairie Trail)
Motion Picture Story Magazine, December 1913 (Campaigning with Custer)
“Warner’s to Inaugurate New Service” in Moving Picture World, 14 November 1914 (Reuben’s Busy Day)
“United Film Service Is Now Well Under Way” in Motion Picture News, 12 December 1914
“New Combination of Producers” in Motography, 12 December 1914
“The Albuquerque Company” in Moving Picture World, 10 July 1915
Moving Picture World, 13 February 1915 (listed as part of United Film Service’s roster)
“Farnum in Capt. Courtesy” in The Billboard, 10 April 1915 (Captain Courtesy)
“Dustin Farnum in Captain Courtesy” in Moving Picture World, 17 April 1915 (Captain Courtesy)
“United Film Service” in Moving Picture World, 5 June 1915 (Aunt Matilda Outwitted)
Motion Picture News, 5 June 1915 (When Quality Meets, shot the rodeo)
“One-Reeler Features Messenger Boy” in Motion Picture News, 19 June 1915 (When Quality Meets)
“The Albuquerque Company” Moving Picture World, 10 July 1915 (When Quality Meets)
Motography, 23 September 1916 (Silver Lake ranch mentioned)
“Tom Mix Will Make Foxfilm Comedies” in Motography, 6 January 1917
“Tom Mix Joins Fox Films” in Moving Picture World, 6 January 1917
“Tom Mix Is With Fox Comedy Company” in Motion Picture News, 13 January 1917
Moving Picture World, 17 January 1917 (also Tom Mix)
Moving Picture World, 20 January 1917 (Tom Mix and Gladys Brockwell films on her ranch)
“The Corral” in Billboard, 1 March 1919 (short news item about relocating to Nogales, Arizona)
“United” in Motion Picture News, 5 August 1922 (“The Law of Life”)
“Stunting Into Stardom” in Photoplay, December 1922
“Questions and Answers” in Photoplay, May 1923 (“The Law of Life”)
Photoplay, May 1923 (news item about doubling in Bella Donna)
Pictures and the Picturegoer, June 1923 (Bella Donna)
“Who’s Who and What’s What in Filmland This Week” in Camera, 23 June 1923 (The Eagle’s Feather)
Picture-Play Magazine, September 1923 (Bella Donna)
“Girls Who Risk Their Lives” in Picture-Play Magazine, March 1925 (article about women stunters, does not cite specific Brown films)
Le Film, April 1926 (article about prominent stunt doubles)
“Risking Life and Limb for $25” in Photoplay, November 1927 (Tom Mix anecdote)
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