Polly Burson, who died April 4 at 86, was an accomplished trick rider who parlayed her horsemanship into a career as one of the most successful stuntwomen of her era.

Burson jumped from car to car on a moving train for Betty Hutton in “The Perils of Pauline” (1947), was dragged underwater in place of Julie Adams by the Gill Man in “Creature From the Black Lagoon” (1954), and plunged from a bell tower for Kim Novak in “Vertigo” (1958).

In part because it was the era of the classic Western, many of the jobs involved riding horses, something at which Burson excelled. Having grown up on her grandfather’s horse ranch, Burson got her start at the rodeo at age 11.

At the beginning of her career, she performed with the trick rider Hoot Gibson, and toured America and Europe. In 1941, she fulfilled a childhood dream of appearing at Madison Square Garden, and made a big impression on Gothamites by turning somersaults over the saddle horn and landing on her horse’s neck sitting backward. Later, she toured with Roy Rogers and his Flying “A” Ranch Rodeo.

In 1945, a friend working on the serial “The Purple Monster Strikes” got Burson her first screen role, a short turn as a lady Martian who falls to her death off a cliff while wrestling the star. “The Perils of Pauline” offered Burson wider scope to display her talents, as she not only train-hopped, but did a variety of horse stunts and literally hung from a cliff. From then on, she got steady work as a Hollywood stuntwoman, one of only a handful in an era in which smaller men in drag doubled for most women’s stunts.

Burson was also the first woman to serve as stunt coordinator on a film, in “Westward the Woman” (1951), the president of the United Stuntwomen’s Association, Bonnie Happy, said. “She was a total pioneer, an icon, too,” Ms. Happy said.

In more than three decades of stunt work, she doubled for Sophia Loren, Shelley Winters, Barbara Stanwyck, and a host of others.

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times from the set of “Lancer” (1968), Burson said, “My body will tell me when to quit.” In 1974, the message came through clearly after she was deluged by 3,000 gallons of water in a simulated dam break in the movie “Earthquake.” The Sensurround-enhanced floodwaters left her with a broken leg and smashed cheek; Burson cut back drastically on movie work. She bought a sailboat and got as far as New Zealand before her money ran out. “It takes money to be a vagabond,” she told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She retired completely in 1992, when she appeared in the Dustin Hoffman film “Hero.”

A beloved figure in the movie industry, Burson was a role model for new generations of stuntwomen who continued to consult her on technique, especially for horseback stunts. She always advised young women to finish school, something rodeo touring left her unable to do. She said it was a good life:. “After rodeoing, stunt work seemed like whipped cream,” Burson told the Los Angeles Daily News in 1995.

Burson made regular appearances at the annual sheriff’s rodeo at the Los Angeles Coliseum, and also was for many years the organizer of the Powder Puff Derby, an annual horse race for women in Agua Caliente, Mexico. Explaining the popularity of the race to the Los Angeles Times in 1955, Burson said, “We gals know horses, but women’s suffrage in the saddle is a long way off. We have just one big advantage: racing fans would rather watch us than the men – any day.”

Burson was married twice, first at age 18 to a cowboy clown and bullfighter, and again at 26 to Wayne Burson, a stunt double for the Monogram singing cowboy Jimmy Wakely, who later did stunts in the “Lone Ranger” television series and numerous Westerns. Both marriages ended in divorce.

Burson was a member of the Rodeo Hall of Fame, and in 2002, she was inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame, alongside a Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O’Connor.

Polly Burson
Born Pauline Shelton in Ontario, Ore., on December 24, 1919; died April 4 at Ventura Hospital after a short illness; there are no immediate survivors.