Wild Women Of The West: Mary Wiggins

Mary Wiggins worshipped excitement. As a double for such screen stars as Barbara Stanwyck, Dorothy Lamour, Norma Shearer and Claudette Colbert she loved to climb the facades of tall buildings, to leap from a running horse to a speeding automobile, to fly a plane while blindfolded. Wiggins was one of the top stuntwomen during the 20s, 30s, and 40s. 

Born on November 8, 1910, in Plant City, Florida, she joined a traveling carnival straight out of high school and got her first screen credit in the short film The Campus Vamp in 1928. Her stunts in films included diving, crashing cars, parachuting and flying planes.

Off the screen Wiggins was a dainty, feminine person. But on the job she thought nothing of diving 80 feet from a cliff into five feet of water, parachuting from planes and walking on their wings, crashing cars through flaming walls, or driving motorcycles through brick buildings. “It’s just the way I happened to pick to earn a living,” she said once. “I guess I like thrills.

Before joining the Women Air Force Service Pilots in 1943, Wiggins was in great demand because her figure closely resembled that of many screen beauties. Doubling for Loretta Young in the film Call of the Wild, Wiggins once dived into turbulent rapids in water 15 degrees below zero. The next day she let herself be dragged down an icy bank by a team of runaway sled dogs. In The Bride Came C.O.D. she bailed out of a plane flying upside down. 

When she left to report for duty as a WASP to fly as a ferry pilot for the army, she was the highest-paid stuntwoman in Hollywood. When she was discharged she used her savings to go into the furniture business with a friend. She lost all her money in the venture and was unable to find regular work in her former profession. 

Despondent over her financial situation, Wiggins decided to take her own life. The dark-eyed daredevil who performed hundreds of perilous feats for high-priced stars without a scratch, was found in the backyard of her home, a bullet from a .25 caliber automatic through her head.

She was thirty-five-years-old when she died on December 19, 1945. 

To learn more about daring stuntwomen like Mary Wiggins read Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures. Visit www.chrisenss.com to enter to win a copy of the book.