Meet the talented California barrel racers who used their horsemanship abilities to carve out successful careers as stuntwomen in Hollywood.

While most of us dream of barreling our way to the bright lights of Las Vegas, a few barrel racers have seen their work light up the silver screen. Through horses, rodeo and the Western way of life, a select few found their horsemanship skills carrying through to fulfilling careers as stuntwomen, doubling some of the most famous actresses in Hollywood.

Ann Scott McGilchrist as the stuntwoman for Haley Bennett.
Ann Scott McGilchrist doubled for Haley Bennett, the lead actress in “The Magnificent Seven.” She’s joined on the set of NBC’s “Timeless” by Annie Wersching, the actress she doubles. Photo courtesy Ann Scott.

Yet, their work isn’t limited to “horse work.” They’ve done “high work”—falling from buildings, bridges and over waterfalls. They’ve driven through barriers and slid sideways on motorcycles. They’ve been set on fire. They’ve sold convincing fight scenes without ever landing a punch. They’ve escaped all the perils thrown at them by the bad guys, generally while wearing high heels and short skirts.

“You have to run over here and fall over,” chuckled Ann Scott McGilchrist, a second-generation stunt worker and the 2014 California Circuit champion barrel racer. “The stunt guys are in pants, so they can put on knee pads and elbow pads, and the stuntwomen are all wearing high heels, getting shot at wearing a little dress.”

Marguerite Happy

A two-term Women’s Professional Rodeo Association California Circuit director, Marguerite Happy got into the film industry as a newlywed. Shortly after she married Clifford Happy, her father-in-law Don—a rodeo producer who often supplied stock for Westerns—marched the couple down to central casting to take roles as extras.

“We worked as background extras in different movies and television shows,” Marguerite said. “Within six months, Clifford went straight A, Screen Actors Guild, doing stunt work. I kept working extra for a year-and-a-half, and I got my SAG card on a fight scene in ‘1941.’”

Once she got her card, Marguerite says it took off from there.

“I was a fairly good size to double a lot of good actresses,” Marguerite said. “There wasn’t a lot of horse work then, so we had to learn a lot to become good all-around stunt persons to make a living at it and not have to wait tables or do something else on the side. We were very fortunate and blessed.”

Even though Marguerite grew up in a rodeo family and loved to rope, she had to expand on her horsemanship as well as learn to fall and drive cars and motorcycles.

“The horse background definitely helped, but there was still a lot to learn,” Marguerite said. “I had to learn to drive a team, and you’re put on so many different horses with different cues.”

Marguerite says doing horse work has made she and Clifford better stunt personnel and given her an edge when learning and adapting to the trade.

Marguerite Happy as a stuntwoman for Susan Sarandon.
Silver Spur Award winner Marguerite Happy is a former California Circuit director. Most of her favorite stunts involve horses, but she enjoyed driving a car as she doubled Susan Sarandon in “Thelma & Louise.” Photo courtesy of Marguerite Happy.

“The horse work has been a huge feather in our cap,” Marguerite said. “I do believe cowboys and cowgirls have an easier time learning to do high work and falls, fights and car work because they have the athleticism. I think it’s harder for someone that’s say, a motorcycle specialist, to learn horse work, because sometimes they’re afraid of the horses. It’s hard to make that transition when livestock is included.”

One of Marguerite’s favorite stunts was a transfer from a horse to a four-horse hitch for “Triumphs Of A Man Called Horse.”

“I supposedly reach down and pull the pin and the wagon flips, and I’m driving the horses without the wagon,” Marguerite said.

Marguerite was honored with a Silver Spur Award in 2017 for her contributions to Western film and television. She was only the second stuntwoman to be honored with that award. Her husband Clifford received the honor in 2012. Their sons, Sean and Ryan Happy, followed them into the business.

“They did their first commercials when they were toddlers, but they weren’t allowed to do stunts until they turned 18,” Marguerite said. “Both have been severely injured. One got hit by a train while working on ‘The Lone Ranger.’ He does limited work now and works as a park ranger. Our other son is still very involved even though he was severely injured while doing some motorcycle work on ‘Jumanji.’”

Now that they’ve retired from full-time stunt work, the Happys have been enjoying their horses more.

“When we first got married, it seemed like every rodeo we entered, there were very few we actually made it to because we had to work. If you were taking off to go rodeo or do something fun, they’d call someone else the next time. You have to be careful not to turn down too many jobs,” Marguerite said, lamenting the fact that Clifford turned down an invitation to the first Timed Event Challenge due to a stunt job.

“We’re both retired, but still work a little,” Marguerite said. “We have our retirement and insurance. It would have been a whole different path had we chosen just to do the horses. Now that we’re retired, we’re able to go a little bit more.”

Tonia Forsberg

This past fall, Tonia Forsberg and her son Tyler were making daily runs from the set of HBO’s “Deadwood” and the California Circuit Finals Rodeo. Forsberg, who put a large part of her barrel racing career on hold for her stunt career, will join her son, a calf roper, at the Ram National Circuit Finals Rodeo in Kissimmee, Florida.

“This is the first time I’ve done anything big,” laughed Forsberg, a stuntwoman who recently added animal trainer to her resumé. “I’ve rodeoed off and on, but I’ve never gone to as many rodeos as I did [last] year. I wanted to qualify for the circuit finals. When I won the second round, it was surreal.”

Now, Forsberg has entered the winter rodeos leading up to the RNCFR.

“I got to trick ride at Fort Worth, and now I get to go back and run barrels. That’s a bucket list right there,” Forsberg said with a smile.

Although her mother Diane Chapman qualified for the National Finals Rodeo six times, Forsberg didn’t follow her mother in the arena.

“I did a lot of horse shows growing up, a lot of gymkhanas and jumping,” Forsberg said. “I did a lot of other disciplines. My mom gave me tips and advice, but she didn’t teach me to run barrels. It wasn’t there for me as a kid. I think that’s why I’m so passionate about it.”

With her parents supplying livestock for the film industry, Forsberg ended up getting her SAG card when she was 10 for doubling Jenny Beck on the television show “Western Guns of Paradise.”

While she’s performed numerous other stunts, the horse work remains her favorite, and it’s taken her around the world.

“I got called to go to Budapest,” Forsberg said. “I had to fall the horse down a hill. As I’m falling, I’ve got to roll down the hill in front of the horse. They ended up cutting it out of the movie, because they thought it was too violent. I got to go to Morocco and double the lead actress in Hidalgo.”

Forsberg says the most recent fun job she’s done was on “The Lone Ranger.”

“I got to use my trick riding skills, riding backwards,” Forsberg said. “I got to fight on top of a train, which was actually a train car on a semitruck. The actress gets thrown off the train onto a horse running alongside the train. I had to do a transfer from the horse to the train while sitting sideways on his neck. We were going like 25–26 miles an hour, so it was an adrenalin rush for sure.”

Forsberg is still doing stunts, but she’s also working on increasing the family’s presence in the production side, supplying livestock and horses, especially now that she and her husband Todd’s two boys want to continue in the business.

Tonia Forsberg played a stuntwoman in the movie "Hidalgo".
Most horse lovers have already seen her in the movie “Hidalgo” as the lead actress’s double, but barrel racing fans will be hearing the name Tonia Forsberg called at the Ram National Circuit Finals Rodeo this year. Photo courtesy Tonia Forsberg.

Ann Scott McGilchrist

Like most stuntwomen, Ann Scott McGilchrist—who goes by Scott in most of the films she’s worked in—followed her family into the business, and like many of her fellow barrel racing stuntwomen, it was horses that got her family involved.

Her father is well-known stuntman and stunt coordinator, Walter Scott. He grew up on a ranch south of Los Angeles, and like many of his contemporaries, parleyed rodeo into stunt work on Westerns.

“When he graduated high school, he was like, ‘I’m going to Hollywood to be an actor,’” Ann said. “He was rodeoing at the time. A lot of cowboys were working on Western movies, doing stunts at the time. He rodeoed and met other stunt guys at the rodeos. He started out with the horses, and then he learned how to do other things.”

Initially, Walter didn’t want his daughter involved in the business, but he did let her do some extra work.

“I didn’t start working until after high school,” Ann said. “My dad always told me I was too tall to double kids and too young to double adults. He kept me away from it. I did get to go visit him on the set, and there were a couple of movies we got to be extras in.”

One of those movies was the Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman epic “Far And Away.” The movie concludes with the couple participating in the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889.

“We spent the whole summer in Montana while my dad was doing the movie,” Ann said. “My great-great-grandma was in the actual land race at the same age I was when I got to be in the movie. I got to be in a covered wagon and ride in the land race.”

After she graduated high school, Ann thought about going away to college when her father encouraged her to stick around Los Angeles, at which time he taught her to do stunt work.

“I was hooked after that,” Ann said. “You don’t want to go back to school after you’re making a good check. After high school, I went to community college and started learning about the business. I went on location for ‘Secondhand Lions’ in Austin, Texas. That was my first movie. I thought ‘Well, yeah, I don’t want to go back to school.’”

While she does a little bit of everything, horse work and Westerns are her favorite.

“You want to be known as doing everything,” Ann said. “You try to make yourself known as more than just the horse girl.”

Making a living as a stuntwoman also means taking the work when asked, because there’s always someone else to take your place. Ann says her father taught her to prioritize work over rodeo.

“My dad would start to go to a rodeo far away, but he’d get called to work,” Ann said. “He’d always turn down a rodeo to work. Rodeo has changed where guys are making a little more, but I was always taught you turn down rodeo to work. It was a better way to make a living doing stunts than rodeo.”

Ann used her stunt work to fund a breeding to leading sire Dash Ta Fame and got her dream horse, the aptly named Fallin For Fame (“Buzz”). Now retired, Buzz carried Ann to 17th in the WPRA world standings, the one year she decided she’d turn down work to rodeo.

“Buzz was doing so well, and I raised him, so I decided I was going to take the year off and rodeo,” Ann said. “I always dreamed about going to some of the bigger rodeos. I knew if someone called [from work], I was going to have to turn it down. I did that for a year. I’m so thankful I had Buzz.”

Ann is currently running Buzz’s sister, California Fame.

Sammy Thurman Brackenbury was the grand dame of barrel racing stuntwomen.
Sammy Thurman Brackenbury competes at the Oakdale, California, Stampede in 1961. Photo courtesy of Cowboy Girl.

Sammy Thurman Brackenbury

The grand dame of barrel racing stuntwomen is Sammy Thurman Brackenbury. The 1965 Girls Rodeo Association—now WPRA—World Champion Barrel Racer was an all-around cowgirl before she made her first appearance on film. She later fostered the growth of professional barrel racing on the West Coast before earning her world title and leaving the sport behind for a long career as a stuntwoman.

“I’d still do something if they called me,” laughed the effervescent 85-year-old.

Named after her father Sam Fancher, an all-around hand, Brackenbury followed him into the arena. A talented roper and hazer, she competed with her father in the early days of rodeo—“back when they rode dinosaurs,” she chuckled—before trying her hand at barrel racing.

“The GRA was in Oklahoma and Texas,” Brackenbury said. “In California they had a state association when I got started.”

The talented horsewoman won most of the barrel races when they were first offered at rodeos. Some places like Santa Maria, where she’d enter with her father, kept changing the ladies’ event in hopes of finding a different winner.

“They had a barrel race long before everybody started having them,” Brackenbury said. “I won the barrels riding my little bay horse. The next year, they had a pole bending. I split the day money the first day with a local gymkhana girl. I told my dad I was riding his calf horse the next day. He said, ‘Oh no, you’re not.’ and I said, ‘Yes, I was.’ That’s how it usually went between my daddy and me. I rode his horse and just smoked them the next day. The next year, they had a stake race, just a down and back. I won that, too.”

Brackenbury continued to dominate at local races, many of which she encouraged places to have.

“I got in on the ground floor out here in this country,” Brackenbury said. “I had been reading about barrel races in Texas and studying up on it. I had been working at it for a while and made barrel horses out of every horse we had.”

Brackenbury made the GRA top 15 for 11 straight years, from 1960 to 1970. In addition to her world title, she took reserve honors in 1961 and won the NFR barrel race in 1962 in Dallas, Texas.

Toward the later years of her NFR qualifications, Brackenbury—then Thurman—dabbled in the picture business.

“When I was 18, I did ‘Horse of the West’ for Disney,” said Brackenbury, who played Eleana Vasquez in the “Wonderful World of Disney” feature, of which a clip still exists on YouTube of a young Brackenbury roping. “Much later I did ‘In Cold Blood’—it was a true story about Perry Smith, who grew up to be a murderer. Bobby (Robert) Blake played him as an adult, but they had flashback [scenes] to what he remembered about his mother. I played his mother. They filmed me roping a calf and picking him up off the fence and riding off with him in front of me, and then later, when I wasn’t such a nice mother, having an affair with a sailor.”

Although she did some acting parts when married to stuntman Billy Burton, Brackenbury mostly did stunts.

“I did all kinds of stuff in the beginning and not a lot of horse stuff,” Brackenbury said. “I doubled a lot of people.”

One of her favorite films to work was the Jane Fonda and James Caan film “Comes A Horseman,” in which she doubled Fonda.

“All I did was rope and chase cattle,” Brackenbury said with a laugh. “It was a ball. There’s one scene where the cattle are stampeding, and we’re running to turn them, and there’s a profile shot of me, doubling Jane. It don’t fit Jane’s look. You can see my Indian profile, not Jane Fonda’s.”

Brackenbury says she didn’t rodeo much once she got in the movie business, mostly because she never had another great horse. She did help others in the stunts and barrel racing, like her former stepdaughter Heather Burton Gibson.

Heather Burton Gibson

“She taught me to run barrels,” Gibson said of Brackenbury. “I even got to junior rodeo on her world champion horse, Ugg. That’s where I got my love of barrel racing.”

Gibson had her WPRA card at 13 and rodeoed for about four years before quitting to focus on stunt work.

“My dad didn’t want me to do stunts, but I really wanted to, so he gave in,” Gibson said. “I grew up training with him and my brothers, so I came into it naturally.”

Heather Burton Gibson performing a stunt in "The Phantom."
Heather Burton Gibson followed her father into the business. One of her favorite stunts is from “The Phantom,” where she got to hang from a plane and trick ride all to get one shot. Photo courtesy of Heather Burton Gibson.

Although she enjoyed doing horse work, she focused on all-around stunts.

“A lot of girls got into the business because they could do horse stuff, but I wanted to stay away from it because I didn’t want to be [type-cast],” Gibson said. “I wouldn’t turn horse stunts down, but I did everything—high falls, motorcycles, cars, burns.”

When her stunt career took off, Gibson gave up her personal horses.

“When I moved out at 19, I didn’t even have a horse,” Gibson said. “My dad would let me ride one of his if I wanted to, but back then, we were traveling and I was never home. We were always somewhere else in the world. I quit barrel racing for about 10 to 12 years.”

One of her most memorable stunts that included horse work was in “The Phantom” doubling for Kristy Swanson.

“I climbed out of an airplane and hung from a pontoon,” Gibson said. “We did a bunch of shots of me crawling out of the plane and hanging from the pontoon with a horse running underneath the plane. Obviously, I can’t fall from the plane and land on a horse, so I got to use my trick riding, which I learned from my husband. I did a Hippodrome stand as the plane flew over, and I fell into my seat. We tied the two shots together to make it look like I jumped from a plane onto a horse.”

Although stunt work may seem daredevilish, Gibson says she looks at it like she does barrel racing—simply a competition to be the best.

“I’ve never considered myself an adrenalin junkie,” Gibson said. “I’ve always looked at it competitively. I felt I was good at it and wanted to be the best.”

Gibson, a multiple California Circuit Finals qualifier, says she’s slowed down on stunt work in recent years, and while she’s barrel racing some and has given some lessons, she hasn’t gotten to go much.

“You have the guys who coordinate the stunts, and they have a little nest of people they hire,” Gibson said. “All the guys I worked for are mostly retired now. I still work a bit, but not full time. I’ve even slowed down on barrel racing. Our ranch burned down two years ago, so we’re slowly rebuilding.”

Gibson is still involved in the business through the boarding facility she and her stuntman husband, Dale, operate near Hollywood.

“It’s like our little ranch in the city,” Gibson said with a laugh. “We do a lot of lessons for actors and a lot of productions use our ranch. [Stunt work] has been a really good business for my family. It’s a tough business, but I’ve enjoyed it.”

This article was originally published in the February 2019 issue of Barrel Horse News.

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