Josie Sedgwick — All Together Again! (1926) 🇺🇸

January 16, 2024

You’ll find Josie Sedgwick at a pretty bungalow home away up on Canon Drive in Hollywood. Possibly she will be sitting in an armchair on the lawn where great palm trees shade her from the California sun.

by A. L. Wooldridge

Possibly you will find her in a hammock poring over the pages of a book or a magazine. Looking a little tired, a little pensive, a little wistfully off at the range of hills through which she used to ride. Possibly she will be walking back to the stables to give Pico, that wiry, high-strung cow pony a lump of sugar and encourage him to be patient just a little while longer, when they will be off again in a wild scamper over the mountain trail.

Josie is fighting the fight of her life to get back her health and strength. And she’s winning. For nearly a year now she has nursed her battered body and broken bones under the care of eminent physicians and surgeons, laughing at the very idea of becoming an invalid.

“Me?” she exclaims. “I got too many broncs to ride and too many stage coaches to decorate with my lissome figure! I haven’t got time to quit.”

And day by day she is driving herself back to health on the theory that a quitter never wins and a winner never quits.

A year ago doctors gravely shook their heads. Too many falls, too many wrenches of the spine, too many shocks to the nervous system, too many broken bones, they said.

“I don’t know,” she confided to me, “but it seems that the knocks and bumps some people get in life, serve only to spur them on to more determined efforts to accomplish things. I’ve had more bones broken and more joints dislocated, I suppose, than any girl in pictures. But I’m just as enthusiastic as I ever was and if I had it all to do over again, I’d go right in and take my aches and pains and fractures just the same. I love my cowboys and my ponies and my stage coaches and the wild rides in the hills. It’s been an experience that doesn’t come into the lives of many young women. And if I was hurt — well, I’m all together now, don’t you see? And it’s the ‘now’ that counts. What’s gone doesn’t matter.”

She curled herself up in a big chair and began telling me some of her experiences. Not in a tone of complaint and not in braggadocio, but just from the funny side of it. The fact that she had suffered broken bones all the way from the tips of her toes to her shoulders and had been picked up unconscious from beneath bucking stage coaches as well as bucking broncos, appeared to her only humorous. What’s a few broken bones, she argued! They’re bound to come in Western stuff!

“I got my first real hurt when I was making One-Shot Ross, with Roy Stewart,” she said. “Do you know what a running dismount is? Well, I didn’t either. But the cowboys showed me. You get your horse into a good stiff run, then you desert him — leave him flat. And you sail through the air and light on your feet, if possible. You don’t drag yourself along the ground, or roll up into a ball somewhere out in the brush. You land on your feet if you can find them. Not being able to find them, you’re just out of luck and anything else must do. When I made that running dismount I’m telling you about, I found my feet all right. They were right there in my little boots. I landed on them just as I should have landed. Fine! But, bless your heart, both my ankles were broken! And presently I went down in a heap. “‘I want my mamma!’ I cried. “I meant it in a kidding way, but they bundled me up and took me home. There I lay till the bones knit, pondering over that running dismount. Oh, I was learning fast!

“You understand, I wasn’t a horsewoman. I was born in Texas but not on a cattle ranch. They selected me to do Westerns because I was a type. I could ride a little but I was no cow-puncher. ‘Oh, come on,’ the cowboys said, ‘we’ll teach you how to stay in the saddle.’ And I came on — and stayed in the saddle — every now and then! You know, riding looks so easy when those cowboys do it. You see them swing onto a broncho’s back and ride anywhere from its ear to the end of its left hind leg and get an awful lot of fun out of doing it. But one who hasn’t practiced that a long, long time usually gets kicked in the face. I didn’t try any trick work. I just wanted to stay in the saddle — that’s all.

“Just about the time I had recovered from my injuries in One-Shot Ross, they told me to get ready to go to the Ince Ranch. They were starting Boss of the Lazy Wife, with Pete Morrison in the lead [Transcriber’s Note: The Boss of the Lazy Y with Roy Stewart?]. Another horse picture — not that Pete was the horse, of course.

“‘Here,’ said I to myself, ‘is where I make good in a big way. Just watch me!’

“Say, did you ever have anything fall on you hard? Listen, listen, listen! Little Josie swung into the saddle, went tearing away on the beautiful, broad, sun-kissed prairie, wearing sombrero, boots, spurs, and everything — wild as the wind that blows. Then — all of a sudden, flip! flop! dud! wham! A little cloud of dust. A pony all flattened out with his nose in the sand. A saddle scratched beyond repair. And Josie, herself, in person, all crumpled up into a little ball and lying very still and quiet. I was numb from the shock. Both knees and both ankles were dislocated and my right shoulder was lying over on mv chest. And it didn’t belong there. Honest it didn’t!

“Five cowboys worked thirty-six minutes trying to return that shoulder to a place somewhere in the vicinity of the right side, and get my dislocated leg joints where they would function again some time, maybe! After they had done all they could, one of them asked:

“‘Is there anything you want, Miss Sedgwick?’

“‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I want my mamma!’

“You see, I was progressing rapidly. I had broken both my ankles, then dislocated them, sprained the joints of both knees, and had succeeded in getting my shoulder wrapped around my neck. Famous, wasn’t it! But I was determined I was going to make a success in those Western pictures and it’s funny how one can call upon some strange, invisible supply of nerve and stamina when the heart is set to do it. I just would succeed. So I kept on. You understand. I was not hurt in all my pictures. I’m just telling you about the times when things went bad. That was only once in a while.

“When we were making scenes for Daring Days, at Universal, I had to race up alongside a runaway stage coach, swing onto it from the side, climb into the driver’s seat, get the reins, and stop the horses. Nice, simple little thing to do! Did you ever try it? You’ll get a wonderful ‘kick’ out of it. I did. Got hold of the swaying, careening old buggy and left my mount, while the stage horses were running like scared rabbits. Then — wham! The old hack lurched to one side and my body crashed against it like a battering ram. Net result — one knee cap wandering off somewhere around the side of my left leg. So, back into splints it went.

Two months later Pico, my pony, rammed that knee and tore the cap loose again. Did it hurt? You know what I said?

“Back to the invalid chair. Back to sitting idly around while injuries healed. Back to become more determined than ever I would ‘fight it out along these lines if it takes all summer.’ Wasn’t that what General Grant said? One day my brother Ed [Edward Sedgwick], the director, came in.

“‘How’re you feeling. Josie?’ he asked.

“‘Fine!’ I replied. ‘Not a bone broken now.’

“‘What?’ he shouted. ‘D’ye mean it?’

“‘Sure I mean it,’ I replied.

“What do you suppose he did? Invited sixty people in to a party — celebrating because I was altogether once more.

“You know, doing Westerns means providing thrills. There has to be a snap, a twang to them — hard riding, stunts, and the like. A Western picture without these becomes a glorious flop. I would not use a double for riding scenes. I made up my mind I would learn to handle a horse and I did learn, as I guess most people will admit, but it cost me a lot of experimenting. And bumps.

“Accidents usually come when least expected. When we were making Dynamite’s Daughter, my horse’s legs buckled under him and he fell on me. breaking five of my ribs. When we were shooting The Sawdust Trail with Hoot Gibson. I got my hand caught in a lariat and broke four fingers and my thumb. But the most surprising accident of all was in The Outlaw’s Daughter. I had to ride a pulley down an aerial cable, throw my feet upward just as we came to a big mining bucket, and kick the daylights out of the villain. All of which I did quite satisfactorily. Then, after the really dangerous thing was done and all was quiet and serene, what do you suppose happened? They dropped a tree on me! And I went down and out.”

Broken bones, torn ligaments, shocks to the nervous system and hard, strenuous work, began telling on Josie Sedgwick. She had written her name on the scroll of fame but her health was threatened. In 1924, when the national rodeo was held at Pendleton, Oregon, she was chosen queen of the round-up because of the magnificent horsemanship she had acquired. True, she had been thrown and hurt many times, but there never was a gamer girl in pictures and she would not quit. It looked as though she could master any horse in the world and ride pell-mell, helter-skelter over the wildest, roughest ground in the country. But the world did not know that on mam- of these rides her slender body was aching and that mending bones sometimes had not fully knit.

I talked to Irvin Cobb at the studio a few days ago about Josie.

“You know,” Cobb said, “that Pendleton round-up where she was queen, is a great sight. They have a way of giving the outlaw and bad-acting horses the cow-punchers ride, some very startling names. They will call a horse ‘Dynamite’ or ‘General Pershing’ or ‘Will Hays’ or something like that, to attract attention. The day I was there they had named one of the bronchos Tryin Cobb. Imagine my astonishment when, entering the grand stand. I heard the announcer saying:

“‘Lad-i-e-s and gentlemen-n! I take great pleasure in letting you know that the young lady Irvin Cobb fell upon this morning is not badly hurt. She will live.’”

But it was not Irvin Cobb who fell on Josie Sedgwick. It has seemed more like an entire corral of cow ponies from the cattle land.

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