The Hollywood Posse: The Story of a Gallant Band of Horsemen Who Made Movie History

by Diana Serra Cary

After 1912, when the great cattle empires began to crumble, hundreds of seasoned cowboys found themselves jobless. A handful of discarded horsemen, however, stumbled upon an entirely new frontier-Hollywood. In a rare insider’s view, Diana Serra Cary tells the story of these cowboys, who survived for another fifty years as riders, stuntmen, and doubles for the stars. Filled with humorous anecdotes, The Hollywood Posse reveals the full story of the cowboys’ long and bitter feud with autocratic director Cecil B. De Mille; their relationships with the great Western stars-from the flamboyant Tom Mix to the durable John Wayne; and above all, their touching loyalty, code of honor, and devotion to each other.

Genres: Nonfiction, Media Tie In, Film, History

330 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Cary was born on October 29, 1918, in San Diego, California,as Peggy-Jean Montgomery, the second daughter of Marian (née Baxter) and Jack Montgomery. While some sources incorrectly give her birth name as Margaret, Cary herself, in her autobiography, notes that she was indeed born as Peggy-Jean.

Baby Peggy was "discovered" at the age of 19 months, when she visited Century Studios on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood with her mother and a film-extra friend.

The success of the Baby Peggy films brought her into prominence. When she was not filming, she embarked on extensive "In-Person" personal appearance tours across the country to promote her movies. She was also featured in several short skits on major stages in Los Angeles and New York, including Grauman's Million Dollar Theatre and the Hippodrome. Her likeness appeared on magazine covers and was used in advertisements for various businesses and charitable campaigns. She was also named the Official Mascot of the 1924 Democratic Convention in New York, and stood onstage waving a United States flag next to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

While under contract with Century and Universal, Peggy commanded an impressive salary, but her parents didn't set aside any money for the future well being of Peggy or her sister, Louise. Through reckless spending of her parents, and corrupt business partners of her father, her entire fortune was gone before she hit puberty.

In her post acting years, Peggy married Gordon Ayres in 1938 and a few years later adopted the name Diana Ayres in an effort to distance herself from the Baby Peggy image. Working at the time as a writer for radio shows, she found that people who figured out her identity were more interested in her Baby Peggy persona than in her writing abilities. She later changed her name to Diana Serra Cary explaining, "After my divorce [from Gordon Ayres] and when I became a Catholic I took Serra as my confirmation name. When I married Bob [her second husband] I became Mrs. Cary."

Eventually, after years of emotional struggle and open derision from Hollywood insiders and the media,] Cary made peace with her Baby Peggy past. She had successful careers as a publisher, historian and author on Hollywood subjects, writing, among other works, an autobiography of her life as a child star, What Ever Happened to Baby Peggy: The Autobiography of Hollywood's Pioneer Child Star, and a biography of her contemporary and rival, Jackie Coogan: The World's Boy King: A Biography of Hollywood's Legendary Child Star.

As an adult, Cary worked on numerous books about the early film industry, Hollywood cowboys and harsh working conditions for child stars in Hollywood. At the end of her own autobiography, she recounts the fates of numerous child stars, including Judy Garland and Shirley Temple. She also advocated for reforms in child performer protection laws as a member of the organization A Minor Consideration.

Cary appeared in numerous television documentaries and interviews about her work, and she made guest appearances at silent film festivals. At the age of 99, Cary self-published her first novel, The Drowning of the Moon.

Cary & her second husband had one son, Mark. They remained married until Cary's death in 2001. She lived in Gustine, California, near Modesto for many years.

Cary died at her home in Gustine on February 24, 2020, at the age of 101.

abridged from Wikipedia

Reviews

[Beth Cato · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book and its unique perspective on early Hollywood. Cary focuses on the life of her father, Jack Montgomery, whose cowboy film career spans the 1910s up into the 1950s. He was a real deal cowboy, part of a old-timey group of other cowboys dubbed the Gower Gulch Gang after the location of their original saloon, the Waterhole, off Gower Street. The book goes into great detail on the horrible riding stunts back in the day--which the cowboys despised and resisted, but often did because they had families to feed--to the inside gossip on which of the big stars was a more genuine cowboy (Gene Autry no, Roy Rogers yes) to her father's role in the opening months of Disneyland. It is absolutely fascinating.

Cary's own incredible life is touched upon, too. She was 'Baby Peggy,' a major child star through the silent era. She talks about Hollywood as someone who knew the industry literally from the time she could speak. However, this book is never all about her; the balance is just right. Her life is mentioned at times because she's in the orbit of her father and his Gower Gulch buddies.

I think the book is a must-read for anyone who grew up on westerns. I did. To this day, my parents will watch old western series and movies almost every day. I've probably seen Jack Montgomery a hundred times and never knew who he was or the vast experience he brought to the screen. Now I do, and I respect him and his brethren all the more for the hard work they endured before 'crossing the Jordan.'

[Greta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great book by Diana Serra Cary. This one covers an obscure but fascinating story--the cowboys put out of business by the closing of the frontier who went to work as riding extras, stunt doubles, stagecoach drivers--anything working with horses. I'll never look at those Western chases the same way again (not to mention scenes of cavalry charges, chariot races, etc.). Also gives insight into the working conditions of Hollywood extras and animal performers, especially during the Depression--and that's not a pretty picture.

[Susan Molloy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is a well-written memoir written by one of the last child stars of the Silent Era, Diana Serra Cary (1918-2020), known as Baby Peggy in her heyday. Post-Hollywood, she became an author and historian. This book is part family history and part Los Angeles-Hollywood history. Here the reader will discover from where the early cowboy extras and stuntmen came, including some interesting people, stories, and observations.

Cary’s writing style in this book was smooth and consistent. She had many interesting accounts about Old Hollywood, from a few of her experiences as a child star of the silent Movie Era, to mostly her first-hand experiences as an actress as a young woman. Her father, Jack Montgomery, worked in Hollywood, as did her mother, Marian, as a movie extra in such films as “San Francisco,” “In Old Chicago,” and “Gone with the Wind.”

Here we learn a great deal about the cowboys of the golden days of Westerns. It appears that many of the stuntmen in those movies were, at one time, actual cowboys who knew their way around the corral and range. Here we read about their gentlemen-ness around women and toughness when it came to dealing with lechers and movie stunts.

She recounts that “Of all the men you could meet in a studio, the only ones I knew I could really trust were the cowboys. They were chivalrous, protective and very old-fashioned in their respect for a lady. And they had a practiced eye for the other kind. As Padjan used to say, "I can spot a sportin' woman [prostitute] in a crowd quick as a goat in a flock of sheep."

Cary shows how well she was treated as an adult movie actress by the cowboys on the set: "If any troublesome male extra tried to get my attention with dirty jokes, or suggestions for relieving neck tensions by a special 'studio massage,' the cowboy would set down his hard-boiled egg and listen very intently to every word the stranger had to say. Soon the man began to burn uncomfortably in the presence of my chaperone and quickly drift away. If I had no way to get home, my 'prairie knight,' be he young or grizzled, escorted me in his car or on the bus or streetcar, and there were no "shenanigans" on the way."

Whereas Cary relates many conversations throughout the book, it is not possible that she would have remembered each one verbatim. But on this I will give her a pass; the stories and history are noteworthy, and the attempt at recreating the conversations add zest.

💥 Recommended.
Also recommended is another of Cary's books, Whatever Happened to Baby Peggy?: The Autobiography of Hollywood's Pioneer Child Star.
I recommend Cary's fascinating look at child stars from Old Hollywood days, Hollywoods Children: An Inside Account of the Child Star Era

I read this book first in 2017 and published my review, noticed it disappeared (?) from here, so I reread it and found it to be just as good as the first time:

🟣

[Marsha Valance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Take of the range riders who became the first movie stuntmen

The author grew up among the cowboys who for 70 years comprised the cast of film epics. Anyone who appreciates good riding will be fascinated by this book.

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Diana Serra Cary, once famous as the star of two-reeler silent pictures, billed as “Baby Peggy,” tells a tale only she can tell. And it’s in fact literally a tale only she can tell, it turns out, for the men involved in the stories—while gregarious with each other—were guarded around noncowboys.
The Hollywood Posse, however, does a wonderful job of recounting the hard lives and harder rides of the men who did stunt work in Hollywood before either animal or man had unions. They endured potentially paralyzing horse falls, rope burns that could deglove a hand, and daily plummets off cliffs and into arroyos. And it was not only done for (relatively) low pay, but they were afforded little respect by most of the dictatorial filmmakers who regarded them as utterly disposable. Tyrannical master of the epic, Cecil B. Demille, not surprisingly comes off as the most heelish of the megalomaniacal bunch. Johns (Ford and Huston) also not surprisingly come off well, as even-keeled men who respected the ridership and ethos of the cowpunchers.
But these assignments with a-list auteurs (both friendly and high-handed) came few and far between. Most of the films the cowboys made were Poverty Row affairs, five-day westerns shot sometimes without a script, packed with stock footage, and then sent out to grindhouses hungry for any content.
It’s not surprising that few of the principals involved in these films documented their careers, as celluloid was regarded as disposable, an inferior medium that couldn’t even tenuously be called an artform. What is not only surprising but frankly astounding is that Cary had the foresight to see—well before academic theorists and industry insiders—that someone might want to document the lives of these men and women who represented the last real link to a dying frontier culture.
In her way, the author acts as a kind of prairie Alan Lomax, using her status as both a former player and daughter of a respected horseman to untie the tongues of men who’d frankly rather grab a branding iron by the hot end than wax about themselves and their deeds.
It’s a great book, charming, sometimes enraging (especially when reading about the abuse that some of these horses were subjected to.) But it’s also compelling and essential history, for those with a penchant for Americana or the unilluminated corners of Hollywood far from the bright kliegs of the Pantages. Highest recommendation, with a heap of photos contained in their own, separate section.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Medium interesting cross between a memoir and a historical exploration