wild women

The most influential woman at Republic Pictures from the early 1940s to the studio’s demise in the early 1960s, was Vera Hruba.  Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on July 12, 1919, the blonde beauty caught Republic Picture’s president Herbert Yates’ attention in 1939 when she toured the United States with an ice-skating show called Ice Vanities.  ...

In many of the films actress Anne Jeffreys made for motion picture studios like Republic Pictures, she either played a cowgirl or a damsel in perilous situations.  Neither the studio nor the performer could imagine how much those movies would affect the lives of young ticket buyers.  A letter from a fan written to Republic...

Skillful and graceful trick rider Faye Blesing and her Palomino horse Flash raced by excited fans at the Butte’s Buckaroo and Homecoming Days Rodeo in Butte, Montana, on July 6, 1951. Faye smiled at the spectators while demonstrating one of her most popular stunts, the Cossack, or Russian Drag. Pulling her feet out of the...

Cowboy Bill Pickett is credited with introducing the sport of bulldogging to rodeos in 1907.  In bulldogging, the rider dashes after a mad, fleeing steer; leans out from the saddle; throws himself onto the steer’s horns; and bringing the beast to the ground in a swirling scramble of dust and a half a pound of...

A well-traveled trail rests peacefully between the rich forested hillsides around the town of Cascade, Montana, and snakes seventeen miles west to St. Peter’s Mission. The road, as well as the mission itself, was the hub of activity in 1895. Back and forth along the route, Mary Fields, a former slave from Tennessee, drove a...

Jessie Hayman turned the flame down in the gas lamp sitting on a giant fireplace mantle in the parlor of her well-known brothel. Apart from the lit, red lantern hanging off the porch, the room was blanketed in darkness. It was approaching four in the morning and all of the home’s boarders were settled in...

A blood orange sun shone down on the dusty, main thoroughfare in Denver, Colorado. Miners and townspeople scurried about with their daily activities, pausing every so often to talk with friends and acquaintances. A sudden commotion at the end of the street drew attention away from their regular routine. An open, horse-drawn coach carrying a...