“I made my living getting beat up, tied up and gagged and thrown off a horse.” Between 1943 and 1947 Linda Stirling appeared in nine Republic B-Westerns and six of their best cliffhangers between ‘44-‘46. The native born Californian (October 11, 1921) started dramatic lessons at 12, graduated from high school at 16 and studied at Ben Bard’s Academy of Dramatic Arts for two years. Modeling led to Republic and the title role in their “Tiger Woman” serial. “I was the last person in the world for that part. I’m not an outdoor girl, I couldn’t ride…my idea of fun was to go to nightclubs and dance. I had done a lot of modeling, print ads and some magazine covers, but I looked sort of like an outdoor girl and Republic needed someone right away for ‘The Tiger Woman’. The part had been given to Kay Aldridge who had been under contract to Republic, but just before it was time for the film to start, she eloped, got married and didn’t want to come back. So they were desperate and I got the part. Yates and the upper echelon had me come out for an interview. There were about 10 people at the interview—turned out half of them were stuntmen because they wanted to know if I could do it. They asked if I could do a running dismount…I didn’t even know what it was! (Laughs) Earlier, when my agent told me what it was, I said, ‘I don’t ride. I don’t think I should do this.’ She said, ‘Don’t worry, they always use doubles. You won’t have to do any riding. Just lie and say you can ride. So, very dutifully, being a good actress, I lied and said, ‘Oh yes, I can do that.’ And I couldn’t do any of the things they were asking if I could do. They asked me to wait outside for a few minutes. Then the director, Spence Bennet, came out and said, ‘We’d like to see you next Monday. Wear some old jeans (which I didn’t even own) and we wanna see you riding a horse—do the running mounts…’ I went, ‘Uh-oh. I just got myself into a real bad situation.’ I smiled, nodded and left and called my agent and started screaming over the phone, ‘What have you done to me? You’ve made a liar out of me, I can’t do this.’ She said, ‘Why don’t you just try?’ Well, one fellow I’d met had a horse at Ace Hudkins Stable. I called him and said, ‘What am I gonna do?’ He said, ‘I’ll call Ace. He has a lot of movie horses…maybe he can give you some pointers.’ He called Ace and called me back and said, ‘Go out at 6 in the morning.’ Well, I hadn’t been up at 6 in the morning in many years…if ever! (Laughs) I staggered out there and Obviously, making Westerns and serials was hard work. “We generally did the serials in a month, Westerns in a week. There was always pressure because all the shooting had to be done before dark. It wasn’t glamorous, believe me! Working hours were long. I was often up at 4am and at the studio by 4:30 for make-up. My hair had to be set and dried each morning so it would exactly match the film already shot. We had to be ready for the first take at 8am sharp, and it generally took about an hour to get to location. We seldom got back to the studio before 8pm. I never seemed to get to bed before 11 or midnight. Then up at 4. But Republic was like a big family. Since we worked on a serial for a month or more, Westerns seemed like vacations. Once director Spence Bennet asked if I could do a running insert. I said sure, although I had no idea what it was. (The camera car travels ahead of a galloping horse, filming horse and rider.) My horse took it as a personal challenge to outrun the camera truck. I was just along for the ride being bounced around on this galloping horse.” Stuntlady Babe De Freest doubled Linda in practically everything. “In ‘Zorro’s Black Whip’ there was one stunt they didn’t want Babe to do, a jump from the top of the barn onto a horse as it was galloping by. They thought it was too difficult. So they told Joe (Yrigoyen) to do it; which he did, and fell off the horse and broke his leg. They put his brother Bill (Yrigoyen) there, he missed and ended up in the tree. Babe said, ‘Why don’t you let me do it?’ They weren’t sure, but she did it perfectly. It was a very successful stunt. She was much shorter than I, stockier, but she’s incredible as a double. There were times when we saw the rushes, we would argue about which one of us it was. Most of the time we couldn’t tell. She was amazing.” Duncan Renaldo (later the Cisco Kid on TV) worked with Linda on “Tiger Woman”. “Duncan was a sweetheart and one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met. Stories all the time. Sometimes he’d be finishing the tag line as we were walking up to shoot the scene. (Laughs) He was irrepressible. He was already part of movie history and knew practically everybody in the business. I really was an eager little actress dying to do it right. Duncan and George J. Lewis were very helpful. They were showing me where the camera was because I had no idea. ‘Don’t look there…look over here…they won’t see your face, they’ll see your profile.’”
Much has been said and written about Western star Allan “Rocky” Lane’s demeanor over the years. Some say he could be difficult. Linda co-starred with him in “Tiger Woman” and two Westerns and chuckles, “Difficult isn’t exactly a fair word. He was very tense, very up tight, very eager and very professional. I think one of his problems was, he wanted to be perfect. But under the conditions we were working, you can’t really be perfect. You can always do it better. The only thing you had to watch out for was his moves. Because once the camera started rolling, he wanted to be in front of the camera. And if you were too close to him, you just got bumped, so that he could get the whole face—and I’d wind up with only my shoulder or part of my head showing. Time and time again, the director would say, ‘Cut! Allan, move over, give her some room.’ But he’d keep edging over. My hips would be black and blue. (Laughs) Once, at Iverson’s, he was supposed to come down a steep cliff on his horse. It was high so they called the doubles. But Allan said, ‘No, I want it. I’m a good rider. I can do it.’ So he went up. There was dirt and it was slipping…and he fell off. The director was ready to send the double in. But Allan said, ‘No, I’m going to do it.’ He did it four times and fell off four times and he still wouldn’t let the double do it. He was determined he was going to do it…and the fifth time, he did do it. But it wasn’t necessary, they weren’t that close. Who would have known? But that’s the kind of person he was. He’d made up his mind, it was a challenge for him. He wasn’t gonna back down, and didn’t!”
Bill Elliott was entirely different. “I was very fond of Bill. He was so courteous and gentle. Here’s this tall, very good looking hunk, but he was sweet and very caring about everybody else, making sure we were all comfortable in a scene. I don’t remember him ever raising his voice.”
Linda’s other leading man in Westerns was Sunset Carson…“Sunset never took anything too seriously. You were very comfortable around him. He was just a good old country boy. My favorite Western has gotta be ‘Santa Fe Saddlemates’ with Sunset. I got to play a real part instead of just be the girl at the door waving the guy off into the sunset, no pun intended. (Laughs) In this one I got to wear a very sexy dress in the saloon while I was pretending to be a saloon singer. I loved it.”
Two other regulars in Republic’s Red Ryder series were Alice Fleming, the Duchess, and Bobby Blake as Little Beaver. “Alice had an enormous background in theatre and film. I was always sitting around asking questions and listening to her stories about the theatre and Broadway. Bobby was a very quiet little boy. He was pretty much hustled off and looked after and watched over so he’d behave. He was terribly well behaved, almost as though he knew he had to be. That was my impression.” Linda did two serials with Clayton Moore (later the Lone Ranger), “Crimson Ghost” and “Jesse James Rides Again”. “Clayton was very professional, very serious when he was working, very relaxed and cool when he wasn’t. A very likable guy and a good actor. He didn’t clown around a lot when he was getting ready to do a scene. Afterwards OK…and earlier. But when he was working he gave his all, lots of energy, lots of vitality.”
As far as a favorite director, Linda says, “I got to know Bill Witney and his wife, (former actress) Maxine Doyle, socially. Bill was temperamental in a way but very nice to actors. I can remember him getting mad from time to time, but that was because he really wanted things done his way because he was usually right. He created new ways of shooting quickly and under pressure and really came up with some awfully good stuff.”
Sloan was the primary reason Linda left the screen. “I married Sloan in ‘46, left Republic in ‘47 and had a couple of kids. Once my sons were a little older I felt I had to go back to acting, that’s all I’d ever done. I started with half hour TV shows. 1954 was the first one. It was fun. I’d been acting since I was 14 and it seemed something was missing. By the late ‘50s I wasn’t working as often, so I thought I’d go to college just for my own enrichment. I got more and more involved and was fascinated to find out how much I didn’t know. After that, I began turning down parts, got more involved and finished up at UCLA. I didn’t intend to be a teacher, that was the last thing in my mind. It just sort of evolved by itself.” Linda subsequently taught English Literature, Irish history and Shakespeare at Glendale College for 27 years, retiring in 1992. Linda died of cancer on July 20, 1997. Linda’s Western Filmography Movies: San Antonio Kid (‘44 Republic)—Bill Elliott; Sheriff of Sundown (‘44 Republic)—Allan Lane; Vigilantes of Dodge City (‘44 Republic)—Bill Elliott; Dakota (‘45 Republic)—John Wayne; Cherokee Flash (‘45 Republic)—Sunset Carson; Santa Fe Saddlemates (‘45 Republic)—Sunset Carson; Sheriff of Cimarron (‘45 Republic)—Sunset Carson; Topeka Terror (‘45 Republic)—Allan Lane; Wagon Wheels Westward (‘45 Republic)—Bill Elliott; Rio Grande Raiders (‘46 Republic)—Sunset Carson; Serials: Zorro’s Black Whip (‘44 Republic)—George J. Lewis; Jesse James Rides Again (‘46 Republic)—Clayton Moore; TV: Kit Carson: No Man’s Law (‘54); Kit Carson: Missing Hacienda (‘54); Kit Carson: Incident at Wagontire (‘55); Wyatt Earp: Suffragette (‘56).
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LINDA STIRLING 
told them, ‘I have to do a running mount, running dismount…but I have to tell you I’ve only been on a horse two times in my life. Both times I fell off.’ Well, we practiced in the ring Thursday and Friday—by Saturday my legs were going in two different directions, I couldn’t walk very well. I had a big hole in the back of my spine where the saddle had rubbed because I didn’t know how to ride properly. But, Monday I went out to Republic. I thought, ‘I haven’t studied all these years and wanted to be an actress for so long—to just to muff this because I haven’t got the courage to give it a try.’ They promised they’d send me the horse I’d been practicing on for four days and the wrangler who knew my problems. When I got there they had me go way down to the end of the Western street. I was to come galloping around—full gallop—come to the Duchess’ Ranch, which was a standing set with a little picket fence; I was to come to a running dismount and then jump over the picket fence, go to the door, come back, get back on the horse and gallop off. Well, I got back there—it wasn’t the horse or wrangler I’d been practicing with! The A.D. gave me the signal and the wrangler hit the horse so hard that when he came whirling around the corner, my feet fell out of the stirrups. I came galloping down the street, bumping up and down and the horse was headed right for this huge mob of people including ‘Papa’ Yates…I thought, ‘I’m gonna kill ‘em all off.’ I just closed my eyes and thought, ‘Oh, this is horrible.’ Well, the horse knew better, he just swirled around in front of the Duchess’ Ranch. I didn’t do a running dismount. I was sort of hanging around the horse’s neck, upside down! I started to laugh because the whole thing was so totally ridiculous. I thought, ‘I’ve made a fool of myself. I might as well hang my head and leave.’ I got down and was laughing because it was such a completely unlikely situation for me to be in. I started to leave but they stopped me and said, ‘Try it one more time.’ So I did. This time I stayed in the stirrups, I got around, got off and to the picket fence, but at that point I was finished. I couldn’t even jump over that foot high fence. (Laughs) I said, ‘I surrender.’ And I left. But by the time I got home my phone was ringing and my agent said, ‘You got the part. They liked your humor and attitude.’ They felt I had a lot of guts to try it, so they were gonna take a chance. Later I found out they were in a terrible bind. They had costumes all ready and I was the closest to the actress who was originally supposed to play the part. So that’s the series of events that led to me standing out there (filming) in that skimpy costume in the coldest winter they’d had in California in many, many years. There was ice on the ground and it was supposed to be the jungle. I was freezing. Our teeth were chattering. When you watch ‘Tiger Woman’, notice the funny smile on my face. The only way I could keep my lips from trembling was to paste this little smile on…it got stuck. (Laughs)”
Perennial heavy, Roy Barcroft was a constant for everyone who worked at Republic. “He loved to act. He really enjoyed it. He probably spent more time at the studio than he did at home. I never could tell if he was serious or if he wasn’t. He had this twinkle in his eye and would say things that sounded alright to me, but I had a feeling he meant more than he was saying. But I never could figure out what! He was fun.”
Linda was married to screenwriter Sloan Nibley until his death in 1990. Nibley wrote most of the great Roy Rogers Republic Westerns in the late ‘40s before turning to episodic TV in the early ‘50s. “He was going to be a musician, then decided he’d be a doctor, neither of which he was able to do very well. There wasn’t much choice left, so he decided to be a writer. This was during the depression, before I knew him. He drove a beer truck, delivering beer to all the big restaurants while he wrote at night. Eventually, he managed to get a junior writer contract at MGM. It was a learning process. I met him at Republic. He wrote a lot of the Roy Rogers. He’d just come back from the service and one day a friend of mine said, ‘There’s this guy that wants to meet you.’ I said, ‘Sure, that’s alright.’ Later, Sloan told me what he’d said to this friend, whom I’d gone out with a lot, who was really just a good friend but a fun fellow. What Sloan had said to him was, ‘Are you serious about Linda?’ And he said, ‘We’re just really very good friends.’ Sloan told him, ‘OK—I just want you to stay away once you introduce me to her because she’s mine.’ (Laughs) He’d made up his mind…I hadn’t made mine up…but he made his up and that more or less took care of it. (Laughs) Sloan was the wittiest…It’s hard to describe…people just absolutely would smile when they were around him. He was one very, very amusing man. As for writing Westerns, he was always interested in the period and did a lot of research. He kept saying they wouldn’t let him write an authentic Western because no one would believe it.”