The Winged Horseman (1929)

During the filming of the 1929 Hoot Gibson silent film "The Winged Horseman", stunt woman Leta Belle Wichart, who was doubling for co-star Ruth Elder, jumped out of an airplane with a parachute in a scene where the heroine is escaping from her kidnapper. Unfortunately, for some reason she failed to pull the ring and fell 3000 feet to her death landing in Wiley Canyon. She was considered the leading woman parachute jumper in the United States and was making her 140th jump. The pilot of the plane, Jim Granger, sensed something was wrong when her chute failed to open and dived under her in an attempt to catch her in the cockpit or on the wings of the plane. He was unsuccessful.

The following accounts are from three different January 25, 1929, newspapers.

No copies of the film are known to exist