Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1926 - Feb 1927)

50 This is a mere nothing in the serial life of Josie, but it is feats like this which have almost made her an invalid for life. 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. 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 Introducing Pico falls, too many wrenches of the her pal. She's All To Josie Sedgwick, the girl who has had in pictures, tells how to fracture By A. L. spine, too many shocks to the nervous system, too many broken bones, they said. "I don't know," she confided to jme. "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 coa-ches 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 onlv humorous. What's a few broken bones, she argued ! Thev'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 3-ourself 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 anded. 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