AP file photo by Erik Petersen Bozeman Chronicle - Hazel Warp is interviewed at her Livingston, home Oct. 27, 2005. The former Hollywood stuntwoman, who served as Vivien Leigh’s stunt double as Scarlet O’Hara in 'Gone With the Wind,’ has died. A spokeswoman at Evergreen Healthcare in Livingston confirmed that Warp died Aug. 26, at Livingston Memorial Hospital. She was 93.
BOZEMAN (AP) -- Hollywood stuntwoman Hazel Warp, who served as Vivien Leigh's stunt double as Scarlet O'Hara in ''Gone With the Wind,'' has died. She was 93 years old.
A spokeswoman at Evergreen Healthcare in Livingston confirmed that Warp died Tuesday at Livingston Memorial Hospital.
Warp was born in Harlowton in 1914, grew up on a farm near Melville and rode horses wherever she could, including to the one-room schoolhouse she attended until the ninth grade when she quit school to train the animals she loved.
The petite and daring young woman soon found herself in Hollywood movies after going to California on a whim -- eventually standing in for Leigh in all the horseback-riding scenes in the 1939 Civil War movie. She even took a fall for Leigh, tumbling down the stairs in the famous scene near the end of the film when Scarlett reaches out to slap Rhett Butler, loses her balance and falls.
''I never will forget it,'' Warp said of her Hollywood work in a 2005 interview with the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. ''I liked it, everything about it. I just liked my work.''
Warp also appeared in the movies ''Wuthering Heights,'' ''Ben Hur'' and ''National Velvet'' among others.
''There was nothing she wouldn't do and nothing she couldn't ride,'' her brother Bob Hash said in 2005. ''We thought it was tops.''
She quit riding when she was 38.
While in California, Warp married her first husband, James Wharton, on June 6, 1954. He died on Aug. 26, 1960. She lived in Virginia for a time before returning to Bozeman in 1969.
She married Lars Warp in Bozeman July 8, 1969. He died in 1983.
She is survived by her brother, Bob, of Bozeman. Her parents, two brothers and four sisters preceded her in death.
Funeral services will be held this morning at Sunset Hills Cemetery in Bozeman. A cause of death was not released.
Posted in State-and-regional on Saturday, August 30, 2008 12:00 am
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