Deaf daredevil leaped from buildings and set records as world’s fastest woman
Life Story
When she was five months old, a simultaneous diagnosis of the mumps, measles and smallpox left Kitty O’neil with a scorching fever that caused her to lose her hearing and nearly killed her. Her mother, a Cherokee homemaker who may have saved her life by immersing Kitty in an ice bath, resisted teaching her sign language and instead showed her how to read lips and form words of her own, placing Kitty’s hands on her throat so she could feel the vibrations of her vocal cords.
In the years that followed, Kitty – who has died aged 72 – learned the piano and cello, feeling the music through her hands and feet, and trained as a platform diver, winning dozens of competitions.
Her coach assured reporters she was a shoo-in for the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo. But in the leadup to the Olympic trials, she broke her wrist and came down with spinal meningitis.
Doctors told her she might never walk again. But within two weeks she was up out of bed, searching for a way to reinvent herself. ‘‘I got sick, so I had to start all over again, and I got bored,’’ she said. ‘‘I wanted to do something fast. Speed. Motorcycle. Water skiing. Boat. Anything.’’
So she set about becoming a stunt artist and record-setting daredevil. Amid a battle with cancer that required two sets of operations in her 20s, she raced motorcycles and speed boats, dived off hotel rooftops, leaped from helicopters, set herself on fire, water-skied at more than 160kmh and earned the title ‘‘world’s fastest woman’’, reaching speeds of about 600mph (960kmh) while piloting a rocket car across a dried lake bed.
From the mid-1970s to early 1980s, she stood in for actresses including Lindsay Wagner of The Bionic Woman, dangled out of a sixth-storey window for a TV detective show, braved rising waters on a sinking jet plane in Airport ’77, was immolated in September 30, 1955, and rolled, crashed or raced cars for films such as The Blues Brothers and Smokey and the Bandit II.
For one memorable 1979 stunt in the Wonder Woman television series, she leaped off the roof of a Hilton hotel in Los Angeles, arms spread wide, and fell 38 metres before landing on an inflated airbag, setting a women’s high-fall record. ‘‘If I hadn’t hit the centre of the bag, I probably would have been killed,’’ she told the Washington Post.
O’neil later broke her own record by jumping from a helicopter on to an airbag 55m below. The bag measured 18m by 24m, she said, ‘‘but from up there, it looked about the size of a postage stamp’’.
Her small stature helped her withstand the strong G-forces of her car drives, including a 1977 outing in which she drove 400m in only 3.22 seconds, reaching 663kmh.
O’neil credited her hearing impairment with helping her maintain focus, and spoke and read lips well enough that some directors were unaware she was deaf, according to one Associated Press account. ‘‘I know I’m deaf. But I’m still normal,’’ she told the Washington Post. ‘‘The way I look at it, being handicapped is not a defect. People say I can’t do anything. I say to people I can do anything I want.’’ In 1977, she set a women’s water-speed record. But perhaps her greatest stunt or daredevil achievement occurred on December 6, 1976, when she set the women’s land-speed record while driving the SMI Motivator, effectively a rocket on three wheels. It was powered by hydrogen peroxide and ‘‘barely large enough to accommodate an expectant baboon’’, wrote Sports Illustrated. Speeding across the Alvord Desert in Oregon, she notched an average speed of 825kmh.
O’neil later recalled that the runs were ‘‘a beautiful experience’’, in which the vast flatness of the desert seemed to move past her in a series of rolling waves, but also
‘‘I know I’m deaf. But I’m still normal . . . People say I can’t do anything. I say to people I can do anything I want.’’
disappointing. Not content with being the fastest woman on Earth, she sought to outpace the fastest man and break the sound barrier as well, and was preparing to do so on December 7, 1976, when car designer William Fredrick told her she could not.
She had, it turned out, been contracted only to break the women’s record. Her friend Hal Needham, a stuntman and film-maker who was then busy directing Smokey and the Bandit, was signed up to break the men’s record, bankrolled by a company that had developed a toy line featuring his likeness.
A war of words ensued, with O’neil’s husband – Ronald ‘‘Duffy’’ Hambleton, a bank executive turned stunt performer – declaring that Needham’s representative had said it would be ‘‘degrading and humiliating to Needham if Kitty ran 650 [mph] and Needham ran only 660’’. The representative issued a denial, and PR executives insisted that contracts, rather than sexism, were the deciding factor.
Neither stunt performer drove away with the record, and O’neil sued unsuccessfully to have another shot inside the Motivator. She had reportedly used just 60 per cent of its engine power during her initial runs, and believed she ‘‘could have done 700 or 750’’.
‘‘I’m a liberated woman, but I’m not trying to compete against men,’’ she had told People magazine earlier in 1977, before the drive. ‘‘I’m just trying to do my own thing.’’
Kitty Linn O’neil was born in Corpus Christi, Texas. Her father was an oil wildcatter and a major in what is now the US Air Force. He died in a plane crash when she was a child.
She became the first woman to join Stunts Unlimited, considered Hollywood’s premier stunt agency. Her exploits inspired a Mattel action figure and a 1979 TV movie, Silent Victory: The Kitty O’neil Story, starring Stockard Channing. (Only about half the movie was accurate, O’neil said.)
Her women’s land-speed record still stands, although she has been challenged in recent years by driver Jessi Combs. ‘‘I’m proud of her. I’m happy for her,’’ O’neil said in 2015, explaining that the two had met. Still, she added, ‘‘If she breaks the record, then I’ll do it again. It’s a challenge.’’ –