A Tragic End to a Classic Cowgirl
Fox Hastings excelled in the bulldogging arena (but not so well outside of it).
By: Jana Bommersbach 06/01/2007
And no matter how many trails they blazed, politics wasn’t one of them. “From Annie Oakley onwards, few cowgirls had ever declared themselves to be feminists,” Savage writes. “In the view of most women’s suffragists, women were moral and pure, the natural opponents of evil such as promiscuity and booze. Rodeo and Wild West cowgirls—many of whom were much-married and knew how to enjoy a drink—represented ... earthier interests. They were not intellectuals or middle-class church ladies, who strove to articulate worthy ideals in well-rounded sentences. They were entertainers, and their message, if they had one, was expressed in their performances.”
In 1924, Fox made her debut as a bulldogger, a sport that saw very few women. Although she would be touted as the “world’s only female bulldogger,” that wasn’t true—she was actually the second, following Tillie Baldwin by a decade. But that doesn’t diminish her talent.
After first bulldogging in Fort Worth, she showed off her new skills at the Cattlemen’s Convention Rodeo in Houston where the press called her “the outstanding act of the entire event.” She undoubtedly earned the honor of being “the most famous cowgirl bulldogger of the 20s and 30s.”
During her first year of bulldogging, she set her record: 17 seconds. One of the most famous postcards of Hastings shows her smiling as she lies in the mud, holding the head of a steer she’s just wrestled. The camera just loved her.
“Bulldogging was a down-and-dirty sport, in which the contestants leaped from a running horse onto the back of a steer, grabbing its horns, and attempting to bring it down by wrenching its neck,” Savage reports. The event was eventually outlawed, not because of the obvious danger to the cowgirl who made the leap, but because “steers were sometimes killed.”
Fox and her husband gained fame as husband-and-wife bulldoggers, although Fox’s manager, Foghorn Clancy—also a rodeo announcer and publicity man—is most credited with spreading her fame. “He made her the most photographed and interviewed cowgirl of the late twenties,” notes Mary LeCompte in her 1993 book, Cowgirls of the Rodeo: Pioneer Professional Athletes.
Fox’s big chance came and went in 1927 at Madison Square Garden in New York, where a steer wrestling competition was announced between Fox (of Iowa Park, Texas) and Claire Belcher (of Ponca City, Oklahoma). An astonishing $5,000 prize was offered. “But the contest never took place,” LeCompte notes. “The judges canceled it, claiming both women violated the rules.” History doesn’t tell us the real reason it was cancelled, but it’s an easy bet that the behind-the-scenes maneuvering was fierce. (Belcher was nearly killed later when a steer fell on her at a Florida rodeo; by 1929, bulldogging was outlawed.)
Fox Hastings’ career was marked by injuries and performances that amazed and delighted the crowds. She was a “contract performer” whose travel expenses were paid, allowing her to keep all prize money as profit. But that also meant she went on even when she was hurting, as the media pointed out: “Notable among the special attractions was Fox Hastings who, though she had suffered a broken rib the day before the show opened, bulldogged her steer each of the three days of the rodeo proper. She had a contract to fulfill and she couldn’t let the management down.”
Fox and Mike’s marriage didn’t last, and it’s not noted when she quit rodeoing. She later married Charlie C. Wilson and settled with him in Winslow, Arizona, where they worked at the William Clemans Ranch.
Comments (1)
Fox Hastings should be in the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame.
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