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One of the few successful cowgirls starring in films, pioneering American action heroine Edythe Sterling worked for Frontier, Bison, Kalem, and Signal in the early 1910s, churning out film after film in which she often used both her fists and a gun to defeat the blackguards. A former rodeo rider, she married future Western star Art Acord during the Salt Lake City Roundup in 1913 and later appeared opposite him in a series of low-budget Westerns released by Dominant. Sterling's popularity had waned by 1920 and so had her marriage to the troubled Acord, whom she divorced. Despite all that, Sterling continued to star in the odd Western, including The Stranger in Canyon Valley, where she portrayed a female Robin Hood, but was usually relegated to playing the typical damsel in distress. Leaving films in 1923 in favor of vaudeville, Sterling later toured circuses with her second husband, James Younger, and, later still, managed a rest home. Along with sisters Eileen Sedgwick and Josie Sedgwick, Edythe Sterling represented the last of the strong action heroines, a field once dominated by the likes of Pearl White, Ruth Roland, and Ann Little.