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How did Kitty O’Neil lose her hearing?

O’Neil was born in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1946. At only five months old she became very ill and her temperature ran dangerously high. Her mother packed ice around her body, which may have saved her life, but as Kitty grew older and didn’t start talking, her parents realised the illness had left her profoundly deaf.

Her mother insisted that she learn to lip read, and to speak by sensing and reproducing the vibrations of her mother’s voice. She eventually learned to play the piano and cello and attended school with her hearing peers. Her great friend and fellow stunt performer, Ky Michaelson, said she could identify music playing on the car radio just by sensing the vibrations. She told him she was a Beatles fan when their music was playing.

O’Neil’s father died in a plane crash when she was eleven years old, but she never forgot the thrill of speeding along on his sit-on lawnmower as a child. After a spell as a competitive diver was cut short by illness, O’Neil took to water-skiing — breaking the women’s speed record, and riding motorbikes in tough cross-country races. It was while racing that she met stuntman Duffy Hambleton. He told her about TV stunt work, and O’Neil decided she had found her perfect career.

What gave O’Neil her incredible drive?

O’Neil attributed her success to two books —The Power of Positive Thinking, and the Bible. She also refused to listen to anyone who said being deaf was a limitation. On the contrary, she said being deaf was her superpower, allowing her to remain completely focused on what she had to do while the business of film making swirled round her.

What were some of her most famous stunts?

O’Neil worked regularly with Lynda Carter on the Wonder Woman series and performed a wide variety of stunts for the show, including dangling from a helicopter in the iconic Wonder Woman costume. The climax of one episode involved her performing a high fall of over a hundred and twenty feet from the Valley Hilton Hotel in Sherman Oaks, California. It was a record-breaking success. She broke another record for a high fall, this time while on fire, for a TV special, and once piloted a jet-powered boat to a speed of two-hundred and seventy-five miles an hour.

In 1976 she was invited to drive an experimental car called the SMI Motivator. It was powered by a hydrogen peroxide engine which could produce a horsepower of forty-eight thousand. O’Neil took the needle shaped car to speeds of over 600 miles per hour in the Alvord Desert, smashing the previous woman’s speed record.

Did she ever slow down?

After breaking a fist-full of records, and numerous film and TV appearances, O’Neil eventually retired to a small town in South Dakota. According to her friend Ky Michaelson, she never lost her love of speed, calling him up even in later years and saying "Let's build a car. Let's build a car."