Trailblazer
Anna Chevallier
A beautiful, athletic young girl, Anna Chevallier was born with a special spark for adventure. She always loved horses and not long after her family moved from Red Deer to Alhambra, Alberta, Anna left home and found her way to Chicago. It was the Roaring Twenties and she got a job in a small café where she often served meals to folks like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano.
When she came across an ad in a magazine for a diving girl, the raven-haired Anna found the promoters were looking for a girl who could perform the spectacular stunt of riding a horse off a high diving tower into a small pool of water. Her beloved horse Johnny proved up to the task and she got the job. Johnny would walk up a long steep ramp to the top of the diving tower. Anna waited on a special ramp where she’d swing onto Johnny’s back as he trotted by, then Johnny would launch himself from the 50-foot tower. He and Anna would land in the water — sometimes no more than 10 feet deep.
Anna and the other girls would perform this stunt twice a day and the crowds, drawn by curiosity and the potential danger, were huge. The diving girls were the subject of a Hollywood movie made in the ‘70s.
The amazing thing about this Alberta ranch girl and her diving horse—Anna could not swim a stroke.
Years after retiring, Anna spotted a huge photograph in a restaurant, allegedly owned by Chicago “mob” money. In the picture were Anna and her beloved Johnny halfway down a platform dive from a tower at the Chicago Steel Pier with Anna holding on for the ride of her life.
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