Carver and his diving-horse act through a newspaper ad - but she was 20, not 15, and didn't have to run away. In real life, she was not an orphan and was raised by her parents.Īs in the film, she did hear of W.F. In the film, she and her sister Arnette are portrayed as orphans sent to live with an uncaring aunt, from whom Sonora runs away at age 15 to avoid being sent to an orphanage. 'I'm very proud of my Webster lineage,' she said, adding that on her mother's side, she's a seventh-generation American. 'I read it again and thought, well, if you don't know this Sonora Carver, you've never heard of her, you've never heard of diving horses - it isn't factually or technically true, but it would make a good picture.'įor the record, Carver, who is now 87, was born Sonora Webster, an 11th-generation descendant of a Webster who came to America on the Mayflower - not on the first, famed 1620 voyage but 10 years later. But when she pointed out all the inaccuracies in the script, Williams and his co-writer, Oley Sassone, argued that their version was more dramatic, and Carver ultimately had to agree. 'He (Williams) just changed things around to suit himself,' Carver said. While the basics of 'Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken' are true - she was a diving-horse girl, she did marry the boss's son, and she did continue diving after losing her eyesight in a diving accident - Carver said many of the details have been either fabricated or so altered that 'to me, they're completely unrecognizable.' Carver shared tales about everything from her jewelry being stolen by a classmate at a pre-World War I schoolhouse to her father-in-law's falling-out with Buffalo Bill Cody and having her own extraordinary life story turned into an autobiography and now a Disney movie.īut when Carver said Williams was good at making up stories, she knew whereof she spoke. During a recent telephone interview from New York - she lives in Pleasantville, N.J.

Like Jimmy Durante used to say, `I got a million of 'em.' ' 'He's the one that was making up the stories. 'I said, `Look, Matt - I'm 86 years old, I've had enough incidents in my life, and I don't have to make up stories.' 'Carver chuckled. 'He said, `Come on, Sonora - you're making these stories up,' ' Carver recalled. Sonora Carver, whose experiences as a diving-horse rider inspired the new film 'Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken,' was entertaining members of the cast and crew with anecdotes one night when writer-producer Matt Williams came along.

Wild hearts can't be broken imdb