Tom Mix

By Dan Rice

Even if you have heard of Tom Mix today (and few have) it's unlikely that you've seen one of his movies. Even though Tom Mix was one of the biggest box office draws from the teens to the thirties and supposedly made 926 silents, most of his films have been lost. A mere handful remain (though I have read rumors that there are some in storage in what was Czechoslovakia and Denmark); a small legacy for such a Hollywood legend. The only movie I have found is his serial from the 1935's The Miracle Rider. Ironically this remaining documentation of this silent start is a talkie.

Tom Mix was successor to silent cowboy star William S. Hart, an actor who practically created the genre. Mix's style was a very different version of the cowboy and the west than Hart, who came from a generation of cowboy actors that had actually seen the West before it was tamed. Hart's portrayal was gritty. Tom Mix took on more of a 'dude' persona, becoming the first of the glamorous cowboys in fancy shirts and sequins, precursor to Roy Rogers and is ilk. He rode his favorite horse, Tony (actually a number of horses throughout his career), and often appeared with his dog 'Duke'.

Hollywood and Mix put out a lot of information about Tom, most of it wildly exaggerated, but that was the style of the times. Image was everything and factual truth counted for little. It's hard to imagine in our modern world of religious belief in facts (not that we adher to it with any more stringency) - but in those days, you could say what you liked about yourself and it didn't make you a liar (students of Wyatt Earp take note). Mix was billed as a genuine Texas Ranger and ex-U.S. Marshal, but it's doubtful he actually held either of those positions since no records at the time can confirm it. Studios even had him riding up San Juan hill with Teddy Roosevelt and fighting in the Boer War. What is known is that Mix was born in Pennyslvannia in 1880 and that his middle name might have been 'Hekeziah' but if it was Tom hated it and dropped it in his teens. He served briefly in the army and may have done some cowboying, but circus and rodeo was his real background. You could see it in the flamboyant style cowboy hero he presented to the movie audience and they lapped it up; making him one of the biggest movie stars of all time up to that point. Translated into our terms today, his popularity would put him right up there with the likes of Tom Cruise and Clint Eastwood.

An interesting footnote in Mix's movie history is that he made friends with the notorious lawman Wyatt Earp when Wyatt came to Hollywood to advise on the sets. The two men hit it off and apparently often read Shakespeare together, according to Adela Rogers St. John (a Hearst journalist); perhaps egged on by their friend, William S. Hart, in order to further their education. While it's interesting that the two cowboy actors became friends with Wyatt, it certainly didn't improve the veracity of the image of the West and the cowboy hero shown up on the silver screen. It must have been something of an irony to the aged lawman and gambler. He was apparently something of a cult celebrity in Hollywood in his later years. When Wyatt died Tom Mix was one of the pallbearers. Adela noted that Tom Mix wept. That was in 1929. In 1985 Blake Edward's release his naffly titled Sunset which featured Tom Mix and Wyatt Earp in a fictional Hollywood. It is by no means a good film, but entertaining nonetheless.

Left to right: W.J. Hunsaker, George Parsons, John Clum, William S. Hart, Wilson Mizner, and Tom Mix.

1929 couldn't have been a good year for Mix in general. The talkies had come and so had the end of his career as silent movie actor. Tom went on to other things, such as the circus. But the heyday of his success ended and he appeared in fewer and fewer movies, ending his cinematic career in serials. He had made a phenomenal amount of money for the time and lived a riotous life of excess in Hollywood, apparently even having had six wives. He died in 1940 in a freak automobile accident, his head crushed by his flying suitcase as it came off the rack of his roadster during the crash. In one of the weirder of America's tributes to it's rich and famous, the suitcase is enshrined at a Tom Mix Museum in Oklahoma.

Notes:

THE MIRACLE RIDER (1935-Mascot) :-) Directed by B. Reeves Eason and Armand Schaefer. Cast: Tom Mix, Joan Gale, Charles Middleton, Jason Robards, Edward Hearn, Pat O’Malley, Robert Frazer, Wally Wales, Chief Standing Bear, Charles King, Tom London, Ed Cobb, George Chesebro, Lafe McKee and Tony, Jr. Action packed 15 chapter serial of men trying to run the Indians from their lands. 295 minutes #MR-Serial $29.95

Tom Mix Book by Merle G. Norris

Sources:

Inventing Wyatt Earp by Allen Barra.

The title image uses a painting of Wyatt Earp by Bob Boze Bell and is reproduced here with kind permission of the artist.

Last Updated on 10/07/06