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Thomas Edwin “Tom” Mix (born Thomas Hezikiah Mix (January 6, 1880 – October 12, 1940) was an American film actor and the star of many early Western movies between 1909 and 1935. Mix appeared in 291 films, all but nine of which were silent movies. He was Hollywood’s first Western megastar and is noted as having helped define the genre for all cowboy actors who followed.
Thomas Hezikiah Mix was born January 6, 1880 in Mix Run, Pennsylvania, about 40 miles (60 km) north of State College, Pennsylvania, to Edwin Elias Mix (February 22, 1854 – November 29, 1927) and Elizabeth Heistand (November 1858 – July 25, 1937). He grew up in nearby Dubois, Pennsylvania, where his father, a stable master for a wealthy lumber merchant, taught him to ride and love horses. He spent time working on a local farm owned by John Dubois, a lumber businessman. He had dreams of being in the circus and was rumored to have been caught by his parents practicing knife-throwing tricks against a wall, using his sister as an assistant.
In April 1898, during the Spanish-American War, he enlisted in the Army under the name Thomas E. (Edwin) Mix. His unit never went overseas, and Mix later failed to return for duty after an extended furlough when he married Grace I. Allin on July 18, 1902. Mix was listed as AWOL on November 4, 1902, but was never court-martialed nor apparently even discharged. His marriage to Allin was annulled after one year. In 1905, Mix married Kitty Jewel Perinne, but this marriage also ended within a year. He next married Olive Stokes on January 10, 1909, in Medora, North Dakota.
In 1905, Mix rode in Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural parade led by Seth Bullock with a group of 50 horsemen, which included several former Rough Riders. Years later, Hollywood publicists would muddle this event to imply that Mix had been a Rough Rider himself.
After working a variety of odd jobs in the Oklahoma Territory, Mix found employment at the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch, one of the largest ranching businesses in the United States, covering 101,000 acres (409 km²), hence its name. The ranch had its own touring Wild West show in which Mix appeared. He stood out as a skilled horseman and expert shot, winning national riding and roping contests at Prescott, Arizona in 1909, and Canon City, Colorado in 1910.
Tom Mix began his film career as a supporting cast member with the Selig Polyscope Company. His first appearance was in a short film titled The Cowboy Millionaire, released on October 21, 1909. In 1910 he appeared as himself in a short documentary film titled Ranch Life in the Great Southwest in which he displayed his skills as a cattle wrangler. Shot at the Selig studio in the Edendale district of Los Angeles (now known as Echo Park), the film was a success and Mix became an early motion picture star.
On July 13, 1912, Olive gave birth to their daughter Ruth. Mix performed in more than 100 films for Selig, many of which were filmed in Las Vegas, New Mexico. While with Selig he co-starred in several films with Victoria Forde, and they fell in love. He divorced Olive Stokes in 1917. By then, Selig Polyscope had encountered severe financial difficulties, and Tom Mix and Victoria Forde both subsequently signed with Fox Film Corporation, which had leased the Edendale studio. Mix and Forde married in 1918 and they had a daughter, Thomasina Mix (Tommie), in 1922.
Mixville
Tom Mix went on to make more than 160 cowboy films throughout the 1920s. These featured action-oriented scripts which contrasted with the documentary style of his work with Selig. Heroes and villains were sharply defined and a clean-cut cowboy always “saved the day.” Millions of American children grew up watching his films on Saturday afternoons. His intelligent and handsome horse Tony also became a celebrity. Mix did his own stunts and was frequently injured.
Tom Mix, 1925
Mix’s salary at Fox reached $7,500 a week. His performances weren’t noted for their realism but for screen-friendly action stunts and horseback riding, attention-grabbing cowboy costumes and showmanship. At the Edendale lot Mix built a 12-acre (49,000 m2) shooting set called Mixville. Loaded with western props and furnishings, it has been described as a “complete frontier town, with a dusty street, hitching rails, a saloon, jail, bank, doctor’s office, surveyor’s office, and the simple frame houses typical of the early Western era.” Near the back of the lot an Indian village of lodges was ringed by miniature plaster mountains which on screen were said to be “ferociously convincing.” The set also included a simulated desert, large corral and a ranch house with no roof, to facilitate interior shots.
In 1927, Tom Mix was the #1 box office star in America, but when his contract ran out with Fox in 1928, he was signed by Film Booking Office of America (FBO), a small movie studio run by Joseph P. Kennedy, who would merge it into RKO Radio Pictures. Mix was 49 and by most accounts he was ready to retire from the movies. Kennedy needed a replacement for FBO’s Western superstar Fred Thomson, whom he had dealt to Paramount Studios. Thomson was second only to Mix at the box office.
Mix played hard-to-get, threatening to move to Argentina to make films or joining the circus, but eventually, he signed with FBO, although he eventually left the studio for Universal due to salary disputes with Kennedy.
In 1929, Mix was a pallbearer at the funeral of Wyatt Earp (during which he reportedly wept).
1930s
Mix appeared with the Sells-Floto Circus in 1929, 1930 and 1931 at a reported weekly salary of $20,000. He and Forde were divorced in 1931. Meanwhile, the Great Depression (along with the actor’s free-spending ways and many wives) had reportedly wiped out most of his savings. In 1932, he married his fifth wife, Mabel Hubbell Ward. Universal Pictures approached him that year with an offer to do talkies which included script and cast approval. He did nine pictures for Universal, but because of injuries he received while filming, he was reluctant to continue with any more. Mix then appeared with the Sam B. Dill circus, which he reportedly bought two years later (1935).
Mix’s last screen appearance was a 15-episode sound Mascot Pictures serial, The Miracle Rider (1935), for which he received $40,000 for four weeks of filming. Outdoor action sequences for the production were filmed primarily on the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, Calif., on the outskirts of Los Angeles. The site was known for its huge sandstone boulders, and one of those boulders became known as Tom Mix Rock in later years after it was discovered that the rock had been used in a sequence in The Miracle Rider in which Mix was filmed descending from the top of the rock, with bootholes carved into the rock to assist the actor in making the descent. The rock and the bootholes remain in place today, and, although they’re unmarked, they can be found at the Garden of the Gods park in Chatsworth.
Also in 1935, Texas governor James Allred named Mix an honorary Texas Ranger. Mix went back to circus performing, this time with his eldest daughter Ruth, who had appeared in some of his films. In 1938, Mix went to Europe on a promotional trip, while his daughter Ruth stayed behind to manage his circus, which soon failed. He later excluded her from his will. He had reportedly made over $6,000,000 (approaching $400 million in early 21st century, inflation-adjusted values) during his 26-year film career.
Radio
Postcard sent in response to an entry for a radio program contest in 1941
In 1933, Ralston-Purina obtained his permission to produce a Tom Mix radio series called Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters which, but for one year during World War II, was popular throughout most of the 1930s through the early 1950s, well after Mix’s death. Mix never appeared on these broadcasts, and was instead played by radio actors: Artells Dickson (early 1930s), Jack Holden (from 1937), Russell Thorsen (early 1940s) and Joe “Curley” Bradley (from 1944). Others in the supporting cast included George Gobel, Harold Peary and Willard Waterman.
The Ralston company offered ads during the Tom Mix radio program for listeners to send in for a series of 12 special Ralston-Tom Mix Comic books available only by writing the Ralston Company by mail.
Very little of the radio series survives to the present day; recordings of only approximately 30 scattered episodes, and no complete story arcs, survive.
Death
Tom Mix memorial near Florence, Arizona (32°49′17.4″N 111°12′12.5″W), the site of his death
On October 12, 1940, after visiting Pima County Sheriff Ed Nichols in Tucson, Arizona, Mix headed north toward Phoenix on U.S. Highway 80 (now Arizona State Route 79), driving his 1937 Cord 812 Phaeton. He stopped at the Oracle Junction Inn, a popular gambling and drinking establishment, to call his agent, and then continued toward Phoenix. About eighteen miles south of Florence, Arizona, Mix came upon construction barriers at a bridge washed away by a flash flood. He was unable to stop in time. The car swerved twice and then rolled into a gully, pinning his body underneath. He had placed a large aluminum suitcase containing a substantial sum of money, traveler’s checks, and jewels on the package shelf behind him. It flew forward and struck Mix’s head, shattering his skull and breaking his neck. The actor was killed almost instantly. Eyewitnesses said Mix had been traveling at 80 mph. He was 60 years old.
The funeral of Tom Mix was held at the Little Church of the Flowers in Glendale, California on October 16, 1940, attended by thousands of fans and Hollywood personalities. He was interred nearby in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.
A small stone memorial marks the site of his death on State Route 79, and the nearby gully is named “Tom Mix Wash”. The plaque on the marker bears the inscription: “In memory of Tom Mix whose spirit left his body on this spot and whose characterization and portrayals in life served to better fix memories of the old West in the minds of living men.”
Legacy
Tom Mix was “the King of Cowboys” when Ronald Reagan and John Wayne were youngsters and the influence of his screen persona can be seen in their approach to portraying cowboys. When an injury caused football player Marion Morrison (later John Wayne) to drop out of USC, Mix helped him get a job moving props in the back lot of Fox Studios.
Mix made 291 movies throughout his career. As of 2007, only about 10% of these were reportedly available for viewing, although it was unclear how many of these films are now considered lost films.
Tom Mix memorial plaque
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Mix has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1708 Vine Street. His cowboy boot prints, palm prints and hoof prints of his horse, Tony, are at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard. In 1958 he was inducted posthumously into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In 1959 a ‘Monument To The Stars’ was erected on Beverly Dr. (where it intersects Olympic Blvd. and becomes Beverwil) in Beverly Hills. The memorial consists of a bronze-green spiral of sprocketed “camera film” above a multi-sided tower, embossed with full-length likenesses of early stars who appeared in famous silent movies. Those memorialized include Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Will Rogers, Conrad Nagel, Rudolph Valentino, Fred Niblo, Tom Mix, and Harold Lloyd. There is a Tom Mix museum in Dewey, Oklahoma and another in Mix Run, Pennsylvania. Between 1980 and 2004, 21 Tom Mix festivals were held during the month of September, most of them in DuBois, Pennsylvania.