Westerns attracted
some interesting talent. The son of Jesse James became a serial star. Bank
robber Al Jennings became a director. Bank robber Emmett Dalton became a
technical advisor. And months after he had been reported killed in a shootout
in Bolivia, Butch Cassidy was discovered in Oregon writing a
screenplay.
Audiences didn't respond to the harsh realities
of frontier life these men wanted to show on the silver screen. They demanded
entertainment. They demanded Tom Mix and his super-horse Tony. Tom
Mix was the greatest thing to happen to movies since popcorn and his popularity
has never been equaled. There was no one like him loose in the
streets.
Dressed-up in
a purple suit, silver-buckled high-heeled cowboy boots and a white high-crowned
Stetson hat, he stopped traffic in every town he visited. Even Hitler said
so. He wanted Mix in Germany for a personal appearance tour. Mix wrote back:
"I'll tour Germany and visit my fans, but over your dead body."
In his autobiography, "Stuntman(University
of Oklahoma Press, 1979)," Yakima Canutt remembered fans who followed Mix
around expected him to be entertaining. Mix didn't disappoint the crowds,
Canutt wrote. Mix turned on the charm, told them how he used to be a gun
fighting
sheriff or some wild adventurer, and was a big hit. As long as no one was
hurt, Mix saw no harm
in telling lies. Until one caused him some public
embarrassment. A studio publicist sent that story about Mix being a gun fighting
sheriff to every magazine and newspaper claiming it was true when it really
came from an old movie.
Soon after
Mix died, friends paid tribute to him on a network radio show. Nothing
was said about the millions of dollars his films earned, his enormous
popularity, or how many actors he inspired to follow after him.
There wasn't even any mention of the important role Mix
played in building Hollywood into the heart of the movie
industry. The best that these friends could do to honor Tom
Mix was dramatize a lie he regretted telling---the one about being
a gun fighting sheriff.
With friends like
that . . .