Thomas E. Mix (January 6, 1880 - October 12, 1940) was an American film actor, the star of many early Western movies. He made a reported 336 films between 1910 and 1935, all but 9 of them silent features. In the process he became Hollywood’s first larger-than-life Western megastar, and defined the genre for all actors that followed.

Early years

Born Thomas Hezikiah Mix into a relatively poor logging family in Mix Run, Pennsylvania, about 40 miles (60 km) north of State College, Pennsylvania. When he enlisted in the Army in April 1898, he registered as Thomas E. Mix. He served in a heavy artillery unit during the Spanish-American War. He re-enlisted in 1901, but failed to return to duty after a 1902 extended furlough when he married Grace I. Allin on July 18th. Mix was listed as AWOL on November 4, 1902 yet he was never court martialed or, apparently, even properly discharged. His marriage was annulled a year later. In 1905, Tom Mix married Kitty Jewel Perinne but this too ended within a year and in 1907 he married Olive Stokes with whom he had a daughter.

After working a variety of odd jobs in the Oklahoma Territory, Mix went on to work at the 101 Ranch, the largest ranching outfit in the US, with 101,000 acres (409 km²), hence the name 101. He distinguished himself as a horseman and expert shot, winning the 1909 national Riding and Rodeo Championship. Mix is rumored to have served a brief and undistinguished term with the Texas Rangers. In the realm of the real wild west, Tom was a pallbearer at the 1929 funeral of Wyatt Earp. Reportedly, he wept.

Film career

Mix was picked out to be a supporting cast member with the Selig Polyscope Company, one of the first silent film makers. His first shoot (1910) was "Ranch Life in the Great Southwest" and he showed off his signature style as a cattle wrangler. The film was a success and Tom Mix became a star. While with Selig, he co-starred with Victoria Forde with whom he became romantically involved. He divorced Olive Stokes-Mix in 1917 to marry Forde in 1918. They had a daughter, Thomasina Mix, but divorced in 1931. He performed in more than 100 films with Selig, many of which were filmed in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Throughout the silent film era, Mix helped redefine what the western film genre could be through an emphasis on action in pursuit of the bad guys. Mix's career in the movies lasted 26 years and made him $6,000,000.

Selig folded in 1917, and Tom Mix and his wife Victoria both signed with Fox Film Corporation.

He went on to make more than 160 films throughout the 1920s, each growing in plot and complexity as the matinee film became a Saturday staple for escapist American youth. These were “packaged” dramatic films, no longer attempting the documentary style of the Selig days, with clear-cut heroes and villains and a clean-cut cowboy always saving the day. (Ronald Reagan and John Wayne both watched Tom Mix films when they were boys.)

Tom Mix did his own stunts in almost all of his pictures, and was frequently injured.

Fatal accident

He died October 12, 1940, in an auto accident in Florence, Arizona in which he was killed by a suitcase. Mix was driving his 1937 Cord 812 phaeton at night between Tucson, Arizona and Phoenix, Arizona on a two-lane road when he came to a bridge that had been washed away. Mix’s car catapulted across the empty space and crashed into the other side. The metal-hardened suitcase he had packed and put on the seat behind him flew free and struck him in the back of the head, shattering his skull and killing him instantly.

The accident occurred on what is now Arizona State Route 79. A historical marker is located at the accident site. Mix is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Honors

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Tom Mix has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1708 Vine Street. He has his cowboy boot prints, palm prints and his famous horse Tony's hoof prints in 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. There is a Tom Mix museum in Dewey, Oklahoma and another in Mix Run, Pennsylvania. A Tom Mix Festival is held in DuBois, Pennsylvania every September.

As a fictional character

A fictional character called Tom Mix frequently appeared in USA Western comics as they were before the Comics Code came. Bruce Willis played Tom Mix in the film Sunset with James Garner as Wyatt Earp.

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