Tom Mix's Own Story
by Himself
Third Installment
TOM received $150 a week for his first motion picture work. Recently he refused a years contract with a circus at $25,000 a week His new contract with Fox calls for a salary, it is said of $17,500. Read this story and you will know why he refused the circus offer.
IT was sort of funny how I happened to go into motion pictures.
I've observed that destiny has got a mighty odd way of bringing some little thing to pass just at the psychological moment that'll revolutionize a man's whole life. That's the way it happened to me. If that telegram had been presented to me at another time in my career. I might have paid no more attention to it than to wonder what motion pictures were, anyhow. As it was, it brought me into a line of business as foreign to me then as could be, to a lot of success I was pretty far from dreaming I'd ever have, and to the woman I love.
It arrived at a time when excitement and danger had begun to pall upon me a trifle. After some of those little episodes I have mentioned to you previously, I had begun to realize that no matter how good a shot a man is, sooner or later the luck is bound to go against him. What with bullets flying around so promiscuous, it's against nature to suppose a man can always be absent when they arrive in his vicinity. And I kind of hated the thought of ending my career by being picked off while an innocent bystander to the alcoholic furor of some rough neck. Also, it was dawning upon me gradual but powerful that I was spending a heap too much time in hospitals, and that was dampening my enthusiasm for romance and adventure some.
I averaged up the sheriffs and rangers and marshals I'd known and most of them had ended their careers sudden and violent.
Well, I was sort of ruminating along these lines, when I went up to Cheyenne, Wyoming, along in 1909, to take part in the contests they were having up there as part of the Frontier Day celebration. I'd won the National Championship in contests that year, and I was figuring to do pretty well.
One morning I went into the bank at Cheyenne to cash a check that had been handed to me as a prize in some event -- rope throwing, as I recollect it, though it might have been bull-dogging steers.
A man named Stone was the head of this Frontier Day committee, and he was likewise president of the bank, and when I come in he says, "Tom, you're just the man I was hoping to' see in here this morning. I got a telegram here might interest you and if it does you can make your own play concerning it."
I walked over by the window and read the telegram.
It was signed by the Selig company, and it asked Stone, he being the main one of the Frontier Day affair, if he knew a man that could do some real cowboy stunts in some motion pictures, and if so they'd like to hire him, and maybe, if possible, rent his ranch and some of his horses and cattle, if he happened to have any. They stated mighty plain that they wanted a real cowboy, that was familiar with ropes and steers and broncs from actual experience.
Now I had a little ranch down in Oklahoma that I'd been fussing around with in between being sheriff and marshal, and Stone knew that. He said, "Tom, you're heading back for Oklahoma anyways, now that the celebration is about to conclude, so why don't you stop off down at Chicago and find out just how this game lays. Might be something you'd like. I am not familiar much with motion pictures myself, but I've heard considerable talk about them lately."
I says, " Well, I have seen a few of them and it looked to me like most of their cowboys learned their trade through a correspondence school. I can see how maybe they could use a man that has some personal acquaintance with horses and the west."
It wasn't much out of my way, so I pulled up in Chicago, and went up to talk the matter over with the folks that had sent the telegram.
The first thing they did was to offer me a hundred dollars a week. I spent the rest of the time trying to get out of that office as fast as I could, without being ornery, because I made out they must be crazy sure. I told them I'd let them know later, and I went down and stood on the street corner and I said to myself, "Tom, these men are crazy and no mistake. You better not get yourself mixed up with them anyways at all. Anybody that'd talk about paying a cowboy a hundred dollars a week is plumb loco."
I went back to my hotel and pretty soon they begun calling me up, talking about this and that, and finally they come right out and says, "If it's salary that's standing in the way, we'd be willing to make it a hundred and fifty, providing you'll use your own horse and take care of him."
Well, that settled any lingering doubts I might have had about them being crazy. I knew they were crazy then. But when I started figuring about it all, I decided there must be some way of finding out about these things, though I wasn't much of a business man. But I knew no business man would mix himself up in such a deal without being convinced proper that these lunatics could make good.
So the next day I went back and put my cards on the table. " Can you give me any sort of assurance whatsoever about this hundred and fifty dollars being paid every week and where it's coming from? I don't like going into any play blindfolded."
They asked me if I knew what Dun and Bradstreet was, and I said I'd heard tell that it was a kind of financial pedigree book. They brought out one then, and showed me where Colonel Selig was rated at a credit of a million dollars, so I said that was all right with me and I was now prepared to go ahead with it.
I went back down to my ranch in Oklahoma, and pretty soon two or three of these gentlemen came down and looked my place over, and then a lawyer showed up on the scene, and he looked it over, and then he brought out a contract and I signed it. That was my first motion picture contract and I made my first screen appearance in 1910. In my whole career on the screen I've only been with two firms -- Selig and Fox.
The troupe was to come down to my place and make some pictures, and when I got the telegram saying they were coming, I began to get sort of panicky. I had seen some of those theatrical companies that barnstormed the west in those days and I had sort of a picture of a lot of blondes with plumes in their hats, and gents with checkered vests and fancy shoes. I began to feel right guilty about importing a bunch like that into Oklahoma, which up till then hadn't had anything worse than some gun fights and a few raids and such like pastimes, which are legitimate in a new country.
The whole town and most of the surrounding country went down to meet the train, and I was there, too, but well in the background. I was sitting on an express truck back of the station with a clear track between me and my horse, that's where I was. I had made up my mind if they were too awful, I'd just make myself scarce by leaving precipitant for parts unknown.
But when they got off the train they weren't a bit like I'd figured them, but were just average human beings, so I got down off the truck and went over and introduced myself. Otis Turner was director of that company, and with him was Kathlyn Williams, and Myrtle Stedman, and William V. Mong and Charles Clary, and some other folks, as well as a lot of cameras and things.
They stayed down on my ranch about six months making pictures, and I got my first experience with acting, and I'm here to state that I didn't fall for it then to any appreciable extent. I didn't mind carrying out my own line of work, such as riding and roping, but I was sure distressed when I had to take any part in the actual picture story.
First thing we had a row about was me putting on any make-up. I'm a right easy cuss to get along with mostly, but in that instance I set myself like a mule and said no. Until I came with Fox and got to be a star, I never had a make-up on but once, and when Colonel Selig saw that picture he wired back to know was I sick or something. When I was a star and had to be as particular about the acting as anything else, they finally convinced me I ought to put on a make-up, and I do it now, but I have never got so I am very crazy about painting my face. It don't seem quite the thing for a big, rough man like me to do.
Well, we surely made a lot of pictures and fought a lot of wars on my ranch in those six months. Sometimes I got killed as many as seven or eight times in one picture. There was one scene I got so familiar with
I felt real comfortable about it, and could do it without any protest from my inner conscience. That was the one of dying on the battlefield with my horse. Just at the end, while the battle was
raging all around us, the old horse would raise up and look me in the face, and I'd crawl over and put my arm around his neck tight and say, "Good-by, old pal." Then we'd both keel
over -- or maybe only the horse -- and the smoke of battle would drift around and hide us from view. I bet we used that scene as many times as George Cohan has used the American flag.
When they'd used up all the scenery that was around my place, we left there and went up to a location I knew in Colorado. While we was there I had a little difference of opinion about something with the company, and they fired me. I reckon I was sort of hankering to get fired, though, because the boys had been writing and asking me to come back and be city marshal of Dewey, Oklahoma, where they
were having a little trouble one way and another with some boys that thought they were right bad. It seemed like a pretty good idea to me, so when I got fired that-away I went back to Dewey.
I hadn't been working at that very long, though, when the first revolution broke out down in Mexico. That was in 1910, you recollect, and it caused considerable commotion. Diaz had been elected president again -- he'd been president so long all the fellows that voted for him the first time were dead and it was their sons that were electing him now -- and a lot of people thought he was getting too old and that corrupt men under him were running things to suit themselves. Anyway, it was what you would call an autocratic rule and the people were crying for a little better treatment and a little more freedom. Anyways, the Liberals got together under Francisco Madera and attacked the government, and the fireworks started. The way it sounded up in Oklahoma I thought it might be worth going to see what it was all about, so I resigned and started for Mexico.
I joined the Madera forces and was with them when they captured Juarez, which brought about the resignation of Diaz and the election of Madera as president. It was open warfare of the worst kind and no better and no worse than what I'd been used to, but I did have one experience while I was down there that I can't say set any too well. I faced a firing squad for the first and, I hope, the last time. Of course it's been done a lot in pictures and is considered old stuff now, but when it actually happen and you're the chief actor it has a lot of excitement connected with it.
I was accused of breaking the military law. I don't know whether you've had much experience with revolutions, but as a rule both sides are fighting among themselves as well as fighting each other and little small-portion revolutions are apt to break out most any time. It was one of those things I got caught in, and after a sort of comic opera trial that I reckon wouldn't be considered as having been conducted strictly according to Hoyle, I was condemned to be shot. Anyway, they had marched me out and were getting all ready to use me for a target, when some witness that had testified against me got troubled in his conscience, and there was another upset in the ruling powers, and when he admitted the truth they set me free.
But that sort of took the edge off my ardor about the Mexican revolution, so I got five hundred dollars in gold from Madera for my
services and started back for El Paso to have a good time. But I hadn't even got started on my celebration when a man I knew came
rushing up, yelling at me like he was going to a fire or something. Well, he was what they call the exchange man for the Selig people, and it
seems like they had been wiring him every fifteen minutes to locate me and ship me pronto to Chicago, being that they needed me pretty
bad. In fact, it seemed like nobody but me would do.
Back in Pictures
So I went back to Chicago, and it didn't take long to find out why they'd had a change of heart like that and were so cordial.
It is no use to mention any names in telling about the following episode, because I don't aim to hurt anybody if I can help it.
But this is the way the thing was --
An actor had come on from New York and sold himself to the Selig company with a great idea, a story he had in mind. He said he could
do it easy, and maybe he thought he could. He wanted to make this picture about a young man that had been ruined by the wolves of
Wall street, and just had to come out west. While he was there he learned to be a man, it seems, and he got in a fight with a real pack of
wolves, and the idea was that he was to be attacked by this pack in a lonely cabin, and whip them with his bare hands. Then, you
see, having conquered the real wolves, he could start back to lick the wolves of Wall street. This leading man allowed he had fought
wolves like that and maybe he had.
However, when it come to doing it in the picture it just seemed like he couldn't manage it right, so he decided maybe he'd rather not
and they had better get a double. There was a lot of money tied up in the picture and they wanted me to be the double and fight the wolf
pack.
It didn't appeal to me exactly, but wolves are mostly cowards and I thought maybe I could choke a couple of them so they'd be
quiet and the others would take a lesson from that and it would do for the scene.
So we started. We built an iron pipeway for the wolves to come into from their cage, and put the mouth right at the window. When I
rushed in, like the wolves were at my heels, and bolted the door, they were to jump through the window. It all come off according
to schedule, except that the biggest wolf came first, of course, and I guess he wasn't pleased with the layout, because when I made a grab
for him, he jumped over and took a hunk out of my arm.
That made me mad. I got him by the hind leg and he kept twisting and snapping and trying to get at me again, and I never did see
a wolf act up so mean. By that time the rest of the pack had come through the window, and they were scared to death and slunk off in the
corners and watched me and old granddaddy wolf having our little run-in. I kept on hanging onto his leg and he kept on trying to get at
me and we sure waltzed all over that set.
In those days they built sets out of something that wasn't much stronger than tissue paper and glued them together and
there wasn't a thing in that room was strong enough for me to get hold of. On the wall was a cupboard full of dishes
and there was a table that looked like it had strong legs. I kicked the table over and sure enough one of the legs fell out.
Then I rapped old daddy wolf through that cupboard, and it tore open and all the dishes fell on his head. That stopped
him a second, and I grabbed the table leg in my left hand and tapped him on the bean with it.
I've still got a mass of scars on one arm where he got to me.
Well, I was mad clear through and I'd forgotten all about being a double and being supposed to keep my back to the camera, but
funny thing was the scene looks all right in the picture. They brought the real leading man down then and he was supposed to
stand with his foot on the wolf while he made his noble resolve about going back to Wall street. They
told him the wolf was dead, but it wasn't dead at all, only stunned, and when he put his foot
on it, it wiggled and looked up at him, and he fainted.
The humane society or something got after me about beaning that wolf, and I had to explain how it all
happened, and how I hadn't started with any intention whatsoever to hurt him, but when it came to
being either him or me, I naturally chose me. As a matter of fact, the folks around where I work say I'm
too kind to animals -- that I spoil them. Maybe I do. Especially horses. But I don't regard horses
as a heap different from human beings, only some a little better.
There's only one way to handle horses, and that's to be kind and firm with them, and I'd like to
kill any man I ever saw abusing a horse. Once or twice, I have felt it my duty to reprimand men for
not treating their horses right -- but that's another story.
Well, I got my job back with Selig all right, and after that I stuck and I have been in pictures ever since. Mostly for a while I doubled
for leading men, and we went down to Florida to make those jungle pictures with Kathlyn Williams, and I did a lot of everything. Maybe
you remember "Lost in the Jungle" and some of those.
Right here, before going into some of the adventures that befell us in Florida, I'd like to say that Miss Kathlyn Williams was a
wonderful woman and that it sure was a privilege to work with her. It wasn't only that she was a mighty brave woman, but she had
a fine disposition, and she was sweet and smiling no matter how tough the going might be, and sometimes it was pretty bad, for we
worked under great difficulties and most of the time lived the same way. Making that kind of pictures was a heap different than
the things they do nowadays and the animals were the chief part of it, too.
I remember that we had a troop of leopards with us, and their trainer allowed that they were tame leopards, but I have
seen a lot tamer things in my time. We had built a great big corral, or cage of wire, and we worked inside that, with all
the tropical atmosphere, but still where the animals couldn't get away. I had one experience with a leopard down there
that was like what you read about in books but that is the only time I ever saw it happen in real life.
We wanted to show on the screen, the leopard finding Miss Williams asleep under a log and springing on her. And the way we planned
to get it was like this -- Miss Williams laid down on one side of the log, right close to it, and on the other side was the leopard. We
had a chicken pegged on the same side as Miss Williams, and we'd move the chicken and the leopard would leap high in the air, right over
Miss Williams, and land on the chicken. Then we'd cut with him in midair. Then with another leopard trained for the part would
continue the fight.
It went great the first time. The second time, just as the leopard started to spring, the breeze caught Miss Williams' hair and blew
it around. It caught his attention and before anyone could move, he had sprung right on Miss Williams, one paw putting five deep cuts in
her head. She fainted.
It was so quick no one could realize it. My gun was some five feet away, and I was afraid to move, for fear the sound would make him
strike instantly. I was only a few feet from him, and right in front of me was his tail. I could see it twitching back and
forth, back and forth, like the tail of a cat with a mouse.
As I told you, cats are my natural enemies, and for a second I didn't know what I could do, that wouldn't make him kill Miss Williams,
or maim her, before I could stop him. Then an idea came to me, and I just reached forward and with all my strength grabbed that moving
tail and swung. He was a big leopard, but I just managed to lift him clean, and someone snatched Miss Williams.
He turned on me in a fury, and we stood there, looking at each other, just staring. Some folks that was watching, thought I was right
cool and collected on that occasion, but the truth was I was just paralyzed with fear, though I was trying to figure out if maybe I
couldn't get him by the throat when he sprang.
And then, as we stared, that leopard suddenly began to shift, dropped his head and his tail, and slunk away into the trees.
The worst thing that ever happened to me, though, was when I was playing a northern spy, one time. I was the villain in that piece,
and Miss Williams was supposed to come riding over a bridge and find me trying to bar her way, and knock me off into the river. It was
a pretty good-sized river, and a drop of eighteen or twenty feet from the bridge to the water.
She pushed me off the bridge all right, and I managed to hit the water intact. I went down and come up easy, and found myself face to
face with the biggest alligator you ever saw in your life. Maybe he was only yawning, but he had his mouth wide open and I thought he
had made up his mind to swallow me whole. The way I went up those piles onto that bridge, I reckon the alligator must have
thought I was just a streak of some kind.
As I come over the side the director yelled, "Hey, you stay down in the water till it's time for you to come up."
"Alligators Don't Bite"
But that didn't have any effect on me whatsoever I took him by the hand and led him over and pointed out the alligator, and I says,
"Maybe some folks won't mind waiting down there in such company until you get ready but not me."
He says, very airy and bright, "Why, Tom, you don't need to be afraid of him. An alligator will never bite a man while he's in the
water."
I says, "That's great, but does the alligator know about it?"
Anyway, that was one scene they never got.
We had a big, old lion down there with us, that had a reputation for being pretty ferocious. One day we had to let him loose to
chase a horse. Now the lions were fed on horse meat, and so you can pretty well count on them chasing a horse most anywheres. I
was to sit on the sidelines, and rope him when they'd got all the chase they wanted.
The old boy came galloping by me after that horse like so many pounds of speed done up in one package, and I threw for him. But I
hadn't roped many lions, and this wise old bird just jumped right through my loop like a circus clown. All I got was one hind leg, and
the old boy seeing me sitting there on top of a horse, charged at us roaring. Well, I turned and give my horse the spur, and all I could do
was to keep moving fast enough to keep that old lion at the end of my rope and every time I'd slack a little he'd come after me with the
evident intention of getting up on that horse.
So round and round we went, and if you've never had a large and unfriendly lion on the end of a rope that you didn't know what to do
with, you don't know how I felt. I kept yelling for somebody else to rope him, and after a while one of the other boys managed to get a
rope on his front leg. So we had him. but we couldn't get any closer to him than before, and then I let go my rope, and gave him another
throw and got him by the neck, and we tied him up and put him back in his cage for his trainer to untangle.
And I want to tell you right now that the trees around there rained folks for hours after that. One actor had actually got two miles
from camp, though he must have beaten Charlie Paddock's record to do it.
After that, I began to make my own pictures, and I was director, and story writer, and actor, and cameraman and props, and scenic
artist and most everything but the horse. And I want to tell you right now, that there's no foundation in the world for a man's business
like knowing it from every angle -- knowing what can be done and what can't be done, and all the difficulties the other fellow is
under-going. I still keep up my camera work, and over in my workshop I've managed to work out some stunt camera stuff that we've used in
our pictures, and some devices for cameras that have helped us a lot. And knowing about direction, and stories, has helped me one
hundred per cent in my work in recent years.
Pretty soon after I came out to Hollywood, there happened to me the biggest thing that has ever happened in my life -- the thing that
has made everything else worth while, that made the hard work easy, and the success glorious. I fell in love.
I did about as thorough a job of it on first sight as I guess any other young man has ever done, because two seconds after I first saw
Victoria Ford she had me roped, tied and branded for life. That was ten or eleven years ago, and that feeling I had when I first looked
at her has never changed except to grow bigger and finer as the years progress.
Tom's Courtship
It was in a little motion picture theater over at Glendale, that I first saw Victoria. Her mother, a character actress, had been making
some pictures with me, and I went to see one. Outside, she introduced me to her daughter, Victoria, who was just a girl in her 'teens then,
with a lot of golden hair, -- a little thing, she was, too, not much bigger than a minute. I just stood there looking at her and wondering
how I'd lived all those years without her and how I was ever going to live another day longer if she wouldn't have me. I expect I'd
have started proposing right there and then if I'd had the nerve.
I found out she was working at the old Universal studio in Sunset Boulevard and the next day I took this automobile I had bought, it was
a second hand one and big as a house, and I commenced driving up and down in front of that studio, hoping maybe I'd get just a
glimpse of her. I was so busy trying to peek inside the door that I ran into a roadster that was standing at the curb and it cost me two
weeks pay to get it fixed up.
It wasn't the whirlwind courtship I would have had it, because Victoria was young, and one thing and another interfered, but when I
went down to Arizona and established a studio there to make a series of western pictures, she and her mother went with me. Victoria as my
leading woman. Perhaps you remember her in some of those early westerns.
We have been married eight years now, and I know we are pointed out frequently as one of the ideal married couples of Hollywood. I
know that we are one of the happiest couples that ever lived in Hollywood or anywhere else, and I guess I'm more grateful to God for that
than for anything else -- that and its crowning joy, our little daughter, Thomasina, who came to us nearly three years ago.
This is not a history of the motion picture industry, so I shan't go into a lot of detail about my picture career. After making a lot of
westerns for Selig, I went with Fox in 1918 and I have been with them ever since and I have just signed a contract that makes it look
like I'd be with them as long as I make pictures. In the years that I have been with them I have had every chance to make western epics,
and I've tried to do it, and gradually they have grown in favor and popularity with people. I've tried always to make clean pictures and to
show the west as I know and love it. I have been responsible for seeing that every angle of my pictures was done and done right, and
though it's kept my nose at the grindstone it's been worth it.
Sometimes I reckon I get to laughing over the fact that I quit being a sheriff to lead a quieter and less dangerous life. Making western
pictures hasn't been exactly a quiet and peaceful life. I had three ribs broken one day in a shuffle; I had to have nine stitches taken
in my head when somebody hit me with the wrong chair; a spur tore the whole side of my head open one day when I was doing a fight
and the man's leg flew up; a horse crushed my toe; I was filled plumb full of pieces of shot when a bomb exploded; I had a tooth smashed
in a scene one day.
Those are just a few of the things that happen. I've had to jump horses thirty feet into a lake. I've had to jump them through plate
glass windows and from the roof of one building to another. I've ridden up and down fire escapes. So sometimes I've thought it wasn't
much of a change. As I heard a kid say to his mother in a theater one day, when they were showing one of my pictures, "If Tom and Tony
aren't careful, they'll get seriously killed one of these days."
(By the way, did you know I bought Tony for twelve dollars, out of a bunch of colts, and he was sure the worst looking one of the bunch.)
The other night while I was sitting in front of my fire, a great feeling of gratitude came over me. I saw my home, with its comforts
and beauties which are so dear to me. I saw my beloved wife, sitting opposite me. I thought of my cars in the garage, my horses,
all the possessions which make life so full of happiness. Above all, I thought of that little girl of ours asleep upstairs, and I thought of
her future, which will be protected as far as loving parents and education and money can protect it.
I thought of the great opportunity that has been given me to be a little influence for good in the lives of the boys and young men of this
country, and remembered how not long before I had spoken to the boy scouts, and to other groups of fine future citizens. I thought of the
fine health I have kept, because I have tried to take proper care of this machine we call the body -- not giving it more fuel to take care of
than it can, always keeping it tuned up to its best pitch.
And I went over to my desk and wrote a letter to one of the finest men I have ever known -- William Fox. And in that letter I
spoke of my life as it is today, and of all these things which have so blessed me, and I told him how wonderful it was to remember our
long association in business, unmarred by any disagreement or discontent. And I said, "Some folks may say that if you hadn't done
all this for me, somebody else would have. But the fact remains that you did it, and I feel mighty grateful."
That's true, I tell you.
And so I can just end by saying that I thank God for all his goodness, for the fine work I have to do, for the love folks have been kind
enough to shower on me, for the appreciation they've given my efforts, and above all for my dearest blessings -- Thomasina and Victoria.
And just let me say this one word -- the greatest happiness there is in the world is in doing right, trying to live straight, have the respect of your
neighbors and a true and faithful home life.
I've lived a lot of different places and a lot of different ways since I was born in that log cabin in Texas, and I know.
