Sid had his fair share of difficult stunts to do in Tom's pictures also.
Tom used to laugh, I can't let myself get soft. I can't have Sid outdoing me."
No one could readily outdo Tom in any kind of physical stunt. Nor did his keen eyesight, hairspring reflexes, and faultless judgment wane as he grew older. He was, at the very end of his life, still able to vault from a horse with surprising ease; and at fifty paces he could still shoot the end off a cigar held in the smoker's mouth; and at the same distance he could split a piece of twine with unerring accuracy.
Tom was able to do all this in later years only because he kept his body constantly in condition. When they were between pictures he and Sid would spend hours every day at target practice, and on conceiving and practicing dangerous stunts that Tom would use in later pictures. I would look out the window of our bungalow and see them leaping all over the yard, dodging behind trees, jumping off the porch roof, and blasting at each other with blank cartridges.
One morning I looked out just in time to see a barrel start its descent from our yard toward the bottom of the hill. Our hill was steep and the barrel was soon rolling at alarming speed toward the clump of trees at the bottom. Tom and Sid were inside the barrel, and by the time it reached the bottom of the hill the barrel was in splinters and Tom and Sid were laughing hard as they rubbed their bruises and sore spots.
They used this idea in Tom's next picture. After their close-quarter fight in a barrel, the barrel bumped down a rocky incline twice as steep as the hill they had practiced on. Sid came out of this scene unconscious, and Tom emerged with a broken bone, but the scene was so novel and effective that they considered their efforts worthwhile.
There was the time, too, when Tom and Sid spent days trying to perfect a chariot race stunt for one of Tom's early Hollywood pictures. Tom was cast as a Roman gladiator in this film, one of the few non-Westerns he made after he settled in Hollywood. He was supposed to be thrown out of a chariot when it was rolling at full speed, but no matter how many times he practiced the scene he still wasn't satisfied that he was elected from the chariot violently enough to please his movie fans. One day he conceived the idea of tying an anvil to his ankle with a rope. At the moment of crisis in the scene he simply kicked the anvil out of the chariot with his foot and his body catapulted out of the chariot as though he'd been shot from a cannon. Tom limped for days after that scene, but at last he was gratified with the result.
When Tom got "shot" in his films, it was usually Sid who did the shooting. Tom jokingly referred to him as "Big Chief Rifle Shot."
Tom highly appreciated the fact that Sid was as unerring a marksman as himself. Though blank cartridges were used in most scenes, sometimes real shells were used, especially in the early days, when the supply of blanks ran low. No matter whether blank or real shell was coming at him, Tom would go about his business in a movie scene perfectly confident that when the shot from Sid's gun came, it would come at precisely the right moment and would hit a prearranged target. During the long period of their working together, Sid must have shot a hundred glasses out of Tom's hand and put dozens of holes in his neckties. He was forever getting Tom behind a rock or in some almost impossible situation where Tom could blast his way out in typical Tom Mix screen fashion.
One day Tom and Sid came home from the studio laughing hard. When I pressed for an explanation, Sid said, "We had a real cowboy from Texas visiting at the studio today. He was spreading it around that Tom and I were just plain phonies."
I looked at Tom. Certainly, I thought, he hadn't passed that off with a laugh.
Tom was grinning. "He was telling everybody on the set that life on the range isn't anything like what we were doing in the scenes today."
"He said that the movies needed some real cowboys making pictures," Sid added. "But he went on to say that no real cowboy would waste his time in pictures. He said he knew that all the stunts we did in our films were tricks, that you sure fool the public with a camera."
I looked at Tom in astonishment. "You let him get away with that? "
"It was kinda fun listening to him scoff," Tom explained. "The crew got a kick out of it. We didn't have any real tough scenes to do today, so the fellow just kept on laughing and letting everybody know how much better he could do the scenes."
"And you let him get away with it? " I persisted.
"Not quite," laughed Sid. "First thing Tom did when the day's shooting was over was ask the cowboy to give us some pointers on how things should be done."
Dawn was beginning to break; I was already smiling. "All right. How did you reduce him to a sweat?"
"First I asked him to show me how to rope properly," Tom said. " I pointed out a peg on the stage and said I'd sure been trying to get a rope around it but hadn't been able to."
"The cowboy tried to rope the peg, but his reach was short," Sid said. "He said nobody could rope that peg from that distance- but Tom said that now that he'd studied the cowboy's fine roping technique he wanted to have a try again himself." Sid chuckled. "Tom put that rope around the peg with no trouble at all."
"I suppose the cowboy was convinced then?" I asked.
"No," said Tom. "He said he was willing to challenge any of us 'phony' cowboys to a shooting match. I figured it might be a good contest. So we got a can-and we started shooting it down a slope."
"The cowboy only missed once," said Sid.
"Yes," nodded Tom. "He was a good shot at that."
"But the clincher was when the cowboy took his last shot and couldn't see the can any more," Sid said, "Tom found the can and sent it clear out of sight- for good."
I nodded and smiled, remembering how Tom had sent a target can spinning on a prairie just a few years before-had sent it spinning after the rest of us had lost sight of it.
"Well, the cowboy wasn't looking so tall after that," said Sid. "In fact, he was kind of itchin' to take off. But Tom asked him to demonstrate the Indian-grip hold for him."
"The cowboy got taller then," Tom laughed. "I guess he figured he ought to be able to bend my arm over double without any trouble."
"He was a big guy," Sid explained, " and he sure looked like he could bulldog a steer with one arm. Well, he and Tom sat down at a table on the set. The cowboy was grinnin' hard when he and Tom locked arms. I guess he figured it'd take him about two seconds to have Tom's arm laid flat on the table. A few minutes later, after a lot of strainin' back and forth, that cowboy had the reddest face I've ever seen-and his arm was flat on the table where Tom had bent it."
"He didn't have any more to say after that," said Tom. "Just got up and took off. I don't expect we'll be seeing him again."
"No," I said. "I don't expect you will."
Tom had ridiculed the braggart cowboy simply to teach him a lesson. He never failed to take the wind out of a braggart when the opportunity presented itself, for he felt that a man revealed himself in his actions, not in his words. If his actions were good, the world could see that they were good, and talking about them was unnecessary. Tom himself never fell victim to the braggadocio he disliked so much in others, though this characteristic was an occupational disease inherent in the natures of many movie stars of his era.
I'm sure the swaggering cowboy left the studio that day completely convinced, beneath his personal humiliation, that Tom was anything but a "phony cowboy."
As for the cowboy's idea that the camera could deceive the public, he was right. The camera could be employed for deception and was, in many pictures, but never in a Tom Mix film. And this was true in spite of the fact that many of the stunts Tom did on the screen seemed virtually impossible to do. They would have been impossible for anyone else.
The forming of the Selig-Tom Mix Company placed Tom in a position of real power, a position that he could have misused had he been a different kind of man. But though Tom had virtually absolute control over all facets of the production of his film, he became no panjandrum. Except for the tension that came to him from ever-increasing responsibility, he remained unchanged.
He considered himself and the people he worked with as one big team. Before he began each picture he gathered the other actors and the production crew together for a kind of pre-filming pep talk to remind them that the Tom Mix films were by no means merely the product of the efforts of one individual.
"We have a responsibility to ourselves and to the public to make this picture as good as we possibly can," Tom would say, " and it will take all of us to make it that way."
His sincerity and humility reached the hearts of everyone he ever worked with. He was not merely a great star to them; he was also best friend, mentor, and hero to all of them. Consequently, the filming of a Tom Mix film usually went off without a hitch, and with a minimum of frayed nerves and an almost complete exclusion of temperament.
Things invariably went that way because the people who worked with Tom loved him and respected him. He was a thoroughly fair man in A his dealings, but he always carried with him the note of authority that had earned him such deep respect in his days as a sheriff. He seldom had to use his authority as a weapon, but when disciplinary action was necessary, he took quick but fair action.
Such an occasion arose once when we left Hollywood to do a film on location in the Arizona desert. Life in the production camp would have gone smoothly except for one thorn: the cook.
The producing of an action film on location, with its attendant hard riding over difficult terrain and the other strenuous work, makes for hearty appetites when mealtime rolls around. On this location trip appetites were at an all-time high because the working days lasted from dawn to dusk. Tom had reasoned that a double working day would bring the film to completion in half the usual time, thus giving the production crew the opportunity to get back to their families in California all the sooner. Everyone worked feverishly to attain this objective. Everyone, that is, except the cook.
The cook was a burly, sour individual, an ex-prizefighter and a dissenter from way back. He was obviously a misfit in the company of the friendly, cooperative crew that formed Tom's film unit. He thoroughly disliked Tom and referred to him, not quite under his breath, as a "plutocrat cowboy." His resentment crept into the meals he prepared for the company; they were not only unsavory, they were also inadequate.
Tom tried to set the cook straight by having a few talks with him. But the meals continued to be unsavory, inadequate, and unpunctual.
The climax came early one morning when the crew was scheduled to rise at three-thirty, eat breakfast and then travel to an arroyo where a special scene had to be filmed just as dawn broke.
Everyone arose on time expecting breakfast to be waiting. But it wasn't. The cook was lying sullenly on his cot in the cook tent.
Tom didn't explode. He simply walked into the tent and pulled the cook out of his cot.
The burly cook glowered at Tom. "You treat this company like a bunch of slaves," the cook said. "Three-thirty in the morning! Well, I'm not cookin' at three-thirty for-"
Tom started shaking the big ex-prizefighter-cook. Those of us standing at the entrance of the cook tent were soon being driven back by the heavy action that was going on inside.
The cook started plunging his heavy fists at Tom, who sidestepped them nicely with his usual agility. He got in a couple of quick blows to the cook's face, which brought a roar of anger from the bellicose giant. Then Tom seized the man's shoulders and started turning him around and around, getting him dizzy and winded. They swept past tables and cookstoves, and kitchenware fell to the ground with a deafening clatter. The cook spun into a corner of the tent, knocking down the supporting pole-and the tent sagged down on one side.
The cook got hold of some dispersed pots and pans and started hurling them at Tom. Tom warded them off with the cover of a garbage can, which he used as a shield.
The next thing we knew, the two men were locked together and throwing each other around the tent. In the ensuing violence the rest of the tent collapsed upon them within a few seconds. The fight continued under the flattened canvas and then, after an interminable period, there was silence.
The crew dived in and picked up the tent. There was Tom, sitting calmly on the stomach of the fallen giant, and grinning.
Tom wasted no time in getting the cook dispatched to the nearest town. There was no breakfast that morning, but the crew voted to go on with work as usual. For the duration of the location trip the cameraman's wife and I divided the cooking duties between us.
There was more than the cook-tent fight to lend excitement during the making of this film. Tom had a real-life experience while we were on this location trip that was reminiscent of some of the tight spots in which he found himself during his days as a marshal.
He rose one Sunday and said he was going to the nearest town, which was some thirty or forty miles away from our location camp, to renew his acquaintance with the sheriff, Harry Wrightman, whom he had known in his pre-movie days.
I became frantic with worry when he didn't return to camp by evening. By the time he finally got back, some time near dawn of the next day, I was livid with anger.
"Tom Mix!" I sputtered. "I've waited all night for you! I was worried to death. I thought you might have had an accident-"
Tom looked sheepish. "I'm sorry," he said. "I wanted to send word that I'd probably be a while getting back here, but there wasn't any time. I had a job to do, Olive."
Tom told me he had arrived in town that Sunday just in time to be swept into the wave of excitement which had enveloped the town over a killing that had taken place only a few minutes before. The posse that was to ride out after the murderer was forming at the sheriff's place only a few minutes before Tom arrived.
Sheriff Harry Wrightman, just about to mount his horse, pumped Tom's hand. "Sure glad to see you, Tom," he said. "Can't stop to talk right now. Local fellow shot down an unarmed man in a fight over a horse not ten minutes ago and hightailed it out of here-"
"How about deputizing me fast, Harry," Tom suggested. "I've had a little experience tracking down murderers."
A few moments later Tom was riding out of town with the sheriff and about a dozen other men. They rode fast and hard over the desert, following the escaped murderer's trail toward a large butte that rose out of the sand a few miles to the south.
When they reached the butte a shot rang out from a cave about halfway up where the murderer had taken refuge.
The men dismounted and took cover behind the boulders and rocks that fringed the base of the butte.
"You can't get out of this no matter how hard you try! the sheriff shouted up to the trapped murderer. "We're going to stay here as long as you do-so you may as well come on down right now."
The sheriff's logic fell on unappreciative ears. The answer from the cave was a blast of shotgun fire. Like a trapped wild animal, the man was determined to fight it out to the end. In his cave he held a strategic vantage point. He could see every movement below him, but he could not be seen.
"We're not getting anywhere," announced Tom after an hour passed. "I think I can sneak around to the back of the butte and come on him from above without being seen. It's worth a chance."
"It's risky," Harry said. "I can't let you go. You're too important a man for anything like that."
Tom ignored him. "I'm going to try it. Now when I get above him I'll signal you and you raise your hat a little above this rock...."
Tom, hugging the ground, crept cautiously along the butte, hiding behind one rock and then wriggling along the ground to the next one, at any moment expecting the murderer to detect him from his surveillance point high on the face of the butte. When he was certain he was out of range, he rose and skirted the side of the butte, moving quickly to the rear side.
Here he hesitated. The criminal's ascent to his cave on the face of the butte had been comparatively easy for him because of the easy slope on that side and because of the numerous projections he could grip while climbing.
Tom didn't hesitate long. Foot by foot he moved up the precipitous rear route. Several times he thought he couldn't make it. It was a long time before he reached the top.
Cautiously he worked himself up to the face of the butte, careful not to kick down a stone or make any other noise that would alert the murderer to the fact that someone was coming on him from above. Tom saw that conditions below had not changed in the long time it had taken him to accomplish this much of his maneuver; the posse was still barricaded behind the rocks below, and their victim was still watching and waiting from the dark recesses of the cave.
Silently, slowly, Tom began sliding down the face of the butte. When he had reached a point directly above the entrance of the cave, he signaled the sheriff and, as they had previously arranged, the sheriff raised his hat over the rock, as though preparing to move out to take a shot at the murderer.
As Tom had anticipated, this movement brought the outlaw forward, out of the shadows of the cave, to get a bead on his intended target. When Tom saw the man's hand appear, he swung down into the cave entrance and knocked the startled murderer over with his swinging boots.
The man groped wildly for the gun that had been flung out of his hand by the impact.
"Oh, no you don't!" yelled Tom, pouncing on the gun and flinging it out of the cave.
But this wasn't quite the finish. The disarmed man turned on Tom and fought him like a wild animal. They pounded each other with fists and then in close embrace rolled to the ledge outside. Tom, realizing the danger of the situation, managed to flip his antagonist over, grab his hand and jackknife it behind his back.
A few moments later he delivered the quarry to the posse.
"That was all there was to it," Tom said after finishing the story.
"All?" I said. "Tom Mix, you take enough risks in your pictures. Why do you take unnecessary chances outside when you don't have to?"
"Helping to bring a murderer to justice is everybody's business," he returned. "I had to do my part."
When Tom reigned as William Fox's biggest star in the postwar period, he had an even more elaborate organization for the production of his pictures than with Selig. Production activities were carried on at a special studio lot covering twelve acres of ground near Edendale, California. This home of Tom's Fox pictures was appropriately called Mixville. Tom was undisputed "King of Mixville," just as he was the king of the screen cowboys.
With Fox he reached the apex of his screen career. His responsibilities also increased a hundredfold. There were scores of people working with him at Mixville, each one of whom depended upon the success of the Tom Mix films as a source of livelihood.
To Tom his fellow workers comprised one big team, a team that functioned efficiently and never became unwieldy simply because he, as the captain, always had the wisdom to treat other persons as human beings.
His splendid treatment of the people he worked with resulted in increasingly better films as time went on. Productions became more elaborate, although nothing was sacrificed to action. He knew that his fans wanted action above everything else-and that's what he gave them. Every new picture came out with new stunts, each more dangerous than previous ones.
Many of the interior scenes were made at Mixville. Almost everything pertaining to the Old West could be found tucked away somewhere in this unique little settlement; indeed, the vast lot was a miniature West in itself. There was 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. Only the signs on the buildings were changed from picture to picture, and some rearrangement of the furnishings.
There was an Indian village with several lodges nestled in a flat piece of land at the rear of the lot. From the range of plaster-of-Paris mountains surrounding the village Tom led many a convincing attack on a tribe of warriors, the whole thing looking ferociously real when the picture reached the screen.
There was a plot of simulated desert too, through which Tom and Tony wandered on many an occasion on their search for the "bad man"; for although Tom preferred actual locations, the Fox executives always held the budget over his head.
Among other things at Maxwells there were a ranch house, sans any ceiling of course, a corral that would hold a hundred horses, and a great barnlike structure to hold props, such as saddles, uniforms, guns, and various items of furniture that conformed to the Old West tradition.
This big organization that Tom ruled over at Mixville was a complicated business. The executives were fully aware that Tom's judgment was canny and that he, more than anyone else, was best interpreting what the public wanted, and incidentally more profitable to the William Fox Company. So Tom carried on with practically no restrictions. He planned his films from start to finish, even to writing large chunks of many scripts. He was an expert director, a competent producer, and a master at seeing that his films, in their unified whole, were as effective as possible.
When he wasn't actually working on the lot, Tom could usually be found conferring with his assistants at the main studio located at the junction of Western Avenue and Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. He also had an office and a dressing room there, as well as a private gymnasium. He never rested for a moment; he even held conferences in his dressing room when he was between scenes of a picture, or in the gym.
Mixville itself was just as much a symbol of his greatness as were the films that emerged as the finished product from its twelve acres. And he almost lost his life trying to save the little studio town on one fateful day.
It was a Sunday afternoon, when only Tom and a half dozen other men were on the lot. A fire broke out in the livery stable that served as one of the buildings in the frontier town set. Tom spied the conflagration from the window of his office where he was holding a conference with the director and a few of the technical men regarding the next day's shooting schedule.
"Come on, men!" Tom shouted, jumping up and leaping out of the window. That was the shortest route to the stable, where were quartered seven or eight horses, the overflow from the regular horse barns.
The fire gathered force quickly. By the time Tom reached the structure it was thick with smoke, and the horses were whinnying in terror. Tom rushed in and, by the time the other men arrived, he was leading out the first horse.
Getting a horse from a burning building is a difficult task. Nothing will throw a horse into a panic more quickly than fire. A horse will resist human efforts to save its life only when it is afraid, and leading a skittish animal from a burning stable is a strenuous task.
With the help of the other men there was only one horse left in the stable when the fire had reached the point where it seemed impossible to do anything. But Tom went back into the inferno and brought out the last horse just before the building collapsed. He was taken to the hospital for treatment of his burns, but he was back on the lot the following morning.
Olive Stokes Mix, with Eric Heath, The Fabulous Tom Mix, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc.), 1957, pages 116-129.
© 1999, David Pierce, on editing and revisions (if any)
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