The Man From Texas

The legendary Tom Mix, a rodeo champion who became Hollywood's leading cowboy star of silent films, performed almost all of his own stunts and had the injuries to prove it. The Man from Texas (1915), a rare surviving example of Mix's early starring vehicles, is a fast-moving two-reel Western adventure in which he plays a cowpoke who, in self-defense, kills a man who jilted his sister. While falling for the dead man's girlfriend, Tom also copes with cattle rustlers and a crooked sheriff. Still a good six years away from superstardom, Mix already was demonstrating the likable personality and daredevil riding and fighting skills that would endear him to movie audiences.

Born in Mix Run, Pennsylvania, in 1880, Mix served briefly with the Texas Rangers before joining the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West Show and winning the 1909 national riding and rodeo championship. He began his movie career at the Selig Polyscope company by rounding up cattle for Ranch Life in the Great Southwest (1910), in which he also played a supporting role. Mix made more than 100 short Westerns for Selig, including The Man from Texas. In 1917 he moved on to Fox studios, where he would quickly become one of the movies' leading box-office attractions.

Although not always given credit as director or producer, Mix was very much in control of his own vehicles. Abandoning the slow-moving, naturalistic approach of movies starring William S. Hart and other less colorful cowboy stars of the period, Mix established an episodic, action-packed style that set the standard for countless escapist Western adventures to come. His career as a cowboy actor extended into the sound era; he retired from films in 1934 and was killed in an automobile accident in 1940.

Producer/Director/Screenplay: Tom Mix
Principal Cast: Tom Mix (Himself), Moya Dalton (Louella Maxam), Hoot Gibson (Indian Joe), Sid Jordan (Frank Scott), Ed Brady (Ranch Foreman).
BW-42m.

by Roger Fristoe