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WILLIAM S. HART

The Foremost Actor In Silent Westerns
Knew And Loved The West

By GEORGE MITCHELL

HE MAN who did most to raise existence until they settled in Dakota
Tthe Western from its haphazard territory near the Sioux reservation.
beginnings, and to make a real film As a very young boy Hart had Sioux
form out of this vital American tradi- playmates, learned their language
tion, was William S. Hart. From and customs, and acquired a respect
1914 until his retirement in 1925 he for them he carried through life.
produced, starred in, and sometimes His boyhood was rich with unusual
also wrote and directed, movies that experiences. His father and he were
are still unsurpassed for their depic- once caught, in the middle of the
tion of the way life really had been main street of Sioux City, in the cross-
during the opening and settling of fire of the local sheriff and two gun-
the West. In this, indeed, Hart's pic- men. While still a boy he worked
tures are the filmic equivalents of the as a hand on a trail herd in Kansas.
Frederic Remington paintings and In his autobiography, My Life East
the drawings of Charles M. Russell. and West, Hart describes the death of
Hart was born on December 6, a baby brother when the family was
1870, in Newburgh, New York. His pioneering in Dakota. The baby was
middle name~Surrey-was for his buried near the headwaters of the
father's brother, an Englishman who Mississippi by the father, Hart, and
had always opposed the rest of the a younger sister, and the passage de-
family. "He's always on the Surrey scribing its harsh reality will stir the
side" is a colloquial expression used sympathy of even the most cynical.
in Britain to describe a stubborn The Harts were very poor, but they
man. In many ways, if the adverb were also very close to each other,
'always' were eliminated, the phrase and they had dignity.
could apply to Hart. And from his When Hart was fifteen his mother's
Irish mother he inherited a strong illness forced the family back East.
sentimental streak. The father became janitor of an
Hart's father, Nicholas, was an apartment house, in the basement of
itinerant miller and travelled about which they lived. The son had a
the country searching for new water variety of odd jobs. He also sang
sites. The family led a nomadic in the Trinity Church choir and took