Page 2 - lw3714

BUDDINI

WISTIRN

STIR

During his years, 1910-1917, at Selig-Polyscope, Tom Mix
achieved an authentic taste of cowboy Americana he was
never ·able to capture again. by Roberts. Birchard

. Tom Mix's early years read very much like a Mark
Twain odyssey, heavily salted with strains of Ho-
ratio Alger, Jr. Born January 6, 1880 at Mix Run,
Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, Tom was the son of Ed
and Elizabeth Mix. His father had been a member of the
famed 7th Cavalry, but throughout Tom's youth he was
employed as stablemaster for Pennsylvania industrialist,
J. E. Du Bois. Tom, of course, learned to ride almost be-
fore he could walk.
At age eighteen, Tom left home. He would later say,
with tongue in cheek no doubt, that he left because he
couldn't stand the smell of the animals in his father's
stable; but in reality, he had been indentured to Du
Bois's foundry, and the prospects of factory life did not
appeal to him.
Tom Mix's military record has long been a matter of
1
dispute, but it would seem that he did serve in Cuba du r-
ing the Spanish-American War, and that he saw action
in the Philippine Insurrection and was a member of the
American Expeditionary Force sent to China in the•
Boxer Rebellion. Wounded at the battle of Tien Tsin, he
was shipped home and mustered out of the service:
After his hitch in the Army, Tom drifted to the South-
west, where he found work as a bartender, a cowboy, a
lawman in a series of nbn-permanent construction
camps, and finally as a Wild West show performer, be-
coming the foreman of the famed Miller Brothers' 101
Ranch Show in 1906.
Leaving the 101 Show in late 1908, Mix married Olive
Stokes, of Dewey, Oklahoma tiis third marriage. For the
first months of their marriage, the couple lived on the
Stokes family ranch, eventually moving to Colorado,
where Tom had a joq as sheriff in a construction camp.
It was here that Tom received his first movie offer.
The 'offer came from Wild West show promoter, W.
A. Dickie, who was then employed by the Selig-
Polyscope company to provide stock and cowboys
. for Western pictures. Dickie knew Olive Mix, and he
had seen Tom perform. He wrote, asking if Tom would
be interested in appearing in "moving pictures." The re- ,
ply was affirmative, and Dickie wrote again, asking the
couple to meet the Selig company in Flemington, Mis-
souri.
Colonel - William N. Selig's Chicago based Selig-
Tony and , Sid Jordan comfort Tom as he moons over a Polyscope Company was one of the most successful
picture of the girl of his dreams in TEXAS RYAN (1917). of the early motion picture concerns. Established before
26