Hi-yo, Tony! Tom Mix rides again! Ted Ashby, a retired police officer who lectures on the Old West, returned to L.A.’s present day West”Pacific Palisades”to deliver his latest lecture, ‘The Amazing Tom Mix,’ to members and guests at this month’s AARP meeting. Held at the Woman’s Club, last Wednesday’s proceedings were conducted by Tina Schroeter, the new president of the Palisades AARP chapter. After acknowledging the one-year anniversary of the passing of Jackie Diamont and the recent passing of former president Daisy Crane, the AARP’s top brass welcomed Ashby to the podium to discuss the life of Mix, the cowboy star of some 336 movies. His talkies included ‘Destry Rides Again’ (1932), ‘The Fourth Horseman’ (1932), and ‘Terror Trail’ (1933). (Bruce Willis portrayed Mix in the 1988 Blake Edwards film ‘Sunset,’ with James Garner as Wyatt Earp. Of course, Ashby is no stranger to these here parts, pard’ner. Last year, he lectured about stagecoaches, the pony express, and The Lone Ranger at AARP and Pacific Palisades Historical Society meetings. This time, Ashby came back equipped with the latest technology: a flash drive-driven slideshow projector. He told the Palisadian-Post beforehand that his Mix talks have been particularly popular. And no wonder: a better title for Ashby’s lecture might have been ‘The Amorous Tom Mix,’ as it was less about the particulars of Mix’s career and more about his active love life, as Ashby recounted Mix’s five wives and various trysts in between. In his day, Mix, the highest-paid actor in Hollywood during the ’10s and ’20s, was an internationally recognized celebrity and a lifelong friend of cowboy philosopher and actor Will Rogers. He was a frequent visitor of Rogers’ Pacific Palisades ranch, where the pair played polo together. Mix, ‘5’10 and 175 lbs. his entire [adult] life,’ lived from 1880 to 1940 and, according to Ashby, ‘in those 60 years, he affected each and every one of us, whether we realize it or not.’ Ashby described the flamboyant actor who ‘dressed in fancy high hats and owned over 600 pairs of custom-made boots,’ Ashby said. ‘He was an unusual man who lived in an unusual time.’ Growing up in Dubois, Pennsylvania (his father Edwin was Irish, his mother was Welsh), young Tom learned how to train horses. ‘He went to school through 4th grade and never went to school again,’ Ashby said, ‘but he wasn’t dumb.’ Instead, Mix joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show at age 10, when he accidentally shot himself in the knee and tried to use a pocket knife to extract the bullet. That bullet stayed lodged inside his leg until he was 18. ’The ladies liked Tom and Tom liked the ladies,’ Ashby said, before launching into the back story on Mix’s marriages. While married to school teacher Grace Allen and working in Guthrie, Oklahoma, as a physical education teacher by day and bartender by night, Mix met wife #2, Kitty Perrine, a pretty hotel clerk. In 1904, Mix met Will Rogers at the World Fair in St. Louis, where the two exchanged rope-trick secrets and developed a rivalry over a cute half-Cherokee girl Rogers had met. But it was Mix who won the heart of Olive Stokes (‘Poor Will could see that he didn’t stand a chance here,’ Ashby said), even though five years went by before he saw her again. Stokes, a talented rodeo queen who became wife #3, ‘was Tom’s equal in the female form.’ Shortly after he and Stokes had a daughter, Ruth Mix, in 1912, Mix met Victoria Ford, the 17-year-old who would, in a year, become wife #4. They married despite the fact that cinema’s cowboy was two decades older than she. Unhappy with their spacious Hollywood digs, Ford ‘started nagging on him about Beverly Hills,’ Ashby said. And so, Mix bought 12 acres and built a mansion at 1018 Summit Dr. that included an eight-car garage and spacious closets ‘just for his hats and boots.’ In Hollywood, Mix made movies with Tony, a steed so smart, Mix would verbalize complicated stage directions and the horse would follow them to a tee. While Mix’s movie career was firing on all cylinders, his personal life began to unravel. In a fit of pique over Mix’s affairs, Ford shot and injured her husband. Soon, Mix was onto wife #5, Mabel Ward, with whom he had daughter Thomasina. Mix fell into debt despite having earned $17,500 a week during the height of the Depression. He was killed in a car accident near Florence, Arizona, dying not from the crash but from an aluminum suitcase sitting on the back seat that struck him from behind. Ashby’s juiciest tale centered on Marion Morrison. Ashby said that when Morrison, a USC football player, was sidelined by a surfing injury, Mix promised the popular college athlete a studio job upon his recuperation. Weeks later, after Morrison had made a full recovery, he arrived at the studio gates only to learn that Mix had not followed through on his promise. He became livid, but as he shouted down the guard, he impressed a filmmaker passing by. That director was John Ford, who asked Morrison if he could recreate such gusto on film. Despite Mix inadvertently leading Morrison to a successful movie career, the man who would become screen legend John Wayne forever held a grudge against Mix, according to Ashby. But not according to a man in attendance at the AARP meeting whose relative had been Mix’s chauffeur. The man suggested that there was more to the rivalry between the cowboy actors. Silent film actress Clara Bow, who had an affair with Mix, had also been known to have a penchant for USC athletes. Perhaps some more research awaits Mr. Ashby. With a mix of education and entertainment typical of Ashby’s amusing lectures, ‘The Amazing Tom Mix’ did not disappoint AARP attendees. And true to the spirit of the horse opera serials, Ashby even left off on a cliffhanger: the historian promised that his next lecture will spotlight Tony the Wonder Horse. To be continued!
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
