Mix, Tom

Mix, (Thomas) Tom

(1880–1940) movie actor; born in Mix Run, Pa. He had been a champion rodeo rider, a soldier, and a cowboy in Oklahoma before he began to make short Western movies in 1909. (Studio publicists would later invent an even more glamorous past—fighting in the Spanish-American War, service with the Texas Rangers, and other such mythical feats.) He went on to star in more than 400 low-budget Westerns with his faithful horse, Tony; there was a daily 15-minute radio show about Tom Mix, enemy of all that was bad in the Old West; in the late 1930s he toured with the Tom Mix Circus. He became very rich and extremely famous, was married five times, and died in a car crash.