Rodeo Dough
Long before Rodeo Drive, Tom Mix resided in a glamourous estate in Beverly Hills, California.
By: Marc Wanamaker 01/01/2009
One of the most popular citizens in Beverly Hills during the 1920s was Western star Tom Mix.
Once known as “El Rodeo de las Aguas,” Gathering of the Waters, by the Spanish explorers in the mid-1700s and later for its lima bean fields in the late 19th century, Beverly Hills had transitioned into a haven for movie, radio, recording and TV stars. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks started the trend in 1920 when they chose Beverly Hills as the home for their estate, “Pickfair.”
Tom Mix and his fellow Beverly Hills residents could be seen riding their horses around this unique community. Mix was definitely at home on his horse. He had worked as a cowboy and as a rodeo performer, and his cowboy days shaped him for the dozens of Western films in which he shared stardom with his horse Tony, executing circus-like stunt riding that showcased Mix’s equestrian talents. His home in Beverly Hills included a stable and tack room for Tony the Wonder Horse.
Before the famed cowboy movie star moved to Beverly Hills, he was just a cowboy who had bought a ranch in 1908, married for the third time and was starting to settle down. In 1910, pioneer filmmaker Col. William N. Selig used Mix’s ranch to shoot Ranch Life In the Great Southwest, a documentary about cattle being rounded up for shipment to slaughterhouses in the Midwest. Mix supervised the cowboy extras and the cattle during filming, gaining his early understanding of how films were made. After his experience with filmmaking, legend says Mix went to Mexico for a few months, fought for the revolutionary leader Francisco Madero and barely escaped being killed. Shortly thereafter, Mix began working for the Selig film company full time.
Between 1910 and 1917, Mix appeared in about 100 one- and two-reelers for Selig, sometimes writing the scenarios and directing the films, as he worked at his studio-ranch Mixville, in the Silver Lake district of north Los Angeles. By 1917, Mix signed a lucrative deal with the William Fox Corporation where he made memorable feature-length films. Instead of the “ride ’em hard, shoot-’em-up” style of earlier cowboy stars, Mix created a wholesome hero, who never drank, smoked or fought without provocation. In all, Mix starred in nearly 340 films (mainly silents, with nine talkies) between 1910 and 1935 that juxtaposed a Wild West setting with a tamer West in which technology, such as the automobile or the airplane, aided Mix in subjugating the renegades. Mix once was quoted saying that in most of his films, he used the same basic plot: “I ride into a place owning my own horse, saddle and bridle. It wasn’t my quarrel, but I get into trouble doing the right thing for somebody else. When it’s all ironed out, I never get any money reward. I may be made foreman of the ranch, and I get the girl, but there is never a fervid love scene.”
Mix married Victoria Forde in 1918, his fourth wife and sometime co-star in some of his films while he was under contract with the Selig Company and later with the Fox Film Corporation. In 1922, they had a daughter, Thomasina, and they became an internationally-known movie star family. By 1925, Tom Mix became one of the highest-paid stars of the silent era, earning nearly $18,000 a week and was world famous.
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