Mix, Tom

orig. Thomas Hezikiah Mix

(born Jan. 6, 1880, Mix Run, Pa., U.S.—died Oct. 12, 1940, near Florence, Ariz.) U.S. film actor. He worked as a cowhand and a deputy sheriff and served in the army and in the Texas Rangers before joining a Wild West show in 1906. He made his screen debut as a roughriding hero in 1910 and soon became a star of silent westerns. Over the years his horse, Tony, became almost as famous as Mix himself. Mix appeared in more than 200 one- and two-reelers and feature films, many of which he also produced or directed. His career declined with the coming of sound.

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.