Stars of The 1920s

Though Mix was undeniably the brightest Western star of the age, the 1920s were distinguished by a galaxy of Western talent. Besides William S. Hart and Tom Mix, the most active stars of the period were Harry Carey, Jack Holt, Art Acord, Hoot Gibson, Buck Jones, Tim McCoy, Fred Thomson, Ken Maynard. As Appendix, Chart 1 shows, all except Art Acord (dead of cyanide poisoning in a Mexican hotel room in 193 1) and Fred Thomson (who died of pneumonia in 1928) proved astonishingly durable and were still playing lead roles in 1940.

All provided a mixture of riding, fighting, comedy and drama. Ken Maynard was the most conspicuously flamboyant, taking even further the emphasis of the Tom Mix pictures on daring feats of horsemanship. Fred Thomson too had glamour; the most handsome of the Western stars of the period, he combined effective stunt action with a strong moral line (as befitted a former preacher). Hoot Gibson, by contrast, relied to a great extent on genial comedy with the minimum of action (he never carried a gun). Buck Jones, though not above humorous interludes, often attained considerable intensity in such roles as Joaquin Murieta in The Avenger (1932). Harry Carey, more actor than cowboy, had begun making one-reel Westerns with Griffith at Biograph and had gone on to stardom in a Western series for Universal, many of them directed by John Ford. Carey frequently- played a character called Cheyenne Harry, who had in him something of the Good Badman first portrayed by Broncho Billy and W.S. Hart. Carey also shared something of their homespun looks; he could never have been a matinee idol. Art Acord and Jack Holt, in contrast to Carey, had both been cowboys originally and their Western series, though extremely-popular at the time, were perhaps the least sophisticated of all the major Western stars of the 20s.

The one who stands out from the rest is Tim McCoy, who took himself a little more seriously. McCoy had run away from home to be a cowboy after being intoxicated by the excitements of a Wild West show. In Wyoming he became skilled with cattle and horses and an expert on the local Arapaho Indians, to the extent that he was called in as advisor for The Covered Wagon in 1923. In his prestige series of Westerns for mcm in the late 20s and in his Columbia films of the early 30s he tried hard, within the constraints of the formula, for a degree of historical authenticity and thematic substance. In End of the Trail (1932) McCoy plays an army officer sympathetic to the Arapaho (he had also been an advisor on The Vanishing American, one of the most pro-Indian features of the 1920s). The film was shot entirely on location at the Arapaho reservation in Wyoming and its Indian scenes were sufficiently convincing for them to he cannihalized in subsequent films. In the continual oscillation within the Western between attempts to ground fiction in history and the desire to escape into the realms of fantasy, Tim McCoy is one of the few stars of the B-Western who incline decisively to the former.

Not that historical references are uncommon in the B-Western. In Old Oklahoma (otherwise known as War of the Wildcats), a typical Republic picture from 1943, is about the oil industry in Oklahoma at the turn of the century. In the course of the narrative it transpires that the hero, played by John Wayne, has been in the army in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Frustrated in his attempt to secure leases to drill for oil, he goes to Washington to appeal to the President, who of course turns out to be none other than Teddy Roosevelt. Since the Wayne character had taken part in the charge up San Juan Hill led by Teddy, the President greets him with open arms, grants the leases and makes a speech about the pioneering spirit being 'the essence of America'.