The Most
Highly Paid Actor in the History of Motion Pictures!
Photo:
Tom Mix in 1928
Is Governor Arnold the most highly paid actor in the history of American motion pictures as he claims?No! The most highly paid actor in the history of American motion pictures is the western/cowboy pictures superstar Tom Mix. In 1920, he used to earn as high as $20,000 a week plus a big cut. Tom Mix was the top cowboy/actor of the American silver screen silent films. He did his own stunts! Very daring ones. He was famous too for his elaborate cowboy outfits; he's the model for the dandyish, squeaky-clean movie cowboy that was much parodied in later years. Mix also had a legendary horse named Tony the Wonder Horse. Mix's movie career ended when silent films were replaced by talkies, but later on, Tom Mix radio program ran for nearly 20 years, with various actors providing the voice of "Tom Mix." According to biographer Jason Buchannan Mix was born on January 6, 1880 in Mix Run, Pennsylvania, USA and died on October 17, 1940. He made a fortune. Born in 1880 in Mix Run, PA, to a lumberjack father, he seemed destined from the earliest age to become something more than simply another working cowboy. Whetting his appetite for acting in a series of Wild West action shows, Mix was initially hired by the Selig Company as a cattle wrangler for Ranch Life in the Great Southwest (1910), though it soon became obvious that Mix aspired to roles of greater prominence in film. Refining his image as a flashy and energetic entertainer with a knack for accomplishing death-defying stunts. Mix was a born showman who, no matter who he had been cast as or which role he may have been playing, was always Tom Mix.
His signature style embedded into every
screen character, Mix won over audiences by always letting his colorful
personality shine through his various roles (a trait that many later actors
would emulate with varying degrees of success). Signing on with the Fox Film
Corporation in 1917, Mix soon found the role that would propel him into
stardom in 1920's The Untamed. Establishing Western conventions that would
continue their influence on the genre for decades, Mix continued to star in a
spectacular amount of popular, quality Westerns (often adaptations of
Zane Grey
novels) including The Lone Star Ranger (1923) and Riders of the Purple Sage (1925). The '20s were
the peak years in Mix's remarkable career. Working tirelessly, Mix became the
epitome of the Western superstar, and along with his popular horse Tony, Mix
consistently thrilled movie going audiences with such breezy and fanciful
stunt-filled adventures as
Dick Turpin
(1925) and
The Great K&A Train Robbery
(1926). Though the slumping popularity of Westerns in the late '20s
momentarily put the brakes on Mix's particular niche, he bounced back briefly
in the early '30s with a series of Universal adventures.
Destry Rides Again
and Rider of Death Valley (both 1932) were certainly entertaining films, but
Mix's age had begun to betray his remarkably agile abilities that initially
propelled him into stardom. Successfully touring with circuses, including the
Tom Mix Circus, into the '30s, Mix continued to hold his reputation as a
dedicated and enthusiastically energetic entertainer -- even inspiring a
long-running radio show based on his fictional adventures -- until his death
in an automobile accident on an Arizona highway in 1940.