Tom Mix

The Tom Mix of Film, Radio & Comics

Tom Mix was a cowboy, a U.S. Marshal, a Captain in the army who both rode up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt, fought in the war in the Philippines in 1903, as well as serving as a commando in World War II, while at the same time serving as a sheriff in more than a dozen western towns, and the man who almost single-handed saved America from a battalion of dragon riding Japanese warriors.

The Real Tom Mix

Thomas Edwin Mix (birth name Thomas Hezikiah Mix, January 6, 1880 – October 12, 1940) was an American film actor and the first Western megastar making an estimated 336 films, all but nine of which were silent films, despite this he still remanded popular almost into the 1950’s.

Joining the army from 1898 to 1901, though he never saw action. In fact, Mix deserted from the Army and carefully kept the facts about his military service a closely guarded secret the rest of his life.

His film career lasted until 1935, from then on appearing only as a performer in a circus until his death in an auto crash in 1940.

It was after his death however that his career as a comic book, newspaper comic strip and radio star took off, remaining so popular that a radio program called the Tom Mix Show ran for 10 years after his death, he was also featured in a number of comics, first with Fawcett comics, where a character based on his appearance was use in the long running Tom Mix Western, with additional appearances in the pages of Master Comics and Captain Marvel Jr. Comics.

At the same time Tom Mix appeared in a series of comics that could only be gotten by sending in box tops to the Ralston-Purina Company which also hosted the Tom Mix Straight-Shooters Club producing such early premiums as Tom Mix decoder rings, badges, whistle-rings, replica six-shooters, Straight-Shooter Manuals for living, and perhaps strangest of all, a poster that detailed the 47 major wounds that the Tom Mix of fictional world of film, radio and comics had gotten from bullets, knifes, arrows, ax attacks, dynamite blasts and various horse falls and cattle stampedes.

Tom was married to five women: (1) Grace Allen - marriage annulled (2) Jewell "Kitty" Perrine (3) Olive Mix (4) Victoria Forde (5) Mabel Hubbell Ward.