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Tom Mix

Tom Mix

4/13/02: His guns were stolen from the Tom Mix Museum in Dewey, OK.

A small stone memorial marks the site of Tom Mix's death on State Route 79 and the nearby gully is named "Tom Mix Wash". The plaque on the marker bears the inscription: "In memory of Tom Mix whose spirit left his body on this spot and whose characterization and portrayals in life served to better fix memories of the old West in the minds of living men."

According to author Jeff Guinn, he was good friends with Frank Hamer, the Texas Ranger who became famous for bringing to justice the members of the Newton Brothers gang (1924) and for tracking down the outlaws Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker (1934).

Appears on sleeve of The Beatles' "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album.

At his funeral Rudy Vallee sang "Empty Saddles"



At one point during the height of his career, he had all his cars fitted with custom-manufactured tires specially molded to leave tracks with his initials TM in the road.

Author Clifford Irving wrote a "historical fiction" novel, "Tom Mix and Pancho Villa", about Mix's involvement with Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa and his supposedly joining Villa's army in the fight against dictator Porfirio Díaz in the bloody Mexican civil wars of the early 20th century. While it's known that Mix did spend time in Mexico during that violent era and had mentioned years later that he had in fact met Villa, it's not known if their association was as close as Irving claimed it was in the novel.

Between 1980 and 2004, 21 Tom Mix festivals were held during the month of September, most of them in DuBois, Pennsylvania.

Bruce Willis played Tom Mix in the 1988 Blake Edwards film Sunset with James Garner as Wyatt Earp.

Charter member of the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1958.

Credited with revolutionizing the Western film genre by eschewing realism in favor of more fantastical, lighthearted story lines and picturesque visual elements (clean, expensively tailored costumes, etc). He is often presented by film historians as the first 'rhinestone' cowboy.

Daughter with Olive Mix, Ruth Mix.

Daughter with Victoria Forde, Thomasina

Despite stories to the contrary, he was not a member of President Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.

Great uncle of DeWalt Mix.

He deserted the army to marry his first wife, Grace Allin; the fact that he was a deserter did not come up until after his death, by which time he was so famous that the army had to hold its tongue and give him a full military burial. This dovetails neatly into the known facts and into the legend of Tom Mix.

He is mentioned in the song "TV is the Thing This Year" (1953) written by William Sanford and Phil Medley.

He never thought much of his acting ability. Once when a director asks him to change expressions, he responded "Which one do you want? One? two? or three?".

He was Peter Cushing's childhood hero.

In The Beverly Hillbillies, Jed Clampett's reason for going to Beverly Hills was to live in the same place as Tom Mix.

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