ERICA SAYS SO! Cont'd. By Erica Soderholm, The Monthly Herald Contributor and Guest Writer
The Most Highly Paid Actor in the History of Motion
Pictures!
Dear Erica, is Governor
Arnold the most highly paid actor in the history of American motion pictures
as he claims?
Photo:
Tom Mix in 1928
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.
REAL AND FAKE PIAF SINGERS IN AMERICA!
Dear Erica: I cannot wait to read your article
on the real and fake Piaf singers and American-Parisian songs recording
artists in the United States. Boy, they are so many singers who pretend to
be a real French cabaret singer. Here in Las Vegas, they are by the dozens.
I am telling you they present themselves as the real thing and they sing
every night at the best casinos. How they do it? I have no clues. So are you
going to crack down on them? Put some heat!
Photo: The
legendary Jeanne Aubert
Elly, we are not going to
crack down on anybody. This is not our policy. If they are fake, I pity their
audiences. The article shall focus on the real and authentic French cabaret
singers in the United States.
The article continues on the following pages.