PrintJack Hoxie
Enlarge
Early western star Jack Hoxie (1890–1965) in The Western Whirlwind, ca. 1927. Photography: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
One of the most successful cowboy stars of the early ’20s, Jack Hoxie was born in 1885 in Kingfisher Creek in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). He lived part of his youth in Idaho, where he became a cowboy, ranch hand, and rodeo rider at a young age. It was on the rodeo circuit in 1913 that he was approached to play Big Eagle in the short film The Tragedy of Big Eagle Mine. In Hollywood, Hoxie became part of the silent-screen posse that included William S. Hart, Hoot Gibson, Tom Mix, and Buck Jones. Careful to be portrayed as honest and moral, he was never filmed smoking, drinking, or being arrested or jailed — a feat he managed in approximately 1,200 movies, including The Great Train Robbery, The Last Frontier, Thunderbolt Jack, and The Broken Spur.
In silent movies, it didn’t matter that Hoxie wasn’t much of an actor. With his compelling eyes, distinctive jaw, and nice physique, he had an on-screen presence — and he could really ride. A quarter Nez Perce Indian, Hoxie was one of Hollywood’s finest horsemen, a talent he displayed in crowd-pleasing low-budget westerns through the 1910s and ’20s, when he was frequently in the saddle on his horses Fender and Dynamite. Hoxie was signed in 1923 by Universal Pictures, starring in Where Is This West? and Hello, ’Frisco. In Metropolitan Pictures’ enormously successful The Last Frontier (1926), he played Buffalo Bill, which he considered his best role.
The advent of sound in 1927 spelled the end of Hoxie’s film career. “While not unintelligent or illiterate as some have suggested, Hoxie had little formal education and was not good at memorizing lines,” writes critic Hans J. Wollstein for the online database All Movie Guide. After a low-budget western talkie series flopped, Hoxie left Hollywood for good in 1933. He briefly ran a dude ranch called The Broken Arrow in Hereford, Arizona, where he trained horses. Hoxie also appeared in Wild West shows, sometimes as the “Famous Western Screen Star,” making his last public appearance in 1959 for the Bill Tatum Circus. He died in 1965 at the age of 80 and is buried in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, where the inscription on his gravestone reads “A Star in Life — A Star in Heaven.”
Issue: July 2010
