In the words of his friend and colleague Yakima Canutt, cowboy movie idol Tom Mix could handle the truth "a bit careless" when recounting the details of his life. To hear old Tom tell it, he was born in a Texas log cabin, could speak a number of Indian languages by the time he was ten, attended the Virginia Military Academy, served with Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War, helped to stem the Moro Uprising in the Philippines, fought in the Boer War, battled Diaz in Mexico, and served as sheriff in scores of western territories -- all this before he made his first film. The less colorful facts are as follows: Born in Pennsylvania, he became fascinated with Wild West Shows and taught himself riding and roping after dropping out of school. He did serve in the Spanish-American War, but it was miles from the battlefield; and when he signed up to fight the Boers, he ended up going AWOL without ever setting foot in Africa. With his first wife, he moved to Oklahoma in 1902, working at a variety of jobs before joining the Cowboy Brigade, a ceremonial organization. Two wives later, Mix could be found performing with the Miller Bros. and Widerman Wild West shows, narrowly escaping arrest for "borrowing" one of the Millers' horses. While appearing with another Wild West show in 1909, he landed a job with the Selig Polyscope film company working as a wrangler, stunt double, and eventually actor and director, toting up over 100 film credits before 1917. When Selig folded that year, Mix joined the fledgling Fox Film Corporation, where he adopted the garish costuming and florid acting style that were to become his trademarks. While the Westerns of William S. Hart strove for authenticity, Mix's 60-odd Fox vehicles were pure escapist entertainment, in the grand manner of the Wild West shows whence he came. His horse Tony became as big of a screen attraction as Mix, even starring in his own film, 1922's Just Tony. With such box-office bonanzas as Tom Mix in Arabia (1922), Riders of the Purple Sage (1925), The Rainbow Trail (1925), and Hard Boiled (1926), Mix was Fox's biggest attraction and the studio's highest-paid star. He lived just as flamboyantly offscreen as on, residing in a huge mansion replete with multicolored fountain and commandeering a fleet of custom-made automobiles. In 1928, Mix left Fox for a smaller firm, FBO, whereupon his popularity slowly began to wane. After a three-year tour with Ringling Bros. Circus, Mix made a group of interesting talkies at Universal, including Destry Rides Again (1932) and the delightful My Pal the King (1932), but his listless speech patterns, coupled with advancing age, brought his film career to an end. His last movie appearance was in the much-maligned Mascot serial The Miracle Rider (1935). Though he'd lost most of his fortune by then, he managed to keep his name alive and his bank account replenished by lending his name to a popular radio series, which ran long after his death, and by touring with his own circus, which later merged with the Sells-Floto troupe. While driving his car at high speed near Florence, AZ, 60-year-old Tom Mix, his pockets crammed with cash from a recent successful business transaction, crashed into a washed-out bridge and was killed instantly; Mix's horse Tony outlived his master by four years.