Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Jack Hoxie


This is Jack Hoxie 10 years later with Mills Bros. Circus in 1947. Picture taken in Joplin Mo. by noted Circus Historian Paul Van Pool. Maybe someone can recognize the other party, looks like a show guy, I only saw the Mills Show once or twice.
Roger Smith might also tell us where Mr. Hoxie would rank in the Cowboy Western hierarchy.

Posted by Buckles at 10/11/2005 06:34:00 AM

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

From Eric:

Jack Hoxie, was an excellent rider and stunter who had been a popular star in silent westerns. He was good as long as he was on horseback and in action. As an actor, he was the pits. He made a comeback of sorts in 1933 with 6 westerns for Majestic Pictures. People who have seen his films say that he was big but clumsy and that his writers and directors would go out of their way to make him out a dunce. (He could neither read nor write and had trouble remembering his lines.) After the Majestic series, he went back to circus life and made no more films.

11 October, 2005 12:31
Anonymous said...

I think Jack Hoxie continued to perform in circuses riding and shooting maybe as late as 1960 when he would have well into his mid-seventies

11 October, 2005 13:20
Anonymous said...

To compliment the excellent insights above, Hoxie was born John Hartford Stone (depending on your source) in the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, at Kingfisher Creek, on 11 January 1885. As Eric notes, he had great Western skills, and won national rodeo championships. His 6' 1" frame and stalwart looks landed him in silent Westerns, where his name shone beside Wm. S. Hart and Col. Tim McCoy. The advent of talkies proved his line delivery hard to take for audiences, but he wracked up a whopping 109 films. He may be hard to find in some of them, as he was variously billed as Hart Hoxie, Art Hoxie, Hartford Hoxie and Jack Hoxan, before the Jack Hoxie monicker stuck. He married trick rider Hazel Panky in 1909, Marion Sais from 1920-1925, and Bonnie Avis Showalter from 1944 until his death. No children are listed. His last film was TROUBLE BUSTERS, in 1933. I do not have at hand references on his circus career, nor how long it lasted. One source claims he lived out his last years in obscurity on his ranch. Jack Hoxie rode into his sunset on 28 March 1965, in Elkhart, Kansas, dying of leukemia at 80. He was survived by a lesser known half-brother, also a Western actor, Al Hoxie.

11 October, 2005 20:09

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