Hollywood Hoofbeats. Audrey Pavia
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Undaunted, he took the horse for a ride in Central Park. When Silver King attempted to unload his rider by bucking, whirling, and trying to scrape him off on trees, Thomson responded by throwing the horse to the ground using a cowboy trick of tying his legs with one end of a rope and striking him repeatedly with the other end. Thus Thomson earned the respect of the spirited stallion, and the two became closely bonded. A week after this incident, the actor took Silver King to Hollywood, determined to make him a star. Stabling the stallion at his home, Thomson taught him many tricks, including sitting down, bowing, and performing the strutting Spanish walk. The stallion was a quick study and loved to show off. One of his admirers was the Thomsons’ friend Greta Garbo, who loved to sit on the corral fence watching Fred put the stallion through his paces. Once his lessons were learned, Silver King was ready for his close-up.
The stallion loved the camera, and although he seemed bored during rehearsals, he came alive once the director called “Action!” He played significant roles in Thomson’s films, and in keeping with the anthropomorphic trend, he appeared to understand and execute abstract demands. A natural box-office draw, he received costar billing. The advertisements variously read: “Fred Thomson and His Wonderful Horse—Silver King,” or “Fred Thomson and His Famous Horse—Silver King.”
In one of Thomson’s two surviving films, Thundering Hoofs (1924), Silver King shows his stuff by rearing on command, bowing, kneeling at a gravesite, untying ropes, and nudging Thomson toward his love interest. In the film’s most frightening sequence, Silver King is condemned to a Mexican bullring as a matador’s mount after Thomson’s character has been unjustly jailed. The giant bull gores the stallion, who appears doomed. In the nick of time, Thomson’s character breaks out of jail to save his horse by wrestling the bull to the ground. Silver King’s bravery in working with the bull can be attributed to the fact that one of his stablemates, and probable costar, was Thomson’s pet bull, Muro.
Silver King’s antics garnered plenty of attention from the Hollywood press, and the stallion often made headlines with his temperamental behavior. He reportedly threw tantrums if one of his doubles performed a stunt, and while docile as a lamb working with children on camera, he might kick the set to smithereens after “Cut!” was called. When Silver King showed up on a nighttime set wearing sunglasses, the gossip columnists went wild with speculation. Had Silver King gone “Hollywood”? It turned out that the glasses were intended to protect his eyes from the bright Klieg lights used in filming after he had shown signs of temporary blindness. Compresses of cold cabbage leaves and ten days in a dark stall reportedly cured him of “Klieg eyes.”
Silver King’s brilliant career was cut short when Thomson passed away suddenly in 1928 following a brief illness. Shortly thereafter, the Los Angeles Times ran a front-page story about Silver King’s mourning his master. The article called him “the most famous horse in the world.” Several years later, Thomson’s widow, the screenwriter Frances Marion, sold Silver King, and in 1934 he returned to the screen in low-budget films with Wally Wales, a little-known cowboy star. The marvelous Silver King received billing and was featured in publicity materials to attract audiences to the seven films he made with Wales.
In 1938, Silver King starred as Silver, The Lone Ranger’s horse, in a fifteen-episode serial. Directed by John English and William Whitney, the series was filmed in the famous Alabama Hills in Lone Pine, California, the setting of many B Westerns. Silver King, then likely in his twenties, received top billing, a testament to his enduring star power. Since the existence of Silver as The Lone Ranger’s horse has been traced back to 1938, it is even possible that he was modeled on the great Silver King.
Silver King traveled in a customized trailer emblazoned with his name.
Other Cowboy Duos
Many more real cowboys rode the silent celluloid range. Another veteran of Wild West shows to achieve stardom was Jack Hoxie, whose lesser known actor brother Al sometimes doubled him. A fan of the Appaloosa breed, Jack Hoxie became popular along with his most famous mount, Scout, a handsome leopard Appaloosa with black spots.
Trick riders Art Acord and Hoot Gibson performed with Dick Stanley’s Congress of Rough Riders as well as the Miller Brothers 101 before they rode into Hollywood from the rodeo circuit.
Art Acord kept rodeoing after he began his film career in 1909 and was crowned World Champion Steer Bulldogger in the 1912 Pendleton, Oregon, Round-Up. During his successful career in silent films, Acord was paired with several different horses. He rode Buddy, Black Beauty, Darkie, and Star, but Raven was his favorite. In the The Circus Cyclone, 1925, Raven played a pivotal role as the horse of a comely circus performer named Doraldina (Nancy Deaver). When she resists the crude advances of the circus owner (Steve Brant), a former boxer, he beats her horse. Cowboy Jack Manning (Acord) comes to the rescue and wins the horse in a boxing match against the circus owner.
As Jack Manning, Art Acord protects Raven from the pugilist circus owner, Steve Brant (Albert J. Smith) in The Circus Cyclone, 1925.
Hoot Gibson, an expert at Roman riding (the art of standing upright on the backs of two horses working in tandem, which despite its name has no link to ancient Rome), won the Allowed-Around Champion title at Pendleton the same year Art Acord won his award. Gibson began his film career doubling silent star Harry Carey. His daring stunt work eventually landed him his first starring role in a 1919 “two-reeler” series. (The approximately twenty- to thirty-minute “two reelers” consisted of two short reels of film.)
In King of the Rodeo (1929), Gibson demonstrates his rodeo expertise. For most of the movie, the affable Gibson rides his palomino, Goldie. Gibson rode several other horses during his career, including Midnight, Starlight, and Mutt, but he was most often associated with Goldie.
Hoot Gibson and Goldie with the cast and crew of the 1925 Universal Pictures production The Saddle Hawk on the grounds of what is now Universal City.
African-American rodeo star Bill Pickett was promoted as the “World’s Colored Champion” in the Norman Film Manufacturing Company’s 1923 production of The BullDogger. Bulldogs were often used by cattle ranchers to help herd unruly steers. In 1903, Pickett had witnessed such a bulldog force a steer into submission by leaping at its head and biting its lip. By imitating the dog’s technique, he developed the rodeo sport of bulldogging: galloping after a steer, leaping onto its neck, wrestling it to the ground, and biting its lip. In 1907, Pickett joined the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West Show and, with his courageous steed Spradley, popularized the daredevil sport. (The lip-biting flourish has since been dropped from the rodeo event.) Pickett’s sensational theatrics led to his starring film role, which according to a press release included “fancy and trick riding by black cowboys and cowgirls.” Pickett made one more film for Norman, a Western titled The Crimson Skull, in 1923. Featuring the heroics of thirty black cowboys, the film celebrated an often overlooked segment of America’s Western history.
For a brief time, rodeo champion Yakima Canutt, who won the Pendleton All-Around title in 1917, took a star turn and made a few pictures with a horse called Boy. Canutt eventually gave up acting and concentrated on stunt riding, doubling many Western stars, including John Wayne. In the stunt business, Canutt is revered for pioneering the difficult maneuver of leaping from a galloping horse onto one of the leads of a team of carriage horses and working his way along the rigging of the running team to the vehicle. He perfected this stunt in Stagecoach (1939). For the spectacular sequence, he added shimmying along underneath the moving coach, getting shot by Wayne, and falling to his “death.” Eventually, Canutt became a stunt coordinator and second unit director, staging some of the greatest horse action of all time, including the thrilling chariot race in the 1959 blockbuster Ben Hur.
Yakima Canutt leaps from wagon seat to a team of galloping horses in one