Tom Mix in Trailin’ at the UCLA Festival of Preservation
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Eva Novak watches Tom Mix take aim at the villains in Trailin' (1921).
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Late May sees the return of the biennial UCLA Festival of Preservation, which allows the public to view UCLA Film & Television Archive’s recent preservation and restoration projects on the big screen of the Billy Wilder Theater. All screenings are free, and on May 31 you can see the Tom Mix western Trailin’ (1921), preserved through a National Film Preservation Foundation grant.
Mix takes the role of a polo-playing Bostonian who heads West to learn the truth about his mother after the death of his father in a mysterious duel. Stunt-filled action ensues as foolish Westerners lock horns with our hero and live to regret it: “He looks like a tenderfoot and he talks like a tenderfoot, but he ain’t no tenderfoot!”
Using the skills learned during his years as a ranch hand and stunt rider, Tom Mix became the first true cowboy movie star and the most popular western hero of the silent era, as his 291 films attest. Having first earned attention for his horsemanship in one-reelers for Selig Polyscope, Mix moved to the Fox Film Corporation in 1917, where he was given the resources to make his finest features. Of his 86 films for Fox, 26 survive. The rest were destroyed in the 20th Century Fox vault fire of 1937.
Trailin’ re-teamed Mix with his favorite director, Lynn Reynolds, and ten-time co-star Eva Novak, known for doing her own stunts. Their film won plaudits fromVariety: “an absorbing story, full of action, well played by a group of western types, all of them hard riders, even to the heroine, in the person of Eva Novak, who mounts her steed to ride to the rescue of her hero. In the popular priced cinemas the feature will give satisfaction.”
UCLA’s preservation was based on the only surviving nitrate 35mm print, created for a 1927 reissue. All prior circulating copies were from 8mm or 16mm sources. Though complete, the 35mm print lacked the film's original tints, which UCLA was able to recreate by studying contemporary silents such Mix’s 1922 Sky High.
So saddle up and ride on down to the Billy Wilder Theater on May 31 to watch the top cowpoke of silent screen bust bronchos and bad guys' faces.