Although William S. Hart is remembered today as a silent western star, he started out about as far away from that genre as one could get. Born William Surrey Hart on this day in Newburgh, New York, to immigrant parents from the British Isles, he took up stage acting while in his early 20's. He made his formal stage debut in 1888 as a member of an acting company in New York City. Not long after this, possibly the very next year, he joined a traveling stage company and worked on stages across the country into the 1890's. He settled for a time in Ashville, North Carolina, where he gained his first experience with directing. In 1899, back in New York, he was a member of the debut cast for the initial Broadway stage production of Ben-Hur, as such he was also in the first ever film of the story (which also served as the first ever lawsuit over production rights in film--successfully so): Ben Hur (1907). The film was his motion picture debut; he was 43 years of age and the part was not credited. It would be another seven years before he made his credited debut in film, appearing in the lead role of His Hour of Manhood (July, 1914); in a sign of things to come, it was a western and he was nearly 50. All of his film roles in 1914, save one were in westerns, with his starring role in The Bargain (December 1914) marking his feature film debut. He also made his directing debut in 1914 as well. He directed himself in two short westerns--Two Gun Hicks and In the Sage Brush Country (he is also thought to have directed The Gringo). By the following year, he was directing features that he also starred in; ironically his first feature was a more of a melodrama than an actual western, though it was set in the Yukon. The Darkening Trail was produced by Thomas Ince and was based on a C. Gardner Sullivan story; the film was released in May of 1915. Ince was the producer of the little two-reelers that Hart largely directed himself which had quickly gained in popularity, which lead to a series of very successful features, starting with Trail. By 1916, his films were bringing in huge returns, and by 1917 he was a bonafide mega-star. Also starting in 1917, he began adding most of his 20 producer credits to his name (his production work on Ben Hur had long been forgotten by this time!). So enamored was he of the western genre that he even began to write stories that were eventually produced into films. By the early 1920's Hart had become so popular among movie fans, young and old alike, that his face on a magazine cover became a sure fire way to sell issues. Gone completely was the actor who was in several stage productions of Shakespeare, replaced totally by the actor nicknamed "Two-Gun Bill." Hart threw himself into the western role in life as well; collecting 19th century memorabilia and "19th century friends" in Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp. He also had a large rancheria home built in 1920's that took four years to build and is today a museum. He also married for the first time at the age of 57 to a 22 year old little knewn actress half his height and far more than half his age. Within a year they had a son, but another year on, the marriage was on the rocks. Normally I wouldn't bring up such personal detail, except that Hart, who already had a tendency to take himself too seriously, became irreversibly sanctimonious to the point that it began to impact his career in films. Not only was his wife's allegations of infidelity, and worse, out in the press (it would take until 1927 for Winifred Westover to actually obtain the divorce she filed for in 1923), he also found himself ultimately the butt of a satirically hilarious Buster Keaton film in 1922 The Frozen North (though Hart was not the only target of the film--he was the main one). He had landed himself in this situation after making strong public statements about Roscoe Arbuckle, despite never having met them man in his life. Keaton, who Hart did know personally, was not going to have any of it (and it is rumored that Arbuckle himself wrote what we would call the "spec" for the film--though he is not credited even under his assumed name of William Goodrich). Despite his kerfuffle with Keaton, Hart was aging and his moralistic scripts began to grate against his growing loss of popularity to much younger, more dynamic, western stars (for example, even though Tom Mix had been in pictures consistently since the teens like Hart, he was nearly 20 year's Hart's junior). After 1921, he was only in a handful of films and the waning of his popularity must have really stung. He left the movie business on a sour note and that also made the presses. His last full film Tumbleweeds is an extremely well made film and Hart produced the entire project from his own monies. He shadow directed some of the most impressive location shoots (in Santa Clarita) and his production company hired King Baggot, a director known for his adventure melodramas over at Universal (credited as 'King Baggott") to direct. Still the film had a sanctimonious ring to it; consider one 1925 tagline (if one can call it that, given it's length): "Not a Cowboy Picture but a tremendous romantic drama of the great West by the only screen star who knows the vast region and the ways of it's vaster people." Hart had also personally secured a deal with United Artists to distribute the film; but United Artists failed to properly promote the film and as a result had only a mediocre response at the box office (could have been worse....it was far from a flop!). Hart sued U.A. and the fight spilled over into the press, after which he retired to his home in Newhall, California. In 1939 he made his only sound appearance on film, though not in a new production, but in a filmed prologue for a new release of Tumbleweeds. He personally oversaw it's new release, picking the music and approving the sound effects added--all quite well done (this is the version you are likely to run into on disc and on streaming services). Though the film is far from a masterpiece, it still a fine piece of cinema and his re-release does benefit from sound selections that he added. Though his prologue is a bit hard to watch, regardless of your opinion of either the actor, silent films in general or of silent westerns in particular. He sounds more like a some odd combination of an over-acting Shakespearean and a tent preacher--his accent obviously influenced by the English and Irish accents of his parents--making his "western star" persona seem out of place (though if he were to have laid off the melodramatic inflection, he would have made a fine narrator later in life!). The following year, Hart at long last won his suit again United Artist over the release of the film. Hart died in Newhall on the 23 of June at the age of 81, but instead of burial in the land that he loved and purported to know so well, he is instead buried back in New York in a family plot at Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. Though he was never a true rough-rider in life (and very many early western stars were), Hart did provide some firsts in the genre, including having a famous horse. So many western stars after him had horses with name almost as famous as they, but Fritz the horse was the first.
Burial memorial to Fritz in California, buried on Hart's ranch after his death in 1938 [source: Life Magazine]
[Green-Wood: source: Ginny M (Find A Grave)]
I liked your post on William S. Hart. I hope to visit his home someday!
ReplyDeleteI am with you on that, I'd love to visit! For now I will have to visit virtually through the web. Looks like a really cool museum. Hope you make it there soon! And thank you!!
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