I met George Marshall in 1970 in Hollywood at the diner attached to the Goldwyn studio on Formosa. I think he agreed to see me because I told him on the phone that I had just acquired one of his “lost” silent pictures, Don Quickshot. “Why you ever dug that one up I’ll never know. God Almighty… I had no trouble with any film except Don Quickshot. All because I made fun of the character … fun of the western picture. And Hoxie was not much of a comedian. I was stuck with the damned thing and I tried to do something different with it and so I guess I stayed with it and that’s how it came out.”
I can’t think why he was so dismissive. To quote an exhibitor’s report in Moving Picture World in October 1923: “They nearly tore the doors off trying to get in.”
Dedicated enthusiasts of later years, like the powers-that-be at Universal, took westerns and the cowboys who starred in them rather seriously, which led to this remarkable headline from Classic Film Collector (No. 31, Summer 1971): “Hoxie – Artist or Idiot?” (Luckily, the verdict was “artist”.)
The film the public was raring to watch in 1923 has not been seen complete and in a halfway decent print for the best part of 100 years. When veteran film historian William K. Everson gave me that l6mm print he warned me that an unscrupulous collector had cut all the action sequences. Thanks to Jere Guldin at the Packard Humanities Institute, they have now been put back.
Hoxie plays  a romantic cowboy who is inspired by reading Don Quixote to set out on a series of adventures that see him unjustly accused of murder (he’s exonerated), battling a gang, and saving the daughter of a cattleman. “Don Quickshot was a top-notch western with fantasy and plenty of action,” wrote film historian George A. Katchmer, who saw the film in the 1920s (Classic Images No. 85, July 1982). “The fantasy, a dream sequence with King Arthur’s Knights, was later copied by Ken Maynard in his The Grey Vulture (1926).” (Which  had the same scenarist as Don Quickshot, George Hively, who also wrote John Ford’s 1917 films Straight Shooting and Bucking Broadway.) “Universal rated it a ‘Jewel’ picture; this preferential treatment was accorded to several of the Hoot Gibson pictures. It meant higher budget, production, cast, etc. Jack soon rose to the top, second only to Hoot Gibson on the Universal lot. There are some historians who claim Jack’s pictures made as much money as Gibson’s despite the budget difference of a Blue Streak western and a Jewel production.”
While Jack Hoxie may not have been a comedian, he was a colourful character; before he became a film star, he had been a deputy sheriff in Las Vegas, Nevada.
This was Hoxie’s first starring role for Universal, initiating his most rewarding period. Tom Mix was the top earner in westerns, with Hoot Gibson at No. 2. Hoxie was considered No. 3, mainly because he was so prolific. He was the first to appear always with his Appaloosa horse, Scout, and his dog, Old Bunk, endearing him to the kids. I never met him, but I have a commercial audiotape he recorded in 1963, and in 1976 I interviewed his brother Al Hoxie, 15 years his junior. Al looked a lot like Jack, doubled for him in many pictures, and starred in a number of programme westerns. Brought up on the family ranch in Idaho, Al was the image of the old-fashioned cowboy. He was extremely polite, and, once you got to know him, warm and charming. (You can see him in Episode 9 of the Hollywood series.)
Jack Hoxie (1885‒1965) was born in Indian Territory, in what would become Oklahoma, but was raised in Idaho. He later claimed to be part-Cherokee though his mother was Nez Percé. He spent his boyhood on the reservation, and became an outstanding rider. Having punched cattle on a number of ranches, and winning a clutch of rodeo trophies, Hoxie was taken on by the Dick Stanley Show, becoming a top performer. Stanley had a contract with Pathé to use the show in the winter. When Stanley was killed in the ring, Hoxie took the show to Los Angeles on behalf of Mrs. Stanley and directed it to the end of the season. He stayed in California and did stunt work and small parts in pictures. In 1915, Lois Weber cast him in The Dumb Girl of Portici and placed him close to the star, Anna Pavlova, mainly to protect her in the crowd scenes. “I was the only one she let do anything,” he said.
At this period he used the name Hart Hoxie (after his favourite western star, with whom he would play in Blue Blazes Rawden, 1918). “He tried that name to see how it would go in pictures,” said Al, “ but it didn’t go over too good. They always thought he was kinda copying Bill Hart. His real name was John [Stone], but he called himself Jack. … He was one of the real cowboys that was in the business … I’m another one. I’m not knocking any of the boys, but they didn’t have the experience on a cattle ranch. … We broke our own horses…”
In 1919 Jack was teamed with Ann Little in a 15-chapter serial which has been acclaimed as the finest of all cowboy adventure serials, Lightning Bryce. That year, he encouraged Al to come out and join him in Hollywood, and Al was soon starring in westerns himself: “They’d take Jack out to make a five-reeler. Maybe to Lone Pine – his whole outfit, horses, go up there, they’d hire a big hotel, big barrack room for the buckaroos, and then spend anywhere from 18 to 25 days making the picture. With us, we’d never take over 5 days, maybe a week at most. You can’t make a good picture in 5 days. My company would spend maybe $15,000 whereas Jack’s would spend $30-35,000 on the same type of picture.”
Among other stories, such as George Marshall’s claim to have started Jack Hoxie’s career, I heard a rumour that Jack had shot a man before he left Idaho. I couldn’t think of a tactful way of putting this to Al, so I am grateful to the late Tom Trusky of Boise State University, who went to the location, conducted interviews, and found the whole story in the newspaper files. It is available in a booklet, Retold in the Hills, a history of the making of Told in the Hills (1919), the first Hollywood feature to be made in Idaho.
The man Hoxie shot was his own younger brother, Earl. Jack had just married a woman named Pearl Gage, and Earl was one of the witnesses. Five months into the marriage, Jack discovered they were having an affair. Jack undoubtedly shot Earl, but the lawmen agreed it was “a tragic accident”. The two men were going on a hunt, and Jack was cleaning his revolver when it went off. Earl was having breakfast next door; the bullet passed through the partition wall and struck him in the temple. He lived for a further 15 minutes. The newspapers said Jack was “prostrate” when he realized what had happened.
According to Everson, Jack Hoxie couldn’t read; he only learned to write late in life. This was an open secret at the time, and there were in-jokes in his films – including this one. His sound westerns suffered from his “clumsy reading of the lines”, and Hoxie’s career in pictures came to an end. Like other major silent western stars he reverted to Wild West shows. But unlike most others, the Jack Hoxie Wild West show succeeded.
As for George Marshall, he became one of the most prolific directors in Hollywood. In 1925 he was put in charge of the entire Fox shorts output. He subsequently worked with Laurel and Hardy, W. C. Fields, and even Martin and Lewis. In 1939 he directed the finest comedy western I’ve ever seen, Destry Rides Again, with James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. He also directed the astonishing railroad segment of How the West Was Won (1962, in Cinerama). – Kevin Brownlow

I would like to thank the AFI, Richard Bann, Richard Koszarski, Cathy Surowiec, Emily Wittenberg, and my wife Caroline for their invaluable assistance on this piece.