Tom Mix - Cultural References

Cultural References

By the 21st century, most people were more familiar with Tom Mix's name through the many cultural references which have echoed long after his death, rather than from having seen his films. Cereal boxtop premiums (radio premiums) from the 1940s relating to Mix are still traded by collectors. Mix was referred to in Conny Froboess' 1951 song "Pack' die Badehose ein" and in a 1953 Dinah Washington song, "TV Is the Thing This Year" for EmArcy Records (signifying a change in technology from radio to television).

• In the JD Salinger short story "The Laughing Man", the Chief is described as having "the most photogenic features of Buck Jones, Ken Maynard, and Tom Mix."
• In 1967, Mix was featured with many other 20th century celebrities on the cover of The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
• In Woody Allen's 1983 film Zelig, archival footage is shown of Mix attending a party at Hearst Castle near San Simeon, California.
• Bruce Willis played Tom Mix in the 1988 Blake Edwards film Sunset, with James Garner as Wyatt Earp. The film was very loosely based on the fact that Earp and Mix knew each other when Earp was serving as a consultant during the silent film era.
• In The Beverly Hillbillies, Jed Clampett's reason for going to Beverly Hills was to live in the same place as Tom Mix.
• Daryl Ponicsan's novel Tom Mix Died for Your Sins (1975) evokes Mix's life and personality. Clifford Irving offered a pseudo-autobiographical version of Mix's early adulthood, drawing him as a brash young gringo who befriends and then joins up with the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa in the novel Tom Mix and Pancho Villa (1982).
• In the 2008 movie Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie, the mysterious little boy claiming to be Walter Collins finally confesses to the police that the reason he ran away to Los Angeles was in hopes of meeting Tom Mix and his horse Tony.
• In the children's novel "Letters From Rifka" by "Karen Hesse", the protagonist Rifka Nebrot mentions learning the English language by reading comic books about a cowboy named Tom Mix who shoots at bad guys.
• James Horwitz's book They Went Thataway (1975) ends with Horwitz visiting Tom Mix Wash (where Mix died) and leaving his childhood cowboy boots at the foot of the monument.
• A resurrected Tom Mix appeared in two of Philip José Farmer's Riverworld novels, The Dark Design (1977) and The Magic Labyrinth (1980) as a traveling companion of Jack London, along with a short story featured in the anthology Riverworld and Other Stories (1979).
• In the "Mulcahy's War" episode of M*A*S*H Father Mulcahy used a Tom Mix pocket knife to perform an emergency tracheotomy (1976).
• Philip K. Dick's sci-fi novel The Penultimate Truth features an underground bunker named 'the Tom Mix'.
• In Batman/Houdini: The Devil's Workshop (1993), Tom Mix is a high profile figure in Gotham society, and takes up Houdini's offer of a free punch to the stomach.
• In an episode of Raw Toonage, Bonkers D. Bobcat plays a cowboy character named "Trail Mix Bonkers", an obvious homage to Tom Mix, as well as a play on both his name and trail mix.
• The menacing cowboy character in David Lynch's film Mulholland Drive contains oblique references to Mix.
• The ghost of Tom Mix haunted a Hollywood couple in the supernatural thriller The Ghosts of Edendale (2004).
• Ralston-Purina briefly revived its Tom Mix boxtop fan club during the 1980s, and in 2007 had Tom Mix pages on the company's website.
• Tom Mix is mentioned as being a pall bearer and weeping at the funeral for Wyatt Earp at the beginning of the end credits for the 1993 George P. Cosmatos film Tombstone.
• In the Doctor Who episode "The Gunfighters", the TARDIS lands at Tombstone, Arizona in 1881, where the Doctor says he doesn't understand why they want to dress like Tom Mix.
• The United States Postal Service has commemorated Tom Mix on a first-class mail postage stamp.
• In Salt-Water Moon, by Canadian playwright David French, Jacob describes watching "The Lucky Horseshoe", calling it "one of the best Tom ever made," and tries to seduce Mary when describing it.
• Italian comic series Captain Miki was renamed by comics calligrapher Ferdi Sayışman as "Captain Tom Mix" (Yüzbaşı Tommiks) in the 70s, and comics are being published with this name till today.
• In the series Bewitched in the episode "Serena's Youth Pill", Darin tries to convince young Larry Tate to drink the magic antidote by telling him it would help Larry grow up to be a cowboy like Tom Mix.
• In the 2010 Boardwalk Empire episode "The Emerald City", Nucky Thompson's servant Eddie Kessler offers to frisk someone who's come to see him. Nucky chides him: "You're Tom Mix all of a sudden?"