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(Courtesy of Les Adams) Heroine Betty Boyd is shown on the left, and on the right, Hoxie is huggin' elderly Mary Carr. (Courtesy of Les Adams) Above, Jack on the white charger 'Dynamite' which was really his trusty hoss 'Scout'. (Courtesy of Ed Tabor) Above, Jack restrains the Winchester-toting Alice Day, who is also pictured in the circular inset.

(Courtesy of Ed Phillips) Above is another great silent era photo from Ed Phillips, and the caption on the back reads: "This is not publicity stuff! Motion picture people in Hollywood are too busy following their profession to stop and assume their street clothes when they "go off the lot" to transact business at the banks or other centers of trade. They often go "as is". Here is one instance. They are all Hollywood stars, lined up at the Savings window of the Hollywood Agency of the First National Bank of Los Angeles of which M F Palmer is the manager. They are, reading from left to right, Jack Hoxie, Pat O'Malley, Raymond Keane, Marion Nixon and Mary Philbin."

Jack Hoxie's Sound Westerns Special thanks to Les Adams for providing this filmography

The initial years of the sound B-western was a shakeout period.  Republic Pictures would not be formed until 1935.  Major studios were spending money and doing solid productions, and during the early 1930s, Columbia had Tim McCoy and Buck Jones while Universal's range riders included Tom Mix and Ken Maynard.  Smaller companies like Monogram utilized Bob Steele, Rex Bell, Bill Cody, Tom Tyler and John Wayne.  There were a bunch of small, independent outfits churning out very low budget oaters for the states rights market, and during this period, many of the stars of silent westerns had a brief fling as heroes in sound oaters.  Included were Wally Wales, Buffalo Bill, Jr., Bob Custer ... and Jack Hoxie.  Boyd Magers' film reviews in our 'Best (and Worst) of the West' column has a good summary of Jack Hoxie's sound oaters for Majestic Pictures:

 OUTLAW JUSTICE (1932 Majestic)
Outlaw Panamint Jack Hoxie and his wonder horse Dynamite, who single hoofedly steals the show, save the ranch for Dorothy Gulliver and her wayward brother from a saloon slicker and his gang headed up by a fairly thin Charlie King. Jack Kirk and his boys sing a song or two. Hoxie's series of six for Majestic marked the end of a screen career that began in 1910, hitting a high from 1923-1927 when he was one of Universal's top range riders. Following a 'difference of opinion' with Universal head Carl Laemmle over a new contract, Hoxie reportedly tore up the document and walked out. He immediately signed to do a silent serial at Mascot but was otherwise off the screen touring with circuses til producer Henry Goldstone signed him for 6 at Majestic. Majestic's non-western product had a polished look, far better than most independents of the time, but the big, beefy, awkward, semi-illiterate Hoxie represented an antiquated form of screen presence. Time had passed him by. Oliver Drake's scripts didn't help, often making Jack appear as a country bumpkin. (No wonder GOLD, the only one not written by Drake, is Jack's best.) After the six (far from) Majestics, Jack left the screen behind, trading on past glories on the sawdust trail til 1959 when he settled down as rancher in Oklahoma. Trivia: Dynamite, the horse Jack used in talkies, is actually Scout, his silent screen horse using an alias.

 GOLD (1932 Majestic)
The lumbering, aw-shucks boyish charm of Jack Hoxie is about all GOLD has to offer. It seems to drag on twice as long as it should while crooks Hooper Atchley, Matthew Betz and Bob Kortman buy out gold claims from miners then rob and kill the miners to get their money back, thus both owning the claim and having the cash. But the thieves don't reckon on Jack Hoxie's resolve when they swindle his partner Lafe McKee (and his daughter --- Alice Day) out of his half of he and Jack's claim, then laying blame for Lafe's murder on Jack.

 LAW AND LAWLESS (1932 Majestic)
A showcase for Jack Hoxie's trick riding and shooting skills as he plays a two-gun man who, with his braggadocio Mexican pal Julian Rivero, hires out to rancher Jack Mower and his pretty daughter Hilda Moreno to stop cattle rustling by the Wolf gang, mysterious night riders (Wally Wales, Yakima Canutt, Slim Whitaker, Hank Bell) who shoot flaming arrows and use a chilling wolf-cry as their signal. Onetime silent serial star Helen Gibson (1892-1977) who starred in THE HAZARDS OF HELEN in 1915-'16 along with other silent serials and two-reelers opposite Hoot Gibson, Pete Morrison and others, plays a rancher's wife with child star Edith Fellows as her and Bob Burns' daughter. Dixie Starr, Hoxie's wife of 10 years as of 1930, has a miniscule bit part.

 GUN LAW (1933 Majestic)
When outlaw Paul Fix is killed, his pal - the Sonora Kid - Jack Hoxie, takes his place with Fix's nearly blind mother (Mary Carr) whom Fix hasn't seen in years. Hoxie helps her rout rustler J. Frank Glendon, an old enemy of Hoxie's. Jack Kirk (who plays one of Glendon's gang) is the briefly dubbed 'singing voice' for Hoxie. Remade as CYCLONE RANGER in '35 with Bill Cody, both scripted by Oliver Drake. Remade again, with Drake uncredited, as GAUCHOS OF EL DORADO ('41) with the 3 Mesquiteers. Drake reused the GUN LAW title for a George O'Brien RKO western in '38, but the resemblance ends there.

 TROUBLE BUSTERS (1933 Majestic)
Jack Hoxie gets the horse laff when he and his friends try to run skinflint storekeeper William T. Burt out of town by throwing a scare into him, mistaking his niece, Kaye Edward, for Burt. Smitten by the girl, Hoxie rides for Placerville where he believes her to be and runs smack into two "trouble busters", Ben Corbett and Harry Todd. Making friends, the trio arrives in Placerville where Hoxie inadvertently hires out to crooked Slim Whitaker to grab off some property while, unbeknownst to him, Corbett and Todd hire out to Lane Chandler to protect the same property - which turns out to be owned by Burt and niece Edward! The silly contrivances actually play very well with lots of fun generated by director Lewis Collins. Buffalo Bill Jr. doubles Chandler quite noticeably in one blatant fight close-up. William Lively dusted off Oliver Drake's story and turned it into DEATH RIDES THE RANGE for Ken Maynard in 1940. Downgrade the rating on this one to 2 if you can't abide Hoxie.

 VIA PONY EXPRESS (1933 Majestic)
Jack Hoxie's horse is Dynamite --- and it would take a keg of it to get this mess moving as Jack and cavalry captain Lane Chandler fight to restore Marceline Day's Spanish Land Grants. The tedium comes to a screeching halt midway for a fiesta song by a 'gay' caballero. Director Lew Collins gets the blame for the boredom.

  Although some of the data is incomplete or inaccurate, the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) has information on Jack and Al Hoxie:

Jim Tipton's Find A Grave website has a photo of the marker for Jack Hoxie at the Willowbar Cemetery, Keyes, Oklahoma: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=10064634&pt=Jack%20Hoxie

The Cimarron Heritage Center in Boise City, Oklahoma, has a 'Jack Hoxie Exhibit' and a brief bio on the older Hoxie brother: http://www.ptsi.net/user/museum/

Donna Anderson has a blog about her grandfather, Al Hoxie. For her "Tribute to Grandpa - In honor of Alton J. Hoxie", go to: http://alhoxietribute.blogspot.com/

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