Tom Mix, a Book Fair, and the Incredible Thing That Happened

By Ronnie Blair

The 78-year-old juvenile novel stood out in the book dealer’s booth at the annual Florida Antiquarian Book Fair in St. Petersburg.

Perhaps what did the trick was the colorful cover with the gruesome sight of a Native American and his horse, both on fire, flying above treetops in the night sky. Despite their fiery appearance, horse and rider seemed unfazed, although perhaps a little surprised at their circumstances.

The book was Tom Mix and the Mystery of the Flaming Warrior by George Lowther. In small type above the title, barely noticeable, was the word “Radio’s.”

Yes, for readers not paying close attention, this book, targeted for children, was connected to the radio show version of Tom Mix, and only indirectly to Tom Mix, the actual man and actor who appeared in movie Westerns from 1909 to 1940.

Without hesitation, I purchased the book, published in 1947, seven years after Mix’s death.

Lowther knew how to grab young readers’ attention. His opening line: “The incredible thing happened a short time after big, burly Mike Shaw, Sheriff of Dobie, entered Tom Mix’s office at the TM Bar.”

But then, the author had plenty of practice. In addition to books, Lowther wrote scripts for radio and television, including for the Tom Mix radio show, which aired from the 1930s to the early 1950s. Although Mix agreed to allow his name to be used on that show, he did not act on it. Instead, over the course of the show’s run, four actors––Artells Dickson, Jack Holden, Russell Thorsen, and Curley Bradley––served as the voice of Mix. 

Tom Mix and the Mystery of the Flaming Warrior includes black-and-white photos from the radio show and it is Bradley––clearly identified––who played Tom Mix at that point. (Since this was radio, not TV, the photos are presumably publicity shots, even though one of them is an action shot from a scene.)

The novel’s plot involves the threat of a Sioux uprising and the supernatural appearance of the flaming warrior of the title to further agitate things. Interestingly, although the setting and plot feel 19th century, the story is contemporary, or at least it was contemporary to the late 1940s. It is mentioned that one character was a fighter pilot in the RAF during World War II, and there is a reference to the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico.

This likely did not strike children at the time as odd. Movie Westerns in that period often combined the contemporary West with the old West. A few years later, singing cowboy star Roy Rogers was featured in a 1950s TV series that mixed horses, six-guns, and 19th century-style bandits with telephones, electricity, and automobiles. Reruns of Rogers’ show in the early 1960s were such a staple of my childhood that I devoted an entire chapter to him in my memoir, Eisenhower Babies.

Beyond the anachronisms, the Tom Mix book also crosses a few lines that might no juvenile novel today likely would. At one point, Tom holds a knife to a man’s throat. He later throws the knife and wounds the man. The novel also is filled with racial and ethnic stereotypes, which unfortunately was typical of children’s books at the time. This is one of the reasons early titles in the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series were revised beginning in the late 1950s.

As for that fiery apparition in the sky, Tom Mix takes the route Scooby Doo and gang would two decades later, revealing that it was a human creation and not supernatural. The big reveal is disappointing and a stretch. The warrior astride a horse image is formed by wires that have been set on fire and carried through the air by a helicopter.

The criminals would have gotten away with it, too, if not for the meddling Mix.

Ronnie Blair is author of the memoir Eisenhower Babies: Growing Up On Moonshots, Comic Books, and Black-and-White TV.