“Elegant gentleman. Indian Agent. Soldier. Cowboy-Hero. The last (and longest-lasting) of the Big Four– Buck Jones, Hoot Gibson, Ken Maynard, and McCoy– who rivaled [Tom] Mix. The man knew more about the West (certainly about the Indians) than any Hollywood Cowboy. Who came out to Hollywood to instruct the movie makers in what the West was really like. And stayed to perform topnotch Wild West Tale make-believe. The only Cowboy-Hero that Metro Goldwyn Mayer, THE top-drawer glamour studio of Hollywood, ever put under contract. A Cowboy Hero with his own unique personality and image. Not to be mistaken for anybody else.” ~Author James Horwitz, They Went Thataway (1976)
If you search on Facebook for movie groups dedicated to legendary Western star John Wayne, you will find dozens of them with memberships currently registering at 165,000, 126,000, 86,000, 63,000, and so on… By contrast, there is only one group on actor Tim McCoy, which I administer, and that has 283 members. Outside the film community– and by that I mean the old-time film buffs and collectors– the general populace will not know the name. That’s a shame because McCoy was an American patriot who not only served his country in two World Wars, but he brought attention and understanding to Native American tribes. And he was a popular movie star. In the early 1930s, Duke Wayne had small roles in Tim McCoy Westerns– not the other way around.
On April 10, 2025, I will be presenting a program on the life and career of Tim McCoy at Wilmette Public Library in Wilmette, IL. The program will be in-person only and will start at 7 pm. Given the relative obscurity of McCoy today, one might wonder why I would jump-start a classic film program at a new venue with a subject few are even aware of? My motivation can be summed up by these three points: 1) More people would appreciate McCoy if they were aware of his contributions to American culture. 2) A library setting presents greater opportunity to delve deeper into a topic without concern for how many people might show up. 3) It’s a film subject I can speak on with a high degree of knowledge if not expertise. I’ve researched the life of Tim McCoy with visits both to his hometown in Saginaw, Michigan, and to his beloved Wyoming, which is home to the Tim McCoy archives in Laramie and Cheyenne. What I’ve learned will not be presented here in article form, but it will be gathered into what I hope will be a very entertaining and informative presentation in April.
McCoy demonstrating “hand talk” on the MGM lot.
Tim McCoy claimed he was never a “movie cowboy.” He was, in fact, a real one– and he has been called the last link between the Old West and the new. Rather than an in-depth article detailing his journey, what you will find in this blog is more of a snapshot of the man. It’s merely a bugle call that he’s coming down the trail. Several articles have already been written on McCoy, typically playing off the well-worn “Real McCoy” idiom for their title, but three of the best can be found below with links. The following do not present the complete picture, but they nevertheless remain the most detailed:
“High Eagle: The Many Lives of Colonel Tim McCoy” (in McCoy’s own words) for the American Heritage website. Click Here!
“Tim McCoy: The Reel/Real Life of a Wind River Cowboy” written by one of McCoy’s sons for the Jackson Hole History website. Click Here! There is also an in-depth article on the Jackson Hole site taken from an issue of The Wind River Rendezvous. Click Here!
“Ed Farlow, Tim McCoy and Their Native Friends on Stage and Screen” on the Wyoming History website. Click Here!
The definitive book on Tim McCoy is his own memoir, Tim McCoy Remembers the West (1977), which he wrote late in life with his son, Ronald McCoy. It’s an exceptional work that includes McCoy’s reminiscences of the Old West and the many fascinating characters he met throughout his life. Besides this autobiographical work, there are several history books that reference Tim McCoy with distinction. Jon Tuska’s The Filming of the West (1976) is highly recommended. With its emphasis on silent movies and the B-Westerns of the sound era, it’s one of those great 1970s film books that does justice to the subject with first-hand eyewitness accounts. (There’s even a chapter solely on McCoy’s Columbia Westerns! Today, this might get, at best, a footnote in a similar book on the subject.) And finally, one of my favorites: They Went Thataway (1976) by James Horwitz. The author managed to track down many of the Western stars from the 1930s and 1940s and interviewed them, McCoy included. It was in this book that I appreciated Tim McCoy from the vantage point of the author, a self-described “Front Row Kid.” Unlike every other movie star, I discovered McCoy in print first; the movies followed.
“If William S. Hart was the ‘Good Badman.’ And Tom Mix was the Rhinestone-and-Neon Cowboy. If Ken Maynard was the Daredevil. And Hoot Gibson the Ragtime Clown. Then Colonel Tim McCoy’s image would be the ‘Man of Destiny.’ In basic black. He wasn’t every Front Row Kid’s idea of a Cowboy-Hero. Only the smart ones’. Tim McCoy, with his cavalry officer’s bearing and a twinkle in his eye, was a Cowboy with… class.” ~James Horwitz, They Went Thataway
What Tim McCoy Means to Me
It’s been at least thirty years since I discovered Tim McCoy, and he remains my favorite Western star. Part of this is due to the image he projected on screen. He wasn’t flashy. He wasn’t one of those singing cowboys like Roy Rogers. He had the presence of a cavalry officer, which is what he had been in real life. In the end, though, it’s a matter of personal preference as to who was the best of the early cowboy stars, but for me he was the very definition of what a hero should be. And if by chance he had to play a less than innocent fellow, as he had done with the dual role in Bulldog Courage (1935), in which his character holds up a stagecoach, he remains a gentleman while doing it– placing an older woman’s purse on her other wrist, away from the attorney-at-law who stands beside her. “You know all bandits don’t ride horses,” he warns her.
Tim McCoy’s life beyond Hollywood is what makes him unique among screen actors. He was an authentic cowboy and rancher who befriended the Arapaho tribe of his native Wyoming and later became an expert in Indian sign language– “hand talk.” He demonstrated this ability in several of his films, including his first for MGM, War Paint (1926). His ties to Native American culture, which are poignantly and humorously described in his memoir, could be a Hollywood movie in itself. He wrote with warmth and compassion about those years on the range with the Arapaho. His strongest bond was with Goes In Lodge, the tribal elder who accepted McCoy as a brother and bestowed upon him the name of “High Eagle.”
Besides serving his country in two wars– re-enlisting for World War II when he was past 50– McCoy created a Wild West show like his mentor, William “Buffalo Bill” Cody; ran for senator in the state of Wyoming; toured in multiple circuses; had a television show that won a local Emmy; made personal appearances around the country; and remained a storyteller of the Old West until the very end in 1978. His diversity of interests, particularly his expertise in Plains Indian Sign Language, remains an inspiration to me; life is too short to limit oneself to any one thing. When he did fail or come up short on a particular venture, he always pulled himself up by his bootstraps and moved on to the next challenge.
McCoy’s time as a featured performer in the circus, beginning with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, is notable to those interested in the history of the big top. I recall seeing some of the beautiful posters that showcased McCoy’s Western act he did in the late 1930s. It was this discovery that motivated me to visit the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin, shortly after reading the Horwitz book on Westerns. McCoy’s short-lived Wild West show, “Col. Tim McCoy’s Real Wild West and Rough Riders of the World,” featured some of the best horsemen in the world and demonstrated McCoy’s penchant for grand showmanship. Additionally, railroad enthusiasts still collect miniature circus trains modeled on those used by McCoy’s show.
But Tim McCoy will always be best known as a Hollywood star of nearly a hundred movies. He had been a major star at MGM in the silent era– the studio’s only Western star, in fact– but to give one an idea of just how important McCoy was on the lot, he had a dressing room adjacent to the legendary “Man of a Thousand Faces,” Lon Chaney, Sr. McCoy would later recall his conversations with Chaney on the subject of makeup when he created his own disguises in some of his Westerns. McCoy quickly adapted to the Hollywood scene and formed relationships that would last a lifetime. His closest friend was British star Ronald Colman.
After those early years working for a major studio, McCoy signed with Universal and then Columbia. The latter is where he made some of his best Westerns of the sound era. He worked at other studios, too, on Poverty Row– long-forgotten places like Puritan and Monogram (where he teamed up with Buck Jones in the excellent Rough Riders series). You won’t find these titles in the Criterion Collection, but you can find them on YouTube. In the 1990s, there wasn’t the luxury of having everything conveniently at one’s fingertips online. There was joy in the search, and there were many Hollywood memorabilia shows I attended where I’d be looking specifically for McCoy movies on VHS, and later DVD.
John Wayne and Tim McCoy in one of their two films together.
Viewers today might find the B-Westerns of yesteryear a bit repetitive, but the ones with McCoy stand out. He was arguably the finest actor in this sub-category of the Hollywood Western. The films could sometimes be technically crude, but in a curious way, it’s this ‘rough around the edges’ quality that made them feel more real and attuned to the Old West than the polished studio product of the 1940s (i.e., Republic’s Roy Rogers movies). The plots could be predictable and elements were often re-used, but the fun was in seeing how the story unfolded. In almost every McCoy film, there is some memorable bit of business, whether it’s a dramatic entrance into town on horseback or a confrontation with the bad guys in a saloon.
There are, however, several Tim McCoy films that are remarkable. The End of the Trail (1932), shot in McCoy’s backyard of Lander, Wyoming, is one of his more personal efforts. In this one, his character, a cavalry officer, gets kicked out of the Army on suspicion of aiding the “red men.” McCoy’s speeches in this film not only reflect a rare (for its time) cultural awareness of the white man’s injustices towards Native Americans, but they demonstrate how good an actor McCoy truly was. The End of the Trail (1932) may only be an hour in length with some unnecessary comedy relief– and a happy ending that was tacked on after the original was deemed too gloomy– but I could watch this film repeatedly unlike the more celebrated Dances With Wolves (1990).
Another one of McCoy’s best…
However, in twenty-five years of film programming, I’ve only shown one Tim McCoy film. That was one of the little-known MGM silents he had done called Winners of the Wilderness (1927), which I screened on 16mm at the LaSalle Bank Theatre in Chicago. Set in pre-Revolutionary War America, this historical drama featured Joan Crawford in a supporting role. McCoy’s films were never on a par with the best of John Wayne’s, but Tim McCoy never worked with a director like John Ford. He could’ve easily played a military officer in Ford’s cavalry trilogy; but then, McCoy never would’ve allowed Ford to berate him as the director had done to Wayne.
In more recent years, I created Col. Tim McCoy’s Real Wild West on Facebook, a community that has attracted die-hard Western enthusiasts. I continue to collect his films and share his name with others who should be aware of it. When I visited the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian in Evanston, the executive director had never heard of Tim McCoy; not surprisingly, she was unaware of his involvement with the Arapaho tribe and his reputation as an authority on sign language. In September 2024, I traveled to Wyoming to prepare for the Wilmette event (which was originally planned for last November to correspond with Native American Heritage Month). All this has finally come together in anticipation of April 10 which, by design, is McCoy’s birthday.
What can attendees expect in April? I’ll be giving a multi-media presentation that includes photos, film clips, and stories told in McCoy’s own words. I’ll also have some of my own McCoy memorabilia on display. I’ll be sharing the discoveries I’ve made over the course of three decades. And of course, there will be plenty of trivia. One of my favorite anecdotes is retold in the aforementioned The Filming of the West:
“At Columbia he perfected the fastest draw of any cowboy on the screen. Otto Meyer, the film editor who worked on most of Tim’s early Westerns, once told him how fast his draw actually was. At the rate of twenty-four frames per second, it took Tim exactly six frames from the blur of his hand to the smoke issuing from the end of his gun. This was part of Tim’s reputation as a cowboy star during the talking picture era; the other part, the ‘man of destiny’ image, was also born at Columbia.”
~MCH
In Saginaw, Michigan– Tim McCoy’s hometown.
There are seven boxes of Tim McCoy materials at the American Heritage Center in Laramie, Wyoming.