William S. Hart
William S. Hart
"My friends, I love the art of making motion pictures. It is as the breath of life to me..."
William S. Hart
Birth name:
William Surrey Hart
Born:
6th December 1864, Newburgh, New York, USA
Died:
23rd June 1946, Newhall, California, USA
Years active:
1914 - 1941
William S. Hart quickly eclipsed Gilbert M. ‘Broncho Billy’ Anderson to become early American cinema's foremost western hero, shaping the genre with realistic, morally driven tales, usually featuring the good-bad man who captivated legions of moviegoers.
William Surrey Hart was born on 6th December 1864 in Newburgh, New York. He spent part of his childhood in the Dakota Territory playing with the children of Sioux indians. His time there led to his enduring fascination and love for the Old West. The family moved to New York. The teenaged Hart worked as a hotel messenger and sometimes received free theatre passes as payment for extra duties. Watching these stage shows inspired Hart to pursue a career in acting.
By the late 19th Century, he had carved out a successful stage career, appearing as Messala in the 1899 Broadway production of Ben-Hur. He played the villainous Cash Hawkins in The Squaw Man, and earned positive reviews for his lead role in The Virginian in 1907.
In 1913, appalled by the poor-quality westerns produced by the film industry, Hart decided to move into motion pictures. He contacted Thomas Ince, with whom he had once worked on the stage and who was now a producer for the New York Motion Picture Company. He failed to make an impression with a pair of two-reelers, but The Bargain (1914), a feature directed by Reginald Barker, made a star of Hart. From 1915, he made a series of popular two-reel westerns for Ince’s Triangle Film Company before graduating to features such as Hell’s Hinges (1916), The Patriot (1916) and The Square Deal Man (1917) which earned him exhibitors’ vote as the country’s top money-making star for two years running.
In 1917, Hart accepted a lucrative offer from Adolph Zukor to join Famous Players-Lasky (later part of Paramount) where he continued to cultivate the screen persona of a sombre, weathered cowboy driven by an inviolable code of honour in stories about sin, redemption and frontier justice. There was a gritty authenticity about Hart’s westerns – which he was now also directing – that was a far cry from the glamorous image projected by other western stars such as Tom Mix.
William S. Hart in Hell's Hinges (1916)
In 1921, Hart married Winifred Westover, an actress thirty-seven years his junior whom he met while making the film John Petticoats (1919). The marriage lasted only a matter of months, although their divorce wasn’t finalised until 1927. Their brief union yielded one son, William Hart Jr.
Between 1914 and 1925 he made around 70 features, but by the mid-twenties moralistic tales began to feel old-fashioned to audiences steeped in the heady culture of the roaring twenties. Realising his career was coming to an end, Hart independently financed and produced Tumbleweeds (1925), an epic swansong set against the Oklahoma land rush. Although it received critical praise, Tumbleweeds did only moderate business. Hart blamed poor promotion by United Artists, the film’s distributor, and instigated legal proceedings that would drag on for fifteen years.
After Tumbleweeds, the 61-year-old actor retired to his ranch in Newhall, north of Los Angeles and commissioned the architect Arthur Kelly to build a 22-room Spanish Colonial Revival mansion, which he named La Loma de los Vientos (Hill of the Winds). Surrounded by Western art and Native American artefacts, he wrote children’s fiction and an autobiography, My Life East and West. He also became involved in animal welfare, donating $100,000 to the Connecticut Humane Society in 1945.
Hart died at home on 23rd June 1946 at the age of 81. In the will he wrote in 1943, he stipulated that his home and grounds were to go to Los Angeles County as a public park and museum which is now known as the William S. Hart Park and Museum. Although he left $50,000 each to his sister and the Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Hart left no bequest to his only child, leaving him reliant on a $100,000 trust fund established before his birth. Hart stated “I have made no provision in this will for my son for the reason that I have amply provided for him during my lifetime.” A lengthy legal appeal failed to reverse the decision.
An important figure in the development of the Western genre, Hart’s authentic representation of the Old West paved the way for later, more ‘adult’ westerns that have come to define the genre.
William S. Hart Filmography:
His Hour of Manhood (1914) (a) (short), The Bargain (1914) (a, d), Two‑Gun Hicks (1914) (a, d) (short), Jim Cameron’s Wife (1914) (a) (short), In the Sage Brush Country (1914) (a) (short), The Man Killer (1914) (a) (short), The Bad Buck of Santa Ynez / Bad Buck of Santa Ynez (1914–1915) (a, d) (short), On the Night Stage (1915) (a), Scourge of the Desert (1915) (a) (short), The Sheriff’s Streak of Yellow (1915) (a, d) (short), The Roughneck (1915) (a, d) (short), The Darkening Trail (1915) (a), The Ruse (1915) (a) (short), Cash Parrish’s Pal (1915) (a) (short), A Knight of the Trails (1915) (a, d) (short), Keno Bates – Liar (1915) (a, d) (short), Between Men (1915) (a), The Disciple (1915) (a), Tools of Providence (1915) (a) (short), The Taking of Luke McVane (1915) (a, d) (short), Pinto Ben (1915) (a, d) (short), Mr. “Silent” Haskins (1915) (a, d) (short), The Man from Nowhere (1915) (a, d) (short), The Grudge (1915) (a, d) (short), Grit (1915) (a, d) (short), The Conversion of Frosty Blake (1915) (a, d) (short), Hell’s Hinges (1916) (a, d), The Aryan (1916) (a, d), The Primal Lure (1916) (a), The Apostle of Vengeance (1916) (a), The Captive God (1916) (a), The Patriot (1916) (a), The Dawn Maker (1916) (a, d), The Return of Draw Egan (1916) (a, d), The Devil’s Double (1916) (a), Truthful Tulliver (1916) (a, d), The Gun Fighter (1917) (a, d), The Desert Man (1917) (a), The Square Deal Man (1917) (a, d), Wolf Lowry (1917) (a, d), The Cold Deck (1917) (a, d), The Silent Man (1917) (a, d), The Narrow Trail (1917) (a, d), All‑Star Production of Patriotic Episodes for the Second U.S. Liberty Loan (1917) (a) (short), Wolves of the Rail (1918) (a, d, w), Blue Blazes Rawden (1918) (a, d), The Tiger Man (1918) (a, d), Selfish Yates (1918) (a, d, w) (short), Shark Monroe (1918) (a, d), Riddle Gawne (1918) (a, d, w), The Border Wireless (1918) (a, p), Branding Broadway (1918) (a, d, p, w), A Bullet for Berlin (1918) (a) (short), Staking His Life (1918) (a) (short), The Lion of the Hills (1918) (a), Breed of Men (1919) (a, p), The Poppy Girl’s Husband (1919) (a, p), The Money Corral (1919) (a, p), Square Deal Sanderson (1919) (a, d, p), Wagon Tracks (1919) (a, d, p) John Petticoats (1919) (a), The Toll Gate (1920) (a, p, w), Sand (1920) (a, d, p, w), The Cradle of Courage (1920) (a, p), The Testing Block (1920) (a, d, p, w), O’Malley of the Mounted (1921) (a, d, w), The Whistle (1921) (a, p), Three Word Brand (1921) (a, d, p, w), White Oak (1921) (a, d, p, w), Travelin’ On (1922) (a, d), Hollywood (1923) (a) (short – cameo), Wild Bill Hickok (1923) (a, p, w), Singer Jim McKee (1924) (a, p, w), Hello Frisco (1924) (a) (short), Tumbleweeds (1925) (a, p, w), Screen Snapshots (1926) (a) (short), Show People (1928) (a) (short – cameo), Billy the Kid (1930) (a) (short – self‑appearance), Screen Snapshots (1932) (a) (short), The Hollywood Gad‑About (1934) (a) (short), O’Malley of the Mounted (1936) (a) (short – sound adaptation using Hart material), Cinema Circus (1937) (a) (short), Screen Snapshots: Seeing Hollywood (1940) (a) (short), One Foot in Heaven (1941) (a) (short – stock footage), The Great Chase (1963) (a) (feature‑length compilation).
(Key: a = acted, d = directed, p = produced, w = wrote)