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William S. Hart
Projecting the American West
Published by: University of Oklahoma Press
Imprint: University of Oklahoma Press
286 Pages | 6 x 9 | 36 b&w illus.
$21.95
Stage actor turned Hollywood star, William S. Hart (1864—1946) was for movie fans a cherished symbol of the romantic Old West. His silent westerns offered excitement, lessons in righteous behavior, and a nostalgic vision of the American frontier. This intriguing biography explores the personal and professional life of Hollywood’s prototypical cowboy hero.
Born in Newburgh, New York, Hart grew up in a Victorian atmosphere that gave rise to the rigid morality prevalent in many of his films. From 1914 to 1924, he appeared in or produced more than sixty movies, but it was not until he abandoned Shakespearean characters for parts in The Squaw Man and The Virginian that Hart truly assumed his western persona.
For the first time, readers are given insights into Hart’s somewhat lonely and tragic personal life, his quarrels with exploitive studios, and his association with such latter-day frontier legends as Charles M. Russell, Bat Masterson, and Wyatt Earp, who regarded him as a kindred spirit. Other highlights of this book include excerpts from his previously unpublished letters to starlet Jane Novak, Hart’s one-time fiancée, as well as numerous photographs from studio and private collections.
Drawing on Hart’s papers, primary sources of the Motion Picture Academy, oral histories, and contemporary newspapers, this chronicle of Hart’s life is the first since his own starry-eyed autobiography, My Life East and West, appeared in 1929.
Ronald L. Davis was Professor of History at Southern Methodist University, where he was Director of both the Oral History Program on the Performing Arts and the De Golyer Institute for American Studies. He has written many books on the performing arts in America, including the best-seller Hollywood Anecdotes.
“While buffs and professional historians alike may be unfamiliar with William S. Hart’s career in the early twentieth century, Ronald L. Davis gives ample reason for western fans to come to attention. His work on the complicated life of Hart is important to those interested in the birth and growth of American western mythology, the history of early American film, and how Hart himself became a part of the western ethos…Most fascinating about this work is the author’s connection between Hart’s western idealism and his background as a classically trained stage actor. By taking Hart’s career as a whole, the author draws a clear line between the actor’s Shakespearian roots and flare for the dramatics with his later obsession with portraying the West in moralistic and Turnerian fashion. By the 1930s filmmakers like John Ford popularized a new generation of westerns, but Hart’s impact on the genre remains. If you have seen a western film with a protagonist gritting his teeth or protecting his heart in a shootout, you have seen a filmed directly or indirectly touched by William S. Hart.”—Panhandle-Plains Historical Review
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