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Show Tribute to Tom Mix By JACK MARTIN Copley Newi Srvic HOLLYWOOD - Over 25,000 people gathered the other day in a little town called Dubois (in Pennsylvania) Pennsyl-vania) to strut through the streets in ten-gallon hats, wear six-shooters on their hips and tin badges on their chests. They gathered to pay tribute to a movie cowboy who was old before the talkies came in and whose name means practically nothing to two generations. Their hero is man named Tom Mix who galloped in total silence across the silver sil-ver screen in more than 300 films and died 42 years ago. Astonishingly his fans have flourished around the world in recent years and the visitors to Dubois showed up from all over America as well as England, Eng-land, Austria, West Germany, Germa-ny, Australia and South Africa. Af-rica. When folks ask, "Tom who?" these ardent admirers admir-ers stare them down in the sort of cold silence that usually precedes a fast draw. Their claim is that Mix was the original screen cowboy: the man who set the standards and the image that was to be imitated by western actors from John Wayne to Clint Eastwood. "When you saw Tom Mix on the screen you knew that good was going to triumph tri-umph over evil. The bad guys didn't have a chance," said Robert Cotton, a film historian from Oklahoma. Kurt Kotzbach from West Germany said: "He was the hero of Europe. He has 5 million fans there and even Hitler couldn't ban his films during the war." Such is the depth of worship wor-ship that four states Texas, Oklahoma, California Califor-nia and Pennsylvania are claiming Mix as a native son. But in Dubois they produced official-looking documents that say Mix was born in 1880 some 40 miles down the road in a place called Mix Run. So how did these torrid Tom fans celebrate the event? Well, they watched some 30 hours of his old movies, stuffed themselves on food Mix once plugged on radio commercials, and tried to emulate the hard-riding hard-riding antics he performed on a horse called Tony. Yep, pardner, it was some weekend. CELEBRATING OF ANOTHER SORT: Meanwhile Mean-while the rich and famous were gathering at Maxwell's Max-well's Plum, the glitzie New York eatery, for a grand reopening after its big face-lift. Just who gathered? Well, Lauren Bacall and her archenemy ar-chenemy Raquel Welch (they've been saying oh-such-nasty-things about each other since Welch replaced re-placed Bacall on B'way in "Woman of the Year"), Richard Dreyfus, Mary Tyler Moore, designer deluxe de-luxe Jacques Bellini (with the sexy Tara Tyson Kulu-kundris) Kulu-kundris) and Dudley Moore (with the sexy Susan Anton). The most spectacular sight, however, was not the aforementioned swells. Nor the multitude of stained-glass windows nor the Venetian chandeliers that cost every penny of $60,000 each. It was the suit worn by the restaurant's owner, Warner Leroy, son of the legendary "Wizard of Oz" director, Mervyn Leroy. Warner wore a sort of zebra swirl of glitter chiffon in orange, red and black speckled with silver and gold (with just a jolt of ketchup on the left lapel but who's perfect?). Said the happy host, "It's one of my more understated understat-ed outfits." Liberace would have been Schiaparelli pink with envy. TIGHT SQUEEZE: The dynamic Dyan Cannon was buying herself a pair of designer de-signer jeans (by Calvin Klein, who else?) the other ayem in Bev Hills. She wanted them to fit really perrrrfectly so, to get them firmly attached to her lower torso, Dyan had to lie on the floor while her 15-year-old daughter Jennifer Jen-nifer (offspring of Cary Grant, remember?) zipped them up. Verrry carefully. MAGIC TIME: Trust you caught the opening show for the new season of "60 Minutes" the other Sunday. Because if you missed it, you missed one of the marvels mar-vels of 20th century show biz, Melina Mercouri, telling tell-ing about how she's (at least temporarily) given up the glitz and glamour to become minister of art and culture in her home country coun-try of Greece. And as usual and always, Melina was magic as the show (and an obviously dazzled Harry Reasoner) followed her around Athens as she performed her governmental goings-on, goings-on, with every inch of the Mercouri vim, vigor and voluptuousness very much intact. And the lady's doing such a bang-up job that the whispers abound that Madame Ma-dame Minister just might wind up Madame Premier one day. As in Nancy Reagan eat your heart out! |
