It is hard to believe that the last five years since the inception of this blog flew by – not to mention having the material and creativity to keep it going. The first post written was Welcome to the Trigger Tom Blog! and was certainly the appropriate opening to information about Tom not seen in his biography by Mike Chapman. Keeping an ongoing, unique niche blog dedicated to Tom Tyler (apparently the only one of its kind to exist ever since the earliest days of the Internet) with engaging and interesting information about Tom has at times been challenging but fulfilling in its own way, bringing little elements of his background to life.
As Aventuras de Tom Tyler enters the New Year of 2022, the search for Tom’s lost silent films and Monogram Pictures westerns continues – and any updates will be made here on this blog.
On a final note for this blog entry – three years from 2022 will mark Tom Tyler’s 100th Anniversary of his debut as a leading man in silent film. Specifically, September 1925 when “Let’s Go Gallagher” was released for exhibition across the nation. “Let’s Go Gallagher” remains the Holy Grail of lost Tom Tyler silent films – here’s hoping that it will be rediscovered in 2022.
men, Shorty Gibbs (Thomas G. Lingham), left the gang on his own volition, only to try and rejoin. Late on night, Rand and Gibbs end up fighting while hiding out by Rock of the Snakes. At the center of the fight is Rand's young son Jimmy. Rand is under the impression that his son has no idea as to what is going on with regards to his illegal activities, and he seems blind to the fact that Jimmy is indeed aware, a fact brought up by Gibbs. Having no mother, the last thing Jimmy needed to know was that he did not have a real father figure in his life. For Rand, having to worry about his son knowing that he is an outlaw, was just as bad as worrying about Corrigan tracking him down and shooting him. Later that evening at the Rand homestead, John seriously asks his son Jimmy if he knew about the cattle rustling the elder Rand was involved in. It is at this moment when Jimmy feels like he has already lost his father, even though his father loves the boy very much, but not to the point where he is willing to go straight, and is not in a position to go straight, being unable to afford supporting a son. For all intents and purposes, the last person John Rand needs to lose is his son, but the law finally catch up with him.
In a major ambush, Tom Corrigan shoots The Desert Pirate, and discovering Jimmy, takes him under his wing. Tom feels bad for having shot the boy’s father, has a crisis of conscience before turning in his sheriff badge before moving away with Jimmy to a remote area and starting a new life together. The two pals arrive upon a distant ranch house and meet Ann Farnham (Duane Thompson), whose father is the owner. After making a gambling deal of his ranch to a bandit named Norton (Edward Hearn), the elder Farnham appeals to Tom to help save the property. More than happy to help the Farnhams due to his growing romance with Ann, Tom successfully defends their side while having it out with the crooked Norton. With the Farnham ranch in the clear, Tom marries Ann, and become new parents for Jimmy, the boy who lost his birth father through traumatic means, yet a much greater good happened for him which made for a happy ending.
Written by Frank Howard Clark, and Tom Tyler's early Hollywood friend Oliver Drake who created the scenario, "The Desert Pirate" offers the viewer a different facet of Tom's onscreen persona, possibly the earliest of its kind, pre-"A Rider of the Plains" (1931). Tom’s role as sheriff is in an awkward position in the story, assuming a responsibility he had not planned for but felt he had a moral obligation to do so with regards to his relationship with Frankie Darro’s character.
“Partners of the Trail” (1931) is a pre-Code sound film made for Monogram Pictures, a company formed the same year this film was released. Its adult themes are different from those as presented in “The Desert Pirate”; here, infidelity, friendship with the accused, and murder are intertwined to make a gripping thriller for Tom’s maturing audience.
The two men spend time with each other in town until one day when local law enforcement takes note of one of the men who they suspect was involved with the shooting crime. Durant gets arrested by Sheriff McWade (Lafe McKee) and put in jail for the crime that Larry committed. Thinking that he is safe for now, Larry continues to stay in town and lay low, until Durant eventually breaks jail. Finally recognizing Larry for who he is, Durant wants to shoot him in an act of revenge but decides against it. Striving to make amends because he valued the friendship he has with Larry, Durant resolves the conflict between them. Sheriff McWade discloses to the two men that the person shot dead was Larry’s wife, which means that her lover was Durant. Confessing to the crime, Larry is escorted off to jail while Durant ends up marrying Ruby.
“Partners of the Trail” seems to be the perfect western to follow “A Rider of the Plains” (1931), another Monogram Pictures film. According to The Western: From Silents to Cinerama (1962) by George N. Fenin and William K. Everson, "Partners of the Trail" describes a rather unusual scene for a common fanfare western of the early 1930's: an inebriated Durant scribbling his name on the adobe wall in his residence. The authors explain the reason for scenes like this is due to the fact that they could be done, before the Hays Code went into place in 1934. Post-Code Hollywood, the exhibiting of a drunk character, especially the protagonist, would not be seen writing all over the walls inside a house, regardless of what the written words may be. Likewise in the use of the theme of infidelity – a topic which until “Partners of the Trail” remained non-existent in Tom Tyler westerns. So why infidelity? Aside from the Hays Code, it is possible that this one-dominant topic of many a dramatic silent film might be viewed as more translatable to sound film in Tom’s case. As the fourth feature-length sound film Tom Tyler starred in, his first-generation audiences were certainly old enough to understand this adult concept, especially as they approached the age of marriage and full-time employment. That carefree interval known as teenage years remained yet to exist, being established in the 1950’s. What also needs to be taken into consideration is that Tom’s character is originally perceived to be chivalrous towards his wife, supposedly protecting her from the man who Larry thinks he shot but did not. Surprisingly, “Partners of the Trail” was marketed in such a manner to maintain the friction between Tom Tyler and his nemesis Reginald Sheffield in the movie and downplay exactly who Tom murders in the story. Moreover, the actress who does play Tom’s wife remains unnamed, possibly due to her very limited onscreen time at the beginning of the story.
"Partners of the Trail" was written by Will Beale and adapted by George Arthur Durlam who also wrote the screenplay, and while this remains Beale's only story to make it to the silver screen ("Partners of the Trail" was later remade as "Sagebrush Trail" in 1933 with John Wayne and Lane Chandler in the starring roles), such descriptions as the above mentioned scene and Durlam's work on Tom Tyler's "Two Fisted Justice" (1931) suggest that the writing is tight enough to receive some degree of acclaim and perhaps notoriety of being a lost film. As with many of the lost Monogram Pictures films, film stills and posters from "Partners of the Trail" have survived, along with synopses from Hollywood trade publications. Considering the nature of Tom Tyler’s character in this western, it is easily comparable to his role of an outlaw in “A Rider of the Plains”, quite possibly even an extension of Blackie Saunders, had the character’s name not been changed. On the plus side, “Partners of the Trail” and “The Desert Pirate” remain the earliest examples of mature themes in Tom’s films which he clearly had no trouble handling at all when he fell into role. For those who have seen and understood the intensity of Tom Tyler’s performance as Luke Plummer in “Stagecoach” (1939), the vast majority of his starring roles in westerns have been heroic, with few variations, but depict the fine actor he truly was.
