An entertaining yarn
Clifford Irving (1930 – 2017) became especially famous in the early 1970s when he was about to publish a life of Howard Hughes supposedly recounted to him by the reclusive billionaire but which turned out to somewhat less autobiographical than that. It earned Irving seventeen months in federal prison. In the 1980s Irving wrote The Hoax, his account of the Hughes book saga, and this was adapted into a 2006 movie starring Richard Gere as Irving – which, however, Irving characterized as a clichéd distortion of the story and “a hoax about a hoax”.
But he had an interesting life apart from this, the son of a Collier’s cover artist and the creator of the syndicated comic strip Pottsy, graduating in 1947 from Manhattan’s famous High School of Music and Art and working in a humble capacity on The New York Times. He published his first novel in 1956, and traveled the world, living on a houseboat in Kashmir and in Ibiza and Mexico. He was the friend of Graham Greene, Robert Graves and Irwin Shaw.
His novel Tom Mix and Pancho Villa dates from 1981 and, Irving said, “is my best book.”
Villa has always exercised a fascination on the American mind. Even while he was still alive, there was huge interest in his doings, especially after the Villista raid on US soil at Columbus, NM in 1916. Early silent movies were made about him (though much of the footage has now been lost) and Villa even agreed to refight some of his battles if the cameras missed them. The story is very well recounted in HBO’s And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself (see index for that and other Villa books and films). Many Mexicans did not care for the characterization of Villa by Wallace Beery in 1934 but MGM’s movie Viva Villa! was hugely popular in the US.
Whether Pancho Villa books and films belong on a Western blog may be open to debate but many movies classified as Westerns have been set south of the border, and especially if they opted for the ‘gringo in Mexico’ plot, were Western enough.
Various American actors played the gringo in Mexico. Johnny Sykes took the role in 1934. Van Heflin in Wings of the Hawk (1953), Rory Calhoun in The Treasure of Pancho Villa (1955), Clint Walker in Pancho Villa (1972) and pretend-American Lou Castel in A Bullet for the General in 1967, aka various titles, all followed. But the gringo was usually Robert Mitchum. He loved Mexico, spoke passable Spanish and appeared in a variety of ‘American gun-runner in Old Mehico’ type roles such as Villa Rides, Bandido! and The Wonderful Country. I suppose having a gringo participate in the revolutions was a way of making the story more accessible to Yanqui audiences.
Irving definitely went down that road and he didn’t just have a made-up gringo but none other than Western star of the silver screen Tom Mix.
One awkwardness of the book is that Irving evidently swallowed the quite common misconception that Mix grew up in El Paso, Texas, and thus was well placed to get involved in the revolutionary fervor. In fact Mix was born in 1880 in a frame house located between the Pennsylvania Railroad line and Bennett’s Branch of the Susquehanna River, and grew up in Pennsylvania, attending elementary, then high school in Dubois. It was there that he saw Buffalo Bill’s Wild West spectacle when he was ten. When the Spanish-American War erupted in 1898 Tom enlisted and was assigned to guard duty at the DuPont powder works in Delaware. So El Paso had nothing to do with his upbringing.
The confusion came from the fact that in 1905, at least according to Paul E Mix in his The Life and Legend of Tom Mix, Tom signed up with Company B of the Texas Rangers in Austin, TX and gave his birthplace as El Paso. When he became a Hollywood star, publicists there told all sorts of ‘biographical’ stories about him, such as that he had been an Old West sheriff, and one of these tall tales was that he had grown up in El Paso, which probably sounded more ‘Western’ than his real background.
It doesn’t matter much because the hero of Irving’s novel is just a generic young American, and not really ‘Tom Mix’ as we know him at all. Apart from a few token remarks about young Tom in Mexico thinking he’d quite like to become an actor one day, there’s nothing truly Mixian about the character. In the story he could be just any gringo in Mexico.
And in fact when Villa seriously abandoned banditry and launched his revolutionary efforts, joining Madero’s revolt in 1910, Tom Mix wasn’t exactly a boy anyway. He was already 30 by then. So the chronology doesn’t match either. Still, as I say, these are quibbles; it’s a novel after all, not a factual biography.
Irving does claim that several books mention Mix’s role as a young volunteer with the Villistas.
Early in the book Tom meets Villa across the river in Juarez and is captivated by the leader’s charm and charisma, joining him in the revolutionary struggle and remaining a staunch ally, even when, later in the book, he is recruited into Black Jack Pershing’s punitive expedition against Villa.
There’s definitely something Zelig about the book because like Woody Allen’s mockumentary character, Tom is there whenever anything of note happens to Pancho or the people around him. It is he, for example, who has to load Rodolfo Fierro’s pistols when El Carnicero took such pleasure in murdering captured federal troops in the corral at Torreon, and of course he is also present when in October 1916 Fierro sinks into that quicksand. He meets Patton and Pershing and also Von Papen. Irving has no qualms about altering history, however. Mix saves Fierro from death by quicksand, and himself kills Fierro later. In Irving’s account, Villa himself did not attack Columbus in March 1916. It is true that Villa always denied it, and several authorities have questioned it.
There is always a temptation for a novelist who mixes real historical characters with a fictional hero (for Irving’s Mix is essentially that) to fall into the Zelig trap. I’ve done it myself.
Irving’s Mix falls for three women, the fictional Hannah, who is the beautiful daughter of a Jewish merchant in El Paso, the equally made-up Rosa, a very youthful camp follower, and in Parral the factual Elisa Griensen (1888 – 1972).
Actually, Irving’s descriptions of the serial lovemaking with these beauties were a bit too graphic for my tastes and I could have done without them, in the same way that I much prefer a suggestive fade-out in a movie to explicit sex scenes. But there we are.
Irving’s Mix rises to become a colonel in the Villista forces and a close friend of Pancho.
Irving writes in an author’s note, “This is a historical fantasy, although I prefer the word romance.” He claims: “For the most part I have tried to be faithful to the facts of the Mexican Revolution and Pancho Villa’s life.”
True or not, and I fear largely not, it all does make an interesting and enjoyable read, I must say, and the Pancho Villa who emerges from the story is indeed a fascinating figure.
All in all, though, in my view James Carlos Blake’s 1996 novel The Friends of Pancho Villa (also reviewed) does in the end make a better book.
11 Responses
Jeff, good write-up of TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA(1981). I have this Historical Novel by Clifford Irving, but have yet to read it. I should move it up on my “To Read” list. I’ve been interested in this time period of the Borderland(1910-1920) since I was a youngster. I agree with you about James Carlos Blake’s THE FRIENDS OF PANCHO VILLA(1996), I think it is a very good novel by a top-notch writer.
I think Fred Bean’s PANCHO AND BLACK JACK(1995) is another good Historical Novel, which takes the alternative view that Pancho Villa wasn’t at the Columbus, New Mexico raid. This book is well worth reading and I enjoyed it.
I haven’t read the Fred Bean book. Must give that one a go!
Jeff
I did not check in your index but I suppose you have told the story of Raoul Walsh inventing probably the first docufiction by not only filming Pancho Villa but playing him in his younger years…! Besides, I have been fortunate enough to travel to Columbus NM, very quaint and fascinating at the same time. It is told that Villa did not participate in the fight but directed and overviewed it from the top of a hill.
Those interested in Pancho Villa, the Mexican revolutions and Westerns (or ‘Westerns’) set south of the border might want to read the following articles on our blog which can be found in the index:
Mexico: the American Western south of the border
And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself (HBO, 2004)
Bandidas (Europacorp, 2005)
Bandido! (United Artists, 1956)
Juarez (Warner Bros, 1939)
Pancho Villa (Granada Films, 1972)
The Treasure of Pancho Villa (RKO, 1955)
The Westerns of Raoul Walsh
The Wild Bunch (Warner Bros, 1969)
The Wonderful Country (United Artists, 1959)
Villa!! (Fox, 1958)
Viva Maria! (United Artists, 1965)
Viva Villa! (MGM, 1934)
Viva Zapata! (Fox, 1952)
Wings of the Hawk (Universal, 1953)
Jeff
Jeff, don’t forget to add your good write-ups of GARDEN OF EVIL(filmed 1953-54, released 1954), THE NAKED DAWN(filmed 1954, released 1955), THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN(1960), THE PROFESSIONALS(filmed 1965-66, released 1966), and THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA(filmed 2004, released 2005),
I’ve read the excellent ALL THE PRETTY HORSES(1992) written by Cormac McCarthy, but I haven’t got around to viewing the filmed version ALL THE PRETTY HORSES(filmed 1999, released 2000), scripted by Ted Tally, produced and directed by Billy Bob Thornton. Have you, or any other readers of your blog viewed the movie?
Unfortunately I would not recommand this movie, in spite of its casting and Thornton efforts, the film has been mutilated by Harvey Weinstein (originally it was a 3 hours film…) driving Matt Damon crazy. Stay with your novel’s impressions.
Jean-Marie, thank you for the information. Yes, I’ve read where Billy Bob Thornton’s directors cut of 162 minutes was cut down to 116 minutes by order of Weinstein. Billy Bob still has his directors cut, so we might see it someday, in the future. I don’t know if he still has his rough cut of 220 minutes, which he showed to some people.
They are Westerns set in Mexico but not revolutionary period pictures, though I guess there was something vaguely Pancho-ish about the bandido Calvera!
The movie of ALL THE PRETTY HORSES was a big disappointment compared with the book. I’ll get round to reviewing it at some point.
Jeff
And Vera Cruz indeed !
Jean-Marie, VERA CRUZ(1954) yes, of course, and also THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE(filmed 1947, released 1948). We’ll probably think of some other “South of the Border” movies.
Plenty of ‘south of the border’ ones, for sure. MAJOR DUNDEE would be another. But as I say, I was thinking more about the gringo-in-the-revolution plotline.
Jeff