Tim McCoy
1891 - 1978
He was every little boy’s ideal: strong, brave, manly and quietly assured as he rode his horse into the sunset. He was the quintessential hero of the Wild West. However, movie and TV idol Tim McCoy was born in Saginaw, Michigan, April 10, 1891.
His father, Tim McCoy Sr., was one of Saginaw’s great police chiefs, serving in the days when a policeman had to be able to lick every man in town. It was from his dad that young Tim received his ideas of law and order, right and wrong. From the start, the West attracted him. His boyhood friend, William Hume, remembered, “When Tim and I were young, we developed a cowboy roping act by practicing in my backyard. If I do say myself, we were pretty good…” Tim attended Hoyt School and St. Mary’s before studying at St. Ignatius Loyola College in Chicago, but he left Loyola after one year to fulfill his childhood dream of becoming a rancher in Wyoming.
World Wars I and II gave him the opportunity to become a genuine hero. He served as a cavalry officer and then in the infantry and was awarded the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star, the Army Commendation Medal and the French Air Medal.
After World War I, he became an aide to General Hugh Scott, an Indian fighter of the late 1880s and 1890s and later, army chief of staff. McCoy was appointed adjutant general of Wyoming. He and General Scott shared an interest in Indian language, including sign language, and Scott passed his considerable expertise on to the younger man. It was that knowledge, along with his rapport with the Indians, that led Tim McCoy to fame and fortune.
In 1922 Paramount Pictures was producing a Western extravaganza, “The Covered Wagon,” but they ran into difficulties in finding Indians who were, of course, essential to the plot. Since Tim McCoy was familiar with several tribes and knew their language, Paramount called on him for help. McCoy provided 500 Indians and got a bit part in the film which led to a spectacular career on the screen. He and a group of Indians appeared in a live prologue to the film when it opened in 1923 in Hollywood.
The prologue was such a tremendous success that he was invited to make similar appearances in London and Paris. MGM, knowing a good thing when they saw it, signed him to star in its Westerns. He also made pictures—over 100—for Universal, Columbia and Monogram, a studio that specialized in Westerns. He was inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1974 with another outstanding Western hero, John Wayne.
In 1933, while on a visit to his family, McCoy was interviewed by the Saginaw News. “You can’t fool today’s boys,” he told them when asked about the movie-going public. “They want action adventure but they want it in terms they can understand.”
There were times when Tim McCoy’s Western roles came a bit too close to reality. In 1926 he was on location in Lander, Wyoming, with a troupe of 50 Arapahos and Shoshones. Robbers had held up a Union Pacific train in the area and made off with its mail pouches. McCoy and the Indians were enlisted in a manhunt for the two criminals and in the resulting melee McCoy took a bullet in his neck. The same year he served as a translator when the touring Crown Prince of Sweden was made an honorary member of the Arapaho tribe.
A dedicated Republican, he campaigned for Wendell Willkie in 1940 and in 1942 also ran for senator from Wyoming but lost by 500 votes.
In 1947 McCoy was married to a beautiful Washington newspaper writer, Inga Arvad, who had made headlines by interviewing Adolph Hitler.
When television came along, Tim McCoy was quick to see its possibilities. He researched, wrote, directed and acted in a live show that also featured his old movies. It was a prime-time favorite for more than 70 weeks and won an Emmy award. In 1959 he was the subject of a Ralph Edwards “This Is Your Life” show on NBC.
He was on radio, wrote a book and travelled with Wild West shows and circuses, including Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. In 1964, at the age of 73, he made 270 personal appearances.
He died in Nogales, Arizona, on January 29, 1978, at the age of 87. He had long exceeded his goal to be in the saddle before the public longer than Buffalo Bill Cody who died at 71.
Tim McCoy always said his life was guided by three basics: a man should be proud of himself as an individual; he must be 120% honest at all times and “there is no such thing as the new morality.”