Jay Silverheels

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File:Jay-silverheels-01.png
Jay Silverheels at Meadows racetrack Pennsylvania in the 1970s

Jay Silverheels (born Harold John Smith, May 26, 1912 – March 5, 1980)[1] was a First Nations actor. He was well known for his role as Tonto, the faithful American Indian companion of the character The Lone Ranger[2][3] in a long-running American western television series.[4]

Early life

Silverheels was born Harold John Smith on the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation, near Brantford, Ontario, Canada, one of 11 children[5] of a Canadian Mohawk tribal chief and military officer,[6] Major George Smith.[7][8] Silverheels excelled in athletics and lacrosse before leaving home to travel around North America. In the 1930s, he played indoor lacrosse as Harry Smith with the "Iroquois" of Rochester, New York in the North American Amateur Lacrosse Association.[9] He lived for a time in Buffalo, New York, and in 1938 placed second in the Middleweight class of the Golden Gloves tournament.[10]

Career

Films

While playing in Los Angeles on a touring box lacrosse team in 1937, he impressed Joe E. Brown with his athleticism. Brown encouraged Silverheels to do a screen test, which led to his acting career.[11] Silverheels began working in motion pictures as an extra and stunt man[12][13] in 1937.[7] He was billed variously as Harold Smith and Harry Smith, and appeared in low-budget features, westerns, and serials.[14] He adopted his screen name from the nickname he had as a lacrosse player.[15][16][17] From the late 1940s, he played in major films, including Captain from Castile starring Tyrone Power, I Am an American (1944),[18] Key Largo with Humphrey Bogart (1948), Lust for Gold with Glenn Ford (1949), Broken Arrow (1950) with James Stewart, War Arrow (1953) with Maureen O'Hara, Jeff Chandler and Noah Beery, Jr., The Black Dakotas (1954) as Black Buffalo, Drums Across the River (1954), Walk the Proud Land (1956) with Audie Murphy and Anne Bancroft, Alias Jesse James (1959) with Bob Hope, and Indian Paint (1964) with Johnny Crawford. He made a brief appearance in True Grit (1969) as a condemned criminal about to be executed. He played a substantial role as John Crow in Santee (1973), starring Glenn Ford. One of his last roles was a wise white-haired chief in The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973).

Television

File:Lone Ranger and Tonto 1956.jpg
Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger and Jay Silverheels as Tonto. Moore is riding Silver, while Silverheels is riding Scout.

Silverheels achieved his greatest fame as Tonto on The Lone Ranger. The fictional story line maintains that a small group of Texas Rangers, except for The Lone Ranger, were massacred. The Lone Ranger and Tonto then ride throughout the West to assist those challenged by the lawless element. Their expenses and bullets are provided through a silver mine owned by The Lone Ranger, who also names his horse "Silver".[19] Being irreplaceable in his role, Silverheels appeared in film sequels: The Lone Ranger (1956) and The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958).[20]

When The Lone Ranger television series ended, Silverheels found himself firmly typecast as an American Indian. On January 6, 1960, he portrayed an Indian fireman trying to extinguish a forest fire in the episode "Leap of Life" in the syndicated series, Rescue 8, starring Jim Davis and Lang Jeffries.[21]

Eventually, he went to work as a salesman to supplement his acting income.[22] He also began to publish poetry inspired by his youth on the Six Nations Indian Reserve and recited his work on television. In 1966, he guest-starred as John Tallgrass in the short-lived ABC comedy/western series The Rounders, with Ron Hayes, Patrick Wayne, and Chill Wills.

Despite the typecasting, Silverheels in later years often poked fun at his character. In 1969, he appeared as Tonto without The Lone Ranger in a comedy sketch on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.[23] The sketch was featured on the 1973 record album Here's Johnny: Magic Moments From The Tonight Show. "My name is Tonto. I hail from Toronto and I speak Esperanto." In 1970, he appeared in a commercial for Chevrolet as an Indian chief who rescues two lost hunters who ignored his advice in that year's Chevy Blazer. The William Tell Overture is heard in the background.

Silverheels hilariously spoofed his Tonto character in a famous Stan Freberg Jeno's Pizza Rolls TV commercial opposite Clayton Moore, and in The Phynx, opposite John Hart, both having played The Lone Ranger in the original television series.

He appeared in three episodes of NBC's Daniel Boone, starring Fess Parker as the real life frontiersman.

His later appearances included an episode of ABC's The Brady Bunch, as an Indian who befriends the Bradys in the Grand Canyon, and in an episode of the short-lived Dusty's Trail, starring Bob Denver of Gilligan's Island.

In the early 1960s, Silverheels supported the Indian Actors Workshop,[24] where American Indian actors refined their skills[25] in Echo Park, California.[26] Today the workshop is firmly established.[27]

Personal life

Silverheels raised, bred and raced Standardbred horses in his spare time. Once, when asked about possibly running Tonto's famous Paint horse Scout in a race, Jay laughed off the idea: "Heck, I can outrun Scout!"[28]

Married in 1945, Silverheels was the father of three girls and a boy.[29]

File:Jay Silverheels star HWF.JPG
Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6538 Hollywood Blvd.

Death

Silverheels suffered a stroke in 1976.[30] The following year Moore rode a paint horse in Silverheels' honour.[citation needed]

Jay Silverheels died on March 5, 1980 from complications of a stroke at age sixty-seven in Calabasas, California.[31] He was cremated at Chapel of the Pines Crematory, and his ashes were returned to the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario.[30]

Legacy

In 1993, Silverheels was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He was named to the Western New York Entertainment Hall of Fame, and his portrait hangs in Buffalo, New York's Shea's Buffalo Theatre. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6538 Hollywood Boulevard. First Americans in the Arts honored Jay Silverheels with their Life Achievement Award.

In 1997, Silverheels was inducted, under the name Harry "Tonto" Smith, into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in the Veteran Player category in recognition of his lacrosse career during the 1930s.

Selected filmography

Television

  • The Lone Ranger - 217 episodes - Tonto (1949-1957)
  • Wide Wide World - episode - The Western - Himself (1958)
  • Wanted: Dead or Alive - episode - Man on Horseback - Charley Red Cloud (1959)
  • Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color - episode - Texas John Slaughter: Apache Friendship & Texas John Slaughter: Geronimo's Revenge - Natchez (1960)
  • Gunslinger - episode - The Recruit - Hopi Indian (1961)
  • Wagon Train - episode - Path of the Serpent - The Serpent (1961)
  • Rawhide - episode - The Gentleman's Gentleman - Pawnee Joe (1961)
  • Laramie - episode - The Day of the Savage - Toma (1962)
  • Daniel Boone - episode - Mountain of the Dead - Chenrogan (1964)
  • Daniel Boone - episode - The Quietists - Latawa (1965)
  • Branded - episode - The Test - Wild Horse (1965)
  • Daniel Boone - episode - The Christmas Story - Sashona (1965)
  • Gentle Ben - episode - Invasion of Willie Sam Gopher - Willie Sam Gopher (1967)
  • The Virginian - episode - The Heritage - Den'Gwatzi (1968)
  • The Brady Bunch - episode - The Brady Braves - Chief Eagle Cloud (1971)
  • The Virginian - episode - The Animal - Spotted Hand (1971)
  • Cannon - episode - Valley of the Damned - Jimmy One Eye (1973)
  • CHiPs-episode-Poachers (1980)

See also

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ [1] Archived September 7, 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ The 16 minute film, I Am an American, was featured in American theaters as a short feature in connection with "I Am an American Day" (now called Constitution Day). I Am an American was produced by Gordon Hollingshead, written and directed by Crane Wilbur, and featured Humphrey Bogart, Gary Gray, Gordon Hart, Dick Haymes, Danny Kaye, Joan Leslie, Mary Lee Moody, Dennis Morgan, Knute Rockne, and Jay Silverheels. See: I Am An American at the TCM Movie Database and Lua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value). I Am an American at IMDb.
  19. ↑ Billy Hathorn, "Roy Bean, Temple Houston, Bill Longley, Ranald Mackenzie, Buffalo Bill, Jr., and the Texas Rangers: Depictions of West Texans in Series Television, 1955 to 1967", West Texas Historical Review, Vol. 89 (2013), p. 103
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  26. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  27. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  29. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

Bibliography

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External links

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