Sky High

Oh wait, that's a different movie

A couple of weeks back, TCM's Silent Sunday Nights feature was acutally a double feature of two relatively short Tom Mix movies. Now, most people have probably heard the name Tom Mix; I know for me I remember the name from crossword puzzles all the way back when I was a kid many years ago. (Ida Lupino was another common name in older crossword puzzles.) Mix was a silent screen cowboy and star of westerns, and because of most of his movies being silent and vault fires and the like, most of them are no longer known to be extant. The two TCM showed were restored and given new scores, with the first of the two being the 1922 movie Sky High.

Sky High is technically not quite a western to the extent that other movies were; it's somewhat cloesr to the singing cowboy concept of the western in that while there's horseback riding and the west, it's also set in the present day. Mix isn't even playing a cowboy, but Grant Newbury, an immigration official trying to track down illegal immigrants in the Southwest, the district running from at least El Paso in the east to Californa in the west. In those days, it wasn't Mexicans and people from further south in Central and South America trying to cross the border illegally; at least, that's not what the movie would have you believe. Instead, it's smuggers trying to bring in Chinese immigrants, presumably because it's easier to go through Mexico than through the Pacific ports. Grant captures a smuggler trying to bring a carload of them in through Arizona, before getting sent to Calexico, on the border between California and Mexico.

Meanwhile, back east in Chicago, Estelle Holloway (Eva Novak) is finishing up another year in college. Her parents have apparently died, as she's the ward of an uncle who lives somewhere out west. He's telegraphed Estelle to stay in Chicago for the summer and he'll get there when he can, but she wants to see him. Fortunately for her, her best friend Marguerite hails from the west coast and is rich enough that her family can put Estelle up for the summer, or at least long enough until they can meet the guardian and hand Estelle over to him.

Now, it doesn't take much to figure out how the two main characters' plots are going to intertwine. Sure enough, Estelle's uncle Frazer (J. Farrell MacDonald, who would go on to become a dependable character actor well into the sound era) is the ringleader of the gang trying to smuggle Chinese immigrants into the country. They've decided to keep the immigrants under wraps in a camp in the middle of the Grand Canyon, it being somewhat more inaccessible if you want to get down close to the Colorado River. Grant is going to track the gang to the Grand Canyon, while Estelle's party is going to stop at the Canyon along the way.

But it's more dramatic than that. Estelle has a dispute with Marguerite's brother when he tries to put the moves on her, so she runs off and decides to explore the canyon herself, which really should be a big no-no; don't go off trail! She gets lost and Grant rescues her. Grant unsurprisingly doesn't know of the relationship between Estelle and Frazer, while Estelle doesn't know that Frazer is a criminal or that Frazer isn't that far away. Eventually, Grant gets his man, but not after some dangerous chases through the Grand Canyon.

And it's the chases through the Grand Canyon that are the highlight of the movie. A good portion of the movie was filmed on location, and even in 100-year-old black and white, the canyon looks quite impressive. More than that, however, there's also aerial photography as part of the chase is from an airplane flying through the canyon, which was pretty risky.

So while the story in Sky High is nothing out of the ordinary, the chance to see Tom Mix as well as the historical footage of the Grand Canyon make the movie one you should definitely watch.