Tom Santschi — Blue Book of the Screen (1923) 🇺🇸

If one now attempted to correct the matter by advertising a production featuring that sterling artist, “Paul William” Santschi, how many of the millions who admire “Tom” would guess that it referred in any way to the man who made fighting really famous, although he had never been in a ring?

Mr. Santschi became a “hero” with those who were attracted to the few places which showed “animated photography,” about fifteen years ago. He had mixed a previous professional experience of ten years with stage work and piano playing, the latter stunt being carefully guarded in late years.

Joining Selig [William Nicholas Selig] in Chicago, Tom was one of those who brought East and West together in a cinema way, when he was leading man with the first picture company to “shoot” in the fair land of Southern California, a pioneering trip which has resulted eventually in transferring Broadway from New York to the City of the Angels, to say nothing of causing ten banks to spring up where but one languished before.

Santschi’s maiden effort before the camera was in that very famous play, “The Heart of Maryland.” Although the stage version ran for almost three hours, the Selig company cheerfully galloped the whole thing into a one-reel photodrama which occupied just fifteen minutes of screen time. For ten years Santschi, together with such early stars as Kathlyn Williams, Bessie Eyton and Tom Mix, trouped under the Selig banner, grinding out one-reel super-features and, towards the close of the period, going to such depths as two and three-reelers.

Hobart Bosworth, another well-known actor at the time, began bobbing up in productions with the doughty Thomas, usually with his fists doubled.

Santschi was six feet, one inch tall, weighing about 190 pounds, but Bosworth was no baby himself, and the ensuing clashes made film history in those days.

Then, with Bosworth gone elsewhere to star, came “The Spoilers,” and Tom’s grand clash with Bill Farnum [William Farnum], a battle which was to make the doctors happy and give the films a challenge which never has been successfully answered since.

When pictures became entertainment instead of novelty, Mr. Santschi appeared in such notable film productions as “The Garden of Allah,” “The Crisis,” “The Still Alarm” and “The City of Purple Dreams.”

At times Santschi wanders away, a stack of guns on his back and the mountains in the far background, while wild animals of the immediate region make hasty preparations to emigrate. He fishes with the same grim purpose that he attends the wounds of his luckless automobile.

Tom Santschi has many personal friends; it hardly could be otherwise, for he arid an irresistible personality have been piling them up since October 24, 1878, the date he made Missouri famous.

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It looks as though Tom Santschi were a student of genealogy with the solemn ancestor looking over his shoulder.

Portrait by C. Heighton Monroe • Los Angeles

Collection: The Blue Book of the Screen (1923)