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The defense of innocence : After the rescue, "he made a bashful face at a girl and his horse raised its upper lip and everybody laughed."
Hart on location : "/ was content. I was surrounded
by no greedy grafters, no . . . slimy creatures — just dogs,
horses, sheep, goats, bulls, mules, burros and . . . men.
in the public eye . . . undergo a difficult discipline and the acquisition of an elaborate system of knowledge." Hart's Westerner had done so; he rode and shot with preternatural skill, had available to him the most obscure bits of outdoor know-how, insuring his triumph in difficult situations. He was, in short, that most admired American phenomenon, the Old Pro, so sure in his hard-won skills that his mere presence was a comfort.
Hart himself seems to have been unaware of the depths he had touched in the nation's unconscious. A rather average stage actor who had spent most of his boyhood in the West, he had been appalled by the lack of realism in the early Westerns, had begged his friend the producer Thomas Ince for a chance to do honest films about the West. Ince, thinking that the genre's popularity was finished, had only grudgingly given Hart his chance. His first, a stark little item called The Bargain, was a surprise hit, and Ince had to bring Hart back to Hollywood from New York, whither he had retreated, convinced that there would be no more Westerns suitable for him. Ince, who had merged with Griffith and Sennett to form Triangle, exploited Hart shamelessly, keep
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ing his salary low while his popularity leaped upward. Whenever Hart complained, the producer played on the actor's strong and simple sense of loyalty to keep him in line, preventing him from capitalizing on his popularity until it had passed its peak.
Triangle was finally absorbed by Paramount, and Hart received an excellent contract, but he was soon dropped, and that studio, then in control of the strongest theater chain in the nation, kept his subsequent independent productions out of the best houses. Commercially, they were probably right. Hart's attention was too firmly fixed on such surface matters as realism of setting and simplicity of moral. In the twenties, when the traditional morality of rural America, on which Hart had based his work, was in retreat from the disorderly assaults of the younger generation, and when the mass audience was more interested in romance than in reality, he was woefully out of step. He turned down The Covered Wagon, a great comeback opportunity, because it lacked realism, and retired to his ranch. He refused to allow development of its oil resources, not wanting his view to be spoiled by derricks.
"These hills were mine, and had been mine since my birth."
— William S. Hart