to Tom Mix. This led to his first starring role, The Last Straw, released in 1920. Stardom In 1925 Jones made three films with a very young Carole Lombard. He had more than 160 film credits to his name by this time and had joined Hoot Gibson, Tom Mix, and Ken Maynard as the top cowboy actors of the day. By 1928 he formed his own production company, but his independently produced film The Big Hop (a non-Western) failed. He then organized a touring Wild West show, with himself as a featured attraction, but this expensive venture also failed due to the faltering economy of late 1929. With the new talking pictures replacing silent films as a national pastime, outdoor Westerns fell out of favor briefly. The major studios weren't interested in hiring Buck Jones. He signed with Columbia Pictures, then just a lowly "B" picture studio, starring in Westerns for $300 a week, a fraction of his top salary in the silent-film days. His voice—a rugged baritone—recorded well and the films were very successful, re-establishing him as a major movie name. During the 1930s he starred in Western features and serials for Columbia and Universal Pictures. His star waned in the late 1930s when singing cowboys became the rage and Jones, then in his late 40s, was uncomfortably cast in conventional leading-man roles. He rejoined Columbia in the fall of 1940, starring in the serial White Eagle (an expansion of his 1932 feature of the same name). The new serial was a hit and Jones was again re-established. His final series of Western features, co-produced by Jones and his friend Scott R. Dunlap of Monogram Pictures, featured The Rough Riders trio: Buck Jones, Tim McCoy, and Raymond Hatton. Radio In 1937 Jones starred in Hoofbeats, a syndicated 15-minute radio program. The 39 episodes could be broadcast daily, weekly, or multiple times a week by individual radio stations. The stories were narrated by "the Old Wrangler" and told the adventures of Buck Jones and his horse Silver. The program was produced in the studios of Recordings, Inc., with Grape Nuts Flakes as sponsor. Merchandising Buck Jones lent his name and likeness to various product endorsements, including Post Grape-Nuts Flakes (his radio sponsor), a short-lived pulp magazine and Daisy Outdoor Products. His licensing also extended to the Big Little Book series, for example: Buck Jones and The Two Gun Kid (1937)