was expiring, might become available, he used his control of Fred Thomson Productions, the supposed tax shelter, to freeze Thomson out of motion pictures entirely. That December, Thomson died—the immediate cause of death was tetanus; his widow, screenwriter Frances Marion, said that he had lost his will to live. Among Western stars under long-term contract, FBO's next most important—though by a distance—was Tom Tyler, who finished twenty-third among men in the 1927 exhibitors' poll. According to a hyperbolic June 1927 report in Moving Picture World: "With Tom Tyler rapidly taking the place recently vacated by Fred Thomson [for the Paramount sojourn from which he would never return], F.B.O.'s program of western pictures is taking a place second to none in the industry. Tyler has made rapid strides during his two years with F.B.O. and with his horse 'Flash' and dog, 'Beans,' has become one of the leading favorites on the screen." Tyler's appeal was also enhanced by his human costars—Frankie Darro (tied for fifty-fourth in the poll) as his young sidekick on over two dozen occasions and starlets such as Doris Hill, Nora Lane, Sharon Lynn, and in Born to Battle (1926), a twenty-five-year-old Jean Arthur. As 1928 began, Tyler was the most popular actor actually working at FBO, but Kennedy wanted the big gun. He bided his time as Tom Mix toured the Orpheum vaudeville theaters with a live show—boosting Kennedy's new exhibition interests—and legal machinations ensured Thomson's exile. Finally, Mix was signed to a six-film deal and began shooting in July. He ultimately made five pictures for the studio (two released after it had ceased to exist), and stayed near the top of the exhibitors' poll, his 112 votes good enough for second among the men, if well behind the 171 of MGM's Lon Chaney (no other FBO regular made it into double digits). But the spread of the talkies was swiftly making the silent sagebrush superstar less of a sure thing. Variety derided Mix's last FBO film, The Big Diamond Robbery, released in May 1929, as "cowboy burlesque". His brief tenure at the studio was marked by salary grievances—he was now making only $10,000 a week—and dismay at FBO's inferior production values, from its worndown sets to the cut-rate film stock it used. Subsequently asked about his experience working with Kennedy, Mix described him as a "tight-assed, money-crazy son-of-a-bitch." In addition to these major draws, there was