Jay Silverheels was a Mohawk Canadian actor and athlete.
Background
Jay Silverheels was born Harold Jay ("Harry") Smith on the Six Nations Indian Reserve near Brantford, Ontario, Canada. A Mohawk Indian, he was the son of Captain A. G. E. Smith, the most decorated Canadian Indian soldier during World War I; little is known about his mother. Along with his nine brothers and sisters, he was raised on his family's farm on the reserve.
Education
Silverheels left the Brantford Collegiate Institute at the age of seventeen to play professional lacrosse in Toronto.
Career
Because of his athleticism, he became one of the greatest professional lacrosse players in Canada by the mid-1930's.
Since he always ran on the balls of his feet with his heels up and had blinding speed, he became known to family members, to Mohawk Indians, and to lacrosse devotees as "Silverheels, " the stage name he used throughout his acting career. Nine years before his death, he legally changed his surname to Silverheels. Besides his legendary skills in lacrosse, he was a semiprofessional hockey player; a football, track, and wrestling star; and winner of the Eastern States Middleweight Golden Gloves Boxing Championship in the United States in 1937.
He was also an established horseman, a skill that later proved beneficial in his acting career.
In 1938, Silverheels was "discovered" by the comedian Joe E. Brown during a lacrosse match. Brown served as his mentor, promoting Silverheels's slow rise to fame by introducing him to the Hollywood film industry.
Silverheels became a member of the Screen Actors Guild and, soon after, found himself working as an extra, making $16. 50 per day falling off horses in battle scenes in Hollywood Westerns.
For nearly ten years, he struggled to make a living as an extra in B Westerns and in memorable motion pictures such as Drums Along the Mohawk (1939). Silverheels's first major screen role was as an Aztec prince in Captain from Castile in 1947.
The following year, he had a bit part in the film classic Key Largo (1948). In all, Silverheels performed in 32 Westerns and all 221 television episodes of "The Lone Ranger. "
Besides Captain from Castile, his major film credits included playing Geronimo in Broken Arrow (1950); costarring in The Lone Ranger (1956) and The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958); and appearing in Brave Warrior (1952), Saskatchewan (1954), True Grit (1970), and The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973).
He also appeared in numerous television episodes, including "Cade County" and "Love American Style, " as well as in television commercials. Although he was by no means the first Native American to succeed in Hollywood, Silverheels was the leading actor playing Native American roles from 1940 to 1970. Much of his fame as an actor stemmed from his role as Tonto in the "Lone Ranger" television series, which he recreated in two full-length motion pictures. As a result of his earlier film credits and his horsemanship skills, Silverheels was selected to costar as Tonto opposite John Hart and, later, Clayton Moore. This highly successful ABC network program, a television version of the famous radio program created by Fran Striker in 1933, ran from 1949 to 1957 and has been widely syndicated in reruns around the world since its final espisode.
Unlike the forceful, articulate Lone Ranger, Tonto had no mask, no silver bullets, rode a pinto horse named Scout, and spoke in butchered English. As the friendly and loyal Indian companion of "Kemo-sabe, " Tonto was presented as a decent man of innate wisdom who could track down "bad hombres" with the best of them.
Despite being criticized by many politically active Indians for playing this clearly subservient role, Silverheels's character was the first major Indian film hero and paved the way for other Native American actors, such as Chief Dan George, Graham Greene, and Will Sampson. Until Silverheels, Indian actors - with the exception of Will Rogers, who played cowboys - had largely been relegated to the roles of foils or villains in Western epics.
In 1960, Silverheels protested the way Native Americans were portrayed in films, sending letters to President Dwight Eisenhower, Vice-President Richard Nixon, and the executives of the three major television networks. He also assisted aspiring actors and in 1963 founded the Indian Actors Workshop in Hollywood, working later with Jonathan Winters and Buffy Sainte-Marie in this endeavor.
In 1974, Silverheels obtained a license to work as a harness racing driver and raced competitively with his horse Tribal Dance. His racing days ended when he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed. After being treated for a heart condition, he died in the Motion Picture and Television Country House at Woodland Hills, California.
Achievements
Interests
Jay Silverheels raised, bred and raced Standardbred horses in his spare time.
Connections
He married Mary Di Roma in 1945, and they had four children.