Maybe it was his homegrown Nebraska beginnings or his quaint, anecdotal affinity for owl-hunting. Something about Hoot Gibson made audiences adore him. Let’s take a short look into the life of this silent and talking cowboy film legend.

Before landing his first role in a minor Western, Hoot Gibson worked as a cowboy on his father’s ranch, in Wild West rodeo shoes and as a wrangler for Universal Pictures.

Though his first film appearance was in the 1910 short, Pride of the Range, Gibson didn’t become a bona fide film star until the 1920s. At the height of his career, his popularity was second only to that of Tom Mix.

Over the course of the next 20 years, until his 1944 retirement, Hoot Gibson appeared in over 200 films. He was last seen in 1960’s Ocean’s 11, as an uncredited “Road Block Deputy.”

Gibson was married three times to  Helen Wagner, Sally Eilers, and June Gale and he was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1979. He died of cancer in 1962.