The Friends of Hart Park and Museum

Mark your calendars for an overnight camping adventure! ⛺️

🐾Mark your calendars everyone!!! 🐴🦬🐂🐕🐩🐕‍🦺🐇🪿🦆🐖🐓

William S. Hart was America's No. 1 Western movie star before Hollywood Westerns became slick, colorful and mythic. He brought something different to the screen: a hard-edged authenticity rooted in the Old West he remembered from boyhood.

This Philip Scorza documentary traces Hart's life from the Dakota Territory and the American stage to silent-film superstardom, World War I bond drives, his beloved pinto pony Fritz, and his final years in Newhall, California. Hart was one of the biggest movie stars in the world in the 1910s, standing alongside Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin as one of the dominant figures of early American film.

Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society 11 likes, 2 comments. "William S. Hart: America's No. 1 Western Movie Star"

Here's something for a gray Sunday afternoon -- one of Hart's earlier "good bad man" films, a 2-reel (24-minute) short from 1915, just a year after he started in the movies, following an extensive career on the Broadway stage. Hosted by the Friends' own Bill West and E.J. Stephens.

Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society 1 comment. "Knight of the Trail (1915 Short) | William S. Hart"

Experience the film legacy of William S. Hart on the "Hart to Hart" podcast! Joining the conversation in this latest episode are The Friends of Hart Park’s Bill West and "Silents Under the Stars" composer Ray Lowe:

Geno Cuddy 2 likes. "Square Deal Sanderson (1919) / Wagon Tracks (1919)"

Don Edwards talks cowboy music at its roots and performs his song "Coyotes" in this intimate archival sit-down, filmed in an old Western bar in Tucson, Arizona, as a promo for the 2004 Santa Clarita Cowboy Poetry & Music Festival.

Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society 1 comment. "Cowboy Roots Music | Don Edwards"

Reopening Day at the William S. Hart Museum!

Here's an old primer on the Hart Mansion, which reopens in April!

Inside William S. Hart's Mansion William S. Hart's hilltop home in Santa Clarita still holds one of the richest collections of Old West and early Hollywood history.In this circa-1994 episode...

As the Hart Museum gets ready to open in a couple weeks for the first time in 6 years, you might get a kick out of seeing it as it appeared 30-some-odd years ago. Note that this is before the age of high-def cell phone cameras. Or any cell phone cameras. Or any cell phones.

Inside William S. Hart's Mansion William S. Hart's hilltop home in Santa Clarita still holds one of the richest collections of Old West and early Hollywood history.In this circa-1994 episode...