FRED THOMSON

Fred Thomson was a major silent cowboy star from the 1920s. His name is almost always misspelled as "Thompson"! Thomson was hugely popular in the late 1920s, and most think he would have been a major star in sound westerns in the 1930s, but stepped on a nail in 1928 while making a movie, and caught tetanus, and died of it at the age of 38. His wife was famed screenwriter Frances Marion, and she had two young children at that time, but she remained a major screenwriter through the 1930s, and passed away in 1973 at the age of 84!