Colonel Timothy John Fitzgerald McCoy (April 10, 1891 – January 29, 1978) was an American actor, military officer, and expert on American Indian life. McCoy is most noted for his roles in B-grade Western films. As a popular cowboy film star, he had his picture on the front of a Wheaties cereal box.
Tim McCoy was born in Saginaw, Michigan, on April 10, 1891. His father was an Irish Union Civil War veteran and Police Chief. While attending St. Ignatius College (now Loyola University), McCoy saw a Wild West show that influenced him to purchase a one-way ticket west. He ended up in Lander, Wyoming, where he worked as a ranch hand. While there, he became an expert horseman and roper while developing an extensive knowledge of the customs and languages of the local American Indian tribes. McCoy was a renowned expert in Indian sign language and was named "High Eagle" by the Arapaho tribe of the Wind River reservation. He also competed in numerous rodeos.
McCoy enlisted as a soldier in the U.S. Army and served in the cavalry during World War I (although he did not serve in combat nor overseas). He served again in World War II in Europe, rising to the rank of colonel with the Army Air Corps and Army Air Forces. He also served as adjutant general of Wyoming between the wars with the brevet rank of brigadier general. At 28, he was one of the youngest brigadier generals in the history of the U.S. Army.
In 1922, David Townsend, president of the Mountain Plains Enterprise Film Company, planned to build "Sunshine Studios" at McCoy's Owl Creek Dude ranch in order to shoot a film titled, "The Dude Wrangler," written by Caroline Lockhart but the project was abandoned.
That same year, he was asked by the head of Famous Players–Lasky, Jesse L. Lasky, to provide American Indian extras for the Western extravaganza, The Covered Wagon (1923). He brought hundreds of Indians to the Utah location and served as a technical advisor on the film. After filming was completed, McCoy was asked to bring a much smaller group of Indians to Hollywood, for a stage presentation preceding each showing of the film.
McCoy's stage show was popular, running eight months in Hollywood and several more months in London and Paris. McCoy returned to his Wyoming ranch, but Irving Thalberg of MGM soon signed him to a contract to star in a series of outdoor adventures and McCoy rose to stardom. His first MGM feature was War Paint (1926), featuring epic scenes of the Wind River Indians on horseback, staged by McCoy and director Woody Van Dyke. (Footage from War Paint was reused in many low-budget Westerns, well into the 1950s.)
War Paint set the tone for future McCoy Westerns, in that Indians were always portrayed sympathetically, and never as bloodthirsty savages. One notable McCoy feature for MGM was The Law of the Range (1928), in which he starred with Joan Crawford.
The coming of talking pictures, and the temporary difficulty in recording sound outdoors, resulted in MGM terminating its Tim McCoy series and McCoy returning once more to his ranch. In 1929 he was summoned back to Hollywood personally by Carl Laemmle of Universal Pictures, who insisted that McCoy star in the first talking Western serial, The Indians Are Coming. The action was filmed on an epic scale, and footage from The Indians Are Coming was reused for years in Universal westerns and serials. The Indians Are Coming was very successful, leading to another Tim McCoy serial for Universal, Heroes of the Flames (1931).
Harry Cohn ran Columbia, then a small, struggling studio trying to improve its standing in the industry. Cohn often hired stars who had just been dismissed by larger companies, giving Columbia features the name value of important players. Tim McCoy joined Columbia in 1931, and remained with the studio for four years. One of his best-known Columbia credits is Two Fisted Law (1932) with John Wayne and Walter Brennan.
In 1935 Cohn decided he wanted a younger cowboy hero (Charles Starrett got the job), and McCoy was released. That same year he signed with independent producer Sam Katzman, whose films had lower budgets and shorter schedules than Columbia's. McCoy had no qualms about working under these lesser conditions, but he did insist on his standard salary of $4,000 weekly (about $96,500 in 2026). Katzman agreed, and McCoy made a string of outdoor adventures.
Then McCoy was temporarily absent from the Hollywood scene. The Ringling Brothers Circus offered him a chance to tour with their show, and then McCoy formed his own "wild west" show. The latter venture was not a success; it was reported to have lost $300,000 (about $6,880,000 in 2026), one third of which was McCoy's own money. It folded in Washington, D.C., and the cowboy performers were each given $5 and McCoy's thanks. The Indians on the show were returned to their respective reservations by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
McCoy was available for pictures again in 1938, and low-budget producers (including Sam Katzman and Maurice Conn) engaged him at his standard salary of $4,000 weekly, for eight films a year. In 1941 Buck Jones recruited McCoy to co-star in "The Rough Riders" series, alongside Jones and Raymond Hatton. The eight films, released by Monogram Pictures, were very popular, and might have continued but McCoy declined to renew his contract, opting to pursue other interests. Monogram made one more picture with Jones and Hatton, and then Jones died in the Cocoanut Grove fire of 1942.
In 1942, McCoy ran for the Republican nomination for the open U.S. Senate Seat from Wyoming. During that campaign, he established the first statewide radio hookup in Wyoming broadcasting history. He lost in the primary and within 48 hours volunteered for active duty with the U.S. Army.
He had maintained his Army Reserve commission and was immediately accepted. McCoy spent the war in the U.S. Army and performed liaison work with the Army Air Forces in Europe, winning several decorations. He retired from the army, and reportedly never lived in Wyoming again. His Eagle's Nest ranch was sold. He retired from acting in films after the war, except for a few cameo appearances much later, as in the all-star blockbuster Around the World in 80 Days (1956).
McCoy hosted a KTLA television show in Los Angeles in 1952, titled The Tim McCoy Show, for children on weekday afternoons and Saturdays, in which he provided authentic history lessons on the Old West and showed his old Western movies. His co-host was the actor Iron Eyes Cody who, while of Italian lineage, played an American Indian both on and off screen. McCoy won a local Emmy for "Best Children's Show" but didn't attend to receive the award. He was competing against Webster Webfoot, a puppet character seen in McCoy's time slot on another station. McCoy refused to show up at the ceremony, saying "I'll be damned if I'm going to sit there and get beaten by a talking duck!"
McCoy launched his own syndicated show in 1955, distributed by U. M. & M. Television Corp. It was successful, ranking between #25 and #35 in popularity in some markets.
McCoy was such an established expert on American Indian lore that he often guested on other radio and TV programs. A 1955 episode of CBS Radio's The Amos 'n' Andy Music Hall had Charles Correll as Andy addressing McCoy, "I guess it was rugged in Wyoming in those days. The Indians weren't too long off the warpath." To which McCoy replied, "Yes, it took a lot of courage to go into an Indian barber shop and say 'just take a little off the top'."
McCoy’s first wife was the actress Agnes Heron Miller, the daughter of Henry Miller and Bijou Heron. They had two sons and a daughter and were divorced on July 20, 1931. Henry Miller was the director and producer of La Tendresse, in which Ronald Colman made his last stage appearance. Colman was to become McCoys closest friend in Hollywood and godfather to one of his sons, who was named after him. McCoy was best man at Colman’s wedding to Benita Hume and became godfather to his daughter Juliet. McCoy’s second wife was Inga Arvad whom he married in 1947. They had two sons, Ronnie and Terry. McCoy was married to Arvad until her death from cancer in 1973. Arvad was a journalist from Denmark, investigated by the FBI in the early 1940s due to rumors that she was a Nazi spy. There were photographs of Arvad as a guest of Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Olympics, and she had twice interviewed him. This investigation included the wiretapping of Arvad during a brief affair with John F. Kennedy in late 1941 and 1942, when Kennedy was serving in the U.S. Navy. No evidence of spying against Arvad was ever found.