Actor Fined for Reckless Driving on Newhall Streets A bit of SCV history

 Actor Tom Mix was already a major box-office draw when, on May 11, 1920, Judge John F. Powell issued a warrant for him to appear on a criminal charge of driving recklessly through the streets of Newhall.
The court record doesn’t give us the sordid details:  Was he drunk?  Did he put citizens’ lives in peril by exceeding the posted 15 mph speed limit, or did he kick up dust in the still-unpaved streets?  We just don’t know.  But we do know the violation occurred April 28, 1920 – a clear and sunny day with a high of 86 degrees recorded at Mission Hills – and we know that for whatever reason, Deputy Constable W. King Collins waited two weeks before he appeared in Powell’s courtroom to swear out the complaint.
Powell’s “courtroom,” of course, was an office in his house on Railroad Avenue between Market and 8th streets.  Newhall didn’t have an actual courthouse building then.  It’s said his office could fit three people.
Collins served the warrant on Mix the same day, May 11, and Mix appeared in court the following day, May 12, with his attorney Richard T. Quinn.  (How four people – Powell, Collins, Mix and Quinn – could all squeeze into the office at the same time will simply have to remain a mystery.)
Mix pleaded guilty.  Powell fined him $50 – quite a sum at the time.  Mix paid it on the spot.  The alternative would have been a day in the local hoosegow, still standing on Spruce Street next to today’s Old Town Newhall Library, for each unpaid dollar of the fine.
Perhaps it was prophetic.  Twenty years later, a 60-year-old Mix would be killed in a car wreck in Arizona after visiting a popular bar and casino.  Driving a spiffy 1937 Cord on the open highway, he didn’t notice a bridge had washed away in a flash flood.  When he jammed on the brakes, a metal suitcase full of money flew forward behind him and smashed his skull.
See more at www.scvhistory.com/scvhistory/aa2001.htm.