The Friends of Hart Park and Museum

05/17/2026

Mark your calendars for an overnight camping adventure! ⛺️

05/03/2026

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

05/03/2026

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.

11 likes, 2 comments. "William S. Hart: America's No. 1 Western Movie Star"

05/03/2026

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.

1 comment. "Knight of the Trail (1915 Short) | William S. Hart"

04/24/2026

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:

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

04/18/2026

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.

1 comment. "Cowboy Roots Music | Don Edwards"

04/12/2026

Reopening Day at the William S. Hart Museum!

03/31/2026

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

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...

03/31/2026

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.

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...

03/29/2026

William S. Hart's own film career ended in 1925, but his innovative storytelling techniques influenced the next generation of movie makers.

William S. Hart didn’t just star in Westerns—he helped redefine them. This 1959 film looks closely at Tumbleweeds (1925) and Hell’s Hinges (1916), showing ho...

03/28/2026

"Pinto Ben" was a story by William S. Hart in collaboration with his sister Mary Ellen that came to life in the form of a movie, a book, a song (sheet music), and a poem in at least two versions. Here, Bill recites the longer version of the poem in 1934 -- one of his rare voice recordings.

William S. Hart brings his own Western legend to life in this rare 1934 national radio appearance, reciting his original poem "Pinto Ben"—a tragic story of a...