Ford’s wife Mary’s best friend was Victoria Forde “Vickie” Mix, the wife of cowboy star Tom Mix. Though no relation to the Fords, Vickie had acted as a child with Francis Ford in some of his earliest silent movies. Jack Ford directed Tom Mix in two runof-the-mill movies at Fox in 1923, Three Jumps Ahead and North of Hudson Bay, but left the socializing with the flamboyant, quarrelsome couple largely to Mary. Written by Jules Furthman (whom Pauline Kael once claimed wrote half of the good movies ever made in Hollywood, with the other half written by Ben Hecht), North of Hudson Bay finds Mix playing Michael Dane, a rancher caught up in the Canadian gold rush. Murder and land thievery are among the challenges Dane faces in the wilderness. A highlight of this incomplete film is Dane’s rescue of his girlfriend (Kathleen Key) in a suspenseful canoe chase. Ford himself did some stunt doubling in that sequence, utilizing the talents that helped win him his start in motion pictures as a stuntman for his director brother Francis.