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Tom Hirt doubled for Western stars of the day. But more often, he fashioned their hats.
That devilish curl on the brim is unmistakable. The $895 black hat is “a must have for the true Doc Holliday aficionado,” has read the sale in recent years on valkilmer.com, where the actor includes a description of Hirt, “the official hat maker for the film ‘Tombstone.’”
No one does it like Hirt, the website says. Pure beaver hide. The crown formed over 100-year-old timber blocks. Flanged, sanded, pounced and finished all by hand.
For his tools, Hirt counts a sturdy string, a wooden cylinder and a brush. No technology.
It all happens through the front door of his home, in the small room where mud is tracked and dust gathers on the work bench and the lamp. Here there’s a framed movie poster for “Conagher,” in which Sam Elliott donned one of Hirt’s hats. Hirt said Elliott was the one who looped him into “Tombstone.”
Elsewhere in a manila folder, Hirt keeps old photos.
There he is in matching attire as Mark Harmon on the set of “Comes a Horseman.” Another time, for the TV show “Gunsmoke,” Hirt stood in for Buck Taylor.
And then there’s a letter from the White House.
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“Please accept this belated note of thanks for the terrific Western hat,” Ronald Reagan wrote. “I am delighted with this handcrafted remembrance and I appreciate your special thoughtfulness.”
As for Hirt’s story, it begins in a classroom in the 1960s. “I was horribly, horribly shy,” he said.
He could hardly manage a sentence. Speeches to fellow students were out of the question, his teacher knew. So she thought of a performance.
“You’re just playing a part, you’re not Tom, you’re a character,” he recalls her instruction. And that excited him, a boy enthralled by the adventures of John Wayne.
So Hirt performed for his class. Nothing heroic, rather mundane actually, something about a restaurant owner. But it was liberating.
“It was the first time in my life I remember people laughing with me instead of feeling like they were laughing at me,” he says.
He resolved to one day attain cowboy glory. First, though, he would flip burgers at McDonald’s in Santa Barbara, Calif. There he also made some of the world’s first Egg McMuffins under the order of company tycoon Ray Kroc. “My claim to fame,” Hirt said.
published, Jan. 2020
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