Bunk

Hollywood star Bunk in 1925.

During the rise of canine performers like Luke, Teddy, and Strongheart in silent-era Hollywood, Jack Hoxie was a noted rodeo-cowboy-turned-actor in westerns, gaining his first feature-film credit in 1919 after many shorts. In 1923 Hoxie sent away to Australia for a pregnant Australian Shepherd with the goal of raising the pups to be performing dogs. Only one survived in the litter: Bunk.

Bunk, a stocky, rather short-legged blue merle, was Hoxie’s dog from the start, making their partnership as a screen cowboy and his dog naturally convincing. For all the specialty performance skills, Hoxie hired Bert de Marc as Bunk’s personal trainer.

Through his career, which launched in 1924 when Bunk was still a juvenile, he tracked down bad guys, wrangled livestock, and served as a cowboy’s best friend in a score of westerns with Hoxie. Bunk became renowned enough that he even appeared in movies without Hoxie, such as Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come in 1928. He performed into the early 1930s and lived to eighteen years old.

There is an excellent article about Bunk on the website Herding on the Web.

Bunk and full cast in a 1927 colorized lobby card for Rough and Ready. (Lobby cards were displayed around movie theater lobbies like tiny posters in order to drum up attention for a new or upcoming film.)

Bunk was often billed as “Rex”, as on this close-up of a 1925 lobby card for The White Outlaw.

Although Bunk was featured on the full set of lobby cards advertising Gold in 1932 along with the horse Scout, he has no part in the film.

Bunk with Jack Hoxie on set.

It’s hard to trace all Bunk films since most are lost and his publicity was misleading. Jack Hoxie claimed that Bunk was in most of his (Hoxie’s) feature films, but even if you watch those that survive, Bunk is seldom in evidence. In at least one film (Gold), he was featured in publicity, but only one dog in the distance, who may or may not be Bunk, is ever seen.

Here is his filmography to the best of our knowledge, nearly all of which are lost. The dog in his supposed final film, Law and the Lawless (1932), is tricolored, maybe Bunk’s son, which was not uncommon for canine actors in Hollywood at the time.

Ridgeway of Montana (1924) (first film, for which he received much publicity)

Fighting Fury (1924)

Hidden Loot (1925)

The White Outlaw (1925)

The White Outlaw (1925) (one of Bunk’s only surviving films)

The Demon (1926)

The Fighting Peacemaker (1926)

The Wild Horse Stampede (1926) (surviving only in a film archive in Moscow)

Red Hot Leather (1926)

The Fighting Three (1927)

Grinning Guns (1927)

Bunk in a publicity still. Note the blue eye.

Heroes of the Wild (1927) (possibly Bunk, billed as “Tornado”)

The Rambling Ranger (1927)

Rough and Ready (1927)

The Western Whirlwind (1927)

Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1928)

Shepherd of the Hills (1928)

Gold (1932) (surviving, but does not appear to show Bunk at all—see notes)

Law and the Lawless (1932)

Law and Lawless (1932) (surviving with a different dog, unless Bunk was dyed for the part or the lighting made his coat look black instead of merle)