Film & TV / Sports
Tom Tyler
1903–1954 · film actor, weightlifter
Hamtramck-raised B-Western star and screen Captain Marvel, who came home to Hamtramck to die and is buried in Detroit's Mount Olivet Cemetery.
- Born
Port Henry, New York- Died
Hamtramck, Michigan
aged 50- Birth name
- Vincent Markowski
- Detroit years
- 1913–1920s, 1953–1954
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Tom Tyler was born Vincent Markowski to Lithuanian-American parents in Port Henry, New York, in 1903. In 1913 the family moved to Hamtramck, the working-class enclave surrounded by Detroit, where he went to St. Florian Elementary School and Hamtramck High School. After school he drifted through jobs as a seaman, coal miner, lumberjack and prizefighter before heading to California. A powerful amateur weightlifter, he won the 1928 AAU heavyweight championship with a record that stood for fourteen years. In Hollywood he became a leading man of low-budget Westerns and serials, the first screen Captain Marvel and the Phantom, the mummy Kharis in The Mummy's Hand, and a gunman in John Ford's Stagecoach. Crippled by rheumatoid arthritis and nearly destitute, he returned to Hamtramck in 1953 to live with his sister and died there in May 1954. He is buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Detroit.
Highlights
- Title role in The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941), the first superhero film serial
- The Phantom (1943) serial
- Kharis the mummy in The Mummy's Hand (1940)
- Roles in Stagecoach (1939), Red River (1948) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
- 1928 AAU heavyweight weightlifting champion
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 3
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · late 1910s–early 1920s
Hamtramck High School
Status being checked
Tyler's high school after the family settled in Hamtramck.
Studied here · 1913–late 1910s
St. Florian Elementary School
Status being checked
The parish school of Hamtramck's St. Florian Church, which he attended after arriving in 1913.
Buried here · 1954
Mount Olivet Cemetery
Tyler was buried in this large Catholic cemetery on Detroit's east side after his death in May 1954.