December 11, 2025

Tom Keene began his acting career as George Duryea, starring as Abie in one of the touring companies for Abie’s Wild Irish Rose, a Broadway hit in 1922. From there he took the male lead in Cecil B. De Mille’s The Godless Girl from Pathé Studios. He did more features for Pathé and other studios, and in the early 1930s he took the name Tom Keene beginning with RKO’s The Sundown Trail. Seeing success in Westerns, but fearful of being typecast, he left Hollywood for summer stock. When he returned, he took on varied roles in various movies beginning with King Vidor’s Our Daily Bread. His plan to not be typecast worked well, except for the problem of not achieving the notoriety and stardom that a consistent onscreen persona would have given him. So he returned to Westerns for a few years, but then left the silver screen for a stage play that bombed. He moseyed back to Hollywood and continued working with RKO and Republic, eventually turning to television westerns and retiring to the dusty trails of real estate and insurance sales. One important note: Rita Cansino eventually changed her name too: to Rita Hayworth.

(Research: Riders of the Range: The Sagebrush Heroes of the Sound Screen by Kalton C. Lahue and B-Westerns at https://www.b-westerns.com/tkeene.htm.)