Trivia: American light leading man James Ellison was recruited from a stock company to appear in the forgotten 1932 film Play Girl. His biggest movie break was DeMille's The Plainsman (1936), in which he played Buffalo Bill Cody opposite Gary Cooper's Wild Bill Hickok and Jean Arthur's Calamity Jane. This sagebrush endeavor led to two seasons' work as "Johnny Nelson" in Paramount's Hopalong Cassidy western programmers. Ellison was one of the stalwarts of the "B" units at 20th Century-Fox and RKO during the 1940s; thereafter he free-lanced in such cost-conscious second features as Dead Man's Trail (1952) and Ghost Town (1956). After starring in the negligible 1963 Castro spoof When The Girls Take Over, James Ellison decided that the time was ripe to leave show business in favor of the lucrative world of real estate.

Trivia: Virtually the prototype of all grizzled old-codger western sidekicks, George "Gabby" Hayes professed in real life to hate westerns, complaining that they all looked and sounded alike. For his first few decades in show business, he appeared in everything but westerns, including travelling stock companies, vaudeville, and musical comedy. He began appearing in films in 1928, just in time to benefit from the talkie explosion. In contrast to his later unshaven, toothless screen persona, George Hayes (not yet Gabby) frequently showed up in clean-faced, well groomed articulate characterizations, sometimes as the villain. In 1933 he appeared in several of the Lone Star westerns featuring young John Wayne, alternating between heavies and comedy roles. Wayne is among the many cowboy stars who has credited Hayes with giving them valuable acting tips in their formative days. In 1935, Hayes replaced an ailing Al St. John in a supporting role in the first Hopalong Cassidy film, costarring with William Boyd; Hayes' character died halfway through this film, but audience response was so strong that he was later brought back into the Hoppy series as a regular. It was while sidekicking for Roy Rogers at Republic that Hayes, who by now never appeared in pictures with his store-bought teeth, earned the soubriquet "Gabby", peppering the soundtrack with such slurred epithets as "Why, you goldurned whipersnapper" and "Consarn it!" He would occasionally enjoy an A-picture assignment in films like Dark Command (1940) and Tall in the Saddle (1944), but from the moment he became "Gabby", Hayes was more or less consigned exclusively to "B"s. After making his last film appearance in 1952, Hayes turned his attentions to television, where he starred in the popular Saturday-morning Gabby Hayes Show ("Hullo out thar in televisium land!") and for a while was the corporate spokesman for Popsicles. Retiring after a round of personal appearance tours, Hayes settled down on his Nevada ranch, overseeing his many business holdings until his death at age 83.

Trivia: As a boy growing up in Sacramento, Robert Warwick sang in his church choir. Encouraged to pursue music as a vocation, Warwick studied in Paris for an operatic career. He abandoned singing for straight acting when, in 1903, he was hired by Clyde Fitch as an understudy in the Broadway play Glad of It. Within a few year, Warwick was a major stage star in New York. He managed to retain his matinee-idol status when he switched from stage to screen, starring in such films as A Modern Othello and Alias Jimmy Valentine and at one point heading his own production company. He returned to the stage in 1920, then resumed his Hollywood career in authoritative supporting roles. His pear-shaped tones ideally suited for talkies, Warwick played such characters as Neptune in Night Life of the Gods (1933), Sir Francis Knolly in Mary of Scotland (1936) and Lord Montague in Romeo and Juliet (1936). He appeared in many of the Errol Flynn "historicals" at Warner Bros. (Prince and the Pauper, Adventures of Robin Hood, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex); in more contemporary fare, he could usually be found in a military uniform or wing-collared tuxedo. From The Great McGinty (1940) onward, Warwick was a particular favorite of producer/director Preston Sturges, who was fond of providing plum acting opportunities to veteran character actors. Warwick's best performance under Sturges' guidance was as the brusque Hollywood executive who insists upon injecting "a little sex" in all of his studio's product in Sullivan's Travels (1942). During the 1950s, Warwick played several variations on "Charles Waterman," the broken-down Shakespearean ham that he'd portrayed in In a Lonely Place (1950). He remained in harness until his eighties, playing key roles on such TV series as The Twilight Zone and The Law and Mr. Jones. Robert Warwick was married twice, to actresses Josephine Whittell and Stella Lattimore.

Trivia: American character actor Frank Campeau was the perfect skulking villain, whether dressed as a millionaire or a Bowery henchman. Short, wiry, and with a face like a dyspeptic weasel, Campeau was "Runyonesque" before there was a Damon Runyon. Actor/producer Douglas Fairbanks capitalized on Campeau's untrustworthy demeanor by casting the actor in several bad-guy roles. In Fairbanks' first United Artists release, 1919's His Majesty the American, Campeau is on hand as an outwardly respectable but shifty-eyed diplomat, while in Fairbank's second UA picture Til the Clouds Roll By (1919) he is identified only as "The Jilted Villain". Two decades later, a seedier-looking Campeau was sneaking through alleys in such talkies as A Soldier's Plaything (1930) and Everything's Rosie (1931). Frank Campeau retired from films at age 74, after completing a starving-peasant bit in the lavish MGM costumer Marie Antoinette.

Trivia: Almost reptilian in appearance and disposition, B-Western heavy Ted Adams came out of a show business family and was reportedly born in the proverbial trunk. On-stage from childhood, Adams segued into films soon after the transition to sound, using several variations of his real name, Richard Theodore Adams. By the mid-'30s, he chose the friendlier Ted but there was nothing friendly about the characters he was given to play: He was sometimes the lead villain and often scruffy-looking so-called "dog heavies," the kind the audience could easily imagine kicking a dog. A constant presence in the low-budget Johnny Mack Brown and Bob Steele Westerns from producer A.W. Hackel, he later worked mainly for PRC and Monogram, the nether regions of sagebrush moviemaking. By the time of his retirement in the early '50s, Adams had added such television Westerns as The Lone Ranger, The Cisco Kid, and Cowboy G-Men to his lengthy resumé.

Trivia: Chinese character actor Willie Fung spent his entire Hollywood career imprisoned by the Hollywood Stereotype Syndrome. During the silent era, Fung was the personification of the "Yellow Peril," never more fearsome than when he was threatening Dolores Costello's virtue in Old San Francisco (1927). In talkies, Fung was a buck-toothed, pigtailed, pidgin-English-spouting comedy relief, usually cast as a cook or laundryman.

Trivia: Born John Myrtland LaVarre, John Merton has appeared on Broadway as "Myrtland LaVarre" in the Theatre Guild's hit production of Karel Capek's R.U.R. (1922). More theater work followed and he was spotted in the background of several silent films, including as a fireman in W.C. Fields' It's the Old Army Game (1926). But the handsome, slightly frosty-looking actor found his rightful place in B-Westerns and serials. He would appear in a total of 170 films, turning up as an assortment of blackguards. Usually a bit more sophisticated than the average "dog heavy," Merton could nevertheless rough it with the best of 'em, a talent he passed on to his equally tough-looking son, Lane Bradford. Father and son appeared in six films together, including 1947's Jack Armstrong. (Another son played supporting roles on television in the '50s under the moniker of Robert La Varre.) Retiring after a bit in Cecil B. DeMille's gigantic The Ten Commandments (1956), Merton died of a heart attack at the age of 58.

Trivia: An "Okie" whose parents died when he was a child, William Boyd became a manual laborer before breaking into the movies in 1919 as an extra in Cecil B. De Mille's Why Change Your Wife? He soon became one of De Mille's favorite actors and was cast as an unassuming leading man in comedies and swashbuckling adventure films. Boyd continued his success in the sound era, but was hurt when a scandal hit another actor named "William Boyd" and the public confused the two. His career took off in 1935 when he began to appear in "Hopalong Cassidy" films (based on the Clarence E. Mulford stories of the Old West), beginning with Hop-A-Long Cassidy and eventually amounting to 66 episodes, the final twelve of which Boyd produced. Cassidy, dressed in black and mounted on his famous horse Topper, was a clean-living good guy who didn't smoke, drink, or swear, and hardly ever kissed the heroine; the character became an enormous hero to millions of American boys, and Boyd bought the rights to it. With the breakthrough of TV in the early 50s, Boyd began to reap huge profits from the character as the old shows found a new audience and by-products began to be produced and sold; he played Cassidy the rest of his life, even into genial, gray-haired old age. Ultimately, William Boyd Enterprises was sold for $8 million. Boyd was married four times and divorced three, each time to an actress: Ruth Miller, Elinor Fair, Dorothy Sebastian, and Grace Bradley.

Trivia: To six decades' worth of filmgoers, Kentucky-born character actor Charles B. Middleton was Ming the Merciless, the megalomaniac ruler of the planet Mongo in three 1930s serials based on Alex Raymond's comic strip Flash Gordon. Beginning his career in circuses and carnivals in the South, Middleton worked in vaudeville and stock companies before his 1927 entree into films. With his hatchet face, bad teeth, and rolling-toned voice, Middleton was ideally cast as stern judges, cruel orphanage officials, backwater sheriffs, and small town bigots. Outside of his extensive work in serials and Westerns, he was used to best advantage in the films of Laurel and Hardy and Will Rogers. In a far less villainous vein, Charles Middleton was cast as Tom Lincoln, father of the 16th president, in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940); he also portrayed the Great Emancipator himself on several occasions -- while in 1937's Stand-In, Middleton was hilariously cast as an unsuccessful actor who dresses like Lincoln in hopes of landing a movie role.

Trivia: Agreeable leading man Kenneth Thompson entered films in 1927 as a contractee of Cecil B. De Mille's Producers Distributing Corporation. Thompson was one of the stars of PDC's ethereal "mood Western" White Gold, and was briefly seen as Lazarus in De Mille's The King of Kings (1927). He made his talkie debut in 1929, playing wealthy Jack Warriner in the pioneering MGM musical Broadway Melody (1929). His subsequent roles -- notably MT-3 in the futuristic musicomedy Just Imagine (1930) and Vance in Harold Lloyd's Movie Crazy (1932) -- tended to be variations of his Broadway Melody characterization. Kenneth Thomson was one of the founders and charter members of the Screen Actors Guild.

Trivia: A rugged and trustworthy Western hero from Boston, silent screen cowboy Franklyn Farnum's appeal was closer to William S. Hart than Tom Mix. Farnum's road to screen stardom began in vaudeville and musical comedy. While he was not related to stage and screen stars William Farnum and Dustin Farnum, two legendary brothers who also hailed from Boston, he never really dissuaded the name association, and while he never achieved the same success as the other Farnums, it was not for lack of trying. Onscreen from around 1914, Franklyn Farnum was usually found in inexpensive Westerns and reached a plateau as the star of the 1920 serial The Vanishing Trails and a series of oaters produced independently by "Colonel" William N. Selig, formerly of the company that bore his name. In 1918, Farnum received quite a bit of press for marrying screen star Alma Rubens, but the union proved extremely short-lived. As busy in the 1920s as in the previous decade, Farnum made the changeover to sound smoothly enough, but he was growing older and leading roles were no longer an option. He maintained his usual hectic schedule throughout the following three decades, more often than not playing villains and doing bit parts, working well into the television Western era. For many years, Farnum was the president of the Screen Extras Guild. In 1961, Franklyn Farnum died of cancer at the Motion Picture Country Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.