Trivia: Arguably the most popular -- and certainly the busiest -- movie leading man in Hollywood history, John Wayne entered the film business while working as a laborer on the Fox lot during summer vacations from U.S.C., which he attended on a football scholarship. He met and was befriended by John Ford, a young director who was beginning to make a name for himself in action films, comedies, and dramas. Wayne was cast in small roles in Ford's late-'20s films, occasionally under the name Duke Morrison. It was Ford who recommended Wayne to director Raoul Walsh for the male lead in the 1930 epic Western The Big Trail, and, although it was a failure at the box office, the movie showed Wayne's potential as a leading man. During the next nine years, be busied himself in a multitude of B-Westerns and serials -- most notably Shadow of the Eagle and The Three Mesquiteers series -- in between occasional bit parts in larger features such as Warner Bros.' Baby Face, starring Barbara Stanwyck. But it was in action roles that Wayne excelled, exuding a warm and imposing manliness onscreen to which both men and women could respond. In 1939, Ford cast Wayne as the Ringo Kid in the adventure Stagecoach, a brilliant Western of modest scale but tremendous power (and incalculable importance to the genre), and the actor finally showed what he could do. Wayne nearly stole a picture filled with Oscar-caliber performances, and his career was made. He starred in most of Ford's subsequent major films, whether Westerns (Fort Apache [1948], She Wore a Yellow Ribbon [1949], Rio Grande [1950], The Searchers [1956]); war pictures (They Were Expendable [1945]); or serious dramas (The Quiet Man [1952], in which Wayne also directed some of the action sequences). He also starred in numerous movies for other directors, including several extremely popular World War II thrillers (Flying Tigers [1942], Back to Bataan [1945], Fighting Seabees [1944], Sands of Iwo Jima [1949]); costume action films (Reap the Wild Wind [1942], Wake of the Red Witch [1949]); and Westerns (Red River [1948]). His box-office popularity rose steadily through the 1940s, and by the beginning of the 1950s he'd also begun producing movies through his company Wayne-Fellowes, later Batjac, in association with his sons Michael and Patrick (who also became an actor). Most of these films were extremely successful, and included such titles as Angel and the Badman (1947), Island in the Sky (1953), The High and the Mighty (1954), and Hondo (1953). The 1958 Western Rio Bravo, directed by Howard Hawks, proved so popular that it was remade by Hawks and Wayne twice, once as El Dorado and later as Rio Lobo. At the end of the 1950s, Wayne began taking on bigger films, most notably The Alamo (1960), which he produced and directed, as well as starred in. It was well received but had to be cut to sustain any box-office success (the film was restored to full length in 1992). During the early '60s, concerned over the growing liberal slant in American politics, Wayne emerged as a spokesman for conservative causes, especially support for America's role in Vietnam, which put him at odds with a new generation of journalists and film critics. Coupled with his advancing age, and a seeming tendency to overact, he became a target for liberals and leftists. However, his movies remained popular. McLintock!, which, despite well-articulated statements against racism and the mistreatment of Native Americans, and in support of environmentalism, seemed to confirm the left's worst fears, but also earned more than ten million dollars and made the list of top-grossing films of 1963-1964. Virtually all of his subsequent movies, including the pro-Vietnam War drama The Green Berets (1968), were very popular with audiences, but not with critics. Further controversy erupted with the release of The Cowboys, which outraged liberals with its seeming justification of violence as a solution to lawlessness, but it was successful enough to generate a short-lived television series. Amid all of the shouting and agonizing over his politics, Wayne won an Oscar for his role as marshal Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, a part that he later reprised in a sequel. Wayne weathered the Vietnam War, but, by then, time had become his enemy. His action films saw him working alongside increasingly younger co-stars, and the decline in popularity of the Western ended up putting him into awkward contemporary action films like McQ (1974). Following his final film, The Shootist (1976) -- possibly his best Western since The Searchers -- the news that Wayne was stricken ill with cancer (which eventually took his life in 1979) wiped the slate clean, and his support for the Panama Canal Treaty at the end of the 1970s belatedly made him a hero for the left. Wayne finished his life honored by the film community, the U.S. Congress, and the American people as had no actor before or since. He remains among the most popular actors of his generation, as evidenced by the continual rereleases of his films on home video.

Trivia: One of the best remembered B-Western heroines of the 1930s, blonde Verna Hillie was Ken Maynard's leading lady in the Mascot serial Mystery Mountain (1934) and John Wayne's in two of his best for Lone Star, The Trail Beyond (1934) and the evocative The Star Packer (1934). A teenage radio actress in Detroit, Hillie was one of the runners-up in Paramount's countrywide Panther Woman search. Kathleen Burke won the coveted role as the animalistic glamour girl created by Charles Laughton in Island of Lost Souls (1932), but Hillie was assigned bit roles in Madame Butterfly (1932) with Sylvia Sidney and Duck Soup (1933) with the Marx Brothers. A top supporting role in the Paramount Western Under the Tonto Rim (1933) led to her brief but memorable B-Western stint, but she left Hollywood in favor of appearing in a stage production of The Night of January 16th. Returning only for a couple of quickies and Walt Disney's The Reluctant Dragon (1941), Hillie retired from show business in the 1940s to raise a family (her daughter, with writer Frank Gill Jr., became an actress and played a secretary in the hit 1983 comedy Tootsie under the name of Pamela Lincoln). Resettled in New York City, Hillie went on to become the U.S. representative for British pulp fiction writer Barbara Cartland.

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: Yakima Canutt was the most innovative stunt performer and coordinator ever to risk life and limb for the art of Hollywood illusion. Cheating death at every turn, many of the tricks of the trade he first developed in the Westerns of the silent era remain fixtures of the craft even today. Born Enos Edward Canutt on November 29, 1895, in Colfax, WA, he began working on ranches while in his youth and at the age of 17 signed on as a trick rider with a Wild West show, where he ultimately won the title of Rodeo World Champion. Billing himself as Eddie Canutt, "the Man From Yakima," in 1917 he met Hollywood cowboy star Tom Mix, who recruited him as a stunt man. Quickly he became one of the leading fall guys in the industry, with a knack for horse spills and wagon wrecks. Over and over again, Canutt brought Western reelers to a rousing finale by doubling as the hero as he leapt from his horse to tackle a villain attempting to flee from the long arm of the law. In 1920, Canutt first earned billing for his work in The Girl Who Dared. Soon his name was appearing in the credits of several Westerns each year, all highlighted by his daredevil antics. His reputation rested on his ability to mastermind larger-than-life sequences -- cattle stampedes, covered-wagon races, and the like -- as well as intricate battles between frontier settlers and their Indian rivals. He could also be counted on to leap from a cliff's top while on horseback, or from a stagecoach onto its runaway horse team. For his elaborately choreographed fight scenes, Canutt developed a new, more realistic method of throwing punches, positioning the action so that the camera filmed over the shoulder of the actor receiving the blow, with the punch itself coming directly toward the lens. With the addition of sound effects, the illusion of fisticuffs was complete, and the practice remains an essential component of the stunt man's craft today. Under Canutt's supervision, a number of rules and guidelines designed to improve stunt safety were established, all of them becoming industry standards. Indeed, to his credit no one was ever seriously injured in any of his films. Many of Canutt's most important innovations involved his use of rigging: In one such attempt to minimize the possibility of broken bones, he carefully rigged his stirrups to break open to allow his feet to release at the proper moment. He also rigged cable mechanisms to trigger stunt action, maintaining more control over his scenes to eliminate the possibility of catastrophe. Gene Autry, Roy Rogers -- nearly every major Western star -- owed much of his success to Canutt's daring; eventually, his mastery of the craft was such that scripts were penned without detailed descriptions of their fight scenes or chases, and "Action by Yakima Canutt" was simply written instead.By the mid-'20s, Canutt was starring in Westerns as well as handling stunts. However, as the sound era dawned he suffered an illness which stripped the resonance from his voice, effectively ending his career as a leading man and reducing him to turns as sidekicks and heavies. In 1932's serial The Shadow of the Eagle, he was cast alongside John Wayne, beginning a partnership that was to endure for many years; their most notable collaboration was the 1939 classic Stagecoach, where Canutt not only came aboard as the stunt supervisor but also appeared onscreen to take falls as a cowboy, an Indian, and even as a woman. In addition to keeping peace between Wayne and director John Ford, Canutt also performed one of the most legendary stunts in film history, a pulse-pounding pass under a moving stagecoach: Doubling as an Indian, he rode his horse ahead of the coach before attempting to leap over to its lead team and dropping to the ground; after a brief moment, he then released his grip and allowed the horses and the coach to pass over his body. As Canutt grew older, injuries began to take their toll, and he cut back on his rigorous schedule, making the transition from stunt performer to coordinator to, ultimately, director. However, he still found time to appear onscreen in noteworthy films like 1939's Gone With the Wind, not only standing in for Clark Gable during his wagon drive through the burning streets of Atlanta but also playing the renegade soldier who attacks Scarlett O'Hara and tumbles backward down a flight of steps. In his later years Canutt also served as a second-unit director, most notably aiding William Wyler on 1959's Ben-Hur, where he helped supervise the choreography of the famed chariot race (a sequence two years in the making). Canutt also oversaw the many animal action scenes in Old Yeller, as well as the car chase in The Flim-Flam Man.In 1966, Canutt received a special Academy Award for his lifetime of excellence as a stunt performer, winning kudos "for creating the profession of stunt man as it exists today and for the development of many safety devices used by stunt men everywhere." In 1975, he was also inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. Canutt remained active in films until 1976, ending his career as a consultant on Equus. His son later carried on in the family business. In 1979, Canutt published his memoirs, Stunt Man: The Autobiography of Yakima Canutt. Yakima Canutt died in Hollywood on May 24, 1986, at the age of 90.

Trivia: American character actor Earl Dwire was most closely associated with the B-Western movie mills of the 1930s. Dwire frequently played the antagonist in the low-budget vehicles of such cowboy stars as Bob Steele and Johnny Mack Brown. In the early '30s, he was virtually a regular in the John Wayne Westerns produced by the Lone Star outfit. He also occasionally accepted such contemporary minor roles as a priest in Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) and a gangster in Accidents Will Happen (1939). Earl Dwire's last known film credit was the Universal serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940).

Trivia: A master at abrasive and intrusive old-codger roles, George Cleveland enjoyed a 58-year career in vaudeville, stage, movies and television. Spending his earliest professional days in his native Canada, Cleveland barnstormed around the U.S. with his own stock company until settling in New York. He came to Hollywood in 1934 for an assignment in the Noah Beery Sr. programmer Mystery Liner and remained in Tinseltown for the next two decades. At first appearing in small roles in serials and westerns, Cleveland's screen time increased when he signed with RKO in the early 1940s. In the Fibber McGee and Molly feature Here We Go Again, Cleveland essayed the "Old Timer" role played on radio by Bill Thompson (who also showed up in Here We Go Again in another of his radio characterizations, Wallace Wimple). Other choice '40s assignments for Cleveland included the role of Paul Muni's faithful butler in Angel on My Shoulder (1946), and featured parts in two Abbott and Costello comedies, 1946's Little Giant (as Costello's uncle) and 1947's Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap (as a corrupt western judge). George Cleveland appeared on TV as a befuddled postman on the forgettable 1952 sitcom The Hank McCune Show; a far more memorable assignment was his three-year gig as Gramps on the Lassie series, which kept Cleveland busy until his sudden death in the spring of 1957.

Trivia: In films from 1932, actor/stunt man Eddie Parker spent the better part of his career at Universal. Parker doubled for most of Universal's horror stars, especially Lon Chaney Jr: rumors still persist that it was Parker, and not Chaney, who actually starred in the studio's Mummy pictures of the 1940s. He also performed stunts for many of Universal's A-list actors, including John Wayne. In the 1950s, he doubled for Boris Karloff in Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953), and played at least one of the title characters in Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955). His long association with Universal ended when he walked off the set of 1955's This Island Earth (in which he'd been cast as the "head mutant") during a salary dispute; he made one last return to the studio as one of the gladiators in Spartacus (1960). In addition to his Universal duties, Parker worked as both an actor and stunter in virtually every Republic serial made during the 1940s and 1950s. Eddie Parker died of a heart attack shortly after staging a comedic fight sequence on TV's The Jack Benny Program.

Trivia: With his rakish mustache and a bowler jauntily pushed to the back of his head, Chicago-born Billy Franey (sometimes billed William Franey) starred in Universal Joker comedies from 1913. In the 1920s, he became a busy presence at almost every poverty row company, almost always supplying brief comic relief in Westerns. The veteran performer died from a bout of influenza.

Trivia: A member of the busy California-based Kalem Company in the early 1910s, tall character actor Tom Lingham (or, as he sometimes billed himself, Thomas G. Lingham) was a regular on the long-running series The Hazards of Helen (1914-1917). When the original Helen, Helen Holmes, left to form her own company, she brought Lingham with her and he would play her father again in such railroad serials as Lass of the Lumberlands (1916) and The Railroad Raiders (1917). With the demise of the Signal Film Company in 1917, Lingham freelanced in scores of low-budget action melodramas and independently made serials. Often playing a stern lawman, Lingham was the sheriff again in his very last film, the 1934 John Wayne oater The Star Packer. A veteran stage actor, Lingham had come to films after appearing opposite such theater legends as Robert Mantell, E.H. Sothern, and James O'Neil. He died at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Trivia: The husband of early Western star Mona Darkfeather, American stuntman/supporting player Art Ortego (born Arturo Ortega) played mostly Native American roles but also did his fair share of Mexican "greasers" in an amazing career that lasted from 1912-1951. Along the way, Ortego attempted to escape such typecasting by billing himself Art Ardigan. The ploy failed and he continued to play mainly villains up until his final credited film, 1951's Skipalong Rosenbloom.

Trivia: Actor Tex Palmer was busy in films from 1932 to 1947. Spending his entire career in B-Westerns, Palmer played bits and minor roles in the films of such sagebrush favorites as John Wayne and Ray "Crash" Corrigan. From 1937 to 1939, he showed up in six of singing cowboy Tex Ritter's vehicles for Grand National Pictures. Tex Palmer was particularly active at PRC Studios in the 1940s, appearing in the company's Billy the Kid, Lone Rider, Frontier Marshal, Buster Crabbe, and Eddie Dean series.

Trivia: A New Mexican of Native American extraction, actor Glenn Strange held down several rough-and-tumble jobs, from deputy sheriff to rodeo rider, before settling on a singing career. He made his radio bow on Los Angeles station KNX (the CBS-owned affiliate) as a member of the Arizona Wranglers singing group. Thanks to his husky physique and plug-ugly features, Strange had no trouble finding work as a stuntman/villain in western films and serials. He also displayed a flair for comedy as the sidekick to singing cowboy Dick Foran in a series of B-sagebrushers of the late '30s. During the war years, Strange became something of a bargain-basement Lon Chaney Jr., playing homicidal halfwits in a handful of horror pictures made at PRC and other low-budget studios. These appearances led to his being cast as the Frankenstein monster in the 1944 Universal programmer House of Frankenstein; he was coached in this role by the "creature" from the original 1931 Frankenstein, Boris Karloff. Given very little to do in House of Frankenstein and the 1945 sequel House of Dracula other than stalk around with arms outstretched at fadeout time, Strange brought none of the depth and pathos to the role that distinguished Karloff's appearances. Strange was shown to better advantage in his last appearance as The Monster in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) where he convincingly menaced the eternally frightened Lou Costello and even indulged in a couple of time-honored "scare" routines, while still remaining in character (Some scenes had to be reshot because Strange couldn't stop laughing at Costello's antics; towards the end of shooting, Strange broke his ankle and had to be replaced in a few shots by Lon Chaney Jr., who was costarring in the film as the Wolf Man). Though typecast as heavies in both movies and television -- he played the hissable Butch Cavendish in the Lone Ranger TV pilot -- Strange was well known throughout Hollywood as a genuine nice guy and solid family man. Glenn Strange's last engagement of note was his 11-year run (1962-73) as Sam, the Long Branch bartender on TV's Gunsmoke.

Trivia: David C. Aldrich, the son of a Ziegfeld girl, first began performing on stage when he was still quite young. Later he played the rich kid in the Our Gang series of short comedies. As a young man Aldrich enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. He then went on to work on the London stage, and ultimately to work as a theater director.