Trivia: Hollywood's quintessential low-budget film noir hero Tom Neal earned some notoriety at an early age when his banker father persuaded him to drop the idea of eloping with Inez Martin, a buxom former Follies girl and the mistress of slain mobster Arnold Rothstein. A former college athlete, the handsome, mustachioed Neal entered the theatrical profession playing summer stock at West Falmouth, MA, and went on to make his Broadway debut in the short-lived anti-war melodrama If This Be Treason (1935). He later performed opposite Maria Ouspenskaya in Daughters of Artreus, but although critically acclaimed, the play was yet another box-office failure and Neal hightailed it to Sunny California. Contracted by MGM, who obviously saw him as another Clark Gable, Neal bided his time in secondary assignments and loan-outs to other studios for such fare as the 1941 serial Jungle Girl. In 1943, a now freelancing Tom earned some recognition for playing a U.S.-educated Japanese in the propaganda film Behind the Rising Sun, but lasting fame had to wait until Detour, Edgar G. Ulmer's cult classic. Although dismissed when the cheaply made drama was released in 1945, Neal and Ann Savage's fiery chemistry did much to earn Detour a lasting place as the quintessential low-budget film noir and remains one of the few memorable films to emerge from PRC, the now infamous Poverty Row company that otherwise more than lived up to its nickname of "Pretty Rotten Crud."Along with another well-remembered but poverty-stricken Ulmer production, Club Havana (1945), Detour marked a definite decline in the actor's cinematic fortunes and by the early '50s he had become better known for his offscreen escapades. A very public brawl with actor Franchot Tone over the dubious charms of starlet Barbara Payton left Tone hospitalized with a fractured cheekbone, a broken nose, and brain concussion, and made Neal all but unemployable. He later worked as night manager of a restaurant in Palm Springs, CA, and for a while operated a landscaping business, but in 1965 he was arrested and charged with second degree murder in the shooting death of his second wife. A jury returned a verdict of involuntary manslaughter and Neal served a six-year prison term. Sadly, the former actor suffered a fatal heart attack a little more than eight months after being paroled in late 1971. His son, Tom Neal Jr. (born 1957), starred in a 1992 remake of Detour.

Trivia: Former model Ann Savage signed her first film contract at Columbia, where she reportedly spent much of her time keeping lascivious studio head Harry Cohn at arm's length. It was always a bit off-putting to watch Savage play standard distressed damsels in films like After Midnight With Boston Blackie (1946); her true forte was portraying hard-boiled babes who spelled trouble. Savage's most famous screen portrayal, that of a blackmailing hitchhiker who comes to a sudden and unexpected bad end, can be found in what was probably her cheapest picture: the 1946 cult favorite Detour. Quitting films cold in 1953, Ann Savage made a screen comeback in 1986, playing a nun in Fire With Fire.

Trivia: Dark-eyed American leading lady Claudia Drake made her first film appearance in the Hopalong Cassidy western False Colors. Drake went on to a variety of assignments at such second-rung studios as Republic, Monogram and PRC. Her most famous role was the other female lead in the cult classic Detour (1946); as Tom Neal's nightclub-singer girlfriend, Drake was permitted to warble "I Can't Believe That You're in Love With Me" before relinquishing Neal to top-billed Anne Savage. Claudia Drake's last film characterizations were Indian "squaws," a demeaning term even back in 1949: she played Turquoise in Indian Agent and Lucky Broken Arm in Cowboys and the Indians.

Trivia: Muscular American general-purpose actor Edmund MacDonald entered films in 1933. MacDonald was briefly a 20th Century-Fox contractee in the early 1940s; his best role under the Fox banner was the antagonistic Sgt. Hippo in Laurel & Hardy's Great Guns (1941). At other studios, he was usually cast as plainclothes detectives or minor gangsters. Aficionados of "film noir" will remember Edmund MacDonald as Charles Haskell Jr., the foredoomed motorist who gives Tom Neal a lift in Edgar Ulmer's Detour (1945).

Trivia: Well versed in virtually every aspect of live entertainment, American performer Tim Ryan spent the greater part of his professional career as one-half of the team of Tim and Irene. The other half was Tim's wife Irene Ryan, better known to modern audiences as Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies. The Ryans appeared on Broadway, starred in a mid-'30s radio series, headlined a brief series of 2-reelers for Educational studios, and guested in such medium-budget musical films as 1943's Hot Rhythm. Even after Tim and Irene divorced, they frequently found themselves working at the same studio, and sometimes even the same soundstage. On his own, Ryan appeared in numerous films as cops, plainclothes detectives and newspaper editors. His best opportunities came at modest little Monogram studios in the '40s and early '50s, where he not only showed up in featured roles, but also wrote several screenplays. In Detective Kitty O'Day (1945), one can spot the reflection of Tim Ryan in a highly polished hubcap, listening intently as leading man Peter Cookson recites the long comic monologue that Ryan had written for him.

Trivia: Switching from Broadway to Hollywood in 1931, actress Esther Howard was an expert at portraying blowsy old crones, man-hungry spinsters and oversexed dowagers. Utilizing her wide, expressive eyes and versatile voice for both broad comedy and tense drama, Howard was equally at home portraying slatternly tosspot Mrs. Florian in Murder My Sweet (1944) as she was in the role of genteelly homicidal Aunt Sophie in Laurel and Hardy's The Big Noise (1944). She was a regular participant in the films of writer/director Preston Sturges, playing everything from an addled farm woman in Sullivan's Travels (1942) to the bejeweled wife of "The Wienie King" in The Palm Beach Story (1942). From 1935 to 1952, Esther Howard was a fixture of Columbia's short-subject unit, usually cast as the wife or sweetheart of comedian Andy Clyde.

Trivia: This callow, mustachioed American actor showed up in utility roles in films beginning in the early 1930s. Usually playing bits in features, Brodie was given a wider range in short subjects, notably as gentleman thief "Baffles" in the 1941 El Brendel 2-reeler Yumpin' Yiminy. Some of his more notable credits include his voiceover work in the Disney cartoon feature Dumbo and his subtly sleazy portrayal of the used car salesman in the noir classic Detour (1946). He also worked off and on as a dialogue director.

Trivia: Working in virtual anonymity throughout his film career, the sharp-featured, gangly character actor Harry Strang was seldom seen in a feature film role of consequence. From 1930 through 1959, Strang concentrated on such sidelines characters as soldiers, sentries, beat cops and store clerks. He was given more to do and say in 2-reel comedies, notably in the output of RKO Radio Pictures, where he appeared frequently in the comedies of Leon Errol and Edgar Kennedy. Harry Strang will be remembered by Laurel and Hardy fans for his role as a desk clerk in Block-Heads (1938), in which he was not once but twice clobbered in the face by an errant football.