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: 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: A genuine westerner, Lane Chandler, upon leaving Montana Wesleyan College, moved to LA and worked as a garage mechanic while seeking out film roles. After several years in bit parts, Chandler was signed by Paramount in 1927 as a potential western star. For a brief period, both Chandler and Gary Cooper vied for the best cowboy roles, but in the end Paramount went with Cooper. Chandler made several attempts to establish himself as a "B" western star in the 1930s, but his harsh voice and sneering demeanor made him a better candidate for villainous roles. He mostly played bits in the 1940s, often as a utility actor for director Cecil B. DeMille. The weather-beaten face and stubbly chin of Lane Chandler popped up in many a TV and movie western of the 1950s, his roles gradually increasing in size and substance towards the end of his career.

Trivia: Chances are when a doctor made a house call in a '40s movie, that doctor was portrayed by Sam Flint. Silver-haired, authoritative, and distinguished by an executive-style moustache, Flint entered films in the early '30s after a long stage career. Though his movie roles were usually confined to one or two scenes per picture, Flint was always instantly recognizable in his characterizations of businessmen, bankers, chairmen of the board, politicians, publishers, fathers of the bride--and, as mentioned before, doctors. In addition to his prolific feature-film work, Sam Flint was always welcome in short subjects, appearing in support of everyone from Our Gang to the Three Stooges.

Trivia: A graduate of the University of Texas Law School, steely eyed Douglas Cosgrove enjoyed a long stage career that included appearances in the U.K. and on Broadway (i.e. The Rise and Fall of Susan Lennox [1920] and The Blue Ghost [1930]). In films from 1931, Cosgrove usually played police officers but was the chiseling boss villain in his last, the John Wayne oater Winds of the Wasteland (1936).

Trivia: A seasoned vaudeville and burlesque comedian, Lew Kelly came to films in 1929. The wizened, pop-eyed Kelly quickly became a comedy "regular," appearing in support of such star comics as Laurel & Hardy, W.C. Fields, and Wheeler and Woolsey. In dramatic films, Kelly could be found in bit parts as night watchmen, bartenders and doctors; one of his best roles of the 1940s was the derelict drunken doc in Bela Lugosi's Bowery at Midnight. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Lew Kelly worked steadily in two-reelers, appearing with the likes of Charley Chase, Andy Clyde, Harry Langdon and the Three Stooges.

Trivia: In films after 1915, hatchet-faced Robert Kortman claimed to have served in the U.S. Cavalry prior to going on-stage. With producer Thomas H. Ince in the mid-1910s, the menacing actor often supported the era's great Western icon William S. Hart (he was one of the rowdy townsmen in 1916's Hell's Hinges) and was equally busy in the '20s. Kortman, however, came into his own in sound serials, especially at Mascot and its successor Republic Pictures, where his menacing visage turned up everywhere, from playing Magua in Last of the Mohicans (1932) to portraying One-Eye Chapin in Adventures of Red Ryder (1940). His roles grew increasingly smaller, and Kortman continued to play mostly villains until at least 1951. He died of cancer.

Trivia: Steely-eyed, mustachioed Edward Cassidy (or plain Ed Cassidy) bore a striking resemblance to Theodore Roosevelt, whom he played three times onscreen, including a brief appearance in the MGM musical Take Me out to the Ball Game (1949). But the McGill University graduate was more at home in B-Westerns and serials, of which he did an impressive total of 218. Cassidy could occasionally be found on the wrong side of the law, but more often than not, he would portray the heroine's (or hero's) beleaguered father, the stern sheriff, or a troubled rancher. Retiring after his 1957 appearance in the television series Circus Boy, the veteran supporting player died from undisclosed causes at the Motion Picture House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Trivia: Bearded and scruffy-looking, William Merrill McCormick became one of the busiest character actors in B-Western history. Beginning his screen career in the late 1910s, McCormick excelled at playing unshaven henchmen, rustlers, stage robbers, and a host of other less-than-desirable prairie varmints. Rarely the main villain, he could usually be spotted sneering in the background alongside such fellow bit part players as Jim Corey, Bill Gillis, and Al Ferguson. Taking time out to direct good friend Marin Sais in a couple of very inexpensive oaters in 1923, McCormick kept up a hectic acting schedule that lasted well into the television era. He died of a heart attack right after finishing a scene for the television series The Roy Rogers Show.

Trivia: Athletic leading man Jon Hall felt safe when, late in his career, he played fast and loose with the facts concerning his early life -- including his actual date of birth. That's because until 1937, there was no Jon Hall, at least not officially. When he began his film career, he was billed as Charles Locher (notably in 1935's Charlie Chan in Shanghai) then went by the named of Lloyd Crane. With his starring role as a persecuted native boy in John Ford's The Hurricane (1937), the actor became Jon Hall for keeps. During the 1940s, Hall co-starred with the exotic Maria Montez in a series of nonsensical but very popular Technicolor costume pictures at Universal, bearing such titles as Arabian Nights (1942) and White Savage (1943). With his beefcake physique beefing up where it shouldn't by the early 1950s, Hall turned to television, where he starred in the well-circulated syndicated series Ramar of the Jungle from 1952 through 1954. He then left acting cold for several years to become an accomplished manufacturer of photographic equipment, making an excellent living renting out his underwater cameras to various Hollywood producers. He returned to films as the star and director of The Beach Girls and the Monster (1965), which not surprisingly was more entertaining in its underwater scenes than when it bobbed to the surface. He also kept busy as owner-manager of a small flying school. Hall was married four times; his second wife was singer Frances Langford, and his third and fourth was actress Raquel Torres. In 1979, suffering from terminal bladder cancer and not wishing to be a further burden on his relatives, Jon Hall shot himself in his sister's North Hollywood home.

Trivia: Along with his brother Bill, Joe Yrigoyen began his screen career performing stunts for pennies at Nat Levine's ramshackle Mascot Pictures, the early sound era's busiest provider of serial thrills. The Yrigoyen brothers stayed with the company when it was incorporated into Republic Pictures, doubling for the action studio's cowboy and serial stars, and most of their villains too. Joe Yrigoyen, who also worked tirelessly on such television shows as Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and Davy Crockett, retired in the late '70s. In 1985, he was awarded the prestigious Golden Boot Award, presented to him by old friend Roy Rogers.

Trivia: A bearded supporting player in countless B-Westerns, Bud McClure would play the occasional lawman but was more often than not just another member of the gang. Nicknamed "Tarzan," McClure was a motorcycle enthusiast whose wild rides across the Cahuenga Pass to Universal City became legendary.

Trivia: A WWI veteran who later studied law at the University of Texas, tough-looking Jack Ingram began his long show business career as a minstrel player and later reportedly toured with Mae West. He began turning up playing scruffy henchmen and assorted other B-Western villains in the mid-'30s and was later the featured heavy in Columbia serials. Ingram would go on to appear in a total of 200 Westerns and approximately 50 serials in a career that later included appearances on such television programs as The Cisco Kid and The Lone Ranger. Many of his later films and almost all his television Westerns, including the Roy Rogers and Gene Autry shows, were filmed on Ingram's own 200-acre ranch on Mulholland Drive in the Santa Monica Mountains overlooking Woodland Hills, which he had purchased from Charles Chaplin in 1944 and which remains a wilderness today.

Trivia: The Illinois-born, Canadian-reared George Kesterson was a boxer and circus trick rider before turning to Hollywood in the early '20s. In the silent era, he appeared first under his real name, then as Art Mix, the invention of Poverty Row producer/director Victor Adamson (aka Denver Dixon). Kesterson insisted on being billed Art Mix even after a falling out with Adamson/Dixon, for a while appearing under the alias concurrently with Dixon himself and rodeo rider Bob Roberts. Dixon reportedly sued him and he was Colonel Art Smith in at least one film, 1932's Mason of the Mounted. The dispute was settled out of court and Kesterson would appear as Art Mix for the remainder of his career. Under any name, the balding, slightly paunchy Kesterson usually played a good guy, often a deputy or Cattlemen's Association detective, and was easily recognizable for his white Stetson, the tallest in the business. He retired from the screen in the early '50s. Kesterson/Mix was married to Cuban-born silent screen actress Inez Gomez, who supported him in such films as West of the Rockies (1929).

Trivia: The quintessential B-movie lawman, granite-faced, mustachioed Jack Rockwell began turning up in low-budget oaters in the late 1920s and went on to amass an impressive array of film credits that included 225 Westerns and two dozen serials, working mostly for Republic Pictures and Columbia although he was never contracted by either. The Jack Rockwell that most fans remember is a stolid, unsmiling sheriff or marshal but he could also pop up as ranchers, homesteaders, stage drivers, and the occasional henchman, always recognizable even if unbilled and awarded only a couple of words of dialogue. Born John Trowbridge, Rockwell was the brother of another busy Hollywood supporting player, Charles Trowbridge (1982-1967).

Trivia: A former opera baritone who had studied at Denver's College of Sacred Heart and the European School of Music, veteran supporting actor Arthur Millett toured with Patta Rosa for several years prior to entering films in the early 1910s, appearing mostly in action-adventures and serials, including 1914's groundbreaking The Perils of Pauline. In a screen career that lasted until the late '30s, the tall (reportedly 6'1"), skinny Millett turned up in scores of supporting roles, usually cast as the girl's father, lawmen, clerks, hotel detectives, lawyers, and so on.

Trivia: An important screen director in the 1910s, Illinois-born Lloyd Ingraham had been a stock manager for California entrepreneur Oliver Morosco prior to entering films directing Broncho Billy Westerns for Essanay in the early 1910s. He went on to direct some of the silent era's biggest stars, including Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, and would specialize in robust outdoor adventures and Westerns. An equally busy supporting player who appeared in scores of silent films ranging from Intolerance (1916) to Scaramouche (1923), the white-haired, ascetic-looking veteran became an actor for hire after the advent of sound, appearing mostly in low-budget Westerns and almost always playing the heroine's father or a lawman. Spending his final years as a resident of the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA, Ingraham's death was attributed to pneumonia.

Trivia: A veteran of Selig two-reelers in the early 1910s, burly American character actor Horace B. Carpenter came to the forefront after joining the Lasky Feature Play Company (later Paramount) in 1914. For pioneering director Cecil B. DeMille, Carpenter played Spanish Ed in The Virginian (1914) and Jacques D'Arc in Joan the Woman (1916), both still extant, before striking out on his own, directing and acting in some of the cheapest Westerns and action melodramas ever produced. Returning to acting exclusively after the changeover to sound, Carpenter continued to play his stock-in-trade, kindly fathers and ranchers in scores of B-Westerns. Thus, it came as an unpleasant surprise when the veteran actor, out of sheer poverty one imagines, accepted to play Dr. Meinschultz, devouring a cat's eye in the 1934 exploitation thriller Maniac. Carpenter survived this indiscretion with his career somewhat intact and continued to play scores of supporting roles and bit parts right up to his death of a heart attack.

Trivia: Sources differ as to whether dark-haired American stunt woman/actress Helen Gibson actually enjoyed the benefit of clergy when "marrying" future cowboy star Hoot Gibson at the Pendleton Roundup in Oregon in 1911. Gibson herself always maintained that they were husband and wife and "The Hooter" certainly appeared the jealous husband when, in 1915, she replaced Helen Holmes in the long-running Hazards of Helen series and became the Gibson family's main breadwinner. Born Rose August Wenger but changing her name to fit her new role on and off the screen, Helen Gibson succeeded Helen Holmes after years as a stunt rider with the famous Miller 101 Wild West Show and as an eight dollars-a-week extra for film producer Thomas Ince. She was actually much livelier and arguably a better actress than her predecessor and the series made her a top action star. The Hazards of Helen finally ended in 1917 and Gibson would find the coming decade less hospitable. No longer with Hoot Gibson, she also suffered the indignity of going bankrupt in an attempt to produce her own starring vehicles. But despite setbacks, Helen Gibson persevered due to her superior riding skills and film work kept coming her way, right through to the 1960s and John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), for which she reportedly earned 35 dollars driving a team of horses. Helen Gibson lived long enough to become part of the nostalgia boom and often shared her recollections with readers of such publications as Films in Review.

Trivia: In films since the earliest days of sound, distinguished-looking Henry Hall specialized in playing small-town doctors, lawyers, benign businessmen, or the heroine's father, often in low-budget Westerns and frequently unbilled. On Broadway in the first decade of the 20th century, Hall spent his final years as a resident at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Trivia: A legendary stuntman/stunt coordinator, Cliff Lyons was as handsome as any of the stars he doubled and had indeed starred in his own series of silent Westerns under the name of Tex Lyons. Having begun his professional career performing with minor rodeos, Lyonsdrifted to Hollywood in the early '20s, where he found work as a stuntman in such films as Ben-Hur (1925) and Beau Geste (1927). In between these major releases, the newcomer did yeoman duty for Poverty Row entrepreneur Bud Barsky, who produced eight Westerns in Sequoia National Park starring, alternately, Lyons and Al Hoxie. Lyons would do a second series of eight equally low-budget jobs for producer Morris R. Schlank, filmed at Kernville, CA, and released 1928-1930. This time, he would alternate with another cowboy star, Cheyenne Bill. Commented Lyons: "We would go on location and make two pictures at a time -- one of Cheyenne Bill's and one of mine -- and also play the villain in each other's." Sound put an end to Lyons' starring career and he spent the next four decades or so as a riding double for the likes of Johnny Mack Brown, Buck Jones, Ken Maynard, and even Tom Mix (in the 1935 serial The Miracle Rider). In his later years he became closely associated with good friends John Wayne and John Ford, for whom he also did some second-unit directing. Although not as remembered today as Yakima Canutt, Lyons was a major force in the burgeoning stunt business and many of his innovations are still used by modern practitioners of the craft. He was married from 1938 to 1955 to B-Western heroine Beth Marion, with whom he had two sons.

Trivia: If a B-Western needed a bartender -- any B-Western between the early 1920s and the late 1930s -- chances were good that Clyde McClary would be the actor hired. In fact, Clyde was found behind the bar in more than two-thirds of his 80 or so sound Westerns, serving everybody from Buck Jones in the early talkie The Dawn Trail (1930) to Tim McCoy in the ultra low-budget Code of the Cactus (1939). In films from at least 1922, McClary had often played rather unsympathetic characters, i.e., a nasty rustler terrorizing the local settlers in The Lone Rider (1922) and one of the smugglers in Twin Triggers (1926).

Trivia: American stage actor George Morrell turned to films in 1921, on the verge of his 49th birthday. Morrell launched his talkie career in 1929 as Reverend McBride in The Virginian, then went on to play innumerable bit parts in both A- and B-Westerns. He showed up in several Gene Autry films, usually playing a surly barfly. George Morrell remained active until in 1947.