Trivia: As a college student, Tex Ritter (born Woodward) began studying cowboy ballads and southwest folklore, and later dropped out of law school to launch a stage and radio folk-singing career. He debuted on Broadway in 1930; his first screen appearance was in Song of the Gringo (1936). Almost immediately, he rivalled Gene Autry in popularity (as a singing cowboy) among movie fans; from 1937-41 and 1944-45 he was on the top-ten Western stars list, and ultimately he appeared in 85 films. He was often referred to as "America's most beloved cowboy." In the latter half of the '40s he stopped making films, instead touring with White Flash, his horse, in live shows; he also continued his successful recording career. He went on to provide the title songs of five Westerns, narrate a sixth, and appear on TV's "Zane Grey Theater." He moved to Nashville and became a weekly fixture at the Grand Ole Opry. He also founded a restaurant franchise, "Tex Ritter's Chuck Wagons." In 1966 he had a prominent role in the film The Girl from Tobacco Row and was featured in cameos as himself in two others. In 1970 he ran in the Republican primary for U.S. Senator in Tennessee, but lost. He was the only entertainer to be elected to both the Cowboy Hall of Fame and the Country Music Hall of Fame. He was married to actress Dorothy Fay; their son is actor John Ritter.

Trivia: A brunette starlet and B-Western heroine, Louise Stanley married two of her leading men: Dennis O'Keefe and Jack Randall (aka Addison Randall). Born Louisa Todd Keys, Stanley began her screen career under contract to Paramount and later to Warner Bros., both of whom mainly farmed her out to independent companies. She subsequently went on to work for most of the B-Western producers, including Universal, Republic, and Monogram, starring opposite everyone from Johnny Mack Brown to Tex Ritter to Jack Randall, who became the second of her three husbands. Stanley appeared in a total of 15 B-Westerns before leaving films for good in 1944. She later married a navy pilot and resettled in Florida.

Trivia: Gawky, loose-limbed Al St. John performed from childhood with his family in vaudeville and burlesque around his home state of California, perfecting an athletic bicycle act that would stand him in good stead for the remainder of his career. Despite his parents' misgivings about "the flickers," St. John was persuaded to enter films by the success of his uncle, Mack Sennett star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. St. John became a "Keystone Kop" in that famous congregation's very first film, The Bangville Police (1913), supported Charles Chaplin and Marie Dressler in the feature comedy Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), and then followed Arbuckle to Comique, where he and the young Buster Keaton functioned as "second bananas" to the hefty star. On his own, St. John starred in Educational comedies (one, The Iron Mule [1925], directed by his now disgraced uncle under the pseudonym of William Goodrich), all along developing his patented rube personality complete with oversized overalls and porkpie hat.St. John himself later claimed that a deal with the Fox company went sour and that he suddenly found himself more or less blacklisted by the major studios. He did appear in one of Roscoe Arbuckle's comeback shorts, Buzzin' Around (1933), but by the mid-'30s he seemed all washed up. To keep food (and, it was rumored, quite a bit of spirits) on the table, St. John switched gears and began pursuing a career in independently produced B-Westerns. He played a variety of characters, both major and minor, before almost accidentally stumbling over the particular role that would sustain him for the rest of his career and make him perhaps the favorite sidekick among kids -- that of the limber, baggy-pants braggart Fuzzy Q. Jones.Poverty Row company Spectrum had originally intended for Melody of the Plains (1937) to co-star singer Fred Scott with Fuzzy Knight but he proved unavailable and the script was simply never changed. St. John became so popular in the role that, by 1940, he was playing Fuzzy in no less than three Western series simultaneously, PRC's Billy the Kid and Lone Rider programmers and Republic Pictures' Don "Red" Barry vehicles. He remained with the Billy the Kid/Billy Carson Westerns when star Bob Steele was replaced by Larry "Buster" Crabbe and was still Fuzzy Q. Jones in 1947 when Crabbe left in favor of Humphrey Bogart-lookalike Al "Lash" LaRue. In quite a few of these downright poverty-stricken potboilers, St. John provided the only glimmer of entertainment. As LaRue often remarked, "Fuzzy could stumble over a match stick and spend 15 exciting minutes looking for the match." In other words, kids didn't really go to see a Buster Crabbe or Lash LaRue Western, they went to see Fuzzy.Al St. John was unique among B-Western sidekicks in that he actually carried his films rather than the easily disposable leading men. Both Crabbe and LaRue were well aware of that and remained steadfast in their praise for the diminutive performer. When the LaRue era finally ended with a short-lived television series, Lash of the West (1953), St. John returned to the boards and continued making personal appearances until his death from a heart attack.

Trivia: With his penetrating eyes, trademark pencil-thin mustache, and stocky build, Missouri-born Karl Hackett appeared in scores of low-budget Westerns from 1935 to 1948, usually playing characters with untrustworthy names like Wolf Hines (Colorado Kid [1937]), Slaughter (Utah Trail [1938]), or Three-Fingers Rogel (Where the Buffalo Roam [1938]). Once in a while he wore a badge (The Lion's Den [1936], Wild Horse Rustler [1943]), but was still highly suspicious. On his few excursions away from the range, Hackett played thugs in the 1939 serials The Green Hornet and its sequel The Green Hornet Strikes Again (1940) and was Councillor Krenko in Buck Rogers (1940).

Trivia: Succinctly described as "portly and pompous" by B-Western aficionado Don Miller, American character-actor Horace Murphy was the Eugene Pallette of the sagebrush. Spending most of his career in cowboy flicks, Murphy was usually cast as intrusive sheriffs, know-it-all doctors, and orotund snake-oil peddlers. In 1937, he made the first of several appearances as comedy-relief sidekick Stubby in the films of Western hero Tex Ritter. In non-Westerns, he could usually be found playing bartenders, burgomeisters, and train conductors. Horace Murphy made his last screen appearance in 1946.

Trivia: Bald, lanky, laconic American actor Hank Worden made his screen debut in The Plainsman (1936), and began playing simpleminded rustics at least as early as the 1941 El Brendel two-reel comedy Love at First Fright. A member in good standing of director John Ford's unofficial stock company, Worden appeared in such Ford classics as Fort Apache (1948) and Wagonmaster (1950). The quintessential Worden-Ford collaboration was The Searchers (1955) wherein Worden portrayed the near-moronic Mose Harper, who spoke in primitive, epigrammatic half-sentences and who seemed gleefully obsessed with the notion of unexpected death. Never a "normal" actor by any means, Worden continued playing characters who spoke as if they'd been kicked by a horse in childhood into the '80s; his last appearance was a recurring role in the quirky David Lynch TV serial Twin Peaks. In real life, Hank Worden was far from addled and had a razor-sharp memory, as proven in his many appearances at Western fan conventions and in an interview program about living in the modern desert, filmed just before Worden's death for cable TV's Discovery Channel.

Trivia: One of the busiest bit-part players in B-Westerns of the late 1930s, Canadian-born Oscar Gahan (born John Harvey Gahan) began his 1935-1942 screen career as a member of several hillbilly music groups, including The Arizona Wranglers (aka The Range Riders), which also included stalwart B-Western player Jack Kirk, stuntman Jack Jones, and Deuce Spriggens. Gahan would both appear with the music group and on his own, usually cast as a henchman.