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: Actress Marguerite Churchill journeyed from her native Kansas City to New York as a child. She was trained for a theatrical career at Professional Children's School and Theatre Guild Drama School, and was on Broadway before reaching the age of 14. In 1929, she was signed to a Fox Studios contract; her first film was The Valiant (1929), in which she co-starred with Paul Muni. Dissatisfied with the sort of roles assigned her at Fox, Marguerite returned to Broadway, where she appeared in Kaufman and Ferber's Dinner at Eight (1933). She gave Hollywood a second chance in 1935, but except for her intriguing damsel-in-distress portrayal in Dracula's Daughter (1936), most of her film roles were eminently forgettable. She left films again in 1936 to spend more time with her husband, cowboy star George O'Brien; after the breakup of their marriage in 1948, Ms. Churchill made one final screen appearance in the RKO "B" Bunco Squad (1950).

Trivia: Cadaverous character actor Tully Marshall attended the University of Santa Clara in the 1880s. Drifting into acting, Marshall first appeared onstage at the age of 26, turning professional shortly thereafter. He had nearly a quarter century of theatrical experience behind him when he made his first film in 1914. Like his fellow actors Charles Coburn and Donald Crisp, Marshall was one of those performers who seemed to have been born at the age of 60. Throughout the silent era, he played a vast array of drunken trail scouts, lovable grandpas, unforgiving fathers, sinister attorneys and lecherous aristocrats. In films until his death at the age of 78, one of the best of Tully Marshall's last performances was as the wheelchair-bound criminal mastermind in This Gun For Hire (1942).

Trivia: American comedian El Brendel spent several years in vaudeville honing his comic characterization as a Swedish simpleton, given to such expletives as "Yumpin' Yiminy!" In real life, Brendel was of German heritage, and spoke with no accent whatsoever, but his Swede character earned him so many laughs that he decided to stick with it. He entered movies during the silent era, making his bow in The Campus Flirt (1926), but it was in the early talkie musicals produced at Fox Studios that he truly made his mark. From 1929 through 1931, Brendel was in virtually every major Fox production, usually as comic relief; once in a while, as in the famous "futuristic" musical Just Imagine (1930), he was the star, and a very popular one. The movies used up Brendel's material very rapidly, however, and before long audiences wearied of his tiny bag of tricks. By the end of the 1930s, he was reduced to minor roles supporting such newer luminaries as Shirley Temple and Bing Crosby. Brendel's most prolific work in this later stage of his career was at Columbia Pictures, where he starred in nineteen two-reel comedies produced between 1936 and 1945; Some of these, like the Oscar-nominated Blitzkiss (1941), were pretty good, but most of El Brendel's short subjects were weak, and many were hampered by unsuccessfully forcing Brendel into a team with fellow Columbia contractee Harry Langdon. After 1945, Brendel's movie career really went downhill, occasionally brightened by amusing character parts in such films as The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949), but usually mired in the mediocrity characterized by El's final film, She-Creature (1956). Shortly before his death, El Brendel made a comeback of sorts as a character actor on TV, notably as a crotchety delicatessen owner on an early 1960s episode of The Danny Thomas Show.

Trivia: Though invariably referred to by latter-day historians as Tyrone Power Sr., British stage and screen actor Tyrone Power never billed himself as such during his lifetime. The grandson of legendary Irish actor Tyrone Power (1797-1841) and the son of concert pianist Harold Power, he was sent to Florida by his family in 1883 to learn the citrus fruit business. Instead, he gravitated to the theater, billing himself variously as Tyrone Power II and Tyrone Power the Younger. He made his Broadway debut in 1886, and for the next 30 years starred in one successful stage vehicle after another. In 1914 he entered films, where it was said that he was never truly comfortable until director Henry King urged Power to forget his lines (which couldn't be heard anyway) and go along with his own emotional impulses. He continued playing colorful character roles throughout the silent era, the most memorable of which included Lord Cornwallis in the Marion Davies historical drama Janice Meredith (1924). His rich, booming voice was heard onscreen only once, when he played the villainous Red Flack in the early talkie Western epic The Big Trail (1930). Married three times, Power outlived all of his wives. While filming The Miracle Man in 1931, Tyrone Power suffered a massive heart attack and died in the arms of his namesake son, who, out of respect for his father, billed himself as Tyrone Power Jr. until he was firmly established as a film idol in his own right.

Trivia: An engaging, dimpled leading man of the late '20s, David Rollins was especially convincing in a series of rah-rah college comedies from Fox and often played opposite pert Sue Carol, who in many ways was his female counterpart. Arriving in films at a difficult time in history -- the transition from silent to sound -- Rollins saw his career decline in the very early '30s and left Hollywood in 1932. He reportedly did some television work in the 1950s.

Trivia: A former opera singer, tall, dignified Frederick Burton began making films in 1919. One of Burton's better early movie roles was Matthew Cuthbert in the silent version of Anne of Green Gables (1919). In the first years of the talkie era, he was seen in such sizeable roles as Pa Basom in The Big Trail (1930) and Samuel Griffiths in An American Tragedy(1931). Thereafter, Frederick Burton was often as not confined to one-scene assignments, playing scores of doctors, reverends, judges, senators, governors, newspaper editors and murder victims.

Trivia: A grandson of the legendary Apache chief Geronimo, Charles Stevens (often billed as Charles "Injun" Stevens because of his ethnic background) made his film bow as an extra in The Birth of a Nation (1915). The close friend and "mascot" of cinema idol Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Stevens appeared in all but one of Fairbanks' starring films, beginning with 1915's The Lamb. He was often seen in multiple roles, never more obviously than in Fairbanks' The Black Pirate (1926). His largest role during his Fairbanks years was Planchet in The Three Musketeers (1921) and its sequel The Iron Mask (1929). In talkies, Stevens was generally cast as a villain, usually an Indian, Mexican, or Arab. Outside of major roles in early sound efforts like The Big Trail and Tom Sawyer (both 1930), he could be found playing menacing tribal chiefs and bandits in serials and B-pictures, and seedy, drunken "redskin" stereotypes (invariably named Injun Joe or Injun Charlie or some such) in big-budget films like John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946). He was also much in demand as a technical adviser on Native American lore and customs. Charles Stevens remained active until 1956, 17 years after the death of his pal and mentor Doug Fairbanks.

Trivia: The daughter of a stage actress, Helen Parrish began appearing in silent films as a child. In the early '30s, she was briefly a member of Hal Roach's Our Gang. Parrish went on to inspire hisses as Deanna Durbin's spiteful nemesis in such films as Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939) and First Love (1939). She began playing adult roles at Universal and RKO in 1940 before her career went into a slow decline at Monogram. For many years the wife of People Are Funny and You Bet Your Life producer John Guedel, Helen Parrish died of cancer at the age of 34. Her older brother was juvenile star-turned-editor-turned-director Robert Parrish.

Trivia: A veteran of musical comedy and vaudeville, American silent-screen comedian Louise Carver used her plain, Midwestern visage to utmost effect in attempting to seduce Harold Lloyd in Somewhere in Turkey (1918), and as the cigar-chomping housekeeper in Harold Langdon's The First 100 Years (1924). Carver's career was mostly taken up with two-reel comedies, but she appeared in feature films as well: The Big Trail (1930) as El Brendel's harridan of a mother-in-law, Riders of the Desert (1932) as Al St. John's wife, and Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (1933) as Chester Conklin's wife. Carver was married to stage and screen comic Tom Murray.

Trivia: William V. Mong was active in the motion picture industry from 1910, as a staff director for Selig Studios. After Selig folded in the mid-teens, Mong directed a handful of films for other studios, then switched to acting (he appeared in 18 films in 1916 alone!) His screen roles of the 1920s ranged from the teetotaling Parson Brown in The Strong Man (1926) to the earthy Cognac Pete in What Price Glory? William V. Mong remained busy right up to his death in 1940, playing innumerable bankers, doctors, ministers, and a Roman senator or two.

Trivia: American actor Ward Bond was a football player at the University of Southern California when, together with teammate and lifelong chum John Wayne, he was hired for extra work in the silent film Salute (1928), directed by John Ford. Both Bond and Wayne continued in films, but it was Wayne who ascended to stardom, while Bond would have to be content with bit roles and character parts throughout the 1930s. Mostly playing traffic cops, bus drivers and western heavies, Bond began getting better breaks after a showy role as the murderous Cass in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). Ford cast Bond in important roles all through the 1940s, usually contriving to include at least one scene per picture in which the camera would favor Bond's rather sizable posterior; it was an "inside" joke which delighted everyone on the set but Bond. A starring role in Ford's Wagonmaster (1950) led, somewhat indirectly, to Bond's most lasting professional achievement: His continuing part as trailmaster Seth Adams on the extremely popular NBC TV western, Wagon Train. No longer supporting anyone, Bond exerted considerable creative control over the series from its 1957 debut onward, even seeing to it that his old mentor John Ford would direct one episode in which John Wayne had a bit role, billed under his real name, Marion Michael Morrison. Finally achieving the wide popularity that had eluded him during his screen career, Bond stayed with Wagon Train for three years, during which time he became as famous for his offscreen clashes with his supporting cast and his ultra-conservative politics as he was for his acting. Wagon Train was still NBC's Number One series when, in November of 1960, Bond unexpectedly suffered a heart attack and died while taking a shower.

Trivia: Stocky, stiff-backed actor DeWitt C. Jennings made his film bow in Cecil B. DeMille's The Warrens of Virginia (1915). After scores of silents, Jennings made a seamless transition to talkies, appearing in half a dozen films in 1929 alone. He was usually cast as gruff police captains or baffled suburban fathers (he was Harold Lloyd's dad in 1932's Movie Crazy). Generally dignified and reserved, DeWitt C. Jennings was afforded a rare opportunity to tear a passion to tatters as the "mystery" murderer (one of the most obvious in movie history) in 1934's Death on the Diamond.

Trivia: Inaugurating his film career around 1918, actor Alphonse Ethier sometimes spelled his first name "Alphonz." In the late 1920s, Ethier became a favorite of young director Frank Capra, who displayed the actor to good advantage in several of his Columbia silent productions, as well as the early-talkie The Donovan Affair (1929). After essaying such sizeable roles as the Marshal in Raoul Walsh's The Big Trail, Ethier settled into minor parts, usually as executives and government officials. Alphonse Ethier retired in 1938, and passed away five years later.

Trivia: Burly vaudeville monologist/comedian Russell J. Powell made his first film in 1920. It wasn't until the advent of talkies, however, that Powell's gift for dialects and bizarre vocal sound effects could truly be appreciated. His more memorable screen roles included the Afghan Ambassador in Lubitsch's The Love Parade (1929) and his blackface turn as the Kingfish in the Amos and Andy vehicle Check and Double Check (1930). So far as many film aficionados are concerned, Russell J. Powell achieved immortality as the dockhand in the opening scene of King Kong (1933), who launches into a stream of fluent exposition with the quizzical "Say, you goin' on this craaazy voyage?"

Trivia: Tall, handsome, golden-throated leading man Ian Keith became a Broadway favorite in the 1920s. He also pursued a sporadic silent film career, appearing opposite the illustrious likes of Gloria Swanson and Lon Chaney Sr. A natural for talkies, Keith appeared in such early sound efforts as Raoul Walsh's The Big Trail (1930) and D.W. Griffith's Abraham Lincoln (1930) (in which he played John Wilkes Booth). A favorite of Cecil B. DeMille, Keith stole the show as the cultured, soft-spoken Saladin in DeMille's The Crusades (1935). A rambunctious night life and an inclination towards elbow-bending reduced Keith's stature in Hollywood, and by the mid-1940s he was occasionally obliged to appear in such cheapies as the 1946 "Bowery Boys" epic Mr. Hex. His final screen appearance was a cameo as Rameses I in DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956). Among Ian Keith's wives was stage luminary Blanche Yurka and silent-film leading lady Ethel Clayton.

Trivia: Best known for having posed for the famous Indian head nickel, Chief John Big Tree (real name Isaac John) enjoyed a screen career lasting 1915-1950. Among his countless Westerns, large and small, Big Tree played important roles in the controversial The Spirit of '76 (1917) and such epics as The Big Trail (1930), Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949).

Trivia: The son and grandson of actors, Tyrone Power made his stage debut at age seven, appearing with his father in a stage production at San Gabriel Mission. After turning professional, Power supported himself between engagements working as a theater usher and other such odd jobs. Though in films as a bit actor since 1932, Power was not regarded as having star potential until appearing in Katherine Cornell's theatrical company in 1935. Signed by 20th Century Fox in 1936, Power was cast in a supporting role in the Simone Simon vehicle Girl's Dormitory; reaction from preview audiences to Fox's new contractee was so enthusiastic that Darryl F. Zanuck ordered that Power's part be expanded for the final release version. As Fox's biggest male star, Power was cast in practically every major production turned out by the studio from 1936 through 1940; though his acting skills were secondary to his drop-dead good looks, Power was a much better actor than he was given credit for at the time. He also handled his celebrity like an old pro; he was well liked by his co-stars and crew, and from all reports was an able and respected leader of men while serving as a Marine Corps officer during World War II. After the war, Power despaired at the thought of returning to pretty-boy roles, endeavoring to toughen his screen image with unsympathetic portrayals in such films as Nightmare Alley (1947) and Witness for the Prosecution. Though Power's popularity waned in the 1950s, he remained in demand for both stage and screen assignments. Like his father before him, Tyrone Power died "in harness," succumbing to a heart attack on the set of Solomon and Sheba (1958).