Trivia: The second-oldest son of humorist Will Rogers, Jimmy Rogers made his screen debut at age six in his dad's Doubling for Romeo. In 1941, Jimmy Rogers was hired by producer Hal Roach to co-star with Noah Beery Jr. in a trio of comedy-Western "streamliners." During the 1943-1944 film season, he was a regular in United Artists' Hopalong Cassidy series. Though Jimmy Rogers didn't care all that much for the movies, he welcomed the opportunity to ride the horses supplied to him by the studios, and after the cessation of his brief film career, he established a profitable horse ranching business in Bakersfield, CA.

Trivia: Born in New York City while his father Noah Beery Sr. was appearing on-stage, Noah Beery Jr. was given his lifelong nickname, "Pidge," by Josie Cohan, sister of George M. Cohan "I was born in the business," Pidge Beery observed some 63 years later. "I couldn't have gotten out of it if I wanted to." In 1920, the younger Beery made his first screen appearance in Douglas Fairbanks' The Mark of Zorro (1920), which co-starred dad Noah as Sergeant Garcia. Thanks to a zoning mistake, Pidge attended the Hollywood School for Girls (his fellow "girls" included Doug Fairbanks Jr. and Jesse Lasky Jr.), then relocated with his family to a ranch in the San Fernando Valley, miles from Tinseltown. While some kids might have chafed at such isolation, Pidge loved the wide open spaces, and upon attaining manhood emulated his father by living as far away from Hollywood as possible. After attending military school, Pidge pursued film acting in earnest, appearing mostly in serials and Westerns, sometimes as the hero, but usually as the hero's bucolic sidekick. His more notable screen credits of the 1930s and '40s include Of Mice and Men (1939), Only Angels Have Wings (again 1939, this time as the obligatory doomed-from-the-start airplane pilot), Sergeant York (1941), We've Never Been Licked (1943), and Red River (1948). He also starred in a group of rustic 45-minute comedies produced by Hal Roach in the early '40s, and was featured in several popular B-Western series; one of these starred Buck Jones, whose daughter Maxine became Pidge's first wife. Perhaps out of a sense of self-preservation, Beery appeared with his camera-hogging uncle Wallace Beery only once, in 1940's 20 Mule Team. Children of the 1950s will remember Pidge as Joey the Clown on the weekly TV series Circus Boy (1956), while the more TV-addicted may recall Beery's obscure syndicated travelogue series, co-starring himself and his sons. The 1960s found Pidge featured in such A-list films as Inherit the Wind (1960) and as a regular on the series Riverboat and Hondo. He kicked off the 1970s in the role of Michael J. Pollard's dad (there was a resemblance) in Little Fauss and Big Halsey. Though Beery was first choice for the part of James Garner's father on the TV detective series The Rockford Files, Pidge was committed to the 1973 James Franciscus starrer Doc Elliot, so the Rockford producers went with actor Robert Donley in the pilot episode. By the time The Rockford Files was picked up on a weekly basis, Doc Elliot had tanked, thus Donley was dropped in favor of Beery, who stayed with the role until the series' cancellation in 1978. Pidge's weekly-TV manifest in the 1980s included Quest (1981) and The Yellow Rose (1983). After a brief illness, Noah Beery Jr. died at his Tehachapi, CA, ranch at the age of 81.

Trivia: The son of actors James and Lucille Gleason, Russell Gleason started his own career as a juvenile in several of his parents' stage productions. Russell made the transition to films in 1929's The Sophomore; the following year, he scored a personal and critical success as Private Muller in the Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front. His subsequent screen assignments included the role of perennial boyfriend Herbert Thompson in 20th Century-Fox's "Jones Family" series, and Republic's "Higgins Family" outings, in which he co-starred with his mother and father. Russell Gleason was 37 years old when he died in an accidental fall from a hotel window; his widow was radio and screen actress Cynthia Lindsay, who in 1975 wrote Dear Boris, an affectionate memoir of the Gleason family's close friend Boris Karloff.

Trivia: When American actor Paul Hurst became the comedy sidekick in the Monte Hale western series at Republic in the early '50s, he came by the work naturally; he had been born and bred on California's Miller and Lux Ranch. While in his teens, Hurst attained his first theatre job as a scenery painter in San Francisco, making his on-stage debut at age 19. In 1911, Hurst ventured into western films, wearing three hats as a writer, director and actor. He worked ceaselessly in character roles throughout the '20s, '30s and '40s, most often in comedy parts as dim-witted police officers and muscle-headed athletes. He also showed up in leading roles in 2-reelers, notably as a punchdrunk trainer in Columbia's Glove Slingers series. On at least two memorable occasions, Hurst eschewed comedy for villainy: in 1943's The Ox-Bow Incident, he's the lynch-mob member who ghoulishly reminds the victims what's in store for them by grabbing his collar and making choking sounds. And in Gone with the Wind, Hurst is Hell personified as the Yankee deserter and would-be rapist whom Scarlet O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) shoots in the face at point blank range. Paul Hurst kept busy into the early '50s; at the age of 65, he ended his career and his life in suicide.

Trivia: Though she remained single throughout her life, actress Marjorie Gateson was the perfect screen "wife" to many a stuffed-shirt aristocrat, blustering businessman or windbag politician. A product of the New York stage, Gateson came to Hollywood when movies learned to talk; of her many matronly roles, she is probably best remembered as the party hostess whom prizefighter Harold Lloyd teaches how to "duck" in The Milky Way (1936). She returned to New York in the early 1940s, where she co-starred in one of the pioneering TV serials, One Man's Family. Marjorie Gateson returned to soap operas near the end of her career in the role of Grace Tyrrell on The Secret Storm, a part she played until illness struck her down in 1969.

Trivia: While visiting a high school pal in Los Angeles in 1924, roly-poly Grady Sutton made the acquaintance of his friend's brother, director William A. Seiter. Quite taken by Sutton's bucolic appearance and comic potential, Seiter invited Sutton to appear in his next film, The Mad Whirl. Sutton enjoyed himself in his bit role, and decided to remain in Hollywood, where he spent the next 47 years playing countless minor roles as dimwitted Southerners and country bumpkins. Usually appearing in comedies, Sutton supported such master clowns as Laurel and Hardy and W.C. Fields (the latter reportedly refused to star in 1940's The Bank Dick unless Sutton was given a good part); he also headlined in two short-subjects series, Hal Roach's The Boy Friends and RKO's The Blondes and the Redheads. Through the auspices of Blondes and the Redheads director George Stevens, Sutton was cast as Katharine Hepburn's cloddish dancing partner in Alice Adams (1935), the first of many similar roles. Sutton kept his hand in movies until 1971, and co-starred on the 1966 Phyllis Diller TV sitcom The Pruitts of Southampton. A willing interview subject of the the 1960s and 1970s, Grady Sutton went into virtual seclusion after the death of his close friend, director George Cukor.

Trivia: Discovered by W.C. Fields in a popular Los Angeles parody of the ancient barnstormer The Drunkard, hatchet-faced Jan Duggan breezed into the comedian's 1934 paean to barnstorming itself, The Old-Fashioned Way. Duggan plays widow Cleopatra Pepperday, whose heartfelt but longwinded and off-key rendition of "Gathering Up the Sea Shells" is interrupted by Fields' wholly insincere "Wonderful, wonderful; You make Jenny Lind sound like a mangy alley cat with asthma." Duggan went on to become part of the comedian's onscreen coterie, but her roles elsewhere were minimal. She died in 1977 at the age of 95.