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: Yet another Follies beauty turned Hollywood starlet, brunette Susan Fleming continued to play good-natured chorus girls in her film assignments as well. Few of them were memorable, unfortunately, and she is probably best remembered as the wife of Harpo Marx.

Trivia: White-maned, saintly American actor Edward LeSaint became a familiar figure in B-westerns of the '30s. He was almost invariably cast as the frail but courageous father of the heroine, who refused to sell his land (water, oil, gold) rights to the villains -- and equally invariably received a bullet in the back for his brave stance. A stage actor since the 19th century and in films since at least 1915, LeSaint was engaged as a staff director by the Fox Studios in 1918, where he was billed as E.J. LeSaint. Switching back to acting in the talkie era, LeSaint showed up in brief roles as college professors, judges, generals, city officials and the like. Edward LeSaint is best known to modern viewers as one of the "yes-men" professors in The Marx Brothers' Horse Feathers, and as judges in both the Three Stooges' Disorder in the Court (1936) and the anti-pot camp classic Reefer Madness (1936).

Trivia: After starting his acting career in Canadian summer stock, Nova Scotian Wallace MacDonald enlisted in the British Army during World War I. After the Armistice, MacDonald emigrated to America, where he continued his theatrical career. Making his first film in 1919, MacDonald became a moderately popular leading man, specializing in westerns after 1925. Talkies interrupted his career momentum, but MacDonald made a successful comeback in character roles in the early 1930s. In 1934, MacDonald forsook acting for writing, becoming script supervisor at the newly formed Republic Studios in 1935. One year later, he accepted a writer/producer post at Columbia Pictures. Wallace MacDonald remained a guiding force of Columbia's program westerns until the 1950s, also dabbling in early television work for Columbia's TV subsidiary Screen Gems.

Trivia: A bombastic character actor of the old school, William Walling played the railroad president in one of Tom Mix's best films, The Great K & A Train Robbery (1926). A frequent visitor to the cinematic range, Walling would also play a host of doctors, fathers, sheriffs, and bankers.

Trivia: An effort by a Films in Review writer of the '60s to catalogue the film appearances of American actor Harry Woods came a-cropper when the writer gave up after 400 films. Woods himself claimed to have appeared in 500 pictures, further insisting that he was violently killed off in 433 of them. After a lengthy and successful career as a millinery salesman, Woods decided to give Hollywood a try when he was in his early thirties. Burly, hatchet-faced, and steely eyed, Woods carved an immediate niche as a reliable villain. So distinctive were his mannerisms and his razor-edged voice that another memorable movie heavy, Roy Barcroft, admitted to deliberately patterning his performances after Woods'. While he went the usual route of large roles in B-pictures and serials and featured parts and bits in A-films, Harry Woods occasionally enjoyed a large role in an top-of-the-bill picture. In Cecil B. De Mille's Union Pacific (1939), for example, Woods plays indiscriminate Indian killer Al Brett, who "gets his" at the hands of Joel McCrea; and in Tall in the Saddle (1944), Woods is beaten to a pulp by the equally muscular John Wayne. Comedy fans will remember Harry Woods as the humorless gangster Alky Briggs in the Marx Brothers' Monkey Business (1931) and as the bullying neighbor whose bratty kid (Tommy Bond) hits Oliver Hardy in the face with a football in Block-Heads (1938).

Trivia: His hangdog expression gracing scores of Hollywood films from 1925 to 1950, Frank Austin (born George Francis Austin) portrayed Abraham Lincoln in the 1928 Jack Holt film Court-Martial. Adept at comedy as well as drama, Austin is memorable as the sinister butler in The Laurel and Hardy Murder Case (1930), the prisoner with the sore tooth in the team's Pardon Us (1931), and the diner with high blood pressure in W.C. Fields' Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941). Making his mark on B-Westerns as well, Austin delivered standout performances as the coroner in Reb Russell's Outlaw Rule (1935), the ill-fated Chuckwalla in the serial Riders of Death Valley (1941), and the assayer in Whip Wilson's Arizona Territory (1950), his final screen performance.

Trivia: A New Mexican of Native American extraction, actor Glenn Strange held down several rough-and-tumble jobs, from deputy sheriff to rodeo rider, before settling on a singing career. He made his radio bow on Los Angeles station KNX (the CBS-owned affiliate) as a member of the Arizona Wranglers singing group. Thanks to his husky physique and plug-ugly features, Strange had no trouble finding work as a stuntman/villain in western films and serials. He also displayed a flair for comedy as the sidekick to singing cowboy Dick Foran in a series of B-sagebrushers of the late '30s. During the war years, Strange became something of a bargain-basement Lon Chaney Jr., playing homicidal halfwits in a handful of horror pictures made at PRC and other low-budget studios. These appearances led to his being cast as the Frankenstein monster in the 1944 Universal programmer House of Frankenstein; he was coached in this role by the "creature" from the original 1931 Frankenstein, Boris Karloff. Given very little to do in House of Frankenstein and the 1945 sequel House of Dracula other than stalk around with arms outstretched at fadeout time, Strange brought none of the depth and pathos to the role that distinguished Karloff's appearances. Strange was shown to better advantage in his last appearance as The Monster in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) where he convincingly menaced the eternally frightened Lou Costello and even indulged in a couple of time-honored "scare" routines, while still remaining in character (Some scenes had to be reshot because Strange couldn't stop laughing at Costello's antics; towards the end of shooting, Strange broke his ankle and had to be replaced in a few shots by Lon Chaney Jr., who was costarring in the film as the Wolf Man). Though typecast as heavies in both movies and television -- he played the hissable Butch Cavendish in the Lone Ranger TV pilot -- Strange was well known throughout Hollywood as a genuine nice guy and solid family man. Glenn Strange's last engagement of note was his 11-year run (1962-73) as Sam, the Long Branch bartender on TV's Gunsmoke.

Trivia: With a flattened proboscis that ended just above his upper lip, James Lew Meehan was a highly visible presence in budget Westerns from the very early '20s to at least 1944. A lead villain in silent oaters starring lesser-known cowboys like Lester Cuneo, Bill Patton, and Al Hoxie, Meehan's florid acting style can be enjoyed today in such silents as Blazing Arrows (1922) and Red Blood (1926) -- the now veteran actor usually found himself demoted to that of anonymous henchman after the advent of sound. He remained busy, though, clocking in at a total of 121 sound Westerns and 11 serials between 1929 and 1944.

Trivia: One of the more effective Western thugs of the 1920s and 1930s, hatchet-faced, mustachioed Jim Corey menaced every cowboy hero around, from Art Acord at Universal to Tom Tyler at FBO, but had a special fondness for irritating the good-natured Hoot Gibson. Corey was never the main opposition (he usually left that position to more polished performers like Duke R. Lee or Harry Woods), but the term "henchman" could easily have been coined with him in mind. Usually lurking in the background, Corey is easily identifiable by wearing his gun holster on his left.

Trivia: Snake-eyed, mustachioed character actor Frank Ellis seldom rose above the "member of the posse" status in "B" westerns. Once in a while, he was allowed to say things like "Now here's my plan" and "Let's get outta here," but generally he stood by waiting for the Big Boss (usually someone like Harry Woods or Wheeler Oakman) to do his thinking for him. Ellis reportedly began making films around 1920; he remained in the business at least until the 1954 Allan Dwan-directed western Silver Lode. Frank Ellis has been erroneously credited with several policeman roles in the films of Laurel and Hardy, due to his resemblance to another bit player named Charles McMurphy.

Trivia: Burly 6'2", 200 pound Bob Reeves, a Texan, was a rodeo champion and stunt double at Universal until a prominent role in the action-packed serial The Great Radium Mystery (1919) paved the way for a starring series of 2-reel westerns. A bit bland as an action lead, Reeves nevertheless worked steadily through the 1920s for small Gower Gulch outfits like Cactus Features and Anchor. Reeves vehicles such as Cyclone Bob (1926), Desperate Chances (1926), Fighting Luck (1926) and Iron Fist (1926) had no production values whatsoever, suffered from nondescript direction (often old hacks like J.P. McGowan), and were saddled with amateurish supporting casts. But they almost always offered non-stop action and were usually filmed on locations in real-life California villages. Unfortunately, Hollywood suffered a glut of inexpensive western fare in the mid 1920s, and Reeves was demoted to minor supporting roles by the time talkies came around. He continued in films for another three decades or so, playing scores of henchmen, cops, security guards, or simply a face in the crowd, rarely billed but always a welcome presence in films ranging from The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1939; he played a policeman) to Canadian Mounties vs. Atomic Invaders (1953; as a bartender). Bob Reeves died of a heart attack in his Los Angeles home in 1960.