Trivia: Born Randolph Crane, this virile, weathered, prototypical cowboy star with a gallant manner and slight Southern accent enlisted for service in the U.S. Army during World War I at age 19. After returning home he got a degree in engineering, then joined the Pasadena Community Playhouse. While golfing, Scott met millionaire filmmaker Howard Hughes, who helped him enter films as a bit player. In the mid '30s he began landing better roles, both as a romantic lead and as a costar. Later he became a Western star, and from the late '40s to the '50s he starred exclusively in big-budget color Westerns (39 altogether). From 1950-53 he was one of the top ten box-office attractions. Later in the '50s he played the aging cowboy hero in a series of B-Westerns directed by Budd Boetticher for Ranown, an independent production company. He retired from the screen in the early '60s. Having invested in oil wells, real estate, and securities, he was worth between $50-$100 million.

Trivia: In vaudeville with her parents from childhood, blonde, silent-movie leading lady Esther Ralston was in films from 1916. Her first important role was the heroine in the 12-chapter Universal serial The Phantom Fortune. A major star at Paramount in the 1920s, Ralston was touted as "The American Venus" after appearing (with a bare-minimum wardrobe) in a 1926 film of the same name. Ever seeking out a variety of parts, Ralston played Rose Maylie in Oliver Twist (1923), Mrs. Darling in Peter Pan (1924), and the Fairy Godmother in A Kiss for Cinderella (1925); she was at her best when exuding an air of highly defendable virtue in films like Old Ironsides (1926). Ralston prepared for talkies by training at Edward Everett Horton's California-based stock company. She continued playing worthwhile roles in features of various importance until her first retirement in 1941, and thereafter briefly acted on radio soap operas. After the breakup of her marriage, Ralston found the financial going rough and took whatever jobs she could; in the mid-'50s she toiled as a Manhattan department store saleswoman, denying that she was Esther Ralston to customers who thought they recognized her. Also in that decade, she briefly managed the career of her daughter, a nightclub singer. Esther Ralston returned before the cameras on the 1962 NBC TV daytime drama Our Five Daughters.

Trivia: Athletic actor Buster Crabbe, born Clarence Crabbe, grew up in Hawaii where he developed into a first-rate swimmer and athlete, going on to win the gold medal in 400-meter swimming at the 1932 Olympics (he broke the record held by another actor-athlete, Johnny Weissmuller). After the Olympics he found work in Hollywood playing Tarzan, branching out from this character to eventually play Flash Gordon, Billy the Kid, and Buck Rogers, among other action heroes. He became enormously popular with young audiences for his appearances in many serials and action flicks of the '30s and '40s, and ultimately starred in over 100 films. He also made westerns (in the '40s he was teamed with sidekick Al "Fuzzy" St. John), and was on the list of Top Ten Western Stars at the box office in 1936. Crabbe went on to star in the '50s TV series Captain Gallant, which also featured his son Cullen "Cuffy" Crabbe. He considerably slowed down his acting output in the '50s and '60s, becoming the athletic director for a resort hotel in the Catskills and investing in the swimming pool business. He also authored Energetics, a book on physical fitness for people over 50. Crabbe later returned to the screen once, for a large role in The Alien Dead (1980).

Trivia: Dubbed by one film historian as "the villain's villain," actor Noah Beery Sr. left his family's Missouri farm at age 14 to work as a newsboy in Kansas City. In rapid succession, Beery was a candy concessionaire at a circus and a lemon-drop entrepreneur, reportedly making his stage debut hawking his wares between the acts of a Kansas City theatrical production. Beery turned to performing around 1900, first as a baritone singer, then as a stock villain in touring melodramas. When his son Noah Jr. (later a popular actor in his own right) fell ill in 1916, Noah Sr. turned to films to pay the mounting medical bills. One of the busiest baddies in the movies, Noah shamelessly chewed the scenery in such films as The Mark of Zorro (1920), The Spoilers (1922), Beau Geste (1927), and Paramount's Zane Grey western series. Making the transition to sound with ease, Beery was given ample opportunity to display his splendid singing voice in several films, notably a brace of Wheeler and Woolsey comedies, Cockeyed Cavaliers (1934) and Kentucky Kernels (1934). During the talkie era, Noah's fame was eclipsed by that of his brother Wallace Beery, and by the late 1930s Noah was accepting roles in Monogram B-pictures and Republic serials. Too ill to play anything but minor roles in the 1940s, Noah was cast in peripheral parts in the MGM vehicles of his brother Wallace; the two men were not always close, but Wally saw to it that Noah was well provided for in his last years. Noah Beery died at the age of 62, a few hours before he was scheduled to co-star with Wallace in a radio production of Barnacle Bill.

Trivia: American actor Jack LaRue is frequently mistaken for Humphrey Bogart by casual fans. In both his facial features and his choice of roles, LaRue did indeed resemble Bogart, in every respect but one; Bogart became a star, while LaRue remained in the supporting ranks. After stage work in his native New York, LaRue came to Hollywood for his first film, The Mouthpiece, in 1932. For the next few years he played secondary hoodlums (for example, the hot-head hit man in the closing sequences of Night World [1932]) and unsavory lead villains -- never more unsavory than as the sex-obsessed kidnapper in The Story of Temple Drake (1933). LaRue decided to shift gears and try romantic leading roles, but this "new" LaRue disappeared after the Mayfair Studios cheapie, The Fighting Rookie (1934). He was at his most benign as "himself", trading gentle quips with Alice Faye at an outdoor carnival in the MGM all-star short Cinema Circus (1935). Otherwise, it was back to gangsters and thugs, with a few exceptions like his sympathetic role in A Gentleman from Dixie (1941). By the 1940s, LaRue had spent most of his movie savings and was compelled to seek out any work available. Awaiting his cue to appear in a small role on one movie set, LaRue was pointed out to up-and-coming Anne Shirley on a movie set as an example of what happens when a Hollywood luminary doesn't provide for possible future career reverses. Things improved a bit when LaRue moved to England in the late 1940s to play American villains in British pictures. His most memorable appearance during this period was as Slim Grissom in the notorious No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948) -- a virtual reprisal of his part in The Story of Temple Drake. LaRue worked often in television during the last two decades of his career; in the early 1950s, he was the eerily-lit host of the spooky TV anthology Lights Out.

Trivia: Barton MacLane may have been born on Christmas Day, but there was precious little chance that he'd ever be cast as Santa Claus. A star athlete at Wesleyan University, MacLane won his first movie role in the 1924 silent Quarterback as the result of his football skills. This single incident sparked his interest in performing, which he pursued on a serious basis at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He performed in stock, on Broadway, and in bit parts in films lensed at Paramount's Astoria studios (notably the Marx Brothers' The Cocoanuts). In 1932, MacLane wrote a slice-of-life play titled Rendezvous, selling it to influential Broadway producer Arthur Hopkins on the proviso, that he, MacLane, be given the lead. The play was a success, leading to a lucrative film contract from Warner Bros. Most effectively cast as a swaggering villain ("who never spoke when shouting would do," as historian William K. Everson observed), MacLane played good-guy leads in several Warner "B"s: he played the conclusion-jumping lieutenant Steve McBride in the studio's Torchy Blaine series. Free-lancing in the 1940s, MacLane made an unfortunate return to writing in 1941, penning the screenplay for the PRC quickie Man of Courage; it is reported that audiences erupted in shrieks of laughter when MacLane, reciting his own lines, recalled his childhood days on the farm by declaring "Boy! Did I love ta plow!" He was better served in a brace of John Huston-directed films, beating up Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and being beaten up by Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. MacLane's TV-series work included a starring stint on The Outlaws (1960-62) and the recurring role of General Peterson on I Dream of Jeannie (1965-69). Having come into the world on a holiday, Barton MacLane died on New Years' Day, 1969; he was survived by his wife, actress Charlotte Wynters.

Trivia: To western fans, the nickname "Fuzzy" invokes fond memories of two first-rate comedy sidekicks: Al "Fuzzy" St. John and John Forest "Fuzzy" Knight. Knight inaugurated his career at age 15 with a tent minstrel troupe. His skill as a musician enabled him to work his way through West Virginia University, after which he headed his own band. Among Knight's theatrical credits in the '20s was the 1927 edition of Earl Carroll's Vanities and the 1928 "book" musical Here's How. Mae West caught Knight's act on the Keith vaudeville circuit and cast the bucolic entertainer in her 1933 film vehicle She Done Him Wrong; he would later show up playing West's country cousin in the actress' last important film, My Little Chickadee (1940). Usually essaying comedy roles, Knight was effective in the his dramatic scenes in Paramount's Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), wherein he tearfully sings a mountain ballad at the funeral of little Spanky McFarland. Knight's B-western comedy sidekick activity peaked in the mid '40s (he appeared most often with Johnny Mack Brown), after which his film roles diminished as his fondness for the bottle increased. Promising to behave himself (at least during filming), Fuzzy Knight signed on in 1955 for Buster Crabbe's popular TV adventure series Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion; for the next two years, Knight played a semi-serious legionnaire -- named Private Fuzzy Knight.

Trivia: Slim, sloe-eyed, dark-haired actress Gail Patrick was once the 21-year-old Dean of women students at her alma mater of Howard College, and briefly studied law at University of Alabama. She was brought to Paramount during that studio's nationwide contest to find an actress to play "the Panther Woman" in Island of Lost Souls (1932). Patrick lost this role to Kathleen Burke, but won a Paramount contract, and co-starred in the studio's horror film follow-up to Island of Lost Souls, 1933's Murders in the Zoo. She played several leading roles -- including a lady lawyer in Disbarred (1939) -- but was more effective as a villainess or "other woman"; her elegant truculence was one of the highlights of the 1936 screwball comedy My Man Godfrey. Patrick's third husband was Thomas Cornwall Jackson, literary agent of Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner. Retired from acting since 1948, Patrick and her husband co-produced the popular Perry Mason TV series, which ran from 1957 through 1966. She made a brief return to acting as a judge in the final Mason episode, which also featured Erle Stanley Gardner himself in a bit role. After her 1969 divorce from Jackson, Patrick attempted to revive Paul Mason for television in 1973, but Monte Markham proved an inadequate substitute for Raymond Burr. Gail Patrick Jackson died of leukemia in 1980.

Trivia: Czechoslovakian stage actor and director Egon Brecher was brought to Hollywood in 1929 to appear in foreign-language versions of American films. Briefly a fixture of mid-1930s horror films, Brecher could be seen in The Black Cat (1934) and Mark of the Vampire (1935). In 1935's Werewolf of London, it is Brecher's duty (in the role of a Himalayan priest) to intone the venerable "There are some things it is better not to bother with!" He worked steadily in the espionage films of the 1940s, his Slavic accent well-suited to both noble and villainous roles. One of Egon Brecher's largest screen roles was in Columbia's So Dark the Night, a 1946 film peopled almost exclusively by dependable European character actors.

Trivia: Aged character actress Eugenie Besserer portrayed Al Jolson's mother with such quiet self-assurance in The Jazz Singer (1927) that many viewers have assumed she really was of Russian-Jewish descent. In truth, Ms. Besserer was born in France and educated in Canada. She began her stage career in the late 1880s, making her film debut in 1911's The Profligate. Most of her movie appearances were in roles requiring matriarchal self-sacrifice; she worked extensively with D. W. Griffith, whose fidelity to the concept of Mother Love was one of his trademarks. When cast in the pioneering part-talkie The Jazz Singer, Besserer assumed her role would be silent, but in the celebrated Vitaphone "Blue Skies" sequence, Jolson's incessant adlibbing all but forced the actress to speak up -- and in so doing, she became the second actor ever to be heard in a major-studio talking picture. Eugenie Besserer remained in films until a few months before her death; her last appearance was in the outdoor western To the Last Man (1933).

Trivia: Though best known to modern filmgoers as a horror star, cadaverous John Carradine was, in his prime, one of the most versatile character actors on the silver screen. The son of a journalist father and physician mother, Carradine was given an expensive education in Philadelphia and New York. Upon graduating from the Graphic Arts School, he intended to make his living as a painter and sculptor, but in 1923 he was sidetracked into acting. Working for a series of low-paying stock companies throughout the 1920s, he made ends meet as a quick-sketch portrait painter and scenic designer. He came to Hollywood in 1930, where his extensive talents and eccentric behavior almost immediately brought him to the attention of casting directors. He played a dizzying variety of distinctive bit parts -- a huntsman in Bride of Frankenstein (1935), a crowd agitator in Les Miserables (1935) -- before he was signed to a 20th Century Fox contract in 1936. His first major role was the sadistic prison guard in John Ford's Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), which launched a long and fruitful association with Ford, culminating in such memorable screen characterizations as the gentleman gambler in Stagecoach (1939) and Preacher Casy ("I lost the callin'!") in The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Usually typecast as a villain, Carradine occasionally surprised his followers with non-villainous roles like the philosophical cab driver in Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) and Abraham Lincoln in Of Human Hearts (1938). Throughout his Hollywood years, Carradine's first love remained the theater; to fund his various stage projects (which included his own Shakespearean troupe), he had no qualms about accepting film work in the lowest of low-budget productions. Ironically, it was in one of these Poverty Row cheapies, PRC's Bluebeard (1944), that the actor delivered what many consider his finest performance. Though he occasionally appeared in an A-picture in the 1950s and 1960s (The Ten Commandments, Cheyenne Autumn), Carradine was pretty much consigned to cheapies during those decades, including such horror epics as The Black Sleep (1956), The Unearthly (1957), and the notorious Billy the Kid Meets Dracula (1966). He also appeared in innumerable television programs, among them Twilight Zone, The Munsters, Thriller, and The Red Skelton Show, and from 1962 to 1964 enjoyed a long Broadway run as courtesan-procurer Lycus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Though painfully crippled by arthritis in his last years, Carradine never stopped working, showing up in films ranging from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (1972) to Peggy Sue Got Married (1984). Married four times, John Carradine was the father of actors David, Keith, Robert, and Bruce Carradine.

Trivia: There's a bit of a cloud surrounding the origins of character actor Harry Cording. The 1970 biographical volume The Versatiles lists his birthplace as New York City, while the exhaustive encyclopedia Who Was Who in Hollywood states that Cording was born in England. Whatever the case, Cording made his mark from 1925 through 1955 in distinctly American roles, usually portraying sadistic western bad guys. A break from his domestic villainy occurred in the 1934 Universal horror film The Black Cat, in which a heavily-made-up Harry Cording played the foreboding, zombie-like servant to Satan-worshipping Boris Karloff.

Trivia: In films from 1921 through 1952, white-maned American character actor Erville Alderson was most closely associated with D.W. Griffith in his early movie years. Alderson played major roles in Griffith's The White Rose (1932), America (1924) and Isn't Life Wonderful (1924). In D.W.'s Sally of the Sawdust (1926), Alderson performed double duty, playing the merciless Judge Foster in front of the cameras and serving as assistant director behind the scenes. During the talkie era, the actor showed up in "old codger" roles as sheriffs, court clerks and newspaper editors. You might remember Erville Alderson as the crooked handwriting expert (he was crooked, not the handwriting) in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and as Jefferson Davis in the Errol Flynn starrer Santa Fe Trail (1940).

Trivia: Actor Richard Dix originally intended to be a surgeon, but dropped out of the University of Minnesota to take a job at a bank. He then accepted an office job in an architecture firm, attending a dramatics course at a local high school in his spare time. Deciding to become a professional performer, Dix secured work with a stock company, eventually graduating to leading-man parts with the celebrated Morosco stock troupe. Following World War I service and a brief stint on Broadway, Dix made his first film, 1920's Not Guilty. This led to a long-term contract with Paramount Pictures, where Dix starred in a string of rugged adventure films which defined his standard screen characterization: the modest, dependable, strong and silent man of action who was moved to violence only when there was no other recourse. Switching from Paramount to RKO Radio in the early talkie period, Dix starred as empire-building Yancey Cravat in RKO's only Oscar-winning film, Cimarron (1931). This film, for which Dix was himself Oscar-nominated, would remain the high water mark of his talkie career, which gradually diminished into inexpensive programmers and westerns. During the 1940s, Dix altered his long-established screen image, allowing himself to play neurotics and psychopaths. He was particularly effective as the obsessive-compulsive captain in Val Lewton's The Ghost Ship (1943) and was equally convincing in "not what he seems" leading roles in Columbia's Whistler "B"-picture series. Illness forced Richard Dix to retire after his last Whistler effort, 1947's The Thirteenth Hour; two years later, he died of heart failure.

Trivia: American actor James Burke not only had the Irish face and brogueish voice of a New York detective, but even his name conjured up images of a big-city flatfoot. In Columbia's Ellery Queen series of the late 1930s and early 1940s, Burke was cast exquisitely to type as the thick-eared Sergeant Velie, who referred to the erudite Queen as "Maestro." Burke also showed up as a rural law enforcement officer in such films as Nightmare Alley (1947), in which he has a fine scene as a flint-hearted sheriff moved to tears by the persuasive patter of carnival barker Tyrone Power. One of the best of James Burke's non-cop performances was as westerner Charlie Ruggles' rambunctious, handlebar-mustached "pardner" in Ruggles of Red Gap (135), wherein Burke and Ruggles engage in an impromptu game of piggyback on the streets of Paris.

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: The jury is still out as to whether or not curly haired Shirley Temple was the most talented child star in movie history; there is little doubt, however, that she was the most consistently popular. The daughter of non-professionals, she started taking singing and dancing classes at the age of three, and the following year began accompanying her mother on the movie audition circuit. Hired by the two-reel comedy firm of Educational Pictures in 1933, she starred in an imitation Our Gang series called the Baby Burlesks, performing astonishingly accurate impressions of Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich; she was also featured in the films of Educational's other stars, including Andy Clyde and Frank Coghlan Jr. In 1934 she was signed by Fox Pictures, a studio then teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. After a handful of minor roles she created a sensation by stopping the show with her rendition of "Baby Take a Bow" in Fox's Stand Up and Cheer. She was promptly promoted to her own starring features, literally saving Fox (and its successor 20th Century Fox) from receivership, and earned a special Oscar in 1934 "in grateful recognition to her outstanding contribution to screen entertainment." With such tailor-made vehicles as Bright Eyes (1934), Curly Top (1935), The Little Colonel (1935), Dimples (1936), and Heidi (1937), Temple was not only America's number one box-office attraction, but a merchandising cash cow, inspiring an unending cascade of Shirley Temple dolls, toys, and coloring books. She also prompted other studios to develop potential Shirley Temples of their own, such as Sybil Jason and Edith Fellows (ironically, the only juvenile actress to come close to Temple's popularity was 20th Century Fox's own Jane Withers, who got her start playing a pint-sized villain in Temples' Bright Eyes). Though the Fox publicity mill was careful to foster the myth that Temple was just a "typical" child with a "normal" life, her parents carefully screened her friends and painstakingly predetermined every move she made in public. Surprisingly, she remained an unspoiled and most cooperative coworker, though not a few veteran character actors were known to blow their stacks when little Temple, possessed of a photographic memory, corrected their line readings. By 1940, Temple had outgrown her popularity, as indicated by the failure of her last Fox releases The Blue Bird and Young People. The following year, MGM, who'd originally wanted Temple to play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, cast her in Kathleen, another box-office disappointment which ended her MGM association almost before it began. Under the auspices of producers Edward Small and David O. Selznick, Temple enjoyed modest success as a teenaged actress in such productions as 1942's Miss Annie Rooney (in which Dickie Moore gave her first screen kiss) and 1944's Since You Went Away. Still, the public preferred to remember the Shirley Temple that was, reacting with horror when she played sexually savvy characters in Kiss and Tell (1945) and That Hagen Girl (1947). Perhaps the best of her post-child star roles was spunky army brat Philadelphia Thursday in John Ford's Fort Apache (1947), in which she co-starred with her first husband, actor John Agar (the union broke up after four years when Agar began to resent being labeled "Mr. Shirley Temple"). She returned to 20th Century Fox for her last film, Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949), in which played second fiddle to star Clifton Webb. Retiring on her trust fund in 1950, she wed a second time to business executive Charles Black, a marriage that would endure for several decades and produce a number of children. In 1958 she made a comeback as host of The Shirley Temple Storybook, a well-received series of children's TV specials. Her final show business assignment was the weekly 1960 anthology The Shirley Temple Show, which though not a success enabled her to play a variety of character roles -- including a toothless old witch in an hour-long adaptation of Babes in Toyland! The staunchly Republican Temple went into an entirely different field of endeavor when she entered politics in the mid-'60s. The bitter taste of an unsuccessful congressional bid was dissipated in 1968 when she was appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She went on to serve as U.S. ambassador to Ghana (1974-1976) and Czechoslovakia (1989), and during the Ford and Carter years kept busy as the U.S. Chief of Protocol. In the 1980s, she went public with information about her mastectomy, providing hope and inspiration for other victims of breast cancer. Still one of the most beloved figures in the world, Temple seemingly went to great pains to dispel her goody two-shoes image in her candid 1988 autobiography Child Star, in which she cast a frequently jaundiced eye on her lifelong celebrity status, revealing among other things that several well-known Hollywood moguls had tried and failed to force their manhood upon her once she was of legal age (and even before!). Temple received several lifetime achievement awards towards the end of her life, including the Kennedy Center Honors in 1998 and the SAG life achievement award in 2005. She died in 2014, at the age of 85.