Trivia: Athletically inclined, Tyler entered films at age 21 as a stuntman and extra. He went on to play supporting roles in several late silents, then signed a contract to star in Westerns. He soon became a popular screen cowboy, often accompanied by sidekick Frankie Darro; he survived the transition to sound, going on to star in a number of serials in the early '30s. He remained popular through the early '40s and occasionally played supporting roles in major films. In 1943 he was struck by a crippling rheumatic condition; although he appeared in a handful of additional films throughout the next decade, his career was effectively ended as he was relegated to minor roles. By the early '50s he was broke. He died of a heart attack at age 50.

Trivia: A former stock company ingénue who had appeared in Leaning on Lettie with comedienne Charlotte Greenwood, blonde Beth Marion (born Betty Goettsche) became a popular B-Western heroine in the 1930s, appearing opposite the likes of Ken Maynard, Johnny Mack Brown, and Bob Steele in unpretentious little oaters that played mainly in the hinterlands. For obscure reasons, she was billed as Betty Lloyd in Kermit Maynard's Wild Horse Roundup (1937), but under whatever name remained a pretty if limited actress who wasn't afraid of working long hours. She married stuntman Cliff Lyons in 1938 and retired.

Trivia: Whenever a film needed a plump mamacita, a downtrodden Mexican peon, or someone's Spanish aunt, Hollywood studios usually contacted Soledad Jiminez. She had reportedly appeared in films as early as the 1915 Carmen with Geraldine Farrar, but Jiminez did not gain much notice until the talkie era, when she turned up as a cook in one of the first sound Westerns, the award-winning In Old Arizona (1929). Often seen in both high and low-budget oaters, Jiminez also appeared as the innkeeper in The Cockeyed World (1929), Dolores del Rio's maid in In Caliente (1935), Edward G. Robinson's mama in Kid Galahad (1937), and a nurse in Fiesta (1942). In addition, she appeared regularly in foreign language versions of Hollywood films. Retired since 1952, Jiminez died of a stroke at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA, where she had been a resident for six years.

Trivia: Veteran American character actor Forrest Taylor is reputed to have launched his film career in 1915. His screen roles in both the silent and sound era seldom had any consistency of size; he was apt to show up in a meaty character part one week, a seconds-lasting bit part the next. With his banker's moustache and brusque attitude, Taylor was most often cast as a businessman or a lawyer, sometimes on the shadier side of the law. Throughout his 40 year film career, Taylor was perhaps most active in westerns, appearing in such programmers as Headin' For the Rio Grande and Painted Trail. From 1952 through 1954, Forrest Taylor costarred as Grandpa Fisher on the religious TV series This is the Life.

Trivia: Though never officially billed as Charles "Blackie" King, American actor Charlie King played so many "Blackies" in B-westerns that one is astounded to discover that it wasn't his middle name. Drifting into films in the '20s, the squat, stubble-chinned, mustachioed King picked up minor roles as chauffeurs, interns and bridegrooms in the two-reel comedies of such performers as Our Gang, the Three Stooges and Leon Errol. It was during the B-western boom of the early talkie era that King really came into his own, showing up in virtually every other poverty-row oater as a gang boss, lynch-mob leader or sinister henchman. Evidently King felt the day was wasted if he wasn't dynamiting a dam, setting fire to homesteaders' shacks, or engaging the hero in a fistic battle. Outtakes of these westerns have revealed that this "human monster" was actually shy and soft-spoken, never reverting to profanity when blowing his lines (more than can be said for some of the "clean-living" western heroes of the era). In fact, King's private life was governed by his formidable wife, who had spies posted at the studio to make certain that King came home right away with his paycheck without any side trips to bars or gaming tables. Gaining a beard and excess weight in the late '40s, King began appearing less frequently as villains and more often as roly-poly comedy relief. King literally died with his boots on, suffering a heart attack after shooting a 1957 episode of Gunsmoke -- in which he played a corpse! William K. Everson's 1964 coffee-table book The Bad Guys was affectionately dedicated to the scurrilously prolific Charles "Blackie" King.

Trivia: A distinguished gray-haired stage actor, John Elliott appeared sporadically in films from around 1920. But Elliott became truly visible after the advent of sound, when he found his niche in B-Westerns. As versatile as they come, he could play the heroine's harassed father with as much conviction as he would "boss heavies." Doctors, lawyers, assayers, prospectors, clergymen -- John Elliott played them all in a screen career that lasted until 1956, the year of his death. His final screen appearance was in Perils of the Wilderness (1956) which, coincidentally, was the second-to-last action serial produced in the United States.

Trivia: Before coming to feature films in 1929, American actor Dick Cramer was a stage actor for 20 years. With a coarse face and a menacing demeanor, Cramer was well-suited to play villains.