Trivia: An authentic cowboy from the age of 15, Timothy McCoy moved to a large Wyoming ranch next to a Sioux Indian reservation after some college studies; he became an authority on Indian languages, customs, and folk history, and mastered Indian sign language. He served in World War I, and was then appointed Indian Agent for his territory. In 1922, he was employed as a technical advisor and co-ordinator of Indian extras for the film The Covered Wagon (1923); McCoy may also have done some trick riding for the film. He later he resigned his government post, having been offered a key supporting role in the western The Thundering Herd (1925). MGM signed him to a film contract in 1925; he was to star in westerns and action movies based on historical anecdotes of the American frontier. By the early '30s he was among the most popular western stars; he always appeared dresed in black, with an oversized white Stetson hat and a pearl-handled gun. McCoy interrupted his screen career in 1935 to travel with the Ringling Brothers circus. In 1938 he started his own Wild West show, but it was unsuccessful. He returned to the screen in 1940, and for two years he co-starred in the low-budget Rough Rider western series; the series ended when Buck Jones, another of its stars, died in a fire. He served in World War II (in which he was awarded the Bronze Star), then retired to his ranch; from 1949, however, he worked on TV and in occasional film cameo roles. He won an Emmy for his TV program The Tim McCoy Show. Until 1976 McCoy continued working 300 days a year as the headliner of Tommy Scott's Country Music Circus. In 1974 he was inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame. He authored an autobiography (assisted by his son Ronald), Tim McCoy Remembers the West (1977).

Trivia: Comely Suzanne Kaaren was attracting offers from producers and impressarios interested in featuring her in their work from her early teens. Born in New York and trained as a dancer, when she was 15 she came to the attention of Florenz Ziegfeld, who offered to put her into his Follies, and would have but for her parents' refusal to allow it. She entered films in 1934 at the age of 18, usually playing dancers or small speaking roles, and even managed to get a part in M-G-M's The Great Ziegfeld, although most of her work took place in less important films. One of Kaaren's most prominent appearances took place in the Three Stooges vehicle Disorder in the Court, in which she acted and had a superb dance number. She later recalled working with the Three Stooges very fondly, remembering that they were always trying out new gags and bits of physical comedy in front of her on and off the set, to see if they were funny or not. Kaaren did two more movies with the comic trio, Yes, We Have No Bonanza and What's the Matador, sandwiched in between appearances in small (often uncredited) roles in major films such as Idiot's Delight, in which she played one of the nurses that Clark Gable kisses in the hospital sequence. Her biggest role (and best-known movie) was as the heroine in the Bela Lugosi chiller The Devil Bat, a low-budget horror film which, thanks to its public domain status (in which it is often distributed under the name Killer Bats), is still widely shown more than six decade later. Kaaren later married actor Sidney Blackmer and retired from acting. In the 1980s, she made headlines again in New York when she was one of the successful plaintiffs in a lawsuit against real estate mogul Donald Trump, and she returned to acting briefly, in a small uncredited role in the movie The Cotton Club, playing the Duchess of Park Avenue.

Trivia: With his penetrating eyes, trademark pencil-thin mustache, and stocky build, Missouri-born Karl Hackett appeared in scores of low-budget Westerns from 1935 to 1948, usually playing characters with untrustworthy names like Wolf Hines (Colorado Kid [1937]), Slaughter (Utah Trail [1938]), or Three-Fingers Rogel (Where the Buffalo Roam [1938]). Once in a while he wore a badge (The Lion's Den [1936], Wild Horse Rustler [1943]), but was still highly suspicious. On his few excursions away from the range, Hackett played thugs in the 1939 serials The Green Hornet and its sequel The Green Hornet Strikes Again (1940) and was Councillor Krenko in Buck Rogers (1940).

Trivia: Dignified character actor John Saint Polis billed himself as Saint Polis when he made his screen bow in 1914. During the pre-WWI era, the actor starred in such important productions as Joseph and His Brethren. During the 1920s, he was established as a character actor, with sizeable roles in Three Weeks (1924) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925), among others. He made an impressive transition to talkies as Mary Pickford's fatally honor-bound father in Coquette (1929), then spent the remainder of his career in roles of varying sizes, usually playing doctors or officials. Like many other venerable silent-film veterans, John Saint Polis made his last appearance in a Cecil B. De Mille production, Reap the Wild Wind (1942).

Trivia: Born John Myrtland LaVarre, John Merton has appeared on Broadway as "Myrtland LaVarre" in the Theatre Guild's hit production of Karel Capek's R.U.R. (1922). More theater work followed and he was spotted in the background of several silent films, including as a fireman in W.C. Fields' It's the Old Army Game (1926). But the handsome, slightly frosty-looking actor found his rightful place in B-Westerns and serials. He would appear in a total of 170 films, turning up as an assortment of blackguards. Usually a bit more sophisticated than the average "dog heavy," Merton could nevertheless rough it with the best of 'em, a talent he passed on to his equally tough-looking son, Lane Bradford. Father and son appeared in six films together, including 1947's Jack Armstrong. (Another son played supporting roles on television in the '50s under the moniker of Robert La Varre.) Retiring after a bit in Cecil B. DeMille's gigantic The Ten Commandments (1956), Merton died of a heart attack at the age of 58.

Trivia: Working in virtual anonymity throughout his film career, the sharp-featured, gangly character actor Harry Strang was seldom seen in a feature film role of consequence. From 1930 through 1959, Strang concentrated on such sidelines characters as soldiers, sentries, beat cops and store clerks. He was given more to do and say in 2-reel comedies, notably in the output of RKO Radio Pictures, where he appeared frequently in the comedies of Leon Errol and Edgar Kennedy. Harry Strang will be remembered by Laurel and Hardy fans for his role as a desk clerk in Block-Heads (1938), in which he was not once but twice clobbered in the face by an errant football.

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: 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.

Trivia: A veteran of Selig two-reelers in the early 1910s, burly American character actor Horace B. Carpenter came to the forefront after joining the Lasky Feature Play Company (later Paramount) in 1914. For pioneering director Cecil B. DeMille, Carpenter played Spanish Ed in The Virginian (1914) and Jacques D'Arc in Joan the Woman (1916), both still extant, before striking out on his own, directing and acting in some of the cheapest Westerns and action melodramas ever produced. Returning to acting exclusively after the changeover to sound, Carpenter continued to play his stock-in-trade, kindly fathers and ranchers in scores of B-Westerns. Thus, it came as an unpleasant surprise when the veteran actor, out of sheer poverty one imagines, accepted to play Dr. Meinschultz, devouring a cat's eye in the 1934 exploitation thriller Maniac. Carpenter survived this indiscretion with his career somewhat intact and continued to play scores of supporting roles and bit parts right up to his death of a heart attack.

Trivia: The youngest of the three acting Tansey brothers, Sherry Tansey began his long screen career in 1916, billed in the style of the day as Master Tansey. He was Sheridan Tansey in the classic tearjerker Over the Hill to the Poorhouse (1920), and as an adult, played weakling brothers, henchmen, and members of the posse in countless low-budget oaters under the names James Sheridan and Sherry Tansey. Often working for older brother Robert Emmett Tansey, Sherry's credits lasted well into the sound era, his last known screen appearance coming in 1941.

Trivia: American stage actor George Morrell turned to films in 1921, on the verge of his 49th birthday. Morrell launched his talkie career in 1929 as Reverend McBride in The Virginian, then went on to play innumerable bit parts in both A- and B-Westerns. He showed up in several Gene Autry films, usually playing a surly barfly. George Morrell remained active until in 1947.