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: 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: Of Hungarian descent, auburn-haired Mae Madison (born Mariska Medgyzsi) was one of several starlets specializing in playing tough girls in early Warner talkies. A native of Los Angeles, Madison joined the likes of Noel Francis, Adrienne Dore, Renee Whitney, and Glenda Farrell to provide color to the studio's many gangster films and musicals. Only Farrell made it to stardom, while Madison found herself lost in such ill-fitting fare as the John Wayne oater The Big Stampede (1932). Retiring in the mid-'30s, Madison was one of several early '30s personalities to reappear in the self-explanatory 2000 documentary I Used to Be in Pictures.

Trivia: Spanish-born character actor Luis Alberni spent most of his Hollywood career playing excitable Italians: waiters, janitors, stagehands, and shop proprietors. A short, elfish man usually decked out in a string tie and frock coat, Alberni worked on stage in Europe before heading for Broadway (and the movies) in 1921. He was busiest in the early-talkie era, appearing twice in large, juicy supporting roles opposite John Barrymore. In Svengali, Alberni is Barrymore's long-suffering assistant, while in Mad Genius, he's a dope-addicted stage manager who murders Barrymore in a baroque climax. During World War II, Alberni kept busy playing Italian mayors and peasants, both fascist and partisan. Luis Alberni's final film appearance was as the great-uncle of a "compromised" French peasant girl in John Ford's remake of What Price Glory? (1952)

Trivia: The apotheosis of Canadian-born Berton Churchill's film career might well have been 1939's Stagecoach, in which he was cast to perfection as the outwardly "solid citizen" banker whose pompous bluster hides the fact that he's actually absconding with his depositors' funds. On Broadway since the turn of the century, Churchill dabbled in filmmaking throughout the 1920s, settling in Hollywood for good in the talkie era, appearing in as many as 25 pictures per year! Often seen as small-town big shots, Churchill proved an excellent foil for the homespun homilies of Will Rogers in such films as The County Chairman (1935); he was also effectively cast as Joan Blondell's furtive "sugar daddy" in Dames (1934). Though generally forgotten today, Churchill exerted a great deal of influence on other character actors of his ilk. Indeed, radio star Harold Peary admitted that he based much of his famous character "The Great Gildersleeve" on the pompous pretensions of Berton Churchill.

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: Actor Sherwood Bailey is best known for playing the rusty-headed befreckled boy Spud in the Our Gang series. As an adult, Bailey left acting and became a civil engineer.

Trivia: White-haired Lafe McKee (real name, Lafayette McKee) was seemingly born old, dignified, and kind. Already playing old codgers by the mid-1910s, McKee delivered one of the funniest and most improbable moments in B-Western history, when, disguised as a bedraggled señorita, he sprang Ken Maynard from prison in Range Law (1931). "The Grand Old Man of Westerns," as film historian William K. Everson called him, retired in the early '40s after more than three decades of yeoman work opposite every cowboy hero on the Hollywood range, from Franklyn Farnum to Gary Cooper.

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: From his first film, Don Quickshot of the Rio Grande (1923), to his last, Fancy Pants (1950) American supporting player Hank Bell specialized in westerns. While still relatively young, Bell adopted the "grizzled old desert rat" characterization, that sustained him throughout his career, simply by removing his teeth and growing a thick, inverted handlebar mustache. Though occasionally given lines to speak, he was usually consigned to "atmosphere roles:" if you'll look closely at the jury in the Three Stooges 2-reeler Disorder in the Court, you'll see Bell in the top row on the left, making swimming motions when Curly douses the jurors with a fire hose. A fixture of "B"-pictures, Hank Bell occasionally surfaced in "A" films like Abraham Lincoln (1930), Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), The Plainsman (1936), Geronimo (1939) and My Little Chickadee (1940).

Trivia: In films from 1911, Joseph W. Girard excelled in roles calling for single-purposed authority: police chiefs, military officers, western marshals. Girard continued playing such parts into the talkie era, usually in such serials as The Clutching Hand (1935), SOS Coast Guard (1938), The Spider Returns (1940) and Captain Midnight (1942). Because his later characters sometimes seemed trigger-happy and a bit slow on the uptake, Girard often appeared to be, in the words of film historian William K. Everson, "that most inefficient of police inspectors, who in picture after picture displayed the dull wits that suggested he was long past the retirement age." There was nothing dull-witted, however, about the actor's brief and convincing appearance as General Pershing in Sergeant York (1941). Some sources have confused Joseph W. Girard with James W. Gerard, the former American ambassador to Germany who appeared in the 1918 film My Four Years in Germany.

Trivia: Someone once called American supporting actor Charles "Slim" Whitaker a "no good yellow-bellied polecat," and that is as good a description as any for this paunchy, mustachioed gent, a former stage manager and stock company actor from Kansas City, MO. Whitaker's screen career was spent almost entirely in B-Westerns, where he would skulk around as lazy ranch hands, tobacco-chewing henchmen, Mexican "half-breeds," and even the occasional corrupt lawman. More versatile than most Western supporting players, Whitaker was adept at comedy as well, and was humorously billed "Slender" Whitaker in 1925's Border Intrigue, in which he played a comedic Mexican bandito. Whitaker, who made his screen bow around 1925, was busiest in the 1930s, appearing in over 25 films in 1935 alone! He continued in pictures through the late '40s, but spent his final years working as a short-order cook in a Hollywood coffee shop.