Son of Belle Starr

Keith Larsen (Actor) .. The Kid

Born: June 17, 1925

Trivia: Usually grouped together in the 1960s with Hollywood's "Beach Boy" set, Keith Larsen was actually more the tennis-playing type. In fact, he was a tennis pro at the time he was tapped by a talent scout to play a small role in 1951's Operation Pacific. While Larsen's film career was negligible, he prospered on television as star of the weekly series The Hunter (1954), Brave Eagle (1955), Northwest Passage (1958) and The Aquanauts (1960). Because none of his TV projects survived their first seasons, Larsen referred to himself as a "professional failure," though in fact he worked longer and with more frequency than most of his beefcake contemporaries. In 1968, Larsen turned producer/director/screenwriter with the pinchpenny war melodrama Mission Batangas. From 1960 through 1973, Keith Larsen was the husband of actress Vera Miles.

Dona Drake (Actor) .. Dolores

Born: November 15, 1914
Died: June 20, 1989

Trivia: Vivacious, volatile Mexico-born singer/actress Dona Drake first gained fame as a band singer; using the name Rita Rio. She was featured in several musical short subjects, and offered a delightful rendition of "The Gypsy from Poughkeepsie" in the 1941 Columbia two-reeler Fresh as a Freshman. Signed by Paramount in 1941, she changed her professional name to Dona Drake. Her most famous role during her Paramount stay was as Bob Hope's vis-a-vis in The Road to Morocco (1942). During her waning days in films, Dona Drake was a Columbia contractee, playing secondary roles in such films as Valentino (1952) and Kansas City Confidential (1954).

Peggie Castle (Actor) .. Clara Wren

Born: December 22, 1926
Died: August 11, 1973

Trivia: The archetypal "gangster's mistress," American actress Peggie Castle started out as a magazine model. She made her first film in 1947, and within three years, she was prominently cast as a succession of gun molls, b-girls and murderesses. With her bleached-blonde hair, garish makeup and tight-fitting sweaters, Peggie Castle seemed to have stepped out of the pages of Mickey Spillane, and in fact starred in two films based on Spillane's works: I, the Jury (1953) and The Long Wait (1954). She cleaned up her image a bit to co-star in two Warner Bros. TV westerns of the 1960s: The Lawman and The Outlaw. Peggie also popped up unexpectedly as a no-nonsense newspaper reporter in the sci-fi cheapie The Beginning of the End (1957). She was married for a time to producer William McGarry. After abruptly ending her career in 1962, Castle,died in obscurity of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 46.

Regis Toomey (Actor) .. Tom Wren

Born: August 13, 1898
Died: October 12, 1991

Trivia: Taking up dramatics while attending the University of Pittsburgh, Regis Toomey extended this interest into a profitable career as a stock and Broadway actor. He specialized in singing roles until falling victim to acute laryngitis while touring England in George M. Cohan's Little Nellie Kelly. In 1929, Toomey made his talking-picture bow in Alibi, where his long, drawn-out climactic death scene attracted both praise and damnation; he'd later claim that, thanks to the maudlin nature of this scene, producers were careful to kill him off in the first or second reel in his subsequent films. Only moderately successful as a leading man, Toomey was far busier once he removed his toupee and became a character actor. A lifelong pal of actor Dick Powell, Regis Toomey was cast in prominent recurring roles in such Powell-created TV series of the 1950s and 1960s as Richard Diamond, Dante's Inferno, and Burke's Law.

James Seay (Actor) .. Clark

Born: January 01, 1914
Died: January 01, 1992

Trivia: James Seay was groomed for romantic leads by Paramount Pictures beginning in 1940. After several nondescript minor roles, Seay finally earned a major part--not as a hero, but as a villainous gang boss in the Columbia "B" The Face Behind the Mask (1941). Never quite reaching the top ranks, Seay nonetheless remained on the film scene as a dependable general purpose actor, appearing in such small but attention-getting roles as Dr. Pierce, the retirement-home physician who explains the eccentricities of "Kris Kringle" (Edmund Gwenn) in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). In the 1950s, James Seay joined the ranks of horror and sci-fi movie "regulars;" he could be seen in films like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Killers from Space (1954), The Beginning of the End (1957), and--as the luckless military officer who is skewered by a gigantic hypodermic needle--The Amazing Colossal Man (1957).

Myron Healey (Actor) .. Sheriff

Born: June 08, 1922

Trivia: The face of American actor Myron Healey was not in and of itself villainous. But whenever Healey narrowed his eyes and widened that countenance into a you-know-what-eating grin and exposed those pointed ivories, the audience knew that he was about to rob a bank, hold up a stagecoach, or burn out a homesteader, which he did with regularity after entering films in the postwar years. Still, Healey could temper his villainy with a marvelous sense of humor: for example, his hilarious adlibs while appearing in stock badguy roles in such TV series as Annie Oakley and Gene Autry. With 1949's Colorado Ambush Healey broadened his talents to include screenwriting. Usually heading the supporting cast, Myron Healey was awarded a bonafide lead role in the 1962 horror film Varan the Unbelievable (a Japanese film, with scattered English-language sequences), though even here he seemed poised to stab the titular monster in the back at any moment.

Frank Puglia (Actor) .. Manuel

Born: January 01, 1892
Died: October 25, 1975

Trivia: Sicilian actor Frank Puglia started his career with a travelling operetta company at age 13. He and his family moved to the US in 1907, where he worked in a laundry until he hooked up with an Italian-language theatrical troupe based in New York. In 1921, Puglia was appearing as Pierre Frochard in a revival of the old theatrical warhorse The Two Orphans when he was spotted by film director D.W. Griffith. Puglia was hired to repeat his role for Griffith's film version of the play, retitled Orphans of the Storm; while Pierre Frochard was slated to die at the end of the film, preview-audience reaction to the death was so negative that Griffith called Puglia back to reshoot his final scenes, allowing him to survive for the fade-out. For the rest of his long film career, Puglia essayed a wide variety of ethnic supporting parts, portraying priests, musicians, diplomats and street peddlers. In 1942's Casablanca, Puglia has a memorable bit as a Morroccan rug merchant who automatically marks down his prices to any friends of Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart). Frank Puglia played a larger and less likable role as a treacherous minion to sultan Kurt Katch in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944); when the film was remade as Sword of Ali Baba in 1965, so much stock footage from the 1944 film was utilized that Puglia was hired to replay his original part.

Robert Keys (Actor) .. Bart Wren

Born: July 13, 1921

I. Stanford Jolley (Actor) .. Rocky

Born: October 24, 1900
Died: December 06, 1978

Trivia: With his slight built, narrow face and pencil-thin mustache, I. Stanford Jolley did not exactly look trustworthy, and a great many of his screen roles (more than 500) were indeed to be found on the wrong side of the law. Isaac Stanford Jolley had toured as a child with his father's traveling circus and later worked in stock and vaudeville, prior to making his Broadway debut opposite Charles Trowbridge in Sweet Seventeen (1924). Radio work followed and he arrived in Hollywood in 1935. Pegged early on as a gangster or Western outlaw, Jolley graduated to playing lead henchman or the boss villain in the '40s, mostly appearing for such poverty-row companies as Monogram and PRC. Although Jolley is often mentioned as a regular member of the Republic Pictures' stock company, he was never under contract to that legendary studio and only appeared in 25 films for them between 1936 and 1954. From 1950 on, Jolley worked frequently on television and remained a busy performer until at least 1976. According to his widow, the actor, who died of emphysema at the Motion Picture Country Hospital, never earned more than 100 dollars on any given movie assignment. He was the father of art director Stan Jolley.

Paul Mcguire (Actor) .. Pinkly

Born: March 13, 1913

Lane Bradford (Actor) .. Beacher

Born: January 01, 1923
Died: June 07, 1973

Trivia: American actor Lane Bradford spent most of his film career in westerns - and in so doing carried on the tradition of his father, veteran sagebrush villain John Merton. Breaking into movies in bit parts, Bradford's first verified screen role was in 1946's Silver Range. He came a bit too late to flourish in B westerns (which died out in 1954), but Bradford essayed cowpoke roles, usually menacing in nature, until 1968. Once in a while, Bradford would venture far afield from the Old West - notably as the Martian villain Marex in the 1952 Republic serial Zombies of the Stratosphere. Lane Bradford retired to Hawaii shortly after completing his last film, Journey to Shiloh (1968).

Holly Bane (Actor) .. Earl

Died: August 25, 1995

Trivia: Character actor Holly Bane (who sometimes billed himself as Michael Ragan) specialized in playing bad guys in low-budget Westerns and serials. He made his first film appearance in Wake Island (1942), then appeared frequently in films through 1966, when he worked opposite Elvis Presley in Gunpoint. In the 1970s, Bane became a makeup director and worked on such television series as Barney Miller and Welcome Back Kotter.

Joe Dominguez (Actor) .. Pablo

Born: January 01, 1893
Died: January 01, 1970

Trivia: Mexican-born utility actor Joe Dominguez claimed to have entered films in 1913, and to have appeared in over 300 pictures. Primarily a bit player, Dominguez usually showed up in Westerns, serials, and historical films with South-of-the-Border settings. Among Joe Dominguez' larger roles were Gonzalez in Fritz Lang's Rancho Notorious (1952) and the Grandfather in I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (1970), his last film.

Alex Montoya (Actor) .. Mexican

Born: January 01, 1907
Died: January 01, 1970

04:30 am - 06:00 am, Saturday, January 10 on WRNN Outlaw (48.4)