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: Virtually the prototype of all grizzled old-codger western sidekicks, George "Gabby" Hayes professed in real life to hate westerns, complaining that they all looked and sounded alike. For his first few decades in show business, he appeared in everything but westerns, including travelling stock companies, vaudeville, and musical comedy. He began appearing in films in 1928, just in time to benefit from the talkie explosion. In contrast to his later unshaven, toothless screen persona, George Hayes (not yet Gabby) frequently showed up in clean-faced, well groomed articulate characterizations, sometimes as the villain. In 1933 he appeared in several of the Lone Star westerns featuring young John Wayne, alternating between heavies and comedy roles. Wayne is among the many cowboy stars who has credited Hayes with giving them valuable acting tips in their formative days. In 1935, Hayes replaced an ailing Al St. John in a supporting role in the first Hopalong Cassidy film, costarring with William Boyd; Hayes' character died halfway through this film, but audience response was so strong that he was later brought back into the Hoppy series as a regular. It was while sidekicking for Roy Rogers at Republic that Hayes, who by now never appeared in pictures with his store-bought teeth, earned the soubriquet "Gabby", peppering the soundtrack with such slurred epithets as "Why, you goldurned whipersnapper" and "Consarn it!" He would occasionally enjoy an A-picture assignment in films like Dark Command (1940) and Tall in the Saddle (1944), but from the moment he became "Gabby", Hayes was more or less consigned exclusively to "B"s. After making his last film appearance in 1952, Hayes turned his attentions to television, where he starred in the popular Saturday-morning Gabby Hayes Show ("Hullo out thar in televisium land!") and for a while was the corporate spokesman for Popsicles. Retiring after a round of personal appearance tours, Hayes settled down on his Nevada ranch, overseeing his many business holdings until his death at age 83.

Trivia: Actress Ann Richards, born Shirley Ann Richards in Sydney, Australia, to an American father and New Zealander mother, began her film career in the late '30s playing ingénues and leads in Australian films. Following the beginning of WWII, Richards moved to Hollywood where she played co-leads and leads in films for MGM and other studios. Richards was a talented actress, but she was choosy about her roles and finally retired from films in the early '50s. Later, she infrequently appeared on-stage. In 1971, she published a volume of her poetry, The Grieving Senses; she has also published a verse play, Helen of Troy.

Trivia: A descendant of one of California's pioneer families, American actor Ray Collins' interest in the theatre came naturally. His father was drama critic of the Sacramento Bee. Taking to the stage at age 14, Collins moved to British Columbia, where he briefly headed his own stock company, then went on to Broadway. An established theatre and radio performer by the mid-1930s, Collins began a rewarding association with Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. He played the "world's last living radio announcer" in Welles' legendary War of the Worlds broadcast of 1938, then moved to Hollywood with the Mercury troupe in 1939. Collins made his film debut as Boss Jim Gettys in Welles' film classic Citizen Kane (1940). After the Mercury disbanded in the early 1940s, Collins kept busy as a film and stage character actor, usually playing gruff business executives. Collins is most fondly remembered by TV fans of the mid-1950s for his continuing role as the intrepid Lt. Tragg on the weekly series Perry Mason.

Trivia: A former illustrator, tall, handsome James Warren (born Wittlig) was discovered in a New York eatery in 1942 by an agent from MGM who awarded him a term contract. After playing servicemen in World War II melodramas, and usually finding himself near the bottom of the cast lists, Warren was approached by RKO, who needed a Western star to replace Robert Mitchum in the studio's Zane Grey Westerns. Mitchum, who had replaced draftee Tim Holt, was being promoted by the studio in Grade-A pictures and Warren, with his slight resemblance to Gary Cooper, seemed the perfect choice to take over the mantle of resident B-Western star. Unfortunately, after only three Westerns, all of them average or above, a reshuffling in RKO's executive offices and the return of Tim Holt left Warren out in the cold. He played Randolph Scott's brother in the high-budget Western Badman's Territory (1946) and later starred in a failed television pilot, Trigger Tales (1950). Gloria Swanson personally selected him as her co-star in the comedy 3 for Bedroom C (1952) and he starred in a rather ridiculous action-thriller, Port Sinister (1953). When both flopped, Warren left Hollywood for good and returned to working as a commercial artist. A longtime resident of Maui, HI, he enjoyed several prominent gallery showings, working mainly in watercolors.

Trivia: Actor Morgan Conway made his first film appearance in Looking for Trouble (1934). He arrived in Hollywood just in time to get on the ground floor of the industry's burgeoning labor movement; along with such notables as Boris Karloff and Lyle Talbot, Conway was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild. While under contract to RKO in 1945, Conway was assigned to star in Dick Tracy, Detective, becoming the second actor to impersonate Chester Gould's jut-jawed comic-strip detective (Ralph Byrd was the first). After his brief spurt of stardom, Morgan Conway went back to secondary roles, leaving movies altogether in 1949.

Trivia: Willowy blonde actress Virginia Sale was seen on stage and screen from the mid-1920s. Sale was usually cast as either an efficient secretary or a well-coiffed socialite, appearing in such 1930s films as Her Majesty Love (1931), Man With Two Faces (1934) and Topper. In all, she was in some 200 films, not to mention her 1000-plus live appearances in her own one-woman show. For fifteen years, Ms. Sale offered this tour-de-force (a combination lecture on theatrical arts and demonstration of the actress' versatility) to schools, nightclubs and legitimate theatres, retiring only when the infirmities of age caught up with her in her 80s. Equally active on television, Sale showed up on innumerable anthologies and sitcoms; in 1964, she was the first actress to portray busybody Selma Plout on the long-running Petticoat Junction. The sister of vaudeville headliner Chic Sale, Virginia Sale was long married to Broadway actor Sam Wren, with whom she co-starred in the pioneering TV domestic comedy Wren's Nest (1949).

Trivia: John Halloran seldom played roles with extensive dialogue during his 24-year screen career, but filmgoers found him a memorable figure from his mere physical presence. A martial arts expert and judo champion, he came to films in middle age after a career in law enforcement that was interrupted over his devotion to those very skills that made him so valuable to the police in the first place. In his larger screen roles, starting with the sinister Captain Oshima in Frank Lloyd's Blood on the Sun (1945), he often made use of his specialized fighting skills, while in smaller parts his size and imposing presence were sufficient. The actor's birth name was John R. Sergel -- he was an American citizen born in Argentina in 1902 to Edwin J. Sergel and the former Belle Russell. His interest in martial arts dated at least from the 1920s. According to various sources, Sergel was part of the San Fernando Dojo in 1932, and set several records in judo competitions at the end of the 1930s. He was a member of the Los Angeles Police Department, holding the rank of sergeant in the early '40s, one of several martial arts experts in the employ of the LAPD at the time. But Sergel was singled out for attention by federal authorities after he took several students, including women, to the notorious Manzanar internment camp -- where many of the Japanese-Americans in the Los Angeles area were being held -- to get them graded in judo. This led to investigations by both the federal government and the local police; Sergel's loyalty to the United States was beyond question, and his police credentials were impeccable, but his admiration and respect for Japanese culture proved to be too controversial in 1944. He resigned from the police force in October of that year. Almost immediately, Sergel was tapped by actor James Cagney, who was then in the process of starring in and producing the movie Blood on the Sun, to serve as a technical advisor as well as the hero's greatest physical nemesis, Captain Oshima. With this commencement of Sergel's movie career, the martial artist and actor took on the stage name John Halloran. The movie got mixed reviews and was not a huge box-office success, but everyone who has ever seen it remembers the climactic judo fight between Cagney and Halloran that destroys just about everything in the room in which it takes place, as well as savaging the two characters. After that, Halloran went on to appear in more than 60 movies and television shows, sometimes cast as sinister heavies in Westerns, and other times making use of his special skills in more exotic and modern settings. Indeed, for a time he became the judo equivalent of Mushy Callahan, the prize fighter who trained countless screen actors and served as technical advisor on a generation's worth of movies about boxing. Halloran worked with Cagney again on pictures, and in movies as different as the Anthony Mann Western The Far Country (1955) and the Kurt Neumann sci-fi thriller Kronos (1957). He also appeared as himself, referred to as "Jack Halloran," in the Abbott & Costello Show episode "Police Rookies," as a martial arts expert demonstrating various judo holds and moves (udenage, kata guruma, etc.). He worked steadily in pictures almost right up until his death in 1968, and his last screen appearance was in the movie Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969).

Trivia: Excelling in baseball while at Phillips-Exeter academy, American comic actor Andrew Tombes determined he'd make a better living as an actor than as a ballplayer. By the time he became a headliner in the Ziegfeld Follies, Tombes had performed in everything from Shakespeare to musical comedy. He received star billing in five editions of the Follies in the '20s, during which time he befriended fellow Ziegfeldite Will Rogers. It was Rogers who invited Tombes to Hollywood for the 1935 Fox production Doubting Thomas. An endearingly nutty farceur in his stage roles, Tombes' screen persona was that of an eternally befuddled, easily aggravated business executive. The baldheaded, popeyed actor remained at Fox for several years after Doubting Thomas, playing an overabundance of police commissioners, movie executives, college deans, and Broadway "angels." Tombes' problem was that he arrived in talkies too late in the game: most of the larger roles in which he specialized usually went to such long-established character men as Walter Catlett and Berton Churchill, obliging Tombes to settle for parts of diminishing importance in the '40s. Most of his later screen appearances were unbilled, even such sizeable assignments as the would-be musical backer in Olsen and Johnson's Hellzapoppin' (1941) and the royal undertaker's assistant in Hope and Crosby's Road to Morocco (1942). Still, Tombes was given ample opportunity to shine, especially as the secretive, suicidal bartender in the 1944 "film noir" Phantom Lady. Andrew Tombes last picture was How to Be Very Very Popular (1955), which starred a colleague from his busier days at 20th Century-Fox, Betty Grable.

Trivia: A onetime opera singer, wizened, glowering American character actor Richard Hale spent most of his screen time playing small-town sourpusses. Many of his movie appearances were small and unbilled: he enjoyed larger assignments as outlaw patriarch Basserman in Preston Sturges' The Beautiful Blonde of Bashful Bend (1949), the Soothsayer in Julius Caesar (1953), and the father of the retarded Boo Radley (Robert Duvall) in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). He also showed up with regularity on television, often cast as a taciturn farmer or hard-hearted banker on the many western series of the 1950s and 1960s. One of Hale's showier parts was in the Oscar-winning All The King's Men, as the father of the girl killed in an auto accident caused by the drunken son (John Derek) of demagogic Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford), his character name: Richard Hale.

Trivia: Rotund, squeaky-voiced American actor Harry Holman forsook vaudeville and the legitimate stage for films in 1929. For the next 18 years, Holman played a vast array of mayors, justices of the peace, attorneys, millionaires and sugar daddies. Sometimes he had no professional designation at all, and was simply a "Jolly Fat Man" (as he was billed in 1935's Dante's Inferno). Equally busy in short subjects as in features, Holman is best remembered by Three Stooges fans as the first of many wealthy professors who tried to turn the Stooges into gentlemen in Hoi Polloi (1935). A fixture of Frank Capra films, Harry Holman showed up as the high school principal in Capra's Yuletide perennial It's a Wonderful Life.

Trivia: Though the "Chief" was a purely honorary title, Chief Thundercloud was indeed a Native American. Educated at the University of Arizona, Thundercloud (given name: Victor Daniels) worked at a series of manual-labor and rodeo jobs before trying his luck in Hollywood. In films from 1928 through 1952, Thundercloud is best known for creating the role of Tonto in the 1938 serial The Lone Ranger. He also played the title role in Paramount's Geronimo (1939), though he incredibly received no on-screen credit. Chief Thundercloud should not be confused with another prominent Indian actor, Chief Thunderbird, who appeared as Sitting Bull in 1936's Annie Oakley, nor with film-actor Scott T. Williams, who also billed himself as Chief Thundercloud.

Trivia: A one-time model with a long rap sheet of less-than-ideal behavior, character actor Lawrence Tierney nevertheless managed to amass scores of film credits over a five-decade acting career before he passed away in 2002. Born in Brooklyn, NY, five years before actor/ brother Scott Brady, Tierney excelled in high school track, winning a scholarship to Manhattan College. Rather than stay in school, however, Tierney dropped out and became an itinerant laborer before his looks brought him a job as a catalogue model. In the early '40s, Tierney began acting in theater and was subsequently signed by RKO. Strengthening his skills with supporting roles in such films as Val Lewton's moody thriller The Ghost Ship (1943) and early teen drama Youth Runs Wild (1944), Tierney sealed his fame, and his image, with his performance as the eponymous gangster in the superb B-picture Dillinger (1945). Cashing in on Dillinger's success, RKO slotted Tierney into numerous tough guy roles, including two turns as archetypal Western outlaw Jesse James in Badman's Territory (1946) and Best of the Badmen (1950), a murderer in cult noir Born to Kill (1947), a sociopath in The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947), and a career criminal in The Hoodlum (1951). His B-movie stardom also garnered Tierney a typically villainous role in Cecil B. De Mille's Oscar-winner The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). Tierney became just as well known in this period, though, for his offscreen exploits involving copious booze and physical violence. Tierney was such a regular in the Los Angeles jail that cops assured fellow RKO star and hell-raiser Robert Mitchum after his famous 1948 drug arrest, "We're keeping Lawrence Tierney's cell warm for ya." By the mid-'50s, Tierney's roles were becoming smaller and scarcer. His professional situation unchanged despite appearing in John Cassavetes' praised mental hospital drama A Child Is Waiting (1963), Tierney moved to Europe but he continued to get in trouble with the law. After he returned to New York in the late '60s, Tierney supported himself with a variety of jobs, including bartending, and maintained his pugnacious, drunken ways; he was stabbed in a brawl in 1973 and questioned in connection with a woman's suicide in 1975. Still, Tierney managed to score the occasional acting gig, appearing in Otto Preminger's Such Good Friends (1971), Andy Warhol's Bad (1977), and the blockbuster comedy Arthur (1981). Dry by 1983, Tierney returned to Hollywood to resurrect his career in earnest, and soon landed regular work on TV as well as in movies. Along with a role on NBC's Hill Street Blues, Tierney also appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation and played a sheriff in the TV movie Dillinger (1991). On film, Tierney was as comfortable in John Sayles' thoughtful drama City of Hope (1991) as in John Huston's esteemed Mafia black comedy Prizzi's Honor (1985) and the tastelessly hilarious The Naked Gun (1988); he drew attention for his vigorous turn as Ryan O'Neal's alcoholic father in Tough Guys Don't Dance (1987). Tierney's most memorable late-career performance, however, was his no-nonsense, dryly funny criminal mastermind Joe Cabot in Quentin Tarantino's heist film Reservoir Dogs (1992). His longevity assured by Dogs, Tierney remained active into the late '90s, appearing in the Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy Junior (1994) and stylish Tarantino rip-off 2 Days in the Valley (1996), as well as playing Joey Buttafuoco's father in the TV yarn Casualties of Love: The "Long Island Lolita" Story (1993). Following the crime drama Southie (1998) and playing hard-nosed oil driller Bruce Willis' gruff father in Armageddon (1998), Tierney's health began to fail. He died in his sleep in February 2002.

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: When casting about for a non de film, upon embarking on a movie career in 1944, Kansas-born stage actor John Stevenson chose the name of the fellow who allegedly jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge in the 1880s. As "Steve Brodie," Stevenson spent the 1940s working at MGM, RKO and Republic. He flourished in two-fisted "outdoors" roles throughout the 1950s, mostly in westerns. He holds the distinction of being beaten up twice by Elvis Presley, in Blue Hawaii (1961) and Roustabout (1964). Steve Brodie's screen career was pretty much limited to cheap exploitation flicks in the 1970s, though he did function as co-producer of the "B"-plus actioner Bobby Jo and the Outlaw (1976), a film distinguished by its steady stream of movie-buff "in" jokes.

Trivia: Nestor Paiva had the indeterminate ethnic features and gift for dialects that enabled him to play virtually every nationality. Though frequently pegged as a Spaniard, a Greek, a Portuguese, an Italian, an Arab, an even (on radio, at least) an African-American, Paiva was actually born in Fresno, California. A holder of an A.B. degree from the University of California at Berkeley, Paiva developed an interest in acting while performing in college theatricals. Proficient in several languages, Paiva made his stage bow at Berkeley's Greek Theatre in a production of Antigone. His subsequent professional stage career was confined to California; he caught the eye of the studios by appearing in a long-running Los Angeles production of The Drunkard, which costarred another future film player of note, Henry Brandon. He remained with The Drunkard from 1934 to 1945, finally dropping out when his workload in films became too heavy. Paiva appeared in roles both large and small in so many films that it's hard to find a representative appearance. Fans of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby can take in a good cross-section of Paiva's work via his appearances in Road to Morocco (1942), Road to Utopia (1945) and Road to Rio (1947); he has a bit as a street peddler in Morocco, is desperado McGurk in Utopia, and plays the Brazilian theatre manager who isn't fooled by the Wiere Brothers' attempt to pass themselves off as Americans ("You're een the groove, Jackson") in Rio. During his busiest period, 1945 through 1948, Paiva appeared in no fewer than 117 films. The familiar canteloupe-shaped mug and hyperactive eyebrows of Nestor Paiva graced many a film and TV program until his death in 1966; his final film, the William Castle comedy The Spirit is Willing (1967), was released posthumously.

Trivia: Born and raised on a Wyoming ranch, American actress Isabel Jewell would only rarely be called upon to play a "Western" type during her career. For the most part, Isabel -- who made her screen debut in Blessed Event (1932) -- was typecast as a gum-chewing, brassy urban blonde, or as an empty-headed gun moll. Jewell's three best remembered film performances were in Tale of Two Cities (1935), where she was atypically cast as the pathetic seamstress who is sentenced to the guillotine; Lost Horizon (1937), as the consumptive prostitute who finds a new lease on life when she is whisked away to the land of Shangri-La; and Gone with the Wind (1939), where she appears briefly as "poor white trash" Emmy Slattery. In 1946, Isabel finally got to show off the riding skills she'd accumulated in her youth in Wyoming when she was cast as female gunslinger Belle Starr in Badman's Territory. Denied starring roles because of her height (she was well under five feet), Isabel Jewell worked as a supporting player in films until the '50s and in television until the '60s.

Trivia: Trained at Iowa's Morningside College for a career as a musician, American actor Emory Parnell spent his earliest performing years as a concert violinist. He worked the Chautauqua and Lyceum tent circuits for a decade before leaving the road in 1930. For the next few seasons, Parnell acted and narrated in commercial and industrial films produced in Detroit. Determining that the oppurtunities and renumeration were better in Hollywood, Emory and his actress wife Effie boarded the Super Chief and headed for California. Endowed with a ruddy Irish countenance and perpetual air of frustration, Parnell immediately landed a string of character roles as cops, small town business owners, fathers-in-law and landlords (though his very first film part in Bing Crosby's Dr. Rhythm [1938] was cut out before release). In roles both large and small, Parnell became an inescapable presence in B-films of the '40s; one of his better showings was in the A-picture Louisiana Purchase, in which, as a Paramount movie executive, he sings an opening song about avoiding libel suits! Parnell was a regular in Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle film series (1949-55), playing small town entrepreneur Billy Reed; on TV, the actor appeared as William Bendix' factory foreman The Life of Riley (1952-58). Emory Parnell's last public appearance was in 1974, when he, his wife Effie, and several other hale-and-hearty residents of the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital were interviewed by Tom Snyder.

Trivia: Born and educated in Pennsylvania, John Hamilton headed to New York in his twenties to launch a 25-year stage career. Ideally cast as businessmen and officials, the silver-haired Hamilton worked opposite such luminaries as George M. Cohan and Ann Harding. He toured in the original company of the long-running Frank Bacon vehicle Lightnin', and also figured prominently in the original New York productions of Seventh Heaven and Broadway. He made his film bow in 1930, costarring with Donald Meek in a series of 2-reel S.S.Van Dyne whodunits (The Skull Mystery, The Wall St. Mystery) filmed at Vitaphone's Brooklyn studios. Vitaphone's parent company, Warner Bros., brought Hamilton to Hollywood in 1936, where he spent the next twenty years playing bits and supporting roles as police chiefs, judges, senators, generals and other authority figures. Humphrey Bogart fans will remember Hamilton as the clipped-speech DA in The Maltese Falcon (1941), while Jimmy Cagney devotees will recall Hamilton as the recruiting officer who inspires George M. Cohan (Cagney) to compose "Over There" in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Continuing to accept small roles in films until the mid '50s (he was the justice of the peace who marries Marlon Brando to Teresa Wright in 1950's The Men), Hamilton also supplemented his income with a group of advertisements for an eyeglasses firm. John Hamilton is best known to TV-addicted baby boomers for his six-year stint as blustering editor Perry "Great Caesar's Ghost!" White on the Adventures of Superman series.

Trivia: Actor Robert Emmett Homans seemingly had the map of Ireland stamped on his craggy face. As a result, Homans spent the better part of his film career playing law enforcement officers of all varieties, from humble patrolmen to detective chiefs. After a lengthy stage career, Homans entered films in 1923. A break from his usual microscopic film assignments occured in Public Enemy (1931), where Homans is given an opportunity to deliver reams of exposition (with a pronounced brogue) during a funeral sequence. And in the 1942 Universal horror programmer Night Monster, Robert Emmett Homans is alotted a sizeable role as the ulcerated detective investigating the supernatural goings-on at the home of seemingly helpless invalid Ralph Morgan.

Trivia: Actor Harry Harvey Sr. started out in minstrel shows and burlesque. His prolific work in Midwestern stock companies led to film assignments, beginning at RKO in 1934. Harvey's avuncular appearance (he looked like every stage doorman named Pop who ever existed) won him featured roles in mainstream films and comic-relief and sheriff parts in B-westerns. His best known "prestige" film assignment was the role of New York Yankees manager Joe McCarthy in the 1942 Lou Gehrig biopic Pride of the Yankees. Remaining active into the TV era, Harry Harvey Sr. had continuing roles on two series, The Roy Rogers Show and It's a Man's World, and showed up with regularity on such video sagebrushers as Cheyenne and Bonanza.