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: The son of an Irish whiskey distiller, Brian Donlevy was 10 months old when his family moved to Wisconsin. At 15, Donlevy ran away from home, hoping to join General Pershing's purge against Mexico's Pancho Villa. His tenure below the border was brief, and within a few months he was enrolled in military school. While training to be a pilot at the U.S. Naval Academy, Donlevy developed an interest in amateur theatricals. He spent much of the early 1920s living by his wits in New York, scouting about for acting jobs and attempting to sell his poetry and other writings. He posed for at least one Arrow Collar ad and did bit and extra work in several New York-based films, then received his first break with a good supporting role in the 1924 Broadway hit What Price Glory?. Several more Broadway plays followed, then in 1935 Donlevy decided to try his luck in Hollywood. A frustrated Donlevy was prepared to head back to Manhattan when, at the last minute, he was cast as a villain in Sam Goldwyn's Barbary Coast. In 1936 he was signed to a 20th Century-Fox contract, alternating between "B"-picture heroes and "A"-picture heavies for the next few years. The most notable of his bad-guy roles from this period was the cruel but courageous Sgt. Markoff in Beau Geste (1939); reportedly, Donlevy deliberately behaved atrociously off-camera as well as on, so that his co-workers would come to genuinely despise his character. From 1940 through 1946, Donlevy was most closely associated with Paramount Pictures, delivering first-rate performances in such films as The Great McGinty (1940), Wake Island (1942), The Glass Key (1942) and The Virginian (1946). His own favorite role was that of the good-hearted, raffish con-artist in Universal's Nightmare (1942). In 1950, Donlevy took time off from films to star and co-produce the syndicated radio (and later TV) series Dangerous Assignment. He went on to introduce the character of Dr. Quatermass in two well-received British science fiction films, The Creeping Unknown (1955) and Enemy From Space (1957). Brian Donlevy left behind an impressive enough filmic legacy to put the lie to his own assessment of his talents: "I think I stink."

Trivia: Trevor was born Claire Wemlinger. After attending Columbia and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she began her acting career in the late '20s in stock. By 1932 she was starring on Broadway; that same year she began appearing in Brooklyn-filmed Vitaphone shorts. She debuted onscreen in feature films in 1933 and soon became typecast as a gang moll, a saloon girl, or some other kind of hard-boiled, but warm-hearted floozy. Primarily in B movies, her performances in major productions showed her to be a skilled screen actress; nominated for Oscars three times, she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work in Key Largo (1948). In the '50s she began to appear often on TV; in 1956 she won an Emmy for her performance in Dodsworth opposite Fredric March.

Trivia: Throughout much of his screen career, actor George Sanders was the very personification of cynicism, an elegantly dissolute figure whose distinct brand of anomie distinguished dozens of films during a career spanning nearly four decades. Born in St. Petersburg on July 3, 1906, Sanders and his family fled to the U.K. during the Revolution, and he was later educated at Brighton College. After first pursuing a career in the textile industry, Sanders briefly flirted with a South American tobacco venture; when it failed, he returned to Britain with seemingly no other options outside of a stage career. After a series of small theatrical roles, in 1934 he appeared in Noel Coward's Conversation Piece; the performance led to his film debut in 1936's Find the Lady, followed by a starring role in Strange Cargo. After a series of other undistinguished projects, Sanders appeared briefly in William Cameron Menzies' influential science fiction epic Things to Come. In 1937, he traveled to Hollywood, where a small but effective role in Lloyd's of London resulted in a long-term contract with 20th Century Fox. A number of lead roles in projects followed, including Love Is News and The Lady Escapes, before Fox and RKO cut a deal to allow him to star as the Leslie Charteris adventurer the Saint in a pair of back-to-back 1939 features, The Saint Strikes Back and The Saint in London. The series remained Sanders' primary focus for the next two years, and in total he starred in five Saint pictures, culminating in 1941's The Saint at Palm Springs. Sandwiched in between were a variety of other projects, including performances in a pair of 1940 Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, Foreign Correspondent and the Best Picture Oscar-winner Rebecca.After co-starring with Ingrid Bergman in 1941's Rage in Heaven, Sanders began work on another adventure series, playing a suave investigator dubbed the Falcon; after debuting the character in The Gay Falcon, he starred in three more entries -- A Date With the Falcon, The Falcon Takes Over, and The Falcon's Brother -- before turning over the role to his real-life brother, Tom Conway. Through his work in Julien Duvivier's Tales of Manhattan, Sanders began to earn notice as a more serious actor, and his lead performance in a 1943 adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel The Moon and Sixpence established him among the Hollywood elite. He then appeared as an evil privateer in the Tyrone Power swashbuckler The Black Swan, followed by Jean Renoir's This Land Is Mine. A pair of excellent John Brahm thrillers, 1944's The Lodger and 1945's Hangover Square, helped bring Sanders' contract with Fox to its close.With his portrayal of the world-weary Lord Henry Wooten in 1945's The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Sanders essayed the first of the rakish, cynical performances which would typify the balance of his career; while occasionally playing more sympathetic roles in pictures like The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, he was primarily cast as a malcontent, winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his venomous turn in 1951's All About Eve. The award brought Sanders such high-profile projects as 1951's I Can Get It for You Wholesale, 1952's Ivanhoe, and Roberto Rossellini's 1953 effort Viaggio in Italia. However, his star waned, and the musical Call Me Madam, opposite Ethel Merman, was his last major performance. A series of historical pieces followed, and late in the decade he hosted a television series, The George Sanders Mystery Theater. In 1960, he also published an autobiography, Memoirs of a Professional Cad.Sanders spent virtually all of the 1960s appearing in little-seen, low-budget foreign productions. Exceptions to the rule included the 1962 Disney adventure In Search of the Castaways, the 1964 Blake Edwards Pink Panther comedy A Shot in the Dark, and 1967's animated Disney fable The Jungle Book, in which he voiced the character of Shere Khan the Tiger. After appearing on Broadway in the title role of The Man Who Came to Dinner, Sanders appeared in John Huston's 1970 thriller The Kremlin Letter, an indication of a career upswing; however, the only offers which came his way were low-rent horror pictures like 1972's Doomwatch and 1973's Psychomania. Prior to the release of the latter, Sanders killed himself on August 25, 1972, by overdosing on sleeping pills while staying in a Costa Brava hotel; his suicide note read, "Dear World, I am leaving you because I am bored." He was 66 years old.

Trivia: Born and educated in Utah, tall, piercing-eyed actor Moroni Olsen learned how to entertain an audience as a Chautaqua tent-show performer. In the 1920s, he organized the Moroni Olsen Players, one of the most prestigious touring stock companies in the business. After several successful seasons on Broadway, Olsen came to films in the role of Porthos in the 1935 version of The Three Musketeers. Though many of his subsequent roles were not on this plateau, Olsen nearly always transcended his material: In the otherwise middling Wheeler and Woolsey comedy Mummy's Boys (1936), for example, Olsen all but ignites the screen with his terrifying portrayal of a lunatic. Thanks to his aristocratic bearing and classically trained voice, Olsen was often called upon to play famous historical personages: he was Buffalo Bill in Annie Oakley (1935), Robert E. Lee in Santa Fe Trail (1940), and Sam Houston in Lone Star (1952). Throughout his Hollywood career, Moroni Olsen was active as a director and performer with the Pasadena Playhouse, and was the guiding creative force behind Hollywood's annual Pilgrimage Play.

Trivia: Eddie Quillan made his performing debut at age seven in his family's vaudeville act. By the time he was in his teens, Quillan was a consummate performer, adept at singing, dancing, and joke-spinning. He made his first film, Up and At 'Em, in 1922, but it wasn't until 1925, when he appeared in Los Angeles with his siblings in an act called "The Rising Generation," that he began his starring movie career with Mack Sennett. At first, Sennett tried to turn Quillan into a new Harry Langdon, but eventually the slight, pop-eyed, ever-grinning Quillan established himself in breezy "collegiate" roles. Leaving Sennett over a dispute concerning risqué material, Quillan made his first major feature-film appearance when he co-starred in Cecil B. DeMille's The Godless Girl (1929). This led to a contract at Pathé studios, where Quillan starred in such ebullient vehicles as The Sophomore (1929), Noisy Neighbors (1929), Big Money (1930), and The Tip-Off (1931). He remained a favorite in large and small roles throughout the 1930s and 1940s; he faltered only when he was miscast as master sleuth Ellery Queen in The Spanish Cape Mystery (1936). Among Quillan's more memorable credits as a supporting actor were Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), and Abbott and Costello's It Ain't Hay (1943). From 1948 through 1956, Quillan co-starred with Wally Vernon in a series of 16 two-reel comedies, which showed to excellent advantage the physical dexterity of both men. Quillan remained active into the 1980s on TV; from 1968 through 1971, he was a regular on the Diahann Carroll sitcom Julia. In his retirement years, Eddie Quillan became a pet interview subject for film historians thanks to his ingratiating personality and uncanny total recall.

Trivia: He began performing in early childhood, going on to appear in tent shows, vaudeville, and stock throughout the Southwest. He formed Chill Wills and the Avalon Boys, a singing group in which he was the leader and bass vocalist, in the '30s. After appearing with the group in several Westerns, beginning with his screen debut, Bar 20 Rides Again (1935), he disbanded the group in 1938. For the next fifteen years he was busy onscreen as a character actor, but after 1953 his film work became less frequent. He provided the voice of Francis the Talking Mule in the "Francis" comedy series of films. In the '60s he starred in the TV series "Frontier Circus" and "The Rounders." For his work in The Alamo (1960) he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. In 1975 he released a singing album--his first.

Trivia: Ian Wolfe was determined to become an actor even as a youth in his hometown of Canton, IL. His Broadway debut was in the warhorse Lionel Barrymore vehicle The Claw. While acting with Katherine Cornell in The Barretts of Wimpole Street in 1934, Wolfe was spotted by MGM producer Irving Thalberg, who brought the actor to Hollywood to re-create his Barretts role. Though not yet 40, Wolfe had the receding hairline and lined features necessary for aged character roles. By his own count, Wolfe appeared in over 200 films, often uncredited assignments in the roles of judges, attorneys, butlers, and shopkeepers. Some of his best screen moments occurred in producer Val Lewton's Bedlam (1946), wherein Wolfe played an 18th century scientist confined to a mental asylum for proposing the invention of motion pictures. Because his actual age was difficult to pinpoint, Wolfe kept working into the 1990s (and his nineties); he was a particular favorite of TV's MTM productions, appearing on such sitcoms as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, and Rhoda. Co-workers during this period noted affectionately that, despite his many years as a professional, Wolfe was always seized with "stage fright" just before walking on the set. Though often cast in timid roles, Ian Wolfe was quite outspoken and fiercely defensive of his craft; when asked what he thought of certain method actors who insist upon playing extensions of "themselves," Wolfe snapped that he became an actor to pretend to be other people.

Trivia: British actor Wallis Clark was a fixture of American films from at least 1916, when he played Pencroft in the first cinemazation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In talkies, Clark busied himself in utility roles as lawyers, city commissioners, foreign noblemen and doctors (he's the medico who warns Warner Baxter that he's courting heart failure in 1933's 42nd Street. During the mid-1930s, he was most often found in the "B" product of Columbia Pictures. In 1939, he was briefly seen as the poker-playing Yankee captain in Gone with the Wind. Wallis Clark's resemblance to Teddy Roosevelt enabled him to portray old Rough 'n' Ready in several films, including Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and Jack London (1943).

Trivia: From 1923 until his retirement in 1949, American character actor Monte Montague was an adventure-film "regular." In both his silent and sound appearances, Montague was usually seen in comic-sidekick roles. He was busiest at Universal in the 1930s, where he appeared in such serials as Tailspin Tommy (1934), The Adventures of Frank Merriwell(1934) and Radio Patrol (1938). He also showed up in bit parts in the Universal "A" product; he was, for example, Dr. Praetorius' miniaturized King in Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Monte Montague wound up his career at Republic, playing utility roles in that studio's serial and western efforts.

Trivia: Piping-voice, hamster-faced Scottish character actor Olaf Hytten left the British stage for films in 1921. By the time the talkie era rolled around, Hytten was firmly established in Hollywood, playing an abundance of butlers and high-society gentlemen. The actor was primarily confined to one or two-line bits in such films as Platinum Blonde (1931), The Sphinx (1933), Bonnie Scotland (1935), Beloved Rebel (1936), The Howards of Virginia (1940) and The Bride Came COD (1941). He was a semi-regular of the Universal B-unit in the '40s, appearing in substantial roles as military men and police official in the Rathbone/Bruce Sherlock Holmes series and as burgomeisters and innkeepers in the studio's many horror films (Ghost of Frankenstein, House of Frankenstein, etc.) Olaf Hytten was active until at least 1956; one of his more memorable assignments of the '50s was as the larcenous butler who participates in a scheme to drive Daily Planet editor Perry White crazy in the "Great Caesar's Ghost" episode of the TV series Adventures of Superman.

Trivia: Eddy Waller's career moved along the same channels as most western comedy-relief performers: medicine shows, vaudeville, legitimate theatre, movie bit parts (from 1938) and finally the unshaven, grizzled, "by gum" routine. During the '40s, Waller was teamed with virtually everyone at Republic studios. He was amusing with his soup-strainer mustache, dusty duds and double takes, but virtually indistinguishable from such other Republic sagebrush clowns as Olin Howlin and Chubby Johnson. Eddy Waller is most fondly remembered for his 26-week stint as Rusty Lee, sidekick to star Douglas Kennedy on the 1952 TV series Steve Donovan, Western Marshal.

Trivia: Best known today for playing Officer Torch in Universal's Flash Gordon serials, American character actor Earl Leslie Askam had studied voice in Italy and appeared in numerous stage operettas prior to making his screen debut in 1930. Despite his education and stage work, however, Askam's screen career was spent mainly in action fare and Westerns. He reportedly died of a heart attack while playing golf. A brother, Perry Askam, appeared in a few films from 1930-1935.

Trivia: Wisconsonite actor Stanley Blystone was the brother of director John G. Blystone and assistant director Jasper Blystone. Entering films in 1915, the burly, muscular, mustachioed Blystone excelled in gruff, villainous roles; he was particularly menacing as a crooked ringmaster in Tom Mix's The Circus Ace (1927). In the talkie era, Blystone was busiest at the 2-reel comedy mills of RKO, Columbia and Hal Roach, often cast as brutish authority figures at odds with the comedy leads. In the Three Stooges' Half Shot Shooters (1936), he plays the sadistic Sgt. McGillicuddy, who reacts to the Stooges' ineptness by taking aim with a long-range cannon and blowing the three comedians right out of their boots! Blystone was much in demand as both "action" and "brains" heavies in Columbia's westerns and serials of the 1940s. Extending his activities to television in the 1950s, the 71-year-old Stanley Blystone was en route to Desilu Studios to play a small role on the TV series Wyatt Earp when he collapsed on the sidewalk and died of heart failure.

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: An oily looking supporting actor who often played gangsters or blue-collar working stiffs, Wisconsin-born, Oregon-educated Lew Harvey had spent three years on the legitimate stage before entering films with the Texas Guinan company in the very early '20s. Later in the decade he was mainly seen as "half-breeds" or gangsters but did turn up as Will Rogers in MGM's behind-the-scenes look at the Follies, in Pretty Ladies (1925). Reduced to bit parts in talkies and under long-term contract to MGM, Harvey turned up in scores of mostly dramas, usually playing truck drivers, two-bit hoodlums, guards, and policemen. His final-known appearance came in The File on Thelma Jordan (1949), in which he played a court reporter.

Trivia: British actor Leyland Hodgson launched his theatrical career at the advanced age of six. From 1915 to 1919, Hodgson toured the British provinces of the Orient with the Bandmann Opera Company, then retraced most of this tour as head of his own stock company. A star of the Australian stage from 1920 to 1929, Hodgson moved to Hollywood, where he made his film bow in RKO's The Case of Sergeant Grischa (1930). Largely confined to minor roles in films, Hodgson enjoyed some prominence as a regular of Universal's Sherlock Holmes films of the 1940s. Otherwise, he contented himself with bits as butlers, military officers, hotel clerks, reporters and chauffeurs until his retirement in 1948. Either by accident or design, Leyland Hodgson was frequently teamed on screen with another busy British utilitarian player, Charles Irvin.

Trivia: Ralph Dunn used his burly body and rich, theatrical voice to good effect in hundreds of minor feature-film roles and supporting appearances in two-reel comedies. He came to Hollywood during the early talkie era, beginning his film career with 1932's The Crowd Roars. A huge man with a withering glare, Dunn was an ideal "opposite" for short, bumbling comedians like Lou Costello in the 1944 Abbott and Costello comedy In Society, Dunn plays the weeping pedestrian who explains that he doesn't want to go to Beagle Street because that's where a two-ton safe fell on his head and killed him. A frequent visitor to the Columbia short subjects unit, Dunn shows up in the Three Stooges comedy Mummie's Dummies as the ancient Egyptian swindled at the Stooges' used chariot lot. Ralph Dunn kept busy into the '60s, appearing in such TV series as Kitty Foyle and such films as Black Like Me (1964).

Trivia: Born in Missouri, Noble Johnson was raised in Colorado Springs, Colorado where he was a classmate of future film-star Lon Chaney Sr., who became one of his closest friends. At 15, Johnson dropped out of school to help his horse-trainer father. The 6'2", 225-pound teenager had little trouble finding "man-sized" employment, and at various junctures he worked as a miner and a rancher. In 1909, he made his motion picture debut, playing an American Indian (the first of many). Seven years later, Johnson and his brother George formed the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, the first American film studio exclusively devoted to the production of all-black feature films. Business was poor, however; by 1918, the studio had failed, and Johnson returned to acting in other's films. During the silent era, he essayed such roles as Friday in Robinson Crusoe (1922) and Uncle Tom in Topsy and Eva (1927), and also began a longtime professional relationship with producer/director Cecil B. DeMille. His talkie roles included Queequeg in Moby Dick (1930) and the Native Chieftan in King Kong (1933); he also played important parts in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), Mystery Ranch (1932) and The Mummy (1932). Launching the 1940's with a vivid portrayal of a zombie in Bob Hope's The Ghost Breakers (1940), Johnson spent the rest of the decade playing Africans, Indians, Mexicans, Arabs and South Sea Islanders, one of the few black performers in Hollywood to be permitted any sort of versatility. Noble Johnson retired in 1950.

Trivia: An outdoorsman from an early age, gangling Montana-born actor Ethan Laidlaw began showing up in westerns during the silent era. Too menacing for lead roles, Laidlaw was best suited for villains, usually as the crooked ranch hand in the employ of the rival cattle baron, sent to spy on the hero or heroine. During the talkie era, Laidlaw began alternating his western work with roles as sailors and stevedores; he is quite visible chasing the Marx Brothers around in Monkey Business (1931). Though usually toiling in anonymity, Ethan Laidlaw was given prominent billing for his "heavy" role in the 1936 Wheeler and Woolsey sagebrush spoof Silly Billies.

Trivia: A handsome, mustachioed bit player from England, long in Hollywood, Clive Morgan played Tarzan's evil cousin in the 1929 Universal serial Tarzan the Tiger (1929). Roles thereafter were miniscule, often military officers, doormen, sales clerks, and others. Morgan's screen career lasted well into the 1960s.

Trivia: One of the most popular, and recognizable, character actors in B-Western history, pudgy, mustachioed Bud Osborne (real name Leonard Miles Osborne) was one of the many Wild West show performers who parlayed their experiences into lengthy screen careers. Especially noted for his handling of runaway stagecoaches and buckboards, Osborne began as a stunt performer with Thomas Ince's King-Bee company around 1912, and by the 1920s he had become one of the busiest supporting players in the business. Rather rakish-looking in his earlier years, the still slender Osborne even attempted to become a Western star in his own right. Produced by the Bud Osborne Feature Film Company and released by low-budget Truart Pictures, The Prairie Mystery (1922) presented Osborne as a romantic leading man opposite B-movie regular Pauline Curley. Few saw this little clunker, however, and Osborne quickly returned to the ranks of supporting cowboys, often portraying despicable villains with names like Satan Saunders, Piute Sam, or Bull McKee. Playing an escaped convict masquerading as a circuit rider in both the 1923 Leo Maloney short Double Cinched and Shootin' Square, a 1924 Jack Perrin feature Western, Osborne even demonstrated an affinity for comedy. The now veteran Bud Osborne continued his screen career into the sound era and became even busier in the 1930s and 1940s. As he grew older and his waistline expanded, Osborne's roles became somewhat smaller and instead of calling the shots himself, as he often had in the silent era, he now answered to the likes of Roy Barcroft and Charles King. But he seems to pop up in every other B-Western and serial released in those years, appearing in more than 65 productions for Republic Pictures alone. By the 1950s, the now elderly Osborne became one of the many veteran performers courted by maverick filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr., for whom he did Crossroad Avenger: The Adventures of the Tucson Kid (1954), an unsold television pilot, Jailbait (1954), Bride of the Monster (1955), and Night of the Ghouls (1958). When all is said and done, it was a rather dismal finish to a colorful career.

Trivia: From 1939 until his death in 1960, gangly, balding Douglas Spencer could be spotted in unbilled film roles as doctors and reporters. By the early '50s, Spencer had graduated to supporting parts, often in films with a science fiction or fantasy theme. One of his lengthier assignments was Simms, the seance-busting reporter in Houdini (1953). Douglas Spencer's best-ever film role was bespectacled reporter Ned "Scotty" Scott in the 1951 sci-fi classic The Thing, wherein he closed the film with the immortal cautionary words "Keep watching the skies!"

Trivia: A stage actor from the age of 16, Briton Wilfrid Lawson made his film debut in the 1931 comedy East Lynne on the Western Front. Lawson was unforgettable as Alfred P. Doolittle ("I'm one of the undeserving poor...and I means to go on being undeserving") in Pygmalion (1938), no less impressive in the title role in The Great Mr. Handel (1942), and exquisitely eccentric as Black George Seagrim in Tom Jones (1963). His handful of American films includes John Wayne's Allegheny Uprising (1939) and The Long Voyage Home (1940). No matter how busy he became in films, Lawson never severed his ties with the theatre; his biggest stage success was the 1954 production The Wooden Dish. In one of his last film appearances as doddering manservant Peacock The Wrong Box (1966), the 66-year-old Wilfrid Lawson looked closer to 90.

Trivia: When actor Robert H. Barrat moved from stage to films in the early 1930s, he found himself twice blessed: He was dignified-looking enough to portray business and society types, but also athletic enough to get down and dirty in barroom-brawl scenes. An ardent physical-fitness advocate in real life, Barrat was once described by his friend and frequent co-worker James Cagney as having "a solid forearm the size of the average man's thigh"; as a result, the usually cautious Cagney was extra careful during his fight scenes with the formidable Barrat. The actor's size and menacing demeanor served him well when pitted against such comparatively pint-sized comedians as the Marx Bros. (in Go West). When not intimidating one and all with his muscle power, the actor was fond of playing roles that called for quaint, colorful accents, notably his Lionel Barrymore-ish turn as a suicidal baron in the 1934 Grand Hotel derivation Wonder Bar. Robert H. Barrat's last film appearance was in the rugged western Tall Man Riding (55).

Trivia: To six decades' worth of filmgoers, Kentucky-born character actor Charles B. Middleton was Ming the Merciless, the megalomaniac ruler of the planet Mongo in three 1930s serials based on Alex Raymond's comic strip Flash Gordon. Beginning his career in circuses and carnivals in the South, Middleton worked in vaudeville and stock companies before his 1927 entree into films. With his hatchet face, bad teeth, and rolling-toned voice, Middleton was ideally cast as stern judges, cruel orphanage officials, backwater sheriffs, and small town bigots. Outside of his extensive work in serials and Westerns, he was used to best advantage in the films of Laurel and Hardy and Will Rogers. In a far less villainous vein, Charles Middleton was cast as Tom Lincoln, father of the 16th president, in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940); he also portrayed the Great Emancipator himself on several occasions -- while in 1937's Stand-In, Middleton was hilariously cast as an unsuccessful actor who dresses like Lincoln in hopes of landing a movie role.