Trivia: Ex-telephone lineman Guy Madison was serving his country in the Navy at the time he made his screen debut as an extra in David Selznick's Since You Went Away (1944). After the war, Madison was signed by RKO, where he was given the star buildup in such films as Till the End of Time (1946) and Honeymoon (1947). Unpleasant publicity surrounding his stormy marriage to actress Gail Russell very nearly put an end to Madison's burgeoning career. Salvation came in the form of a syndicated TV series, Wild Bill Hickok, which starred Madison in the title role and which ran from 1951 through 1958. Thanks to his Hickok popularity, Madison was able to secure major roles in such "A" pictures as The Charge at Feather River (1953) and On the Threshold of Space (1956). After the cancellation of Wild Bill Hickok in 1958, Guy Madison's star faded somewhat, though he went on to make a good living as a leading man in German and Italian westerns and swashbucklers of the 1960s.

Trivia: Actor Frank Lovejoy was linked to show business before he was even born; his father was a salesman for the Pathe Film studio. After working as a Wall Street page, Lovejoy attended NYU, then acted in stock companies. He made his first Broadway appearance in 1934's Judgment Day. One of the busiest "Golden Age" radio actors, Lovejoy was heard in hundreds of soap operas, mystery programs and dramatic anthologies: from 1950 through 1952, he starred in the weekly radio crime drama Nightbeat. After his 1948 film debut in Black Bart, Lovejoy specialized in tough, cynical roles, such as the leading character in I Was a Communist For the FBI. From 1957 through 1959, he starred in the TV private eye series Meet McGraw. Frank Lovejoy died of a heart attack while appearing in a New Jersey production of The Best Man with his actress wife Joan Banks.

Trivia: Helen Westcott launched her stage career at the age of 5. It has long been presumed that she made only one screen appearance in her preteen years, as a fairy in Midsummer Night's Dream (1935); in fact, she played a major role in the 1934 B western Thunder Over Texas, which starred Guinn "Big Boy" Williams. Be that as it may, Westcott would not achieve film prominence until the late 1940s--early 1950s, with such roles as Gregory Peck's ex-wife in The Gunfighter (1950) and the imperiled heroine of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953). When her starring career in films faded, Helen Westcott turned to television, where she flourished as a character actress; her last screen appearance was as Mrs. Burrows in 1970's I Love My...Wife.

Trivia: Beauty contest winner Vera Ralston made a smattering of industrial films before beginning her Hollywood career in 1952. While making films at Republic studios, Ralston changed her name to avoid being confused with Republic's reigning queen Vera Hruba Ralston; "Miles" was the last name of her first husband. At first cast as a bland ingenue, she proved herself capable of conveying neurotic hysteria in The Charge at Feather River (1953), playing a white girl kidnapped by Indians who was violently resistant to being returned to her real family. She met her second husband, Gordon Scott, while filming Tarzan's Hidden Jungle (1954). With her work in John Ford's The Searchers (1955), she graduated to big-budget productions. During the latter half of the 1950s, she was under contract to Alfred Hitchcock, who was impressed by the "still waters run deep" element of her performances. She played a delusional rape victim in "Revenge," the very first episode of TV's Alfred Hitchcock Presents; she was cast as Henry Fonda's beleaguered wife in Hitch's The Wrong Man (her final scene is a knockout!); and, of course, she was seen as the sister of the ill-fated Janet Leigh in Psycho, a role she flamboyantly reprised in the 1982 sequel Psycho 2. While she never quite attained full film stardom, Miles kept extremely busy in both theatrical releases and television. During the 1960s and 1970s, she was regarded as a "good luck charm" by TV producers: if she guest-starred in the pilot episode of a potential series, chances are that series would sell (among those sold were the aforementioned Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Asphalt Jungle, The Eleventh Hour, The Fugitive, Court Martial, The Outer Limits, I Spy, Gentle Ben, Cannon and Owen Marshall, Counsellor at Law). She continued to make occasional appearances until the 1995 feature Separate Lives, in which she costarred with James Belushi; afterward, she retired from acting. As of this writing, Vera Miles is still married to her fourth husband, sound engineer and mixer Bob Jones.

Trivia: Comic actor Dick Wesson, he of the crew-cut hair and toothy grin, began his career in nightclubs in a double act with his brother Gene. Wesson spent virtually his entire film career at Warner Bros., providing genial comedy relief to such Technicolor musicals as About Face (1952), The Desert Song (1953) and Calamity Jane (1953). After playing a dyspeptic assistant director in Jerry Lewis' The Errand Boy, Wesson began appearing on episodes of sitcoms like The Beverly Hillbillies, Maude, and the TV weekly Friends and Lovers, while working as a producer for the hit series Petticoat Junction. He then retired from the spotlight, and passed away from a heart attack in 1996. Dick Wesson was the father of actress Eileen Wesson.

Trivia: Onslow Stevens was the son of character actor Housley Stevenson who, in turn, was the son of a prominent British artist. Stevens' own career in the arts began in 1928, when he was featured in the Pasadena Playhouse production Under the Roof. To believe his publicity, Stevens was "accidentally" hired for film work in 1932 when he agreed to help an actress friend get through her screen test. At first a leading man, Stevens soon established himself in character roles, often cast as saturnine villains -- or, as in the case of films like House of Dracula (1945), he played weak-willed men with the capacity for villainy. From 1952 through 1955, Stevens played the kindly Mr. Fisher on the religious TV dramatic series This Is the Life. Onslow Stevens spent his last years in a nursing home, where, according to his wife, he was persecuted and brutalized by his fellow patients; he died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 75.

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: The oldest child of an itinerant bridge builder, actor Neville Brand intended to make the military his career, and indeed spent ten years in uniform. During World War II, he became America's fourth most decorated soldier when he wiped out a German 50-caliber machine gun nest. He also decided that he'd seek out another line of work as soon as his hitch was up. Paying for acting classes with his GI Bill, he started his career off-Broadway. In 1949, he made his film debut in D.O.A., playing a psychotic hoodlum who delights in punching poisoned hero Edmond O'Brien in the stomach. Brand spent most of the early '50s at 20th Century Fox, a studio that surprisingly downplayed the actor's war record by shuttling him from one unstressed supporting role to another (though he's the principal villain in 1950's Where the Sidewalk Ends, he receives no screen credit). He fared far better on television, where he won the Sylvania Award for his portrayal of Huey Long in a 1958 telestaging of All the King's Men. Even better received was his portrayal of Al Capone on the TV series The Untouchables, a characterization he repeated in the 1961 theatrical feature The George Raft Story. In 1966, Brand briefly shed his bad-guy image to play the broadly hilarious role of bumbling Texas Ranger Reese Bennett on the TV Western series Laredo. His off-camera reputation for pugnacity and elbow-bending was tempered by his unswerving loyalty to his friends and his insatiable desire to better himself intellectually (his private library was one of the largest in Hollywood, boasting some 5000 titles). Fighting a losing battle against emphysema during his last years, Neville Brand died at the age of 70.

Trivia: A rotund, balding supporting actor, Henry Kulky began his show business career wrestling professionally under the alarming name of "Bomber Kulkovich." Fellow wrestler-turned-screen actor Mike Mazurki arranged for Kulky to make his acting debut in Call Northside 777 (1947), and the die was cast. Because of his rather off-putting appearance, Kulky became typecast as thugs, gangsters, and bartenders, who were at times quite lovable characters. He even showed up in a Western or two, including a 1949 Durango Kid entry. Like many supporting players of his generation, Kulky would enjoy his greatest popularity on television, including a five-year stint on Life of Riley and as Chief Curly Jones on The Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The latter was his final role; he died of a heart attack while studying a script during the show's second season.

Trivia: A genuine westerner, Lane Chandler, upon leaving Montana Wesleyan College, moved to LA and worked as a garage mechanic while seeking out film roles. After several years in bit parts, Chandler was signed by Paramount in 1927 as a potential western star. For a brief period, both Chandler and Gary Cooper vied for the best cowboy roles, but in the end Paramount went with Cooper. Chandler made several attempts to establish himself as a "B" western star in the 1930s, but his harsh voice and sneering demeanor made him a better candidate for villainous roles. He mostly played bits in the 1940s, often as a utility actor for director Cecil B. DeMille. The weather-beaten face and stubbly chin of Lane Chandler popped up in many a TV and movie western of the 1950s, his roles gradually increasing in size and substance towards the end of his career.

Trivia: A tall (reportedly 6'4") stuntman from Texas, Fred Carson played scores of bit parts in both films and television while doubling the likes of Rod Cameron, Victor Mature, and Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1954). He later functioned as stunt coordinator on such films as The Big Circus (1959), More Dead Than Alive (1969), and the made-for-television movie Tarantula: The Deadly Cargo (1977).

Trivia: Not to be confused with African-American action star Jim Brown or with the "Godfather of Soul" of the same name, American actor James Brown was a tennis pro before entering films in 1941. Clearly a man of unlimited athletic prowess, Brown appeared in such rugged Hollywood productions as The Forest Rangers (1942), Air Force (1943), Objective Burma (1945) and Sands of Iwo Jima (1949). He had more sedate roles in Going My Way (1944), as nominal romantic lead Ted Haines (Bing Crosby, the star of the film, was a priest and therefore out of the running with the leading lady), and in Pride of St. Louis (1952), a biopic about baseball star Dizzy Dean wherein Brown played sidelines ballplayer "Moose." Few of his later movies were worth mentioning, though Brown had a few telling moments as the stern, rifle-toting father of the serial killer "protagonist" in Peter Bogdanovich's Targets (1968). Brown, sometimes billed as Jim L. Brown, is best known to aging baby boomers for his continuing role as Lt. Rip Masters on the enormously popular 1950s TV series Rin Tin Tin. He retired from acting in the late 1960s to manage his successful body-building equipment concern, then was appointed head of customer relations at Faberge, a cosmetics firm. When Faberge's filmmaking division, Brut Productions, put together a 1975 comedy titled Whiffs, the producers persuaded Brown to return to acting in a supporting role. And in 1976, James Brown redonned his 19th century cavalry uniform to film new wraparounds for a syndicated Rin Tin Tin rerun package.

Trivia: A diminutive, pot-bellied supporting player in B-Westerns, Ben Corbett had enjoyed some success at the famous rodeo at Pendleton, OR, and at New York's Madison Square Garden, where his roping and "Roman" riding skills reportedly won him several trophies. Entering films as a riding double for William Desmond and Antonio Moreno in Vitagraph Westerns and action melodramas in the 1910s, Corbett later became a member of Western star Hoot Gibson's stock company at Universal. That studio saw enough comedic potential in the former stunt man to team him with the equally diminutive Gilbert "Pee Wee" Holmes as Magpie and Dirtshirt in a series of rural comedy shorts set in the fictive community of Piperock. The series, which was released on Universal's "Mustang Brand" in the mid-'20s, counted among its leading ladies such future stars as Janet Gaynor and Fay Wray. In the 1930s, Corbett's character of Magpie returned in several independently produced "Bud 'n Ben" western shorts and the now veteran supporting player later became Tim McCoy's sidekick at low-budget Victory Pictures. He seems to have popped up in every other low-budget Western thereafter, usually appearing unbilled. B-Western compiler Les Adams has verified Corbett's presence in about 185 Westerns and half a dozen serials between 1930 and the actor's retirement in the early '50s, but there may actually have been many more. History, alas, has not been kind to the rustic B-Western perennial, whose arcane comedy relief, most fans of the genre agree, often seems more a hindrance than a help in keeping a plot moving.

Trivia: Actor Dub Taylor, the personification of grizzled old western characters, has been entertaining viewers for over 60 years. Prior to becoming a movie actor, Taylor played the harmonica and xylophone in vaudeville. He used his ability to make his film debut as the zany Ed Carmichael in Capra's You Can't Take it With You (1938). He next appeared in a small role in the musical Carefree(1938) and then began a long stint as a comical B-western sidekick for some of Hollywood's most enduring cowboy heroes. During the '50s he became a part of The Roy Rogers Show on television. About that time, he also began to branch out and appear in different film genres ranging from comedies, No time for Sergeants (1958) to crime dramas, Crime Wave (1954). He has also played on other TV series such as The Andy Griffith Show and Please Don't Eat the Daisies. One of his most memorable feature film roles was as the man who brought down the outlaws in Bonnie and Clyde. From the late sixties through the nineties Taylor returned to westerns.

Trivia: American actor Dick Wessel had a face like a Mack Truck bulldog and a screen personality to match. After several years on stage, Wessel began showing up in Hollywood extra roles around 1933; he is fleetingly visible in the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933), Laurel and Hardy's Bonnie Scotland (1935), and the Columbia "screwball" comedy She Couldn't Take It (1935). The size of his roles increased in the '40s; perhaps his best feature-film showing was as the eponymous bald-domed master criminal in Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946). He was a valuable member of Columbia Pictures' short subject stock company, playing a variety of bank robbers, wrestlers, jealous husbands and lazy brother-in-laws. Among his more memorable 2-reel appearances were as lovestruck boxer "Chopper" in The Three Stooges' Fright Night (1947), Andy Clyde's invention-happy brother-in-law in Eight Ball Andy (1948), and Hugh Herbert's overly sensitive strongman neighbor in Hot Heir (1947). Wessel was shown to good (if unbilled) advantage as a handlebar-mustached railroad engineer in the superspectacular Around the World in 80 Days (1956), and had a regular role as Carney on the 1959 TV adventure series Riverboat. Dick Wessel's farewell screen appearance was as a harried delivery man in Disney's The Ugly Dachshund (1965).

Trivia: Loyola University grad Paul Picerni became an actor at a time when Arrow-collar leading men were giving way to blue-collar realistic types. Picerni never seemed too comfortable with his leading assignments in such films as House of Wax (1953); he appeared more at ease in down-to-earth supporting roles. His latter-day reputation rests on his four-year run as a federal agent on the slam-bang TV series The Untouchables. Paul Picerni is the brother of stunt man and stunt coordinator Charles Picerni.