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: Yakima Canutt was the most innovative stunt performer and coordinator ever to risk life and limb for the art of Hollywood illusion. Cheating death at every turn, many of the tricks of the trade he first developed in the Westerns of the silent era remain fixtures of the craft even today. Born Enos Edward Canutt on November 29, 1895, in Colfax, WA, he began working on ranches while in his youth and at the age of 17 signed on as a trick rider with a Wild West show, where he ultimately won the title of Rodeo World Champion. Billing himself as Eddie Canutt, "the Man From Yakima," in 1917 he met Hollywood cowboy star Tom Mix, who recruited him as a stunt man. Quickly he became one of the leading fall guys in the industry, with a knack for horse spills and wagon wrecks. Over and over again, Canutt brought Western reelers to a rousing finale by doubling as the hero as he leapt from his horse to tackle a villain attempting to flee from the long arm of the law. In 1920, Canutt first earned billing for his work in The Girl Who Dared. Soon his name was appearing in the credits of several Westerns each year, all highlighted by his daredevil antics. His reputation rested on his ability to mastermind larger-than-life sequences -- cattle stampedes, covered-wagon races, and the like -- as well as intricate battles between frontier settlers and their Indian rivals. He could also be counted on to leap from a cliff's top while on horseback, or from a stagecoach onto its runaway horse team. For his elaborately choreographed fight scenes, Canutt developed a new, more realistic method of throwing punches, positioning the action so that the camera filmed over the shoulder of the actor receiving the blow, with the punch itself coming directly toward the lens. With the addition of sound effects, the illusion of fisticuffs was complete, and the practice remains an essential component of the stunt man's craft today. Under Canutt's supervision, a number of rules and guidelines designed to improve stunt safety were established, all of them becoming industry standards. Indeed, to his credit no one was ever seriously injured in any of his films. Many of Canutt's most important innovations involved his use of rigging: In one such attempt to minimize the possibility of broken bones, he carefully rigged his stirrups to break open to allow his feet to release at the proper moment. He also rigged cable mechanisms to trigger stunt action, maintaining more control over his scenes to eliminate the possibility of catastrophe. Gene Autry, Roy Rogers -- nearly every major Western star -- owed much of his success to Canutt's daring; eventually, his mastery of the craft was such that scripts were penned without detailed descriptions of their fight scenes or chases, and "Action by Yakima Canutt" was simply written instead.By the mid-'20s, Canutt was starring in Westerns as well as handling stunts. However, as the sound era dawned he suffered an illness which stripped the resonance from his voice, effectively ending his career as a leading man and reducing him to turns as sidekicks and heavies. In 1932's serial The Shadow of the Eagle, he was cast alongside John Wayne, beginning a partnership that was to endure for many years; their most notable collaboration was the 1939 classic Stagecoach, where Canutt not only came aboard as the stunt supervisor but also appeared onscreen to take falls as a cowboy, an Indian, and even as a woman. In addition to keeping peace between Wayne and director John Ford, Canutt also performed one of the most legendary stunts in film history, a pulse-pounding pass under a moving stagecoach: Doubling as an Indian, he rode his horse ahead of the coach before attempting to leap over to its lead team and dropping to the ground; after a brief moment, he then released his grip and allowed the horses and the coach to pass over his body. As Canutt grew older, injuries began to take their toll, and he cut back on his rigorous schedule, making the transition from stunt performer to coordinator to, ultimately, director. However, he still found time to appear onscreen in noteworthy films like 1939's Gone With the Wind, not only standing in for Clark Gable during his wagon drive through the burning streets of Atlanta but also playing the renegade soldier who attacks Scarlett O'Hara and tumbles backward down a flight of steps. In his later years Canutt also served as a second-unit director, most notably aiding William Wyler on 1959's Ben-Hur, where he helped supervise the choreography of the famed chariot race (a sequence two years in the making). Canutt also oversaw the many animal action scenes in Old Yeller, as well as the car chase in The Flim-Flam Man.In 1966, Canutt received a special Academy Award for his lifetime of excellence as a stunt performer, winning kudos "for creating the profession of stunt man as it exists today and for the development of many safety devices used by stunt men everywhere." In 1975, he was also inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. Canutt remained active in films until 1976, ending his career as a consultant on Equus. His son later carried on in the family business. In 1979, Canutt published his memoirs, Stunt Man: The Autobiography of Yakima Canutt. Yakima Canutt died in Hollywood on May 24, 1986, at the age of 90.

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: The Illinois-born, Canadian-reared George Kesterson was a boxer and circus trick rider before turning to Hollywood in the early '20s. In the silent era, he appeared first under his real name, then as Art Mix, the invention of Poverty Row producer/director Victor Adamson (aka Denver Dixon). Kesterson insisted on being billed Art Mix even after a falling out with Adamson/Dixon, for a while appearing under the alias concurrently with Dixon himself and rodeo rider Bob Roberts. Dixon reportedly sued him and he was Colonel Art Smith in at least one film, 1932's Mason of the Mounted. The dispute was settled out of court and Kesterson would appear as Art Mix for the remainder of his career. Under any name, the balding, slightly paunchy Kesterson usually played a good guy, often a deputy or Cattlemen's Association detective, and was easily recognizable for his white Stetson, the tallest in the business. He retired from the screen in the early '50s. Kesterson/Mix was married to Cuban-born silent screen actress Inez Gomez, who supported him in such films as West of the Rockies (1929).

Trivia: Together with his older brother Fred Burns, Robert Burns (aka Bob Burns and Robert E. Burns) became one of the busiest bit players/stunt performers in B-Western history, easily recognizable by his trademark mustache and straightforward demeanor. Burns entered films in the 1910s, when he starred in a series of two-reelers from Vitagraph. He was still starring in two-reelers by 1920 but now for small-scale independent producers, and sometimes in the early 1920s, a low-budget concern attempted to turn him into a feature Western star as well. With character actor Horace B. Carpenter handling the directional chores and brunette Dorothy Donald playing the leading ladies, the Burns Westerns never sold as a series but were distributed by various minor organizations throughout the decade. Just Traveling (released 1927) has survived and proves Burns to be a very acceptable Western hero who may even have made the bigtime had he been given half the chance. But the Burns series was too low-budget and disappeared in the glut of low-budget Westerns released in the mid-1920s. Even busier in sound films and often cast along with brother Fred and son Forrest, Burns continued to appear in B-Westerns and serials -- literally hundreds of them -- often cast as stage drivers, townsmen, deputies, members of the posse, or non-speaking henchmen. He should of course not be confused with silent-screen comic Bobby Burns (1878-1966) or Paramount rustic Bob "Bazooka" Burns (1890-1956).

Trivia: In films since the earliest days of sound, distinguished-looking Henry Hall specialized in playing small-town doctors, lawyers, benign businessmen, or the heroine's father, often in low-budget Westerns and frequently unbilled. On Broadway in the first decade of the 20th century, Hall spent his final years as a resident at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Trivia: American character actor Earl Dwire was most closely associated with the B-Western movie mills of the 1930s. Dwire frequently played the antagonist in the low-budget vehicles of such cowboy stars as Bob Steele and Johnny Mack Brown. In the early '30s, he was virtually a regular in the John Wayne Westerns produced by the Lone Star outfit. He also occasionally accepted such contemporary minor roles as a priest in Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) and a gangster in Accidents Will Happen (1939). Earl Dwire's last known film credit was the Universal serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940).

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: 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.

Trivia: Sometimes he was Hal Price, other times he was Harry Price. Sometimes (in fact, much of the time) he wasn't billed at all. Whatever the case, Hal Price was one of the more ubiquitous performers in the field of B-Westerns and serials. He was the bald, mustachioed frontiersman who usually said something like, "We got a nice, quiet town here, stranger...and we aim to keep it that way."

Trivia: The 14th of 16 children born to a New York air-conditioner repairman and his wife, Henry Richard Hall was nicknamed "Huntz" because of his Teutonic-looking nose. At the ripe old age of one year, Huntz made his stage debut in Thunder on the Left. He went on to attend New York's Professional Children's School, perform in radio programs and at least one experimental TV broadcast, and sing with a youthful quintette; the last activity came to an end when he "ruined" his voice hawking peanuts at Madison Square Garden. In 1935, Hall was cast as slum-kid Dippy in Sidney Kingsley's Dead End, repeating the role in the 1937 screen version. Together with his fellow "Dead End Kids" Leo Gorcey, Gabriel Dell, Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan and Bernard Punsley. Hall was signed by Warner Bros in 1938. In between such Warners' assignments as Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) and They Made Me a Criminal (1939), Hall co-starred with Halop, Dell, Punsley and Leo Gorcey's brother David in Universal's Little Tough Guy, the first of many "Dead End Kid" spin-offs. During his years at Universal, Hall began developing his trademarked goofy comic style, which came to full fruition when he was reunited with Leo Gorcey in Sam Katzman's East Side Kids series at Monogram. Previously, his character name (and character) had changed from film to film: at Monogram, Hall was consistently cast as Gorcey's perennial punching bag Glimpy. Occasionally, he accepted non-"East Side Kids" assignments in the mid-1940s, earning high critical praise for his performance as Carraway in Lewis Milestone's A Walk in the Sun. In 1946, Hall, Gorcey and producer Jan Grippo created the Bowery Boys series for Monogram. Hall played the increasingly buffoonish Horace Debussy "Sach" Jones in 48 inexpensive but profitable "Bowery Boys" entries, graduating to top billing when Gorcey left the series in 1955. After the final Bowery Boys entry in 1958, he appeared in nightclubs and dinner-theater productions. Thanks to his 10% ownership of the Bowery Boys series and his investments in offshore oil, Hall was wealthy enough to retire in the early 1960s, but he was never able to completely divest himself of the urge to perform. His post-"Sach" appearances include a semi-heavy role in Ivan Tors' Gentle Giant (1977), regular stints in the weekly TV series The Chicago Teddy Bears (1971), The Ghost Busters (1975) and Uncle Croc's Block (1977), his unexpectedly effective portrayal of movie mogul Jesse Lasky in Ken Russell's Valentino (1977), and any number of supporting roles in such R-rated fare as Gas Pump Girls and Auntie Lee's Meat Pies. He also turned director for the made-for-TV feature Lost Island (1979). Hall was appointed by Princess Grace to Monaco's Council on Drug Abuse in the 1970s. Huntz Hall remained active on the nostalgia-convention circuit into the 1990s until his death in early 1999.