Trivia: The son of an Ohio oil driller and farmer, American actor Clark Gable had a relatively sedate youth until, at age 16, he was talked into traveling to Akron with a friend to work at a tire factory. It was in Akron that Gable saw his first stage play, and, from that point on, he was hooked. Although he was forced to work with his father on the oil fields for a time, Gable used a 300-dollar inheritance he'd gotten on his 21st birthday to launch a theatrical career. Several years of working for bankrupt stock companies, crooked theater managers, and doing odd jobs followed, until Gable was taken under the wing of veteran actress Josephine Dillon. The older Dillon coached Gable in speech and movement, paid to have his teeth fixed, and became the first of his five wives in 1924. As the marriage deteriorated, Gable's career built up momentum while he appeared in regional theater, road shows, and movie extra roles. He tackled Broadway at a time when producers were looking for rough-hewn, down-to-earth types as a contrast to the standard cardboard stage leading men. Gable fit this bill, although he had been imbued with certain necessary social graces by his second wife, the wealthy (and, again, older) Ria Langham. A 1930 Los Angeles stage production of The Last Mile starring Gable as Killer Mears brought the actor to the attention of film studios, though many producers felt that Gable's ears were too large for him to pass as a leading man. Making his talkie debut in The Painted Desert (1931), the actor's first roles were as villains and gangsters. By 1932, he was a star at MGM where, except for being loaned out on occasion, he'd remain for the next 22 years. On one of those occasions, Gable was "punished" for insubordination by being sent to Columbia Studios, then a low-budget factory. The actor was cast by ace director Frank Capra in It Happened One Night (1934), an amiable comedy which swept the Academy Awards in 1935, with one of those Oscars going to Gable. After that, except for the spectacular failure of Gable's 1937 film Parnell, it seemed as though the actor could do no wrong. And, in 1939, and despite his initial reluctance, Gable was cast as Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind, leading him to be dubbed the "King of Hollywood." A happy marriage to wife number three, Carole Lombard, and a robust off-camera life as a sportsman and athlete (Gable enjoyed a he-man image created by the MGM publicity department, and perpetuated it on his own) seemed to bode well for the actor's future contentment. But when Lombard was killed in a 1942 plane crash, a disconsolate Gable seemed to lose all interest in life. Though far beyond draft age, he entered the Army Air Corps and served courageously in World War II as a tail-gunner. But what started out as a death wish renewed his vitality and increased his popularity. (Ironically, he was the favorite film star of Adolf Hitler, who offered a reward to his troops for the capture of Gable -- alive). Gable's postwar films for MGM were, for the most part, disappointing, as was his 1949 marriage to Lady Sylvia Ashley. Dropped by both his wife and his studio, Gable ventured out as a freelance actor in 1955, quickly regaining lost ground and becoming the highest paid non-studio actor in Hollywood. He again found happiness with his fifth wife, Kay Spreckels, and continued his career as a box-office champ, even if many of the films were toothless confections like Teacher's Pet (1958). In 1960, Gable was signed for the introspective "modern" Western The Misfits, which had a prestigious production lineup: co-stars Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, and Eli Wallach; screenwriter Arthur Miller; and director John Huston. The troubled and tragic history of this film has been well documented, but, despite the on-set tension, Gable took on the task uncomplainingly, going so far as to perform several grueling stunt scenes involving wild horses. The strain of filming, however, coupled with his ever-robust lifestyle, proved too much for the actor. Clark Gable suffered a heart attack two days after the completion of The Misfits and died at the age of 59, just a few months before the birth of his first son. Most of the nation's newspapers announced the death of Clark Gable with a four-word headline: "The King is Dead."

Trivia: Ava Gardner began her career first as a model, then as a contract player at MGM, where her gawky, unsophisticated demeanor was totally made over by the studio into an image of inaccessible glamour. Gardner toiled in tiny bit roles, finally getting a worthwhile one on loan-out to Universal in The Killers (1946). MGM was never very comfortable with the bad-girl persona she displayed so well in this film, and, thus, most of her starring appearances at her home studio were relatively sympathetic roles in The Hucksters (1947) and Show Boat (1951). Her cinema reputation as The World's Most Beautiful Animal (in the words of a '50s publicity campaign) was once again manifested in loan-out movies like Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) and The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952). MGM eventually came to terms with the elements that made Gardner popular, notably in the gutsy Mogambo (1953), in which she made an excellent partner to the equally earthy Clark Gable. Director George Cukor was much taken by Gardner and cast the actress in her best and most complex MGM role in Bhowani Junction (1956), in which she was torn not only by love but also clashing East Indian cultural values. Gardner was equally well served in The Barefoot Contessa (1954), which, in many ways, was a replay of her own rags-to-riches personal story. The actress was cast in some of her best parts during the '60s, notably in Seven Days in May and Night of the Iguana (both 1964), but the pace of her jet-setting lifestyle and increasing personal problems began to show. With roles and public appearances steadily decreasing, she died on January 25, 1990. She was married and divorced three times -- to Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, and Artie Shaw.

Trivia: Broderick Crawford was the typical example of "overnight" success in Hollywood -- the 1949 release of All the King's Men turned him into one of the most popular "character" leads in Hollywood, a successor to Wallace Beery and a model for such unconventional leading men to come as Ernest Borgnine. His "overnight" success, however, involved more than a decade of work in routine supporting roles in more than 20 movies, before he was ever considered as much more than a supporting player. Crawford was born into a performing family -- both of his maternal grandparents, William Broderick and Emma Kraus, were opera singers, and his mother, Helen Broderick, was a Broadway and screen actress, while his father, Lester Crawford, was a vaudeville performer. Born in Philadelphia, PA, he accompanied his parents on tour as a boy and later joined them on-stage. He attended the Dean Academy in Franklin, MA, and excelled in athletics, including football, baseball, and swimming. Crawford entered show business by way of vaudeville, joining his parents in working for producer Max Gordon. With vaudeville's decline in the later 1920s, he tried attending college but dropped out of Harvard after just three months, preferring to make a living as a stevedore on the New York docks, and he also later served as a seaman on a tanker. Crawford returned to acting through radio, including a stint working as a second banana to the Marx Brothers. He entered the legitimate theater in 1934 when playwright Howard Lindsay selected him for a role in the play She Loves Me Not, portraying a football player in the work's London run -- although the play only ran three weeks, that was enough time for Crawford to meet Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne (then theater's leading "power couple" on either side of the Atlantic) and come to the attention of Noel Coward, who selected him for a role in his production of Point Valaine, in which the acting couple was starring. After a string of unsuccessful plays, Crawford went to Hollywood and got a part as the butler in the comedy Woman Chases Man, produced by Samuel Goldwyn. Crawford's theatrical breakthrough came in 1937 when he won the role of the half-witted Lennie in the theatrical adaptation of John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men. His performance won critical accolades from all of the major newspapers, and Crawford was on his way, at least as far as the stage was concerned -- when it came time to do the movie, however, the part went to Lon Chaney Jr.. In movies, Crawford made the rounds of the studios in one-off roles, usually in relatively minor films such as Submarine D-1, Undercover Doctor, and Eternally Yours. The murder mystery Slightly Honorable gave him a slight boost in both billing and the size of his role, but before he could begin to develop any career momentum the Second World War intervened. Crawford served in the U.S. Army Air Force and saw action in the Battle of the Bulge. When he returned to civilian life, he immediately resumed his screen career with a series of fascinating films, including The Black Angel and James Cagney's production20of The Time of Your Life. True stardom however, still eluded him. That all changed when director-producer Robert Rossen selected Crawford to portray Willie Stark in All the King's Men. In a flash, Crawford became a box-office draw, his performance attracting raves from the critics and delighting audiences with its subtle, earthy, rough-hewn charm. His portrayal of the megalomaniac political boss of a small state, based on the life and career of Louisiana governor and senator Huey Long, won Crawford the Oscar for Best Actor. He signed a long-term contract with Columbia Pictures in 1949, which resulted in his starring in the comedy hit Born Yesterday (1950). That was to be his last major hit as a star, though Crawford continued to give solid and successful lead performances for much of the next five years, portraying a tough undercover cop in the crime drama T he Mob, and a villainous antagonist to Clark Gable in Vincent Sherman's Lone Star. During the early '50s, Crawford was Hollywood's favorite tough-guy lead or star antagonist, his persona combining something of the tough charm of Spencer Tracy and the rough-hewn physicality of Wallace Beery -- he could be a charming lunkhead, in the manner of Keenan Wynn, or dark and threatening, calling up echoes of his portrayal of Willie Stark. In the mid-'50s at 20th Century Fox, he added vast energy and excitement to such films as Night People and Between Heaven and Hell -- indeed, his performance in the latter added a whole extra layer of depth and meaning to the film, moving it from wartime melodrama into territory much closer to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, with his character Waco serving as the dramatic stand-in for Kurtz. In 1955, after working on the melodrama Not As a Stranger and Fellini's Il Bidone (his portrayal of the swindler Augusto being one of his best performances), Crawford became one of the biggest Hollywood stars of the era to make the jump to television. He signed to do the series Highway Patrol for Ziv TV, which was a hit for three seasons. In its wake, however, Crawford was never able to get movies or roles of the same quality that he'd been offered in the early '50s. He did two more series, King of Diamonds and The Interns, and did play the title role in Larry Cohen's The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977), which attracted some offbeat notice; otherwise, Crawford's work during his final 30 years of acting involved roles as routine as the ones he'd muddled through while trying for his break at the other end of his career. One of his most visible screen appearances took place on television, in a 1977 episode of CHiPS that played off of his work in Highway Patrol, with Crawford making a gag appearance as himself, a motorist pulled over and cited for a moving violation by the series' motorcycle police officers.

Trivia: Like his younger brother John, American actor Lionel Barrymore wanted more than anything to be an artist. But a member of the celebrated Barrymore family was expected to enter the family trade, so Lionel reluctantly launched an acting career. Not as attractive as John or sister Ethel, he was most effectively cast in character roles - villains, military officers, fathers - even in his youth. Unable to save what he earned, Barrymore was "reduced" to appearing in films for the Biograph Company in 1911, where he was directed by the great D.W. Griffith and where he was permitted to write a few film stories himself, which to Lionel was far more satisfying than playacting. His stage career was boosted when cast in 1917 as Colonel Ibbetson in Peter Ibbetson, which led to his most celebrated role, Milt Shanks in The Copperhead; even late in life, he could always count on being asked to recite his climactic Copperhead soliloquy, which never failed to bring down the house. Moving on to film, Barrymore was signed to what would be a 25-year hitch with MGM and begged the MGM heads to be allowed to direct; he showed only moderate talent in this field, and was most often hired to guide those films in which MGM wanted to "punish" its more rebellious talent. Resigning himself to acting again in 1931, he managed to cop an Academy Award for his bravura performance as a drunken defense attorney in A Free Soul (1931), the first in an increasingly prestigious series of movie character parts. In 1937, Barrymore was crippled by arthritis, and for the rest of his career was confined to a wheelchair. The actor became more popular than ever as he reached his sixtieth birthday, principally as a result of his annual radio appearance as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol and his continuing role as Dr. Gillespie in MGM's Dr. Kildare film series. Barrymore was aware that venerability and talent are not often the same thing, but he'd become somewhat lazy (if one can call a sixtyish wheelchair-bound man who showed up on time and appeared in at least three films per year "lazy") and settled into repeating his "old curmudgeon with a heart of gold" performance, save for the occasional topnotch part in such films as It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Down to the Sea in Ships (1949). Denied access to television work by his MGM contract, Barrymore nonetheless remained active in radio (he'd starred in the long-running series Mayor of the Town), and at one point conducted a talk program from his own home; additionally, the actor continued pursuing his hobbies of writing, composing music, painting and engraving until arthritis overcame him. On the day of his death, he was preparing for his weekly performance on radio's Hallmark Playhouse; that evening, the program offered a glowing tribute to Barrymore, never once alluding to the fact that he'd spent a lifetime in a profession he openly despised.

Trivia: American actress Beulah Bondi entered the theatre at age 7, playing the male role of Little Lord Fauntleroy; it would be her last role "in drag" and one of the very few times that she'd play a character her own age. Upon graduation from Valparaiso University, she joined a stock company, working throughout the US until her 1925 Broadway debut in Wild Birds. Even in her late twenties and early thirties, Bondi specialized in playing mothers, grandmothers and society dowagers. She made her first film, Street Scene, in 1931, concentrating on movies thereafter. She is best known to modern film fans for her role as James Stewart's mother in the Christmastime favorite It's a Wonderful Life (1946). It was but one of several occasions (among them Vivacious Lady [1938] and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [1939]) that the actress played Stewart's mother; as late as 1971, Bondi was essaying the same role in the short-lived sitcom The Jimmy Stewart Show. Even after her "official" screen retirement - her last film was Tammy and the Doctor (1963), in which, not surprisingly, she played a wealthy old invalid - Bondi kept herself open for television roles, including an Emmy-winning 1977 performance on the dramatic TV series The Waltons.

Trivia: Born in Connecticut to an immigrant Irish couple, Ed Begley ran away from home several times before making a complete break from both his family and his formal education at the age of 13. For the next two decades, Begley knocked around in a variety of activities, from Naval service to working as bowling alley pin boy, before obtaining an announcer's job at a Hartford radio station in 1931. Ten years later, Begley moved to New York, where he became a prolific radio actor; from 1944 through 1948, he played the title role in the radio version of Charlie Chan. His belated Broadway debut at age 43 came in a short-lived play titled Land of Fame. In 1947, Begley created the role of benighted war profiteer Joe Keller in Arthur Miller's All My Sons; that same year, he was assigned a solid supporting part in his first film, Boomerang (1947). He was a familiar figure in TV's "golden age" of the 1950s, co-starring in the original video productions of Twelve Angry Men and Patterns. In 1955, he made the first of 789 appearances as the William Jennings Bryan counterpart in the Broadway drama Inherit the Wind, co-starring first with Paul Muni and then with Melvyn Douglas. Despite his ever-increasing activity, Ed Begley was standing in the unemployment compensation line in 1961 when he was informed that he'd been Oscar-nominated for his performance in Sweet Bird of Youth. Justifiably proud of his Oscar statuette, Begley reportedly carried it with him everywhere he went, even on short airplane flights! Ed Begley died at 69 while attending a party at the home of Hollywood press agent Jay Bernstein; he was the father of popular movie and TV leading man Ed Begley Jr.

Trivia: The son of actors, William Farnum was 12 years old when he joined his parents and his brother Dustin and Marshal in the family business. Dustin (1874-1929) made it to motion-picture stardom first, as leading man of Cecil B. DeMille's first feature, 1914's The Squaw Man. That same year, William made his movie debut in another popular western, The Spoilers (1914). The climactic fight scene between Farnum and co-star Tom Santschi made stars out of both men, though only Farnum graduated to matinee-idol status. Signing with Fox films in 1915, Farnum became one of that studio's most popular leading men, thanks to such solid vehicles as Tale of Two Cities (1917), Les Miserables (1917) and If I Were King (1920). At his peak, Farnum was pulling down $10,000 dollars per week. He briefly returned to Broadway in 1925 to star in The Buccaneer. Later in 1925, Farnum suffered a serious injury on the set of The Man Who Fights Alone; as a result, he was confined to supporting roles for the rest of career. While many of these roles were sizeable (notably King Arthur in the 1931 Will Rogers version of A Connecticut Yankee), Farnum would never again recapture the glory of his silent stardom. William Farnum remained a busy character actor up until his death in 1952, often playing minor roles in remakes of his silent triumphs--including the 1942 remake of The Spoilers.

Trivia: A suave-looking, wavy-haired supporting actor who always seemed more British than American despite his Midwest origins, Lowell Gilmore had appeared in a host of successful Broadway productions, including Autumn Crocus (1932) and the 1935 Theatre Guild revival of The Taming of the Shrew, before making his screen debut as Gregory Peck's second-in-command in Days of Glory (1944). Often cast as a cad, Gilmore added numerous television guest appearances to his list of credits in the 1950s, including the role of Pontius Pilate in the "Crucifixion and Resurrection" episode of The Living Christ Series (1951).

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: American actor Russell Simpson is another of those character players who seemed to have been born in middle age. From his first screen appearance in 1910 to his last in 1959, Simpson personified the grizzled, taciturn mountain man who held strangers at bay with his shotgun and vowed that his daughter would never marry into that family he'd been feudin' with fer nigh on to forty years. It was not always thus. After prospecting in the 1898 Alaska gold rush, Simpson returned to the States and launched a career as a touring actor in stock -- most frequently cast in romantic leads. This led to a long association with Broadway impresario David Belasco. Briefly flirting with New York-based films in 1910, Simpson returned to the stage, then chose movies on a permanent basis in 1917. Of his hundreds of motion picture and TV appearances, Russell Simpson is best known for his participation in the films of director John Ford, most memorably as Pa Joad in 1940's The Grapes of Wrath.

Trivia: Actor/director/producer William Conrad started his professional career as a musician. After World War II service, he began building his reputation in films and on Hollywood-based radio programs. Due to his bulk and shifty-eyed appearance, he was cast in films as nasty heavies, notably in The Killers (1946) (his first film), Sorry Wrong Number (1948) and The Long Wait (1954). On radio, the versatile Conrad was a fixture on such moody anthologies as Escape and Suspense; he also worked frequently with Jack "Dragnet" Webb during this period, and as late as 1959 was ingesting the scenery in the Webb-directed film 30. Conrads most celebrated radio role was as Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke, which he played from 1952 through 1961 (the TV Gunsmoke, of course, went to James Arness, who physically matched the character that the portly Conrad had shaped aurally). In the late 1950s, Conrad went into the production end of the business at Warner Bros., keeping his hand in as a performer by providing the hilariously strident narration of the cartoon series Rocky and His Friends and its sequel The Bullwinkle Show. During the early 1960s, Conrad also directed such films as Two on a Guillotine (1964) and Brainstorm (1965). Easing back into acting in the early 1970s, Conrad enjoyed a lengthy run as the title character in the detective series Cannon (1971-76), then all too briefly starred as a more famous corpulent crime solver on the weekly Nero Wolfe. Conrad's final TV series was as one-half of Jake and the Fatman (Joe Penny was Jake), a crime show which ran from 1987 through 1991.

Trivia: American actor James Burke not only had the Irish face and brogueish voice of a New York detective, but even his name conjured up images of a big-city flatfoot. In Columbia's Ellery Queen series of the late 1930s and early 1940s, Burke was cast exquisitely to type as the thick-eared Sergeant Velie, who referred to the erudite Queen as "Maestro." Burke also showed up as a rural law enforcement officer in such films as Nightmare Alley (1947), in which he has a fine scene as a flint-hearted sheriff moved to tears by the persuasive patter of carnival barker Tyrone Power. One of the best of James Burke's non-cop performances was as westerner Charlie Ruggles' rambunctious, handlebar-mustached "pardner" in Ruggles of Red Gap (135), wherein Burke and Ruggles engage in an impromptu game of piggyback on the streets of Paris.

Trivia: In films since 1932, Charles Cane seldom rose above the status of bit player, usually cast as patrolmen and desk sergeants. After a featured role as a teamster in Bob Hope's My Favorite Blonde (1942) Cane went off on a new career tangent, playing scores of truck drivers. Active until 1961, he was briefly billed as Charles R. Cane in the mid-1950s.

Trivia: American actor Trevor Bardette could truly say that he died for a living. In the course of a film career spanning three decades, the mustachioed, granite-featured Bardette was "killed off" over 40 times as a screen villain. Entering movies in 1936 after abandoning a planned mechanical engineering career for the Broadway stage, Bardette was most often seen as a rustler, gangster, wartime collaborator and murderous backwoodsman. His screen skullduggery carried over into TV; one of Bardette's best remembered video performances was as a "human bomb" on an early episode of Superman. Perhaps being something of a reprobate came naturally to Trevor Bardette -- or so he himself would claim in later years when relating a story of how, as a child, he'd won ten dollars writing an essay on "the evils of tobacco," only to be caught smoking behind the barn shortly afterward.

Trivia: An effort by a Films in Review writer of the '60s to catalogue the film appearances of American actor Harry Woods came a-cropper when the writer gave up after 400 films. Woods himself claimed to have appeared in 500 pictures, further insisting that he was violently killed off in 433 of them. After a lengthy and successful career as a millinery salesman, Woods decided to give Hollywood a try when he was in his early thirties. Burly, hatchet-faced, and steely eyed, Woods carved an immediate niche as a reliable villain. So distinctive were his mannerisms and his razor-edged voice that another memorable movie heavy, Roy Barcroft, admitted to deliberately patterning his performances after Woods'. While he went the usual route of large roles in B-pictures and serials and featured parts and bits in A-films, Harry Woods occasionally enjoyed a large role in an top-of-the-bill picture. In Cecil B. De Mille's Union Pacific (1939), for example, Woods plays indiscriminate Indian killer Al Brett, who "gets his" at the hands of Joel McCrea; and in Tall in the Saddle (1944), Woods is beaten to a pulp by the equally muscular John Wayne. Comedy fans will remember Harry Woods as the humorless gangster Alky Briggs in the Marx Brothers' Monkey Business (1931) and as the bullying neighbor whose bratty kid (Tommy Bond) hits Oliver Hardy in the face with a football in Block-Heads (1938).

Trivia: Actor George Hamilton got his start in high school dramatics. Movie-star handsome, Hamilton played the lead in his very first film, Crime and Punishment USA (1959). While his acting talent was barely discernible in his earliest effort, Hamilton steadily improved in such MGM films as Home From the Hill (1960), Where the Boys Are (1960), Light in the Piazza (1961). He was at his best in a brace of biopics: in Warner Bros.' Act One (1963) he played aspiring playwright Moss Hart, while in Your Cheatin' Heart (1965), he registered well as self-destructive C&W singer Hank Williams. His much-publicized mid-1960s dating of President Johnson's daughter Lynda Bird was unfairly written off by some as mere opportunism, a calculated ploy to buoy up a flagging career. In fact, it did more harm than good to Hamilton: by 1969, movie roles had dried up, and he was compelled to accept his first TV-series role, playing jet-setter Duncan Carlyle in The Survivors. The following year, he starred as State Department functionary Jack Brennan in the weekly TV espionager Paris 7000. He staged a spectacular comeback as star and executive producer of Love at First Bite (1979), a screamingly funny "Dracula" take-off that won the actor a Golden Globe nomination. Even better was Zorro the Gay Blade (1980), which unfortunately failed to match the excellent box-office performance of First Bite but which still provided a much-needed shot in the arm to Hamilton's career. He went on to play such campish roles as villainous movie producer Joel Abrigor in TV's Dynasty (1985-86 season only) and jaded 007-type Ian Stone in the weekly Spies (1987). Throughout the thick and thin of his acting career, Hamilton remained highly visible on the international social scene, squiring such high-profile lovelies as Elizabeth Taylor and Imelda Marcos. He also remained financially solvent with his line of skin products and tanning salons. In 1995, George Hamilton hopped on the talk-show bandwagon, co-starring with his former wife Alana (who'd remarried rocker Rod Stewart) on a not-bad syndicated daily TV chatfest.

Trivia: American actor and drama coach Roy Gordon made his first film appearance in 1938. A bit player for most of his Hollywood career, Gordon was at his best as corporate-executive types. He also played many a college dean, banker and military officer. Late Late Show habitues will remember Roy Gordon for his poignant cameo as doomed passenger Isidore Straus in Titanic (1953).

Trivia: Actor Stanley Andrews moved from the stage to the movies in the mid 1930s, where at first he was typed in steadfast, authoritative roles. The tall, mustachioed Adrews became familiar to regular moviegoers in a string of performances as ship's captains, doctors, executives, military officials and construction supervisors. By the early 1950s, Andrews had broadened his range to include grizzled old western prospectors and ageing sheriffs. This led to his most lasting contribution to the entertainment world: the role of the Old Ranger on the long-running syndicated TV series Death Valley Days. Beginning in 1952, Andrews introduced each DVD episode, doing double duty as commercial pitchman for 20 Mule Team Borax; he also became a goodwill ambassador for the program and its sponsor, showing up at county fairs, supermarket openings and charity telethons. Stanley Andrews continued to portray the Old Ranger until 1963, when the US Borax company decided to alter its corporate image with a younger spokesperson -- a 51-year-old "sprout" named Ronald Reagan.

Trivia: At first studying for the ministry, in college he was attracted to acting; at age 21 he went to Hollywood, working for several years as an extra. His first lead role came in A Woman Who Sinned (1924); three years later he was elevated to star status after his lead role opposite Sharon Lynne in Clancy's Kosher Wedding (1927). For the next several years he played romantic leads in numerous mysteries, drawing-room dramas, and comedies, and easily made the transition into the sound era. In the mid '30s he began specializing in Westerns and action serials, and last starred in 1936; after that he played supporting roles, both as the heroes' buddies and low-down villains, in dozens of B-Westerns and serials.

Trivia: From 1931's Vice Squad onward, American character actor Davison Clark could be seen onscreen as scores of lawyers, doctors and big-city officials. One of Clark's meatier assignments (albeit still a minor one) was as Horace Greeley in The Mighty Barnum. As an member of Cecil B. DeMille's unofficial stock company, Clark essayed bits in DeMille's The Plainsman (1936), The Buccaneer (1938), Union Pacific (1939), The Story of Dr. Wassell (1947), Unconquered (1948) and Samson and Delilah (1949). Davison Clark made his last film appearance in the 1951serial Zombies of the Stratosphere.

Trivia: Native American actor Chief Yowlachie (pronounced "Yo-latchee") spent many years on stage as an opera singer, performing under his given name of Daniel Simmons. His film career began in the mid-1920s with feathered-headdress bits in such productions as Ella Cinders (1925). Though well into middle age when he started showing up on screen, he was youthful-looking enough to play fierce Indian warriors and renegades well into the 1930s. His larger roles include the nominal villain in Ken Maynard's Red Raiders (1928), Billy Jackrabbit in the 1930 version of Girl of the Golden West (1930) and Geronimo in Son of Geronimo. After years of portraying noble, taciturn characters with names like Running Deer, Yellow Feather, Long Arrow, Little Horse and Black Eagle, Chief Yowlachie let his hair down in the role of "Chief Hi-Octane" in the Bowery Boys' Bowery Buckaroos (1948).

Trivia: Whether in vaudeville, burlesque, "legit" theatre or radio, Emmet "Pop" Lynn played variations on the toothless-old-reprobate roles that brought him screen fame. Though he'd made a tentative foray into films as a teenager in 1913, Lynn truly came into his own after 1940, playing the cantankerous sidekick to such western heroes as Don Barry and Allan "Rocky" Lane. In non-westerns, he could usually be spotted as a janitor, night watchman or rural rustic. He enjoyed a longtime association with Columbia Pictures' short-subject unit, where he was harmoniously teamed with such comics as Andy Clyde and Slim Summerville. Emmet Lynn made his final screen appearance as a downtrodden Hebrew peasant in DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956).

Trivia: Actor Earle Hodgins has been characterized by more than one western-film historian as a grizzled, bucolic Bob Hope type. Usually cast as snake-oil salesmen, Hodgins would brighten up his "B"-western scenes with a snappy stream of patter, leavened by magnificently unfunny wisecracks ("This remedy will give ya a complexion like a peach, fuzz 'n' all..."). When the low-budget western market died in the 1950s, Hodgins continued unabated on such TV series as The Roy Rogers Show and Annie Oakley. He also made appearances in such "A" films as East of Eden (55), typically cast as carnival hucksters and rural sharpsters. In 1961, Earle Hodgins was cast in the recurring role of wizened handyman Lonesome on the TV sitcom Guestward Ho!

Trivia: University of Iowa alumnus Rex Bell began playing small film roles in the late '20s. Blessed with good looks and an easygoing manner, Bell rapidly achieved stardom as a cowboy hero. He appeared in scores of B-Westerns, was seen as Virgil Earp in 1942's Tombstone: The Town Too Tough to Die, and hosted a TV anthology of vintage sagebrushers, Cowboys and Injuns (1950). Entering politics in the 1950s, he served as Lieutenant Governor of Nevada from 1954 to 1962. During this period, he made his final screen appearance in The Misfits (1961) which was partially filmed in Reno. From 1931 until his death, Rex Bell was the husband of silent screen star Clara Bow, with whom he'd appeared in True to the Navy (1930).

Trivia: Burly and athletic actor George Barrows seldom worried about being recognized on the street because he spent much of his long, busy career dressed up in a gorilla suit. Barrows created his first one shortly after doubling for Johnny Weismuller in Tarzan and His Mate (1934). When not performing in the gorilla suit himself, he rented it out to others. In one film, Robot Monster (1953), he put a diving helmet over his gorilla head to play a space alien. Other films in which Barrows played great apes include Gorilla at Large (1954), The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966), and Hillbillies in the Haunted House (1967). He began performing professionally as a child, but his film career quickly petered out as his size increased. He grew to be a such a large man that after he returned to film in Cleopatra (1934) he was often relegated to playing heavies and, of course, gorillas. In addition to film work, Barrows frequently guest starred on television. He also appeared in made-for-TV films, such as The President's Plane Is Missing (1971) and Donner Pass: The Road to Survival (1978).