Trivia: Former All-American halfback Johnny Mack Brown was a popular screen cowboy during the 1930s. Already in the public eye for his athletic prowess, Brown was persuaded by a friend to give Hollywood a try after graduating from the University of Alabama. In 1927, the muscular macho man was signed by MGM where he played in a number of leading roles opposite popular actresses such as Garbo, Pickford, and Crawford for several years. But Brown never really found his acting niche until he starred in King Vidor's Billy the Kid (1930). From then on he was happily typecast as a cowboy actor, and became a hero to millions of American boys, appearing in over 200 B-grade Westerns over the next two decades. From 1942-50 he was consistently among the screen's ten most popular Western actors. Brown formally retired from movies in 1953 but made occasional return appearances as a "nostalgia" act.

Trivia: Looking for all the world like a beardless Rumpelstiltskin, actor Raymond Hatton utilized his offbeat facial features and gift for mimicry in vaudeville, where he appeared from the age of 12 onward. In films from 1914, Hatton was starred or co-starred in several of the early Cecil B. DeMille productions, notably The Whispering Chorus (1917), in which the actor delivered a bravura performance as a man arrested for murdering himself. Though he played a vast array of characters in the late teens and early 1920s, by 1926 Hatton had settled into rubeish character roles. He was teamed with Wallace Beery in several popular Paramount comedies of the late silent era, notably Behind the Front (1926) and Now We're in the Air (1927). Curiously, while Beery's career skyrocketed in the 1930s, Hatton's stardom diminished, though he was every bit as talented as his former partner. In the 1930s and 1940s, Hatton showed up as comic sidekick to such western stars as Johnny Mack Brown and Bob Livingston. He was usually cast as a grizzled old desert rat, even when (as in the case of the "Rough Riders" series with Buck Jones and Tim McCoy) he happened to be younger than the nominal leading man. Raymond Hatton continued to act into the 1960s, showing up on such TV series as The Abbott and Costello Show and Superman and in several American-International quickies. Raymond Hatton's last screen appearance was as the old man collecting bottles along the highway in Richard Brooks' In Cold Blood (1967).

Trivia: Although she starred in scores of B-Westerns opposite the likes of Buck Jones, Buster Crabbe, and Johnny Mack Brown, blonde American actress/singer Christine McIntyre is almost solely remembered for her energetic appearances opposite that zaniest of comedy teams, the Three Stooges. With a Bachelor of Music degree from the Chicago Musical College, McIntyre began her professional career on radio. She entered films around 1937, graduating to leading roles the following year opposite singing cowboy Fred Scott. Appearances in a large number of B-Westerns followed and McIntyre would probably have remained just another prairie flower had she not caught the eye of Columbia producer Hugh McCollom. Not so different at first from the host of pretty girls who decorated the Columbia comedy shorts, McIntyre soon developed into a first-rate comedienne, with an operatic voice to boot. The erudite McCollum persuaded Stooges director Edward Bernds to create Micro-Phonies (1945) for her, with McIntyre was perfectly cast as an aspiring vocalist whose rendition of "The Voice of Spring" is spoiled by the irreverent trio. Micro-Phonies proved one of the year's best Stooges shorts and the die was cast. Alternately playing ingenues and femme fatales, Christine McIntyre was almost regarded as the fourth Stooge and stayed with the department until 1954, longer if one counts her many subsequent appearances via stock footage. "Of all the people I worked with, Christine was one of my favorites," Stooges veteran Emil Sitka said, not long before his death in 1998. Director Edward Bernds concurred: "She was so nice, so sweet; a real joy. She had the rare ability of indulging in the zany antics and still remaining a real lady, which is what she was." The seemingly indefatigable McIntyre also managed to squeeze a series of Johnny Mack Brown Westerns into her busy schedule, but mainstream stardom eluded her and she retired in the mid-'50s to marry J. Donald Wilson, a radio director/producer. Although she relished talking about her many B-Westerns, McIntyre flatly refused to discuss her work with the Stooges.

Trivia: If the heroine's father, the town doctor, or storekeeper wasn't played by Lafe McKee or John Elliott, chances are that he would be portrayed by the equally distinguished-looking, gray-haired Steve Clark, whose B-Western credits reached an impressive 250 and whose career continued well into the 1950s in such television Westerns as The Range Rider, The Cisco Kid, and The Lone Rider. But unlike McKee and Elliott, Clark was just as often to be found on the wrong side of the law and he can be spotted playing "dog heavies" well into his fifties. A well-known actor-manager prior to entering films in the early 1930s, Clark both directed and starred in The Blue Ghost (1930), a Broadway play featuring Leslie King which enjoyed a respectable run of 112 performances.

Trivia: In films from 1944, actor Marshall Reed played all sorts of roles in all sorts of westerns. Occasionally the lead (especially if the budget was beneath $80,000), Reed was more often a supporting player in films like Angel and the Badman (1947) and The Way West (1967). He was also active in serials, appearing in such chapter plays of the 1940s and 1950s as Federal Agents vs. Underworld Inc, The Invisible Monster Strikes, and Blackhawk. On television, Reed played Lt. Fred Asher on The Lineup (1954-58), and later became a TV documentary producer. Colorado-born Marshall Reed should not be confused with the British actor of the same name, nor the child performer who appeared as John Curtis Willard on the 1970s TV series The Waltons.

Trivia: With his slight built, narrow face and pencil-thin mustache, I. Stanford Jolley did not exactly look trustworthy, and a great many of his screen roles (more than 500) were indeed to be found on the wrong side of the law. Isaac Stanford Jolley had toured as a child with his father's traveling circus and later worked in stock and vaudeville, prior to making his Broadway debut opposite Charles Trowbridge in Sweet Seventeen (1924). Radio work followed and he arrived in Hollywood in 1935. Pegged early on as a gangster or Western outlaw, Jolley graduated to playing lead henchman or the boss villain in the '40s, mostly appearing for such poverty-row companies as Monogram and PRC. Although Jolley is often mentioned as a regular member of the Republic Pictures' stock company, he was never under contract to that legendary studio and only appeared in 25 films for them between 1936 and 1954. From 1950 on, Jolley worked frequently on television and remained a busy performer until at least 1976. According to his widow, the actor, who died of emphysema at the Motion Picture Country Hospital, never earned more than 100 dollars on any given movie assignment. He was the father of art director Stan Jolley.

Trivia: The grandson of a governor of New Mexico, pioneering screen cowboy Edmund Cobb began his long career toiling in Colorado-produced potboilers such as Hands Across the Border (1914), the filming of which turned tragic when Cobb's leading lady, Grace McHugh, drowned in the Arkansas River. Despite this harrowing experience, Cobb continued to star in scores of cheap Westerns and was making two-reelers at Universal in Hollywood by the 1920s. But unlike other studio cowboys, Cobb didn't do his own stunts -- despite the fact that he later claimed to have invented the infamous "running w" horse stunt -- and that may actually have shortened his starring career. By the late '20s, he was mainly playing villains. The Edmund Cobb remembered today, always a welcome sign whether playing the main henchman or merely a member of the posse, would pop up in about every other B-Western made during the 1930s and 1940s, invariably unsmiling and with a characteristic monotone delivery. When series Westerns bit the dust in the mid-'50s, Cobb simply continued on television. In every sense of the word a true screen pioneer and reportedly one of the kindest members of the Hollywood chuck-wagon fraternity, Edmund Cobb died at the age of 82 at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Trivia: Often sporting a pencil-thin mustache, Carl Sepulveda was one of the many anonymous stunt riders found in the background of countless B-Westerns and serials. Having made a couple of screen appearances in the late silent era, Sepulveda returned to films full time in 1939, appearing mostly unbilled in more than 50 Westerns and at least eight serials until 1951. He also worked on the first season of television's Gene Autry Show (1950-1956).

Trivia: The namesake nephew of American journalist Tris Coffin, actor Tristram Coffin set his stage career in motion at age 14. By 1939, the tall, silver-mustached Coffin was well on his way to becoming one of the screen's most prolific character actors. Generally cast as crooked lawyers, shifty business executives, and gang bosses in B-pictures, Coffin projected a pleasanter image in A-films, where he often played soft-spoken doctors and educators. In 1949, he essayed his one-and-only film starring role: heroic Jeff King in the Republic serial King of the Rocket Men. Even busier on TV than in films (he was virtually a regular "guest villain" on the Superman series), Tristram Coffin starred as Captain Ryning of the Arizona Rangers in the weekly syndicated Western 26 Men (1957-1958).