Trivia: One of the best movie equestrians of all time, Ken Maynard had been a 1920 world champion trick-rider and had toured with Pawnee Bill (aka Ted Wells) and Ringling Bros. before doubling for Marion Davies and playing the small, but important, role of Paul Revere in Janice Meredith (1924). A year later, Maynard starred in poverty row producer J. Charles Davis in a series of very low-budget oaters that also featured a group of ex-Follies girls, an odd mix that, in many ways, foreshadowed Maynard's later career and ultimate downfall. From Gower Gulch, Ken Maynard moved up to become First National's resident cowboy hero prior to the advent of sound. The Maynard-First National Westerns were top-flight affairs, with the star performing daring feats on his famous palomino horse, Tarzan. (A copyright infringement suit by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of the pulp-fiction jungle hero of the same name, was finally dismissed in 1935.) The string of box-office and critical successes, of which, sadly, few examples remain, ended when Maynard left First National in favor of more pedestrian Universal. Increasingly difficult to handle, Maynard's reign at Carl Laemmle's huge, family-oriented lot proved brief, however, and he returned to star for a poverty row company, in this case Samuel Bischoff's KBS. Universal brought him back in 1933 as a replacement for the retiring Tom Mix, but Maynard's ego had, by then, gotten nearly out of control. He is credited with introducing the Singing Cowboy fad at this juncture (despite a voice that he himself often dismissed as "nasal soundin'" and amateurish, at best) and his Westerns became increasingly flamboyant, both in attitude and expenditure. The star, who had become his own producer, spent money with abandon, but the market for B-Westerns was diminishing and the otherwise so avuncular Carl Laemmle summarily replaced him with the less expensive (and far less volatile) Buck Jones. Still a potential moneymaker in the hinterlands, Maynard continued to star in low-budget Westerns through the mid-'40s -- at a reported salary of 850 dollars per picture as opposed to the 10,000-dollar paycheck he had received in his heyday -- but an ever expanding waistline and an impossible ego put the final nails in his cinematic coffin. Sadly, Maynard was never able to shake rumors that he had mistreated his equine co-stars and spent his declining years if not in outright poverty then in very diminished circumstances and, some said, an alcoholic stupor. One of the great showmen of early Hollywood action fare, Maynard died at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA. He was preceded in death by his brother, ultra-low-budget Western star, stunt double, and all-around good fellow Kermit Maynard, with whom he had always retained a rather strained relationship.

Trivia: One of the best remembered B-Western heroines of the 1930s, blonde Verna Hillie was Ken Maynard's leading lady in the Mascot serial Mystery Mountain (1934) and John Wayne's in two of his best for Lone Star, The Trail Beyond (1934) and the evocative The Star Packer (1934). A teenage radio actress in Detroit, Hillie was one of the runners-up in Paramount's countrywide Panther Woman search. Kathleen Burke won the coveted role as the animalistic glamour girl created by Charles Laughton in Island of Lost Souls (1932), but Hillie was assigned bit roles in Madame Butterfly (1932) with Sylvia Sidney and Duck Soup (1933) with the Marx Brothers. A top supporting role in the Paramount Western Under the Tonto Rim (1933) led to her brief but memorable B-Western stint, but she left Hollywood in favor of appearing in a stage production of The Night of January 16th. Returning only for a couple of quickies and Walt Disney's The Reluctant Dragon (1941), Hillie retired from show business in the 1940s to raise a family (her daughter, with writer Frank Gill Jr., became an actress and played a secretary in the hit 1983 comedy Tootsie under the name of Pamela Lincoln). Resettled in New York City, Hillie went on to become the U.S. representative for British pulp fiction writer Barbara Cartland.

Trivia: One of the first stars to emerge from the old Edison film company, Canadian-born actor Edward Earle had toured in vaudeville and stock before settling on movies in 1915. The blonde, muscular Earle quickly rose to the rank of romantic lead in films like Ranson's Folly (1915), The Gates of Eden (1916), and East Lynne (1921). In the '20s he could be seen supporting such luminaries as George Arliss (The Man Who Played God [1922]) and Lillian Gish (The Wind [1928]). In talkies, Earle became a character player. Though his voice was resonant and his handsome features still intact, he often as not played unbilled bits, in everything from prestige pictures (Magnificent Obsession [1935]) to B-items (Laurel and Hardy's The Dancing Masters [1943] and Nothing but Trouble [1944]). In Beware of Blondie, Earle assumed the role of Dagwood's boss, Mr. Dithers -- but his back was turned to the camera and his voice was dubbed by the Blondie series' former Dithers, Jonathan Hale. Earle's best sound opportunities came in Westerns and serials; in the latter category, he was one of the characters suspected of being the diabolical Rattler in Ken Maynard's Mystery Mountain (1934). Edward Earle retired to the Motion Picture Country Home in the early '60s, where he died at age 90 in 1972.

Trivia: A dignified-looking young character actor, Lynton Brent began his career on the stage, appearing in plays such as The Student Prince, Paid in Full, and as Laertes in Hamlet before entering films in 1930. Handsome enough in an average kind of way, Brent played such supporting roles as reporters (King Kong [1933]), radio operators (Streamline Express [1935]), and again Laertes, in the play-within-the-film I'll Love You Always ([1935], Garbo's interpreter Sven Hugo Borg was Hamlet!). Today, however, Brent is mainly remembered for his many roles in Columbia short subjects opposite the Three Stooges. His dignity always in shambles by the denouement, Brent was a welcome addition to the stock company, which at the time also included such comparative (and battle scarred) veterans as Bud Jamison and Vernon Dent. Leaving the short subject department in the early '40s, Brent played everyone from henchmen to lawmen in scores of B-Westerns and action melodramas, more often than not unbilled. He worked well into the television era, retiring in the late '60s. Offscreen, Brent was an accomplished architect and painter.

Trivia: Scrawny supporting actor Syd Saylor managed to parlay a single comic shtick -- bobbing his adam's apple -- into a four-decade career. He starred in several silent two-reel comedies from 1926 through 1927, then settled into character parts. During the late '30s and early '40s, Saylor frequently found himself in B-Westerns as the comical sidekick for many a six-gun hero, though he seldom lasted very long in any one series. Syd Saylor was still plugging away into the 1950s, playing "old-timer" bits in such films as Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and Jackpot (1950), and such TV series as Burns and Allen and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Trivia: White-haired Lafe McKee (real name, Lafayette McKee) was seemingly born old, dignified, and kind. Already playing old codgers by the mid-1910s, McKee delivered one of the funniest and most improbable moments in B-Western history, when, disguised as a bedraggled señorita, he sprang Ken Maynard from prison in Range Law (1931). "The Grand Old Man of Westerns," as film historian William K. Everson called him, retired in the early '40s after more than three decades of yeoman work opposite every cowboy hero on the Hollywood range, from Franklyn Farnum to Gary Cooper.

Trivia: In films from 1931, Alan Bridge was always immediately recognizable thanks to his gravel voice, unkempt moustache and sour-persimmon disposition. Bridge spent a lot of time in westerns, playing crooked sheriffs and two-bit political hacks; he showed up in so many Hopalong Cassidy westerns that he was practically a series regular. From 1940's Christmas in July onward, the actor was one of the most ubiquitous members of writer/director Preston Sturges' "stock company." He was at his very best as "The Mister," a vicious chain-gang overseer, in Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, and as the political-machine boss in the director's Hail the Conquering Hero, shining brightly in an extremely lengthy single-take scene with blustery Raymond Walburn. Alan Bridge also essayed amusing characterizations in Sturges' Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1946), Unfaithfully Yours (1948, as the house detective) and the director's final American film, The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend (1949).

Trivia: Actor Edward Hearn's Hollywood career extended from 1916 to 1951. A leading man in the silent era, Hearn was seen in such roles as Philip Nolan, the title character in Man without a Country (1925). His first talkie effort was Frank Capra's The Donovan Affair (1929). Capra never forgot Hearn, securing minor roles for the actor when his star faded in the early 1930s. Edward Hearn spent his last two decades in films playing dozens of cops, jurors, and military officers, essaying bits in features and supporting roles in serials and short subjects.

Trivia: In films after 1915, hatchet-faced Robert Kortman claimed to have served in the U.S. Cavalry prior to going on-stage. With producer Thomas H. Ince in the mid-1910s, the menacing actor often supported the era's great Western icon William S. Hart (he was one of the rowdy townsmen in 1916's Hell's Hinges) and was equally busy in the '20s. Kortman, however, came into his own in sound serials, especially at Mascot and its successor Republic Pictures, where his menacing visage turned up everywhere, from playing Magua in Last of the Mohicans (1932) to portraying One-Eye Chapin in Adventures of Red Ryder (1940). His roles grew increasingly smaller, and Kortman continued to play mostly villains until at least 1951. He died of cancer.

Trivia: Gene Autry, the archetype of the guitar strumming, singing Hollywood cowboy, is one of American cinema's most beloved figures. Born Orvon Autry, his entry to showbiz has a story book quality. During the 1920s he was working as a telegraph operator when American folk hero Will Rogers overheard him singing and convinced him to give show business a try. By 1928 he was singing regularly on a small radio station. Three years later, he was starring in his own national radio show (The National Barn Dance) and making records for Columbia. He first made his mark in films starring roles in the 13-part Republic serial Phantom Empire (1935) and the movie Tumblin' Tumbleweeds (1935). Then he went on to make dozens of Westerns, usually with his famed horse Champion and his comic sidekick Smiley Burnette. He was the top Western star at the box office from 1937-42, and is the only Western actor ever to make the list of Hollywood's top ten attractions, an achievement attained in 1940, '41, and '42. His career was interrupted by service in World War II (he served as a flight officer), during which his place was supplanted at Republic by singing cowboy Roy Rogers. Between 1947 and 1954, now working for Columbia Pictures, Autry trailed behind Rogers as the second most popular western star. His films focus exclusively on action, with little romantic interest. Autry's special twist, though, was to pause from time to time for an easy-going song, creating a new genre of action films that is considered by film historians to constitute a revolution in B-movies (one that went on to have many imitators). As a recording artist, he had nine million-sellers; and as a songwriter, he penned 200 popular songs including the holiday classic "Here Comes Santa Claus." After 20 years as a singing cowboy, Autry retired from movies in 1954 to further his career as a highly successful businessman (among many other investments, he eventually bought the California Angels, a major league baseball team). However, he continued performing on television until the '60s. In 1978 he published his autobiography Back in the Saddle Again, titled after his signature song.

Trivia: Smiley Burnette, said his longtime partner and boss Gene Autry, "couldn't read a note of music but wrote 350 songs and I never saw him take longer than an hour to compose one." Arguably the most beloved of all the B-Western sidekicks and certainly one of the more prolific and enduring, Burnette had been a disc jockey at a small radio station in Tuscola, IL, when discovered by Autry. The crooner prominently featured him both on tour and on Chicago's National Barn Dance broadcasts, making certain that Burnette was included in the contract he signed in 1934 with Mascot Pictures. As Autry became a major name in Hollywood, almost single-handedly establishing the long-lasting Singing Cowboy vogue, Burnette was right there next to him, first with Mascot and then, through a merger, with the newly formed Republic Pictures, where he remained through June 1944. The culmination of Burnette's popularity came in 1940, when he ranked second only to Autry in a Boxoffice Magazine popularity poll of Western stars, the lone sidekick among the Top Ten. Perhaps not everyone's cup of tea -- his style of cute novelty songs and tubby slapstick humor could, on occasion, become quite grating -- Burnette nevertheless put his very own spin on B-Westerns and became much imitated. In fact, by the 1940s, there were two major trends of sidekick comedy in B-Westerns: Burnette's style of slapstick prairie buffoonery, also practiced by the likes of Dub Taylor and Al St. John, and the more character-defined comedy of George "Gabby" Hayes, Andy Clyde, et al. Burnette, who would add such classic Western tunes as "Song of the Range" and "Call of the Canyon" to the Autry catalog, refined his naïve, but self-important, Frog Millhouse character through the years at Republic Pictures -- called "Frog," incidentally, from the way his vocals suddenly dropped into the lowest range possible. But the moniker belonged to the studio and he was plain Smiley Burnette thereafter. When Autry entered the service in 1942, Burnette supported Sunset Carson, Eddie Dew, and Robert Livingston before switching to Columbia Pictures' Durango Kid series starring Charles Starrett. But despite appearing in a total of 56 Durango Westerns, Burnette was never able to achieve the kind of chemistry he had enjoyed with Autry and it was only fitting that they should be reunited for the final six Western features Gene would make. Although his contribution to Autry's phenomenal success was sometimes questioned (minor cowboy star Jimmy Wakely opined that Autry had enough star power to have made it with any comic sidekick), Smiley Burnette remained extremely popular with young fans throughout his career, and although not universally beloved within the industry, he has gone down in history as the first truly popular B-Western comedy sidekick. Indeed, without his early success, there may never have been the demand for permanent sidekicks. When B-Westerns went out of style, Burnette spent most of his time in his backyard recording studio, returning for an appearance on television's Ranch Party (1958) and the recurring role of train engineer Charley Pratt on Petticoat Junction (1963-1967). He died of leukemia in 1967 at the age of 55.