Trivia: Born Randolph Crane, this virile, weathered, prototypical cowboy star with a gallant manner and slight Southern accent enlisted for service in the U.S. Army during World War I at age 19. After returning home he got a degree in engineering, then joined the Pasadena Community Playhouse. While golfing, Scott met millionaire filmmaker Howard Hughes, who helped him enter films as a bit player. In the mid '30s he began landing better roles, both as a romantic lead and as a costar. Later he became a Western star, and from the late '40s to the '50s he starred exclusively in big-budget color Westerns (39 altogether). From 1950-53 he was one of the top ten box-office attractions. Later in the '50s he played the aging cowboy hero in a series of B-Westerns directed by Budd Boetticher for Ranown, an independent production company. He retired from the screen in the early '60s. Having invested in oil wells, real estate, and securities, he was worth between $50-$100 million.

Trivia: Vivacious American actress Barbara Britton was active in student theatricals at Long Beach City College before signing with Paramount Pictures in 1941. Many of her film appearances were enjoyable but unmemorable, with a few exceptions like her comic turn as Ronald Colman's sister in Champagne for Caesar (1950). Barbara's chief claim to fame was her two-year tenure as inquisitive amateur sleuth Pam North on the Thin Man-like TV series Mr. and Mrs. North. Thereafter, Barbara was best known for her long tenure as commercial spokeswoman for Revlon Products. Perhaps the most intriguing assignment of Barbara Britton's post-North years was the 1959 TV sitcom pilot Head of the Family, in which she created the role of Laura Petrie--a role later essayed by Mary Tyler Moore when Head of the Family was retooled as The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Trivia: After attending the University of the South in Tennessee, Bruce Cabot bounced around from job to job: working on a tramp steamer, selling insurances, even hauling away the bones of dead animals. While attending a Hollywood party, Cabot met RKO producer David O. Selznick, which resulted in Cabot's first film appearance in Roadhouse Murder. His most famous role while at RKO was as the heroic Jack Driscoll in King Kong (1933), rescuing Fay Wray from the hairy paws of the 50-foot ape. Thereafter, Cabot was most often seen in villainous, brutish roles. It is hard to imagine anyone more venomous or vicious than Bruce Cabot in such roles as the scarred gangster boss in Let 'Em Have It (1936), the treacherous Magua in Last of the Mohicans (1936), or the thick-skulled lynch-mob instigator in Fury (1936). During World War II, Cabot worked in army intelligence and operations in Africa, Sicily and Italy. A good friend of John Wayne, Cabot was frequently cast in "The Duke's" vehicles of the 1960s, including The Green Berets (1968). Among Bruce Cabot's three wives were actresses Adrienne Ames and Francesca de Scaffa.

Trivia: Earning a contract with Columbia in 1946 that stipulated "A-movies only," brunette Dorothy Hart blazed onto the screen in Gunfighters (1947), an above-average Western starring Randolph Scott. Hart was apparently too ambitious to remain with also-ran studios like Columbia and Universal for long, eventually signing with Warner Bros. Unfortunately, with the possible exception of Raton Pass (1951), yet another oater in which she was billed below Patricia Neal, that studio failed to provide her with a single standout film. She turned to television instead, starring on such popular game shows as Take a Guess and Pantomime Quiz. A former model and the winner of a 1944 National Cinderella Cover Girl Contest, Hart is today best remembered for appearing, all too briefly, as Howard Duff's innocent fiancée in The Naked City, the 1948 film noir that later became the basis for the popular television crime series. Retired since the late '50s, she should not be confused with the stand-up comedienne of the same name.

Trivia: A circus, vaudeville, and Broadway comedian, actor Charles Grapewin was an unlikely prospect for screen stardom. In fact, he had already retired as an entertainer prior to the advent of sound in films, and before he'd ever even considered appearing in movies. Born in Xenia, OH, in 1869 (although some say 1875), he ran away from home to join a circus at the age of ten, and, by his teens, was a roller-skating acrobat who graduated to be a high-wire performer and trapeze artist. Grapewin made a living at these high-risk activities for a few years, but was later drawn to the footlights, and eventually joined a regional stock company (although he found himself back on the trapeze in the 1880s). He moved between the theater and the circus until the end of the decade, when he landed a role in a New York production of the play Little Puck. He never returned to the circus, although he did lend his skills to vaudeville for a time, writing plays along the way and touring with one of his own productions, The Awakening of Mr. Pipp, for a dozen years. In 1919, Grapewin gave up performing to join General Motors; having invested his money wisely, he retired. One day in late 1929, however, he and his wife Anna awakened to discover that their net worth -- once two million dollars -- had dropped to about 200. He subsequently wrote four books that proved successful enough to earn him some income. At around the same time, the arrival of sound in movies was also creating a demand for actors who could read lines well, and, as he had retired to California, Grapewin decided to give Hollywood a try. He ended up a busy actor throughout the 1930s in increasingly visible roles, including key supporting parts in films such as The Grapes of Wrath. But it was in 1941 that he achieved stardom when he was cast as Lester Jeeter in John Ford's Tobacco Road. That movie made Grapewin into a major screen actor, but, given his advanced age, he never took full advantage of it. He declined to sign a long-term contract, preferring to use his energy at his time of life picking and choosing his roles. He always seemed to be offered the best character parts, and remained busy right to the end of the '40s. Ironically, Tobacco Road dropped out of distribution in later decades, and Grapewin's became best known for playing a part that was probably one of the shortest of his movie career: Dorothy's Uncle Henry in The Wizard of Oz, in which he displayed some of his comedic skills to great advantage in the historic film's opening segment.

Trivia: Czech character actor Steven Geray was for many years a member in good standing of the Hungarian National Theater. He launched his English-speaking film career in Britain in 1935, then moved to the U.S. in 1941. His roles ranged from sinister to sympathetic, from "A" productions like Gilda (1946) to potboilers like El Paso (1949). He flourished during the war years, enjoying top billing in the moody little romantic melodrama So Dark the Night (1946), and also attracting critical praise for his portrayal of Dirk Stroeve in The Moon and Sixpence (1942). Many of Geray's film appearances in the 1950s were unbilled; when he was given screen credit, it was usually as "Steve Geray." Geray's busy career in film and television continued into the 1960s. Steven Geray worked until he had obviously depleted his physical strength; it was somewhat sad to watch the ailing Geray struggle through the western horror pic Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1965).

Trivia: Forrest Tucker occupied an odd niche in movies -- though not an "A" movie lead, he was, nonetheless, a prominent "B" picture star and even a marquee name, who could pull audiences into theaters for certain kinds of pictures. From the early/mid-1950s on, he was a solid presence in westerns and other genre pictures. Born Forrest Meredith Tucker in Plainfield, Indiana in 1919, he was bitten by the performing bug early in life -- he made his debut in burlesque while he was still under-age. Shortly after graduating from high school in 1937, he enlisted in the United States Army, joining a cavalry unit. Tucker next headed for Hollywood, where his powerful build and six-foot-four frame and his enthusiasm were sufficient to get him a big-screen debut in The Westerner (1940), starring Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan. Signed to Columbia Pictures, he mostly played anonymous tough-guy roles over the next two years, primarily in B pictures, before entering the army in 1943. Resuming his career in 1946, he started getting bigger roles on a steady basis in better pictures, and in 1948 signed with Republic Pictures. He became a mainstay of that studio's star roster, moving up to a co-starring role in Sands Of Iwo Jima (1949), which also brought him into the professional orbit of John Wayne, the movie's star. Across the early/middle 1950s, Tucker starred in a brace of action/adventure films and westerns, alternating between heroes and villains, building up a significant fan base. By the mid-1950s, he was one of the company's top box-office draws. As it also turned out, Tucker's appeal was international, and he went to England in the second half of the decade to play starring roles in a handful of movies. At that time, British studios such as Hammer Films needed visiting American actors to boost the international appeal of their best productions, and Tucker fulfilled the role admirably in a trio of sci-fi/horror films: The Crawling Eye, The Cosmic Monsters, and The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas. Part of Tucker's motivation for taking these roles, beyond the money, he later admitted, was his desire to sample the offerings of England's pubs -- Tucker was a two-fisted drinker and, in those days, was well able to handle the effects of that activity so that it never showed up on-screen. And he ran with the opportunity afforded by those three science fiction movies -- each of those films, he played a distinctly different role, in a different way, but always with a certain fundamental honesty that resonated with audiences. When he returned to Hollywood, he was cast as Beauregard Burnside in Auntie Mame (1958), which was the top-grossing movie of the year. Then stage director Morton De Costa, seeing a joyful, playful romantic huckster in Tucker (where others had mostly seen an earnest tough-guy), picked him to star as Professor Harold Hill in the touring production of The Music Man -- Tucker played that role more than 2000 times over the years that followed. He was also the star of the 1964 Broadway show Fair Game For Lovers (in a cast that included Leo Genn, Maggie Hayes, and a young Alan Alda), which closed after eight performances. The Music Man opened a new phase for Tucker's career. The wily huckster became his image, one that was picked up by Warner Bros.' television division, which cast him in the role of Sgt. Morgan O'Rourke, the charmingly larcenous post-Civil War cavalry soldier at the center of the western/spoof series F-Troop. That series only ran for two seasons, but was in syndicated reruns for decades afterward, and though Tucker kept his hand in other media -- returning to The Music Man and also starring in an unsold pilot based on the movie The Flim-Flam Man (taking over the George C. Scott part), it was the part of O'Rourke with which he would be most closely identified for the rest of his life. He did occasionally take tougher roles that moved him away from the comedy in that series -- in one of the better episodes of the series Hondo, entitled "Hondo And The Judas", he played Colonel William Clark Quantrill very effectively. At the end of the decade, he returned to straight dramatic acting, most notably in the John Wayne western Chisum, in which he played primary villain Lawrence Murphy. That same year, he appeared in a challenging episode of the series Bracken's World entitled "Love It Or Leave It, Change It Or Lose It", playing "Jim Grange," a sort of film-a-clef version of John Wayne -- a World War II-era film star known for his patriotism, Grange is determined to express his political views while working alongside a young film star (portrayed by Tony Bill) who is closely associated with the anti-war movement. Tucker continued getting television work and occasional film roles, in addition to returning to the straw-hat circuit, mostly as Professor Harold Hill. None of his subsequent series lasted very long, but he was seldom out of work, despite a drinking problem that did worsen significantly during his final decade. In his final years, he had brought that under control, and was in the process of making a comeback -- there was even talk of an F-Troop revival in film form -- when he was diagnosed with lung cancer and emphysema. He died in the fall of 1986 at age 67.

Trivia: Chubby, gravelly-voiced American comic actor Charles Kemper learned his trade in vaudeville and minstrel shows. Kemper came to films as a short-subject headliner in 1929, working in the comedy output of Educational Studios at least until 1937. He then spent several seasons on stage and radio before returning to films in 1945 as a character actor. He is best remembered for his quietly chilling portrayal of outlaw leader Uncle Shilo Clegg in John Ford's Wagonmaster (1950). Charles Kemper was fifty years old when he died of injuries sustained in an auto crash; his last film, On Dangerous Ground (1951), was released posthumously.

Trivia: Strappingly handsome leading man Grant Withers worked as an oil company salesman and newspaper reporter before he turned to acting in 1926. One of the more popular second echelon stars of the early '30s, Withers was unable to sustain his celebrity. By the end of the 1930s, Withers was pretty much limited to character roles and bits, with such notable exceptions as the recurring role of the brash Lt. Street in Monogram's Mr. Wong series. In 1930, Withers eloped with 17-year-old actress Loretta Young, but the marriage was later annulled. Some of Withers' later screen appearances were arranged through the auspices of his friends John Ford and John Wayne. Grant Withers committed suicide in 1959, leaving behind a note in which he apologized to all the people he'd let down during his Hollywood days.

Trivia: Curmudgeonly American character actor Griff Barnett first began showing up in movie bit roles in 1942. Barnett's screen time increased considerably after 1946 with solid supporting roles in films like Possessed (1947), Cass Timberlane (1947) and Tap Roots (1948). He was most often seen as stern judges (Angel Face) and small-town doctors (Pinky). Griff Barnett retired in 1955, three years before his death.