Trivia: American actor Joel McCrea came from a California family with roots reaching back to the pioneer days. As a youth, McCrea satiated his fascination with movies by appearing as an extra in a serial starring Ruth Roland. By 1920, high schooler McCrea was a movie stunt double, and by the time he attended USC, he was regularly appearing at the Pasadena Playhouse. McCrea's big Hollywood break came with a part in the 1929 talkie Jazz Age; he matriculated into one of the most popular action stars of the 1930s, making lasting friendships with such luminaries as director Cecil B. DeMille and comedian Will Rogers. It was Rogers who instilled in McCrea a strong business sense, as well as a love of ranching; before the 1940s had ended, McCrea was a multi-millionaire, as much from his land holdings and ranching activities as from his film work. Concentrating almost exclusively on westerns after appearing in The Virginian (1946), McCrea became one of that genre's biggest box-office attractions. He extended his western fame to an early-1950s radio series, Tales of the Texas Rangers, and a weekly 1959 TV oater, Wichita Town, in which McCrea costarred with his son Jody. In the late 1960s, McCrea increased his wealth by selling 1200 acres of his Moorpark (California) ranch to an oil company, on the proviso that no drilling would take place within sight of the actor's home. By the time he retired in the early 1970s, McCrea could take pride in having earned an enduring reputation not only as one of Hollywood's shrewdest businessmen, but as one of the few honest-to-goodness gentlemen in the motion picture industry.

Trivia: According to her Rockford, Illinois, high-school yearbook, Barbara Hale hoped to make a career for herself as a commercial artist. Instead, she found herself posing for artists as a professional model. This led to a movie contract at RKO Radio, where she worked her way up from "B"s like The Falcon in Hollywood (1945) to such top-of-the-bill attractions as A Likely Story (1947) and The Boy With Green Hair (1949). She continued to enjoy star billing at Columbia, where among other films she essayed the title role in Lorna Doone (1952). Her popularity dipped a bit in the mid-1950s, but she regained her following in the Emmy-winning role of super-efficient legal secretary Della Street on the Perry Mason TV series. She played Della on a weekly basis from 1957 through 1966, and later appeared in the irregularly scheduled Perry Mason two-hour TV movies of the 1980s and 1990s. The widow of movie leading man Bill Williams, Barbara Hale was the mother of actor/director William Katt. Hale died in 2017, at age 94.

Trivia: On stage from the age of 19, American actor Alex Nicol toiled away in supporting roles for nearly a decade, his Actors Studio training often serving him well in helping him make something out of nothing. Nicol enjoyed a good run in the 1949 Broadway smash South Pacific, albeit in a role consisting of no more than four lines. Things perked up when he made his first film, The Sleeping City, in 1950, after which Nicol concentrated upon movie parts calling for shifty villainy. He worked in both Hollywood and England, with time out for TV assignments, including an oddly delineated role as a grown-up Mamma's boy on the 1962 Twilight Zone episode "Young Man's Fancy." Nicol had accrued enough capital in the late '50s to begin directing as well as starring in films. Some of his projects were tawdry little items like The Screaming Skull (1958), but at least one Nicol-directed film, And Then There Were Three (1962), proved that a singular talent had been wasted in Hollywood. And Then There Were Three, a no-budget war film, scored on its grittiness and spontaneity; unfortunately the film was not given a general release, and began circulating only when sold to television in 1965. Alex Nicol added to his directing credits by helming a few network TV series in the '60s, often through the auspices of Universal, his home studio as an actor in the '50s.

Trivia: American actor James Arness had an unremarkable Minneapolis childhood, but his wartime experiences shattered that normality - literally. During the battle of Anzio, Arness' right leg was peppered with machine gun bullets, and when the bones were set they didn't mend properly, leaving him with a slight but permanent limp. The trauma of the experience mellowed into aimlessness after the war. Arness became a "beach bum," lived out of his car, and worked intermittently as a salesman and carpenter. Acting was treated equally lackadaisically, but by 1947 Arness had managed to break into Hollywood on the basis of his rugged good looks and his 6'6" frame. Few of his screen roles were memorable, though one has become an object of cult worship: Arness was cast as the menacingly glowing space alien, described by one character as "an intellectual carrot," in The Thing (1951). For a time it looked as though Arness would continue to flounder in supporting roles, while his younger brother, actor Peter Graves, seemed destined for stardom. John Wayne took a liking to Arness when the latter was cast in Wayne's Big Jim McLain (1953). Wayne took it upon himself to line up work for Arness, becoming one of the withdrawn young actor's few friends. In 1955, Wayne was offered the role of Matt Dillon in the TV version of the popular radio series Gunsmoke. Wayne turned it down but recommended that Arness be cast and even went so far as to introduce him to the nation's viewers in a specially filmed prologue to the first Gunsmoke episode. Truth be told, Arness wasn't any keener than Wayne to be tied down to a weekly series, and as each season ended he'd make noises indicating he planned to leave. This game went on for each of the 20 seasons that Gunsmoke was on the air, the annual result being a bigger salary for Arness, more creative control over the program (it was being produced by his own company within a few years) and a sizeable chunk of the profits and residuals. When Gunsmoke finally left the air in 1975, Arness was the only one of the original four principals (including Amanda Blake, Milburn Stone and Dennis Weaver) still appearing on the series. Arness made plans to take it easy after his two-decade Gunsmoke hitch, but was lured back to the tube for a one-shot TV movie, The Macahans (1976). This evolved into the six-hour miniseries How the West Was Won (1977) which in turn led to a single-season weekly series in 1978. All these incarnations starred Arness, back in the saddle as Zeb Macahan. The actor tried to alter his sagebrush image in a 1981 modern-day cop series, McClain's Law -- which being set in the southwest permitted Arness to ride a horse or two. It appeared, however that James Arness would always be Matt Dillon in the hearts and minds of fans, thus Arness obliged his still-faithful public with three Gunsmoke TV movies, the last one (Gunsmoke: The Last Apache) released in 1992. In between these assignments, James Arness starred in a 1988 TV-movie remake of the 1948 western film classic Red River, in which he filled the role previously played by his friend and mentor John Wayne.

Trivia: Upon graduating from Nichols College, Charles Ruppert entered the professional world as a salesman. When he decided to switch to acting, Ruppert changed his name to Drake. In films from 1939, Drake was signed to a Warner Bros. contract and appeared in such films as The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Now, Voyager (1942), Dive Bomber (1942), Air Force (1943), and Mr. Skeffington (1944). Freelancing in the mid-'40s, he played the romantic lead in the Marx Brothers flick A Night in Casablanca (1946). Once he moved to Universal in 1949, Drake proved that the fault lay not in himself but in the roles he'd previously been assigned to play. He was quite personable as Dr. Sanderson in Harvey (1950) and thoroughly despicable as the cowardly paramour of dance-hall girl Shelley Winters in Winchester '73 (1950). One of his most unusual performances was as the ostensible hero of You Never Can Tell (1951), who after spending two reels convincing the viewer that he's a prince of a fellow, turns out to be the villain of the piece. Drake did some of his best work at Universal as a supporting player in the vehicles of his offscreen pal Audie Murphy. In 1955, Drake turned to television as one of the stock-company players on Robert Montgomery Presents; three years later, he was star/host of the British TV espionage weekly Rendezvous. Charles Drake prospered as a character actor well into the early 1970s.

Trivia: LA native Jimmy Hunt was seven years old when he was selected by an MGM talent scout to play Van Johnson as a child in High Barbaree (1947). From that point onward, the freckle-faced Hunt remained in great demand as a general-purpose juvenile. He went on to play Evelyn Keyes' foster child (and plot motivator) in The Mating of Millie (1947), "mean widdle kid" Junior in Red Skelton's Fuller Brush Man (1948), and Ronald Reagan's son in Louisa (1950). At 20th Century-Fox, he appeared as William Gilbreth, one of the twelve offspring of efficiency expert Frank Gilbreth(Clifton Webb) in Cheaper by the Dozen (1950); two years later, he played another member of the Gilberth clan in the Dozen sequel Belles on the Toes (1952). It wasn't until his 38th film that he essayed his most famous role: wide-eyed David Maclean in the "child's eye view" sci-fier Invaders from Mars (1953). At fourteen, Hunt decided that he didn't want to pursue an acting career any more. After college, he worked in military intelligence in Germany; more recently, he was an industrial tool and dye salesman in the San Fernando Valley. At the request of director Tobe Hooper, Jimmy Hunt made one last, nostalgic fling at acting, essaying the role of the police chief in the 1986 remake of Invaders from Mars.

Trivia: Tall, silver-maned character actor Roy Roberts began his film career as a 20th Century-Fox contractee in 1943. Nearly always cast in roles of well-tailored authority, Roberts was most effective when conveying smug villainy. As a hotel desk clerk in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), he suavely but smarmily refused to allow Jews to check into his establishment; nineteen years later, Roberts was back behind the desk and up to his old tricks, patronizingly barring a black couple from signing the register in Hotel (1966). As the forties drew to a close, Roberts figured into two of the key film noirs of the era; he was the carnival owner who opined that down-at-heels Tyrone Power had sunk so low because "he reached too high" at the end of Nightmare Alley (1947), while in 1948's He Walked By Night, Roberts enjoyed one of his few sympathetic roles as a psycho-hunting plainclothesman. And in the 3-D classic House of Wax, Roberts played the crooked business partner of Vincent Price, whose impulsive decision to burn down Price's wax museum has horrible consequences. With the role of bombastic Captain Huxley on the popular Gale Storm TV series Oh, Susanna (1956-1960), Gordon inaugurated his dignified-foil period. He later played long-suffering executive types on The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and The Lucy Show. Roy Roberts last appeared on screen as the mayor in Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974).

Trivia: Busy character actor Frank Ferguson was able to parlay his pinched facial features, his fussy little moustache, and his bellows-like voice for a vast array of characterizations. Ferguson was equally effective as a hen-pecked husband, stern military leader, irascible neighbor, merciless employer, crooked sheriff, and barbershop hanger-on. He made his inaugural film appearance in Father is a Prince (1940) and was last seen on the big screen in The Great Sioux Massacre (1965). Ferguson proved himself an above-average actor by successfully pulling off the treacly scene in The Babe Ruth Story (1948) in which Babe (William Bendix) says "Hi, kid" to Ferguson's crippled son--whereupon the boy suddenly stands up and walks! Among Franklin Ferguson's hundreds of TV appearances were regular stints on the children's series My Friend Flicka (1956) and the nighttime soap opera Peyton Place (1964-68).

Trivia: Wisconsonite actor Stanley Blystone was the brother of director John G. Blystone and assistant director Jasper Blystone. Entering films in 1915, the burly, muscular, mustachioed Blystone excelled in gruff, villainous roles; he was particularly menacing as a crooked ringmaster in Tom Mix's The Circus Ace (1927). In the talkie era, Blystone was busiest at the 2-reel comedy mills of RKO, Columbia and Hal Roach, often cast as brutish authority figures at odds with the comedy leads. In the Three Stooges' Half Shot Shooters (1936), he plays the sadistic Sgt. McGillicuddy, who reacts to the Stooges' ineptness by taking aim with a long-range cannon and blowing the three comedians right out of their boots! Blystone was much in demand as both "action" and "brains" heavies in Columbia's westerns and serials of the 1940s. Extending his activities to television in the 1950s, the 71-year-old Stanley Blystone was en route to Desilu Studios to play a small role on the TV series Wyatt Earp when he collapsed on the sidewalk and died of heart failure.

Trivia: The last of the low-budget Western heroes, Johnny Carpenter had been a semi-professional baseball player prior to heading West in search of film jobs in the very early '40s. Beginning as a stunt man under the names of John Forbes and Josh Carpenter, monikers he would occasionally adopt throughout his screen career, Carpenter rode in a host of routine series Westerns and such Grade-A films as National Velvet (1944). In 1950, he was discovered by independent producer Jack Schwartz, who saw star potential in the handsome, dark-haired stunt man whom some considered a dead ringer for Montgomery Clift. B-Westerns, unfortunately, were about to be made redundant by even cheaper television fare and Carpenter never enjoyed much of a following away from the grind-houses. By the mid-'50s, he had added guest roles on such TV Westerns as Wild Bill Hickock and Judge Roy Bean to his list of credits and had even written, produced, and starred in a handful of feature Westerns of his own, one of which, The Lawless Rider (1954), was directed by ace stunt man Yakima Canutt. Lacking the polish of television Westerns, none of his films made much money and he subsequently returned to stunt work. From the 1940s and until he was evicted in 1994 to make room for a housing project, Carpenter ran the "Heaven on Earth" ranch for handicapped children in Glendale, CA. B-Western historian Boyd Magers summed up Johnny Carpenter's contribution to a quickly vanishing genre: "The last of the shoestring independent producer/stars, he didn't make top-drawer B-Westerns, but through all the budget pinching and corner cutting, his love of Western films shows through on the screen in much the same way his friend Ed Wood's did in low-echelon horror films."

Trivia: A would-be B-Western star who never made the grade, Eddie Dew had been in musical comedy prior to drifting into films in 1937. After appearing in countless bit parts at (mostly) Republic Pictures, Dew was awarded a one-year contract in 1943 and a promotion to stardom with a proposed John Paul Revere series of Westerns that also featured the popular Smiley Burnette as the comedic sidekick, a job the tubby Burnette had done so admirably in the Gene Autry music Westerns. Alas, in spite of Burnette's popularity, the series in general and Dew in particular fell far short of expectations and after only two films had been produced, Republic bought back his contract for a reported 1,000 dollars. The studio tried to salvage the series by re-hiring Robert Livingston, formerly of The Three Mesqueteers, but there were few takers and the project was shelved after only two additional Westerns. Dew meanwhile, landed a berth at Universal as a second banana to Rod Cameron and even took over the lead in Trail to Gunfight (1944) when Cameron was upgraded to Grade A projects. In the end, however, singer Kirby Grant was brought in to take over the spot vacated by Cameron and Dew, who sidelined once again, went into television instead, appearing on the Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill programs and directing episodes of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. He would later add such low-budget feature films as Naked Gun (1956) and the Canada-lensed Wings of Chance (1961) to his directorial credits.

Trivia: Snake-eyed, mustachioed character actor Frank Ellis seldom rose above the "member of the posse" status in "B" westerns. Once in a while, he was allowed to say things like "Now here's my plan" and "Let's get outta here," but generally he stood by waiting for the Big Boss (usually someone like Harry Woods or Wheeler Oakman) to do his thinking for him. Ellis reportedly began making films around 1920; he remained in the business at least until the 1954 Allan Dwan-directed western Silver Lode. Frank Ellis has been erroneously credited with several policeman roles in the films of Laurel and Hardy, due to his resemblance to another bit player named Charles McMurphy.

Trivia: In films from 1932, American actor/stunt man Chuck Hamilton was a handy fellow to have around in slapstick comedies, tense cop melodramas and swashbucklers. Hamilton showed up in the faintly fascistic law-and-order epic Beast of the City (1932), the picaresque Harold Lloyd comedy Professor Beware (1938), and the flamboyant Errol Flynn adventure Against All Flags (1952). When not doubling for the leading players, he could be seen in minor roles as policemen, reporters, chauffeurs, stevedores and hoodlum. From time to time, Chuck Hamilton showed up in Native American garb, as he did in DeMille's Northwest Mounted Police (1940).

Trivia: Character actor Donald Kerr showed up whenever a gumchewing Runyonesque type (often a reporter or process server) was called for. A bit actor even in two-reelers and "B" pictures, Kerr was one of those vaguely familiar faces whom audiences would immediately recognize, ask each other "Who is that?", then return to the film, by which time Kerr had scooted the scene. The actor's first recorded film appearance was in 1933's Carnival Lady. Twenty-two years later, Donald Kerr concluded his career in the same anonymity with which he began it in 1956's Yaqui Drums.

Trivia: Silent film leading man Jack Mower was at his most effective when cast in outgoing, athletic roles. Never a great actor, he was competent in displaying such qualities as dependability and honesty. His best known silent role was as the motorcycle cop who is spectacularly killed by reckless driver Leatrice Joy in Cecil B. DeMille's Manslaughter (1922). Talkies reduced Jack Mower to bit parts, but he was frequently given work by directors whom he'd befriended in his days of prominence; Mower's last film was John Ford's The Long Gray Line (1955).

Trivia: In films from 1932, actor/stunt man Eddie Parker spent the better part of his career at Universal. Parker doubled for most of Universal's horror stars, especially Lon Chaney Jr: rumors still persist that it was Parker, and not Chaney, who actually starred in the studio's Mummy pictures of the 1940s. He also performed stunts for many of Universal's A-list actors, including John Wayne. In the 1950s, he doubled for Boris Karloff in Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953), and played at least one of the title characters in Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955). His long association with Universal ended when he walked off the set of 1955's This Island Earth (in which he'd been cast as the "head mutant") during a salary dispute; he made one last return to the studio as one of the gladiators in Spartacus (1960). In addition to his Universal duties, Parker worked as both an actor and stunter in virtually every Republic serial made during the 1940s and 1950s. Eddie Parker died of a heart attack shortly after staging a comedic fight sequence on TV's The Jack Benny Program.

Trivia: Mustachioed and shifty-eyed, Hugh Prosser became a well-known B-Western supporting actor in the 1940s, almost always playing the Boss Heavy, the unscrupulous saloon owner, crooked banker, notorious bandit leader, or the like. In films from 1938, Prosser was especially busy menacing Johnny Mack Brown at Monogram, but also appeared in scores of wartime melodramas and serials. Equally busy on early television shows such as (The Lone Rider, Gene Autry, and The Cisco Kid), Prosser was killed in an automobile accident near Gallup, NM.

Trivia: Had he been born a decade earlier, American actor Denver Pyle might well have joined the ranks of western-movie comedy sidekicks. Instead, Pyle, a Colorado farm boy, opted for studying law, working his way through school by playing drums in a dance band. Suddenly one day, Pyle became disenchanted with law and returned to his family farm, with nary an idea what he wanted to do with his life. Working in the oil fields of Oklahoma, he moved on to the shrimp boats of Galveston, Texas. A short stint as a page at NBC radio studios in 1940 didn't immediately lead to a showbiz career, as it has for so many others; instead, Pyle was inspired to perform by a mute oilfield coworker who was able to convey his thought with body language. Studying under such masters as Michael Chekhov and Maria Ouspenskaya, Pyle was able to achieve small movie and TV roles. He worked frequently on the western series of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry; not yet bearded and grizzled, Pyle was often seen as deputies, farmers and cattle rustlers. When his hair turned prematurely grey in his early '30s, Pyle graduated to banker, sheriff and judge roles in theatrical westerns -- though never of the comic variety. He also was a regular on two TV series, Code 3 (1956) and Tammy (1966). But his real breakthrough role didn't happen until 1967, when Pyle was cast as the taciturn sheriff in Bonnie and Clyde who is kidnapped and humilated by the robbers -- and then shows up at the end of the film to supervise the bloody machine-gun deaths of B&C. This virtually nonspeaking role won worldwide fame for Pyle, as well as verbal and physical assalts from the LA hippie community who regarded Bonnie and Clyde as folk heroes! From this point forward, Denver Pyle's billing, roles and salary were vastly improved -- and his screen image was softened and humanized by a full, bushy beard. Returning to TV, Pyle played the star's father on The Doris Day Show (1968-73); was Mad Jack, the costar/narrator of Life and Times of Grizzly Adams (1978-80); and best of all, spent six years (1979-85) as Uncle Jesse Duke on The Dukes of Hazzard. Looking stockier but otherwise unchanged, Denver Pyle was briefly seen in the 1994 hit Maverick, playing an elegantly dishonest cardshark who jauntily doffs his hat as he's dumped off of a riverboat. Pyle died of lung cancer at Burbank's Providence St. Joseph Medical Center at age 77.