Trivia: Low-budget company PRC's late entry in the Singing Cowboy sweepstakes, Eddie Dean (born Glosup) had gained some recognition as a singer on the popular National Barn Dance radio program back in 1934 and was later a featured performer on Gene Autry's Melody Ranch and the Judy Canova Show. It was Autry who offered Dean a chance for a movie career. The year was 1938 and the film was Western Jamboree. For the next eight years the rather gawky-looking singer would play supporting roles in scores of low-budget westerns, appearing in five Hopalong Cassidy Westerns (1939-1940) and the serial The Lone Ranger Rides Again (1939). Ironically, Dean was not asked to sing until Harmony Trail (1944), a Ken Maynard Western in which he appeared as himself and performed his own "On the Banks of the Sunny San Juan" and "Boogie Woogie Cowboy." That brought him to the attention of PRC, who was without a singing cowboy star to compete with Republic's Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. The ramshackle little studio certainly believed in his potential, releasing the initial five Eddie Dean music westerns in Cinecolor and thus making Dean the star of the first B-western series in color. Old-timer Emmett Lynn was cast as comic relief and the studio also added the black-garbed Al La Rue, a Humphrey Bogart lookalike destined for B-Western stardom himself. Rather homely in appearance, Dean nevertheless performed well in fights and looked comfortable on a series of ever-changing equine co-stars. Dean later explained that he changed horses often in order never to be upstaged by his four-footed sidekick. Dean's crooning of his own western ballads was of course always one of the films' main selling points, but it wasn't the only one and Dean soon garnered a following among less demanding Western fans. Part of the success may be attributed to the presence of stammering Roscoe Ates, who had replaced Emmett Lynn and would become Dean's best remembered sidekick. Of Dean's films, at least one stands out in the crowded field of low-budget westerns: The Hawk of Powder River (1948), which had a girl villain (Jennifer Holt, whom Dean is forced to kill. In 1946, Dean and Ates appeared in the supporting cast of PRC's Down Missouri Way (1946), the singing cowboy's only non-western until his final film, Varieties on Parade (1951). Mainly due to budget constraints, Eddie Dean never really came close to rivaling the success of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers -- nor indeed the popularity of his non-singing PRC colleague Al La Rue. He continued as a prolific country & western performer and also contributed songs to other artists including "One Has My Name, the Other Has My Heart", a hit for Jimmy Wakely, and "I Dreamed of a Hill Billy Heaven", which became one of Tex Ritter's most successful recordings. In 1978, Eddie Dean received a "Pioneer Award" by the Academy of Country Music and was inducted into the Western Music Association's "Hall of Fame" in 1990. In his last years, Dean was a frequent and very welcome guest at B-Western memorabilia shows.

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: A rather nondescript B-Western supporting player, Gene Alsace (born Rockford G. Camron) was Tim McCoy's stunt double before being awarded the starring role in 1935's Gun Smoke (aka Gunsmoke on the Guadalupe) a very low-budget oater ostensibly produced by rodeo rider Monte Montana. Alsace, who used the moniker Buck Coburn for the occasion, was supported by such B-Western stalwarts as Marion Shilling, Bud Osborne, Henry Hall, and Ben Corbett, but the little film made almost no money and no further starring roles were forthcoming. Leaving the Buck Coburn tag behind him for good, Alsace instead played scores of minor supporting roles but is easy to pick out in a posse or among the villain's henchmen because of his penchant for wearing old-fashioned chaps and sticking his gun carelessly in his belt. Working mainly at small-scale operations such as Monogram and PRC, Alsace later changed his name once again, this time to Rocky Camron, the character he played in the 1943 trail blazers Western Outlaw Trail. Alsace/Camron was a good guy for a change and continued to use the Rocky Camron moniker when playing law-abiding citizens in such Westerns as Harmony Trail (1947) and Callaway Went Thataway (1951).

Trivia: Though the "Chief" was a purely honorary title, Chief Thundercloud was indeed a Native American. Educated at the University of Arizona, Thundercloud (given name: Victor Daniels) worked at a series of manual-labor and rodeo jobs before trying his luck in Hollywood. In films from 1928 through 1952, Thundercloud is best known for creating the role of Tonto in the 1938 serial The Lone Ranger. He also played the title role in Paramount's Geronimo (1939), though he incredibly received no on-screen credit. Chief Thundercloud should not be confused with another prominent Indian actor, Chief Thunderbird, who appeared as Sitting Bull in 1936's Annie Oakley, nor with film-actor Scott T. Williams, who also billed himself as Chief Thundercloud.

Trivia: Irish-born Robert McKenzie was already a theatrical showman of some renown by the time he made his first film appearance in 1921. The barrel-chested, snaggle-toothed McKenzie appeared in dozens of westerns and comedies, usually as a bombastic lawman or backwoods con artist. Even when he played bits (which was often), his raspy voice and hyena-like laugh always identified him. His more memorable feature-film roles included W. C. Fields' drinking buddy Charlie Bogle in You're Telling Me (1934), larcenous Judge Roy Dean in Gene Autry's Sing, Cowboy, Sing (1937), and the jolly captain who rents Laurel & Hardy a broken-down boat in Saps at Sea (1940). In addition, he appeared in hundreds of short subjects, playing opposite the likes of Our Gang, Andy Clyde, Charley Chase and the Three Stooges. In 1927, McKenzie tried his hand at screenwriting with the low-budget western The White Outlaw. Robert McKenzie and his actress-wife Eva had three daughters, all of whom acted in films at one time or another; their daughter Ella was the wife of comedian Billy Gilbert.

Trivia: In films from 1937, silver-haired American actor Forbes Murray could be described as a less-costly Claude Rains. Murray lent his middle-aged dignity to such serials as The Spider's Web (1938), Mandrake the Magician (1940), Lone Ranger (1938), Perils of Nyoka (1942), Manhunt of Mystery Island (1945), and Radar Patrol vs. Spy King (1950). He also showed up in quite a few comedies, notably as the bank president who finances the college education of Laurel and Hardy ("Diamonds in the rough," as he describes them) in A Chump at Oxford (1940). Forbes Murray was active at least until 1955.

Trivia: Born two weeks before the great San Francisco earthquake, Jack O'Shea held down a variety of jobs before entering films in 1938. Nearly always cast as swarthy, mustachioed Western villains, he more than earned his billing as "Black Jack O'Shea" and "the Man You Love to Hate." An able stunt man, he doubled for such stocky performers as Lou Costello, Leo Carrillo, and Orson Welles. Retiring from films in the mid-'50s, Jack O'Shea kept busy as the proprietor of an antique shop in Paradiso, CA, where he briefly served as honorary mayor (given his unsavory screen image, one wonders if he fixed the election).

Trivia: American character actor Stanley Price reportedly launched his screen career in 1922. Possessed of a sharkish smile and luminescent stare, Price was usually seen as a villain, often of the psychotic variety. He was a "regular" in the serial field, appearing in such chapter plays as The Miracle Rider (1935), Red Barry (1938), Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941), Holt of the Secret Service (1942), Batman (1943), Captain America (1944), Superman (1948), and King of the Rocket Man (1949). His flair for comedy was well represented in such films as Road to Morocco (1942), in which he played the blithering idiot in the opening bazaar scene, and his many appearances with the Three Stooges. According to at least one source, Stanley Price was briefly a dialogue director at Lippert Studios.

Trivia: A veteran stage actor, Jack Richardson began his screen career at the American Film Manufacturing Company opposite his then-wife Louise Lester, the studio's comic "Calamity Anne." One of the better "Boss Heavies" around, Richardson even starred in a couple of low-budget Westerns in the 1920s, but was not really suitable hero material. Today he is perhaps best remembered for playing the brutal servant -- in blackface, no less -- in Thomas H. Ince's justly infamous Free and Equal (1915, released 1925). Richardson's career lasted through the 1940s, but mostly in minor roles.

Trivia: American actor Lee Roberts spent most of his time in Westerns and actioners. Roberts essayed roles of all sizes in such films as the Trail Blazers series at Monogram and the Lash LaRue and Eddie Dean vehicles at PRC. Over at Republic, he showed up with regularity in the studio's serial product. Lee Roberts remained in films until the late '50s, playing the leading role in Hollywood's final serial effort, Columbia's Blazing the Overland Trail (1956).

Trivia: A child star of the early silent era, Matty Roubert was advertised as the "Universal Boy." Often appearing in melodramas produced and/or directed by his real-life father, William L. Roubert, Matty's popularity remained high through the 1910s but waned as he grew into young adulthood. Continuing in films well into the sound era, Matty Roubert made something of a specialty playing newsboys or messengers, usually unbilled. He left the screen in the late '40s.

Trivia: Veteran American character actor Forrest Taylor is reputed to have launched his film career in 1915. His screen roles in both the silent and sound era seldom had any consistency of size; he was apt to show up in a meaty character part one week, a seconds-lasting bit part the next. With his banker's moustache and brusque attitude, Taylor was most often cast as a businessman or a lawyer, sometimes on the shadier side of the law. Throughout his 40 year film career, Taylor was perhaps most active in westerns, appearing in such programmers as Headin' For the Rio Grande and Painted Trail. From 1952 through 1954, Forrest Taylor costarred as Grandpa Fisher on the religious TV series This is the Life.

Trivia: In films from at least 1918, when he billed himself "Texas Cooper," this busy bit-part player/B-Western extra looked for all the world like "Buffalo" Bill Cody, whom he finally got to play in his last film, the Lash LaRue Western King of the Bullwhip (1951). Hardly ever receiving onscreen billing, Cooper appeared in literally hundreds of B-Westerns -- genre historian Les Adams has counted 116 appearances in Westerns and serials in the sound era alone -- -- usually just hanging around in the background. If a group of spectators gathered to watch a shootout in the street, a saloon girl's performance, or a skirmish outside the sheriff's office, Cooper was almost always included, easily spotted by his long white hair and florid mustache. Few knew him by name, but almost every kid in the audience cheered when he appeared. His wife Nona was reputedly one of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.

Trivia: The son of famed horse trainer Fez Reynolds and a champion trick and fancy rider from early childhood, Don Kay Reynolds replaced Bobby Blake (later Robert Blake as the hero's Native American sidekick in the last four films of the long-running Red Ryder series. Blake, the former Mickey Gubitosi of Our Gang fame, played Little Beaver at Republic Pictures opposite both William Elliott and his replacement Allan Lane, but when the series was sold to low-budget Eagle Lion in 1948, that studio cast Reynolds, along with Jim Bannon -- the new Red Ryder -- and veteran silent-screen actress Marin Sais, who replaced Martha Wentworth as the Duchess. Nicknamed "Little Brown Jug," Reynolds became a great favorite with the series' mostly juvenile audience. Alas, only four films were actually produced -- albeit in garish Cinecolor -- and Reynolds left Hollywood soon after to tour with various circuses. He later owned a restaurant in Northern California, but retained the nickname of "Jug."