Buchanan Rides Alone

Randolph Scott (Actor) .. Tom Buchanan

Born: January 23, 1898
Died: March 02, 1987
Birthplace: Orange County, Virginia, United States

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.

Craig Stevens (Actor) .. Carbo

Born: July 08, 1918
Died: May 10, 2000
Birthplace: Liberty, Missouri

Trivia: Craig Stevens abandoned all plans for a career in dentistry when he became involved in student productions at the University of Kansas. Trained at Pasadena Playhouse and Paramount's acting school, Stevens was signed to a stock Warner Bros. contract in 1941. He was well showcased as a soft-hearted gangster in At the Stroke of Twelve, a 1941 two-reel adaptation of Damon Runyon's The Old Doll's House, but his feature film roles were merely adequate at best. By 1950, Stevens was reduced to playing a standard mustachioed villain in the Bowery Boys epic Blues Busters. His saving turnaround came about when Stevens was cast in the title role of the 1958 Blake Edwards-produced TV private eye series Peter Gunn. Though obviously imitating Cary Grant in the early episodes of this three-season hit, Stevens eventually developed a hard-edged acting style all his own. He later re-created his TV role in the 1967 theatrical feature Gunn. Subsequent TV-series assignments for Stevens included the British-filmed weekly Man of the World (1962) and CBS' Mr. Broadway (1964). Craig Stevens was married to actress Alexis Smith (with whom he toured in such stage productions as Critic's Choice) from 1944 until her death in 1993.

Barry Kelley (Actor) .. Lew

Born: January 01, 1908
Died: June 05, 1991

Trivia: Trained at the Goodman Theatre in his hometown of Chicago, the 6'4", 230-pound Barry Kelley made his professional stage bow in 1930. Seventeen years later, he appeared in his first film, director Elia Kazan's Boomerang. Kelley was most often found in crime yarns and westerns, often cast as a corrupt law officer, e.g. Lieutenant Ditrich in John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle. Barry Kelley's hundreds of TV credits include the recurring roles of city editor Charlie Anderson in Big Town (1954) and Pete's boss Mr. Slocum in Pete and Gladys (1961).

Tol Avery (Actor) .. Simon

Born: January 01, 1915
Died: January 01, 1973

Peter Whitney (Actor) .. Amos

Born: January 01, 1916
Died: March 30, 1972

Trivia: Burly character actor Peter Whitney was under contract to Warner Bros. from 1941 to 1945. Whitney spent much of that time on loan-out, playing a variety of moronic thugs and henchmen. His best-ever screen role (or roles) was as identical twin hillbilly murderers Mert and Bert Fleagle in the 1944 screwball classic Murder He Says. He enjoyed a rare romantic lead in the 1946 horror film The Brute Man (the title character was played by Rondo Hatton). Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Whitney supported himself by portraying some of TV's most scurrilous and homicidal backwoods villains. Peter Whitney essayed a more comical characterization as rustic free-loader Lafe Crick in several first-season episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies.

Manuel Rojas (Actor) .. Juan

L. Q. Jones (Actor) .. Pecos Bill

Born: August 19, 1927

Trivia: What do actors Gig Young, Anne Shirley, and L.Q. Jones have in common? All of them lifted their show-biz names from characters they'd portrayed on screen. In 1955, University of Texas alumnus Justice McQueen made his film debut in Battle Cry, playing a laconic lieutenant named L.Q. Jones. McQueen liked his character so much that he remained L.Q. Jones offscreen ever after (though he never made it legal, still listing himself as Justice Ellis McQueen in the 1995 edition of Who's Who). A natural for westerns both vocally and physically, Jones played supporting roles in several big-screen oaters, and was seen on TV as Smitty on Cheyenne (1955-58) and as Belden on The Virginian (1964-67). Jones gained a measure of prominence in the films of Sam Peckinpah, notably Ride the High Country (1961) and The Wild Bunch (1969). Turning to the production side of the business in the early 1970s, L. Q. Jones produced and co-starred in the 1971 film Brotherhood of Satan; he also co-produced, directed, adapted and played a cameo (as a porn-movie actor!) in the fascinating 1975 cinemazation of Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog, a tour de force that won Jones a Hugo Award from America's science fiction writers.

Robert Anderson (Actor) .. Waldo Peek

Born: July 12, 1920

Joe De Santis (Actor) .. Esteban Gomez

Born: June 15, 1909
Died: August 30, 1989

Trivia: The son of Italian immigrants, Manhattan-born Joe DeSantis started out in 1931 as an actor and announcer for Italian-language radio programs; that same year, he made his first Broadway appearance in Sierna, likewise performed in Italian. DeSantis did not act in English until he was hired for the Walter Hampden troupe in 1932. Throughout the late 1930s and 1940s, DeSantis was active in network radio (where he specialized in dialect parts), regional theatre, and government-funded acting projects. After his inaugural film appearance in 1949's Slattery's Hurricane, DeSantis remained on call for roles requiring muscle and menace. His film credits include I Want to Live (1958), Al Capone (1959) (as Big Jim Colosimo), The George Raft Story (1960), Beau Geste (1966), The Professionals (1966) and Little Cigars (1973). Joe DeSantis was a regular on the pioneering 1949 television series Photocrime (1949), and was narrator of the 1950 melodramatic TV anthology The Trap.

William Leslie (Actor) .. Roy Agry

Born: January 01, 1924

Jennifer Holden (Actor) .. K.T.

Nacho Galindo (Actor) .. Nacho

Born: January 01, 1908
Died: January 01, 1973

Roy Jenson (Actor) .. Hemp

Born: February 09, 1927
Died: April 24, 2007

Duke Fishman (Actor) .. Townsman

Terry Frost (Actor) .. Jury Foreman

Born: October 26, 1906
Died: March 01, 1993

Trivia: A tough-looking character actor in Grade-Z Westerns of the 1940s, Terry Frost's screen career was highly affected by a role he didn't get to play. In 1945, Frost, who had been portraying henchmen in Westerns since 1941, was signed to star the title role in Dillinger, a low-budget but highly publicized melodrama depicting the exploits of real life gangster and Public Enemy Number One, John Dillinger. The proposed screenplay, however, came in for intense scrutiny by the Production Code censors and when the cameras finally rolled, the part had been re-cast with newcomer Lawrence Tierney, who thus embarked on a long and profitable career portraying public enemies. Frost, in contrast, returned to the realm of low-budget oaters, laboring rather anonymously in countless Western melodramas for also-ran studios Monogram and PRC. He was even busier on television in the 1950s, appearing in seemingly every Western series ever produced, from The Gene Autry Show to Gunsmoke to Rawhide. In his later years, the erstwhile vaudevillian and coffee shop owner became a popular guest speaker at various B-Western conventions, where he would reminisce about everyone from Johnny Mack Brown to Whip Wilson. His death was attributed to a heart attack.

Riley Hill (Actor) .. Juror

Born: March 20, 1914

Trivia: A busy western actor from the 1940s onward, Riley Hill spent the better part of his career playing villains in formula "B"s. Occasionally, Hill would show up in some of Hollywood's costlier oaters, notably Howard Hawk s' Rio Bravo. His television work included several guest spots on the various series churned by Gene Autry's Flying A Productions, and the semi-regular Marshal Riley Roberts in Marshal of Gunsight Pass (1950), Hollywood's only live (as opposed to filmed) TV western. Riley Hill could later be seen in crusty character parts in films like The Trial of Billy Jack (1974) and When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? (1979).

Barbara James (Actor) .. Nina

James B. Leong (Actor) .. Gomez's Friend

Born: January 01, 1899
Died: January 01, 1963

Don C. Harvey (Actor) .. Lafe

Born: December 12, 1911
Died: April 23, 1963

Trivia: Don C. Harvey's screen acting career was launched when he signed a Columbia contract in 1949. An all-purpose villain, Harvey showed up in most of Columbia's serials of the era, including Atom Man vs. Superman (1949), Adventures of Sir Galahad (1949), Batman and Robin (1949), Captain Video (1950), and the studio's final chapter play, Blazing the Overland Trail (1956). He also appeared in Columbia's "A" product (Picnic), "B" pictures (Women's Prison) and two-reel comedies (the Three Stooges' Merry Mavericks). Fans of 1950s horror films may recall Harvey as Mac in Revenge of the Creature (1955) and Lester Banning in Creature with the Atom Brain (1955). Don C. Harvey was married to actress June Harvey.

2:00 pm - 4:00 pm, Sunday, October 26 on WCCT Grit (20.2)