Trivia: One of the cinema's most enduring actors, Henry Fonda enjoyed a highly successful career spanning close to a half century. Most often in association with director John Ford, he starred in many of the finest films of Hollywood's golden era. Born May 16, 1905, in Grand Island, NE, Fonda majored in journalism in college, and worked as an office boy before pursuing an interest in acting. He began his amateur career with the Omaha Community Playhouse, often performing with the mother of Marlon Brando. Upon becoming a professional performer in 1928, Fonda traveled east, tenuring with the Provincetown Players before signing on with the University Players Guild, a New England-based ensemble including up-and-comers like James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, and Joshua Logan. Fonda's first Broadway appearance followed with 1929's The Game of Life and Death. He also worked in stock, and even served as a set designer. In 1931, Fonda and Sullavan were married, and the following year he appeared in I Loved You Wednesday. The couple divorced in 1933, and Fonda's big break soon followed in New Faces of '34. A leading role in The Farmer Takes a Wife was next, and when 20th Century Fox bought the film rights, they recruited him to reprise his performance opposite Janet Gaynor, resulting in his 1935 screen debut. Fonda and Gaynor were slated to reunite in the follow-up, Way Down East, but when she fell ill Rochelle Hudson stepped in. In 1936 he starred in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (the first outdoor Technicolor production), the performance which forever defined his onscreen persona: Intense, insistent, and unflappable, he was also extraordinarily adaptable, and so virtually impossible to miscast. He next co-starred with Sullavan in The Moon's Our Home, followed by Wings of the Morning (another Technicolor milestone, this one the first British feature of its kind). For the great Fritz Lang, Fonda starred in 1937's You Only Live Once, and the following year co-starred with Bette Davis in William Wyler's much-celebrated Jezebel. His next critical success came as the titular Young Mr. Lincoln, a 1939 biopic directed by John Ford. The film was not a commercial sensation, but soon after Fonda and Ford reunited for Drums Along the Mohawk, a tremendous success. Ford then tapped him to star as Tom Joad in the 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, a casting decision which even Steinbeck himself wholeheartedly supported. However, 20th Century Fox's Darryl Zanuck wanted Tyrone Power for the role, and only agreed to assign Fonda if the actor signed a long-term contract. Fonda signed, and Zanuck vowed to make him the studio's top star -- it didn't happen, however, and despite the success of The Grapes of Wrath (for which he scored his first Best Actor Academy Award nomination), his tenure at Fox was largely unhappy and unproductive.The best of Fonda's follow-up vehicles was the 1941 Preston Sturges comedy The Lady Eve, made at Paramount on loan from Fox; his co-star, Barbara Stanwyck, also appeared with him in You Belong to Me. After a number of disappointing projects, Fox finally assigned him to a classic, William Wellman's 1943 Western The Ox-Bow Incident. Studio executives reportedly hated the film, however, until it won a number of awards. After starring in The Immortal Sergeant, Fonda joined the navy to battle in World War II. Upon his return, he still owed Fox three films, beginning with Ford's great 1946 Western My Darling Clementine. At RKO he starred in 1947's The Long Night, followed by Fox's Daisy Kenyon. Again at RKO, he headlined Ford's The Fugitive, finally fulfilling his studio obligations with Ford's Fort Apache, his first unsympathetic character. Fonda refused to sign a new contract and effectively left film work for the next seven years, returning to Broadway for lengthy runs in Mister Roberts, Point of No Return, and The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. Outside of cameo roles in a handful of pictures, Fonda did not fully return to films until he agreed to reprise his performance in the 1955 screen adaptation of Mister Roberts, one of the year's biggest hits. Clearly, he had been greatly missed during his stage exile, and offers flooded in. First there was 1956's War and Peace, followed by Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man. In 1957, Fonda produced as well as starred in the Sidney Lumet classic Twelve Angry Men, but despite a flurry of critical acclaim the film was a financial disaster. In 1958, after reteaming with Lumet on Stage Struck, Fonda returned to Broadway to star in Two for the Seesaw, and over the years to come he alternated between projects on the screen (The Man Who Understood Women, Advise and Consent, The Longest Day) with work on-stage (Silent Night, Lonely Night, Critic's Choice, Gift of Time). From 1959 to 1961, he also starred in a well-received television series, The Deputy.By the mid-'60s, Fonda's frequent absences from the cinema had severely hampered his ability to carry a film. Of his many pictures from the period, only 1965's The Battle of the Bulge performed respectably at the box office. After 1967's Welcome to Hard Times also met with audience resistance, Fonda returned to television to star in the Western Stranger on the Run. After appearing in the 1968 Don Siegel thriller Madigan, he next starred opposite Lucille Ball in Yours, Mine and Ours, a well-received comedy. Fonda next filmed Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West; while regarded as a classic, the actor so loathed the experience that he refused to ever discuss the project again. With his old friend, James Stewart, he starred in The Cheyenne Social Club before agreeing to a second TV series, the police drama Smith, in 1971. That same year, he was cast to appear as Paul Newman's father in Sometimes a Great Notion.After a pair of TV movies, 1973's The Red Pony and The Alpha Stone, Fonda began a series of European productions which included the disastrous Ash Wednesday and Il Mio Nome è Nessuno. He did not fare much better upon returning to Hollywood; after rejecting Network (the role which won Peter Finch an Oscar), Fonda instead appeared in the Sensurround war epic Midway, followed by The Great Smokey Roadblock. More TV projects followed, including the miniseries Roots -- The Next Generation. Between 1978 and 1979, he also appeared in three consecutive disaster movies: The Swarm, City on Fire, and Meteor. Better received was Billy Wilder's 1978 film Fedora. A year later, he also co-starred with his son, Peter Fonda, in Wanda Nevada. His final project was the 1981 drama On Golden Pond, a film co-starring and initiated by his daughter, Jane Fonda; as an aging professor in the twilight of his years, he finally won the Best Actor Oscar so long due him. Sadly, Fonda was hospitalized at the time of the Oscar ceremony, and died just months later on August 12, 1982.

Trivia: An shy, slender actor whose name became virtually synonymous with legendary screen Psycho Norman Bates despite numerous solid performances in films outside the Hitchcock originated series, Anthony Perkins' sensitive and versatile early performances remain unfortunately obscured by his portrayal of the gender-bending sociopath that made filmgoers reluctant to shower alone for decades to come. Born to actor Osgood Perkins in April 1932 (who would die when Tony was but five years old), the young Perkins decided to follow in his father's footsteps when, at age 15, he became a member of the Actor's Equity. Soon taking the stage in summer stock, the fledgling and humble thespian embraced even the more unglamorous aspects of stage work and worked tirelessly to develop into an actor who could find celluloid success. Subsequent performances in such Rollins College productions as The Importance of Being Ernest helped him to develop the necessary skills, and following a relocation to Hollywood, Perkins was cast alongside Spencer Tracy in the film adaptation of Ruth Gordon's dramatic play The Actress. Reluctant to dive headfirst into what he considered the questionable ethics of Tinsletown, Perkins packed his bags for Columbia University. Landing roles in such Golden Age of Television staples as Studio One and G.E. Theater found the actor continuing to gain positive notice and exposure, with the success carrying over to Broadway, where Perkins would gain the respect of some of New York's harshest critics for his performance as a college student suspected of homosexuality in Robert Anderson's Tea and Sympathy. Nearly becoming a teen idol after crooning "A Little Love Goes a Long, Long Way" in the Goodyear TV Playhouse production Joey, Perkins was signed to Epic Records and later RCA Victor shortly before earning an Oscar nomination for his breakthrough roles in both William Wyler's Friendly Persuasion (1956) and Robert Mulligan's Fear Strikes Out (1957). With his portrayal as a timid pacifist and a disturbed baseball player respectively, Perkins' sensitive performances riveted audiences and resulted in numerous film offers. Appearing in The Matchmaker (1958) and On the Beach (1959) in the following years, Perkins' screen image as a soft-spoken everyman would be forever shattered with the release of Alfred Hitchcock's controversial masterpiece Psycho. Purposefully cast against type as twitchy, psychotic mama's boy Norman Bates, it would be that characterization which would haunt Perkins' career for the rest of his days. In an attempt to shake the association, Perkins would move to Europe after becoming a minor cultural icon following his role in Goodbye Again (1961) (for which he was named Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival). Appearing in such efforts as Orson Welles' The Trial (1963) and Is Paris Buring? (1966) throughout much of the duration of the 1960s, Perkins made somewhat of a return to American screens with such later efforts as Pretty Poison (1968), Catch-22 (1970), and Mahogany (1975). Working more frequently in television moving into the 1980s (1978's Les Miserables and The Sins of Dorian Gray [1983]), Perkins also continued to thrill theatergoers with roles in such films as The Black Hole (1979) and Ffolkes (1980) before returning to the character of Norman Bates in the inevitable sequel Psycho II. Directed this time by Hitchcock protégé Richard Franklin, the film proved a success and ranked among the top ten releases of 1983. From this point forward there would be little deviation from the twitchy theatricals that Perkins had perfected, and though entertaining in such efforts as Crimes of Passion (1984) and Edge of Sanity (1989), contemporary audiences would sadly witness little of the talented actor's pre-Psycho dramatic range. Associated almost exclusively with horror films by the onset of the 1990s, Perkins would return to the role of Bates for one last outing in the made-for-cable Psycho IV: The Beginning before serving as host to the short-lived television horror anthology series Chillers (1990). Taking the director's chair for the curious but widely ignored Psycho III (1986), it was only a short time later that Perkins would learn of his contraction of the virus that causes AIDS after reading of it in the tabloids. Working tirelessly alongside his longtime wife, Berry Berenson, for Project Angel Food (a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing meals to AIDS patients) in his later years, Perkins' philosophical statements regarding the ravaging disease that many considered a curse of humanity showed neither bitterness, anger, nor resentment toward the disease, but that his experiences in dealing with it had taught him more about compassion and love than he ever learned in his years in the film industry. On September 12, 1992, Perkins succumbed to AIDS-related pneumonia in Hollywood, CA, leaving behind a haunting but hopeful message to those who have suffered from the disease in an uncredited epilogue to the AIDS drama And the Band Played On (1993). Perkins left behind a son, who also embarked on an acting career with such efforts as Legally Blonde and Not Another Teen Movie (both 2001). Tragically, Perkins' wife was a passenger on one of the terrorist-hijacked planes that crashed into the World Trade Center a day before the nine-year anniversary of Perkins' death.

Trivia: Direct from Chicago's DePaul University, Betsy Palmer underwent intensive training at New York's Actors Studio, supporting herself as a secretary. She made her professional bow in stock in Wisconsin and Illinois in 1950; one year later, she made the first of hundreds of TV appearances. In 1955, Palmer first appeared on Broadway in The Grand Prize, and that same year launched her sporadic film career. Later stage credits included Forty Carats, in which she successfully replaced Lauren Bacall, and extensive touring in the role of Nellie Forbush in South Pacific. To millions of baby-boomers, Palmer will forever be associated with her work as a panelist on such TV game shows as I've Got a Secret; a later generation of televiewers will most readily recall her as Virginia Bullock on the 1989-90 season of Knot's Landing. To those whose teen years coincided with the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, Betsy Palmer is known only as the vicious, vengeful, axe-wielding Mrs. Voorhees (Jason's mom) in the first Friday the 13th (1980); reportedly, Palmer won that role because she was willing to drive her own car to and from location shoots. Palmer continued to act through her later years; she died in 2015, at age 88.

Trivia: Former juvenile, onscreen from age eight in 1955.

Trivia: The oldest child of an itinerant bridge builder, actor Neville Brand intended to make the military his career, and indeed spent ten years in uniform. During World War II, he became America's fourth most decorated soldier when he wiped out a German 50-caliber machine gun nest. He also decided that he'd seek out another line of work as soon as his hitch was up. Paying for acting classes with his GI Bill, he started his career off-Broadway. In 1949, he made his film debut in D.O.A., playing a psychotic hoodlum who delights in punching poisoned hero Edmond O'Brien in the stomach. Brand spent most of the early '50s at 20th Century Fox, a studio that surprisingly downplayed the actor's war record by shuttling him from one unstressed supporting role to another (though he's the principal villain in 1950's Where the Sidewalk Ends, he receives no screen credit). He fared far better on television, where he won the Sylvania Award for his portrayal of Huey Long in a 1958 telestaging of All the King's Men. Even better received was his portrayal of Al Capone on the TV series The Untouchables, a characterization he repeated in the 1961 theatrical feature The George Raft Story. In 1966, Brand briefly shed his bad-guy image to play the broadly hilarious role of bumbling Texas Ranger Reese Bennett on the TV Western series Laredo. His off-camera reputation for pugnacity and elbow-bending was tempered by his unswerving loyalty to his friends and his insatiable desire to better himself intellectually (his private library was one of the largest in Hollywood, boasting some 5000 titles). Fighting a losing battle against emphysema during his last years, Neville Brand died at the age of 70.

Trivia: A versatile, commanding, leathery character actor, he learned to raise and ride broncos on his family's ranch during his youth. He attended college for two years, became a seaman, then began his performing career as a radio announcer; he became nationally known as an announcer on the "March of Time" broadcasts. Onscreen from the late '40s, he often portrayed law officers; he was also convincing as a villain. He was well-known for his TV work; he starred in the series Naked City and Wagon Train. He was married to actress Jeanette Nolan, with whom he appeared in Saddle Tramp (1950) and Two Rode Together (1961); they also acted together on radio, and in the late '60s they joined the cast of the TV series The Virginian, portraying a married couple. Their son was actor Tim McIntire.

Trivia: American actor Peter Baldwin was signed by Paramount Studios in the early 1950s as one of Paramount's "Golden Circle of Newcomers." As such, Baldwin was assured a steady paycheck with such Paramount productions as The Girls of Pleasure Island (1953), Stalag 17 (1953) (in which, as an escaping POW, he was killed off in the first reel), Houdini (1953) and Little Boy Lost (1958). No longer a newcomer, but not yet a star, Baldwin remained at his home studio until 1959, appearing fleetingly in The Tin Star (1957), Teacher's Pet (1958) and other films. Understandably dissatisfied with his dead-end performing career, Baldwin became a prolific TV director (Love American Style, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Carter Country), ultimately winning a 1988 Emmy for his work on The Wonder Years. As a screenwriter, Peter Baldwin was one of four scriveners credited on the Marcello Mastroianni-Faye Dunaway starrer A Place for Lovers (1969).

Trivia: Following a wartime tour with the Navy, New Jersey-born Lee Van Cleef supported himself as an accountant. Like fellow accountant-turned-actor Jack Elam, Van Cleef was advised by his clients that he had just the right satanic facial features to thrive as a movie villain. With such rare exceptions as The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1954), Van Cleef spent most of his early screen career on the wrong side of the law, menacing everyone from Gary Cooper (High Noon) to the Bowery Boys (Private Eyes) with his cold, shark-eyed stare. Van Cleef left Hollywood in the '60s to appear in European spaghetti Westerns, initially as a secondary actor; he was, for example, the "Bad" in Clint Eastwood's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). Within a few years, Van Cleef was starring in blood-spattered action films with such titles as Day of Anger (1967), El Condor (1970), and Mean Frank and Crazy Tony (1975). The actor was, for many years, one of the international film scene's biggest box-office draws. Returning to Hollywood in the late '70s, He starred in a very short-lived martial arts TV series The Master (1984), the pilot episodes of which were pieced together into an ersatz feature film for video rental. Van Cleef died of a heart attack in 1989.

Trivia: American actor Russell Simpson is another of those character players who seemed to have been born in middle age. From his first screen appearance in 1910 to his last in 1959, Simpson personified the grizzled, taciturn mountain man who held strangers at bay with his shotgun and vowed that his daughter would never marry into that family he'd been feudin' with fer nigh on to forty years. It was not always thus. After prospecting in the 1898 Alaska gold rush, Simpson returned to the States and launched a career as a touring actor in stock -- most frequently cast in romantic leads. This led to a long association with Broadway impresario David Belasco. Briefly flirting with New York-based films in 1910, Simpson returned to the stage, then chose movies on a permanent basis in 1917. Of his hundreds of motion picture and TV appearances, Russell Simpson is best known for his participation in the films of director John Ford, most memorably as Pa Joad in 1940's The Grapes of Wrath.

Trivia: Sad-eyed, mustachioed actor Hal K. Dawson appeared in several Broadway productions of the 1920s. During the run of Machinal, Dawson was the roommate of fellow actor Clark Gable; throughout his later Hollywood career, Gable saw to it that Dawson was given parts in such films as Libeled Lady (1936) and To Please a Lady (1951). Even without Gable's help, Dawson enjoyed a long and productive movie and TV career, usually playing long-suffering personal secretaries and officious desk clerks. Hal K. Dawson was a lifelong member of the Masquers Club, and, in the twilight of his life, was made an honorary member of the Pioneers of Radio Club.

Trivia: Balding, long-necked character actor Frank Cady was a stage actor of long standing when he moved into films in 1947. He was usually cast as a quiet, unassuming small town professional man, most memorably as the long-suffering husband of the grief-stricken alcoholic Mrs. Daigle (Eileen Heckart) in The Bad Seed (1957). A busy television actor, he spent much of the 1950s on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet as Ozzie Nelson's neighbor Doc Willard. The "TV Generation" of the 1960s knows Cady best as philosophical storekeeper Sam Drucker on the bucolic sitcoms Petticoat Junction (1963-1970) and Green Acres (1965-1971). Whenever he wanted to briefly escape series television and recharge his theatrical batteries, Frank Cady appeared with the repertory company at the prestigious Mark Taper's Forum.

Trivia: No one can accuse Richard Farnsworth of taking the easy road to film stardom: by the time he finally got name-above-the-title billing, he was 61 years old, and had been in films for 34 of those years. A veteran Hollywood stunt man, he eventually became a respected actor in his own right, and earned widespread adulation for two outstanding lead performances, first as the veteran train robber released into a changed world in 1982's The Grey Fox and then as the dedicated Alvin Straight in 1999's The Straight Story.Born in Los Angeles on September 1, 1920, Farnsworth was a high-school dropout who became a rodeo rider at the age of 16. When the call went out from MGM for expert horsemen to appear in the Marx Brothers comedy A Day at the Races (1937), Farnsworth was hired as a combination stunt man/extra. The stint was the beginning of a decades-long Hollywood career, over the course of which he did stunt work for many a cowboy star and swashbuckler. For nearly a decade, he was exclusive stunt man/stand-in for Roy Rogers, accepting such occasional outside assignments as Guy Madison's riding double on the 1950s TV Western Wild Bill Hickok (three decades later, Farnsworth would himself impersonate Hickok in the theatrical feature The Legend of the Lone Ranger). Farnsworth's studio years were fairly lucrative; in addition to working with directors ranging from Cecil B. De Mille and Sam Peckinpah, it was not unusual for the stunt man to receive a bigger paycheck than the actors for whom he doubled. In the 1960s, the performer used his considerable clout in his field to co-create the Stuntman's Association, a group which would fight to safeguard the rights and working conditions of the men and women who risked life and limb for Hollywood.As he grew older, Farnsworth thought it wise to cut back on the athletics and to seek out speaking roles. By 1976, he was working as a full-time actor, his weather-beaten countenance and self-assuredness enlivening many an otherwise "flat" scene. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his supporting appearance as Dodger in Comes a Horseman (1978); the star of that film was Jane Fonda, whose father, Henry, had been doubled by Farnsworth in The Tin Star (1957). In 1982, Farnsworth won Canada's Genie Award for his starring role as an elderly, elegant bank robber in The Grey Fox. On two occasions -- the 1984 baseball flick The Natural and the 1992 TV series Boys of Twilight -- the actor co-starred with another venerable stunt man-cum-character actor, Wilford Brimley. Farnsworth continued to craft a career not unlike Brimley's, making small but memorable supporting appearances in many A-list Hollywood productions, including Misery and Havana (both 1990).Farnsworth had been living in semi-retirement on his New Mexico ranch for most of the 1990s when he received a call from director David Lynch to star in The Straight Story, the real-life tale of an elderly widower who drives a tractor from his Iowa home to the Wisconsin bedside of his estranged, gravely ill brother (Harry Dean Stanton). The film received a warm reception, much of which was directed at the septuagenarian's understated, plainspoken performance. Honored with a Golden Globe nomination and an Independent Spirit Award for his work, Farnsworth would also receive a Best Actor nod at the 2000 Academy Awards -- becoming the oldest person to be nominated for the award. Though stricken with terminal bone cancer, Farnsworth continued to make public appearances -- at film festivals, award ceremonies, and even the National Cowboy Symposium -- until the debilitating disease caused him to take his own life at his New Mexico home in October 2000. The actor's namesake, Richard "Diamond" Farnsworth, continued his father's legacy by becoming a Hollywood stunt man.

Trivia: Danish-born actor Kit Guard came to prominence in the mid 1920s as a regular in a trio of 2-reel comedy series: "The Go-Getters," "The Pacemakers" and "Bill Grimm's Progress." Guard appeared in at least 200 feature films, usually cast as sailors, barflies and foreign legionnaires. Usually unbilled, he managed to attain screen credit in the 1931 Ronald Colman vehicle The Unholy Garden and as Dinky in the 1940 Columbia serial The Green Archer. Kit Guard made his last fleeting film appearance in Carrie (1952).

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: Yet another country & western music performer turned B-Western bit player, mustachioed Al Haskell and his accordion joined Johnny Luther, Chuck Baldra, Jack Jones and, to the regret of his fans, a singing Ken Maynard in Honor of the Range (1934), and later performed with Oscar Gahan and Rudy Sooter in Roy Rogers' Frontier Pony Express (1939). As an actor, Haskell would appear in nearly 100 B-Westerns and serials, almost always unbilled and often playing a henchman. His screen career lasted well into the 1950s.

Trivia: Burly 6'2", 200 pound Bob Reeves, a Texan, was a rodeo champion and stunt double at Universal until a prominent role in the action-packed serial The Great Radium Mystery (1919) paved the way for a starring series of 2-reel westerns. A bit bland as an action lead, Reeves nevertheless worked steadily through the 1920s for small Gower Gulch outfits like Cactus Features and Anchor. Reeves vehicles such as Cyclone Bob (1926), Desperate Chances (1926), Fighting Luck (1926) and Iron Fist (1926) had no production values whatsoever, suffered from nondescript direction (often old hacks like J.P. McGowan), and were saddled with amateurish supporting casts. But they almost always offered non-stop action and were usually filmed on locations in real-life California villages. Unfortunately, Hollywood suffered a glut of inexpensive western fare in the mid 1920s, and Reeves was demoted to minor supporting roles by the time talkies came around. He continued in films for another three decades or so, playing scores of henchmen, cops, security guards, or simply a face in the crowd, rarely billed but always a welcome presence in films ranging from The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1939; he played a policeman) to Canadian Mounties vs. Atomic Invaders (1953; as a bartender). Bob Reeves died of a heart attack in his Los Angeles home in 1960.

Trivia: Instantly recognizable to fans of B-Westerns, Oklahoma native Tom Smith often appeared as one of the Boss Villain's unshaven henchmen, skulking about in the background or riding in the posse. Onscreen from 1930, Smith began appearing regularly in Westerns from 1935 but was at his busiest in the late 1930s. More often than not unbilled, and only infrequently awarded speaking parts, Smith left films after the 1949 Jimmy Wakely oater Roaring Westward.

Trivia: A real life horse wrangler from Missouri, burly George Sowards claimed to have entered the film industry as a stunt man/stunt driver as early as 1911. Rarely, if ever, billed in the earliest years, Sowards played a few supporting roles in very inexpensive Westerns of the 1920s: one of the henchmen in Bill Patton's The Battlin' Kid (1921) and heroine Florence Gilbert's wayward brother in Jack Hoxie's Backfire (1922). More often than not merely a face in the crowd, an unnamed "dog heavy," or a stage driver with no dialogue, Sowards appeared in literally hundreds of sound Westerns as well, his screen career lasting well into the 1950s. A brother, Len Sowards (1895-1962), also appeared in Westerns.