Trail Guide

Tim Holt (Actor) .. Tim Holt

Born: February 05, 1919
Died: February 15, 1973

Trivia: The son of actor Jack Holt and brother of actors David and Jennifer Holt, Tim Holt, born Charles John Holt III, debuted onscreen at age ten (playing his father's character as a child) in The Vanishing Pioneer (1928). He went on to play earnest teenagers in the mid-to-late '30s, moving into roles as boyish Western heroes in many B-movies; from 1941-43 and 1948-52 he was a top ten box office star, and at one point was very popular among teenage girls. He occasionally got higher quality roles, and will probably be best remembered as the arrogant aristocrat George Amberson in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and as Curtin, Humphrey Bogart's conscientious partner, in John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). During World War II, he was an oft-decorated B-29 bomber in the Pacific arena. He was rarely onscreen after 1952, and he retired from acting in the mid-50s to go into business; later he did occasional radio and TV work. He died of cancer in 1973.

Linda Douglas (Actor) .. Peg Masters

Trivia: According to RKO publicity, the studio expected much from blonde Linda Douglas, a model from Oregon, and she made an interesting screen debut as the lady marshal in Tim Holt's Target (1952). Alas, her only other film was yet another Holt Western that same year, Trail Guide, in which she essayed the standard ingénue role.

Frank Wilcox (Actor) .. Regan

Born: March 13, 1907
Died: March 03, 1974

Trivia: American actor Frank Wilcox had intended to follow his father's footsteps in the medical profession, but financial and personal circumstances dictated a redirection of goals. He joined the Resident Theater in Kansas City in the late '20s, spending several seasons in leading man roles. In 1934, Wilcox visited his father in California, and there he became involved with further stage work, first with his own acting troupe and then with the Pasadena Playhouse. Shortly afterward, Wilcox was signed to a contract at Warner Bros., where he spent the next few years in a wide range of character parts, often cast as crooked bankers, shifty attorneys, and that old standy, the Fellow Who Doesn't Get the Girl. Historian Leslie Haliwell has suggested that Wilcox often played multiple roles in these Warners films, though existing records don't bear this out. Frank Wilcox was still working into the 1960s; his most popular latter-day role was as Mr. Brewster, the charming banker who woos and wins Cousin Pearl Bodine (Bea Benaderet) during the inaugural 1962-1963 season of TV's The Beverly Hillbillies.

Robert Sherwood (Actor) .. Kenny

John Pickard (Actor) .. Dawson

Born: June 25, 1913

Kenneth MacDonald (Actor) .. Wheeler

Born: January 01, 1901
Died: May 05, 1972

Trivia: A stage actor since the 1920s, Kenneth MacDonald found the going rough in Hollywood until he published and distributed a pamphlet titled "The Case of Kenneth MacDonald." This little self-promotional book brought him to the attention of studio executives, and throughout the 1930s MacDonald could be seen as a mustachioed, mellifluous-voiced villain in scores of westerns and melodramas. His work in the Charles Starrett westerns at Columbia led to a lengthy association with that studio. From 1940 through 1954, MacDonald played featured roles in such Columbia productions as Island of Doomed Men (1940), Power of the Whistler (1945) and The Caine Mutiny (1954); he was also prominently cast in the studio's short subjects, especially in the comedies of the Three Stooges and Hugh Herbert, his most familiar role being that of a society criminal or shyster lawyer. During the 1960s, Kenneth MacDonald was a semi-regular on the Perry Mason TV series, playing a solemn judge.

Wendy Waldron (Actor) .. Mary

Patricia Wright (Actor) .. Katie

Born: July 15, 1921

Tom London (Actor) .. Old Timer

Born: August 24, 1889

John Merton (Actor) .. Dale

Born: February 18, 1901
Died: September 19, 1959

Trivia: Born John Myrtland LaVarre, John Merton has appeared on Broadway as "Myrtland LaVarre" in the Theatre Guild's hit production of Karel Capek's R.U.R. (1922). More theater work followed and he was spotted in the background of several silent films, including as a fireman in W.C. Fields' It's the Old Army Game (1926). But the handsome, slightly frosty-looking actor found his rightful place in B-Westerns and serials. He would appear in a total of 170 films, turning up as an assortment of blackguards. Usually a bit more sophisticated than the average "dog heavy," Merton could nevertheless rough it with the best of 'em, a talent he passed on to his equally tough-looking son, Lane Bradford. Father and son appeared in six films together, including 1947's Jack Armstrong. (Another son played supporting roles on television in the '50s under the moniker of Robert La Varre.) Retiring after a bit in Cecil B. DeMille's gigantic The Ten Commandments (1956), Merton died of a heart attack at the age of 58.

Richard Martin (Actor) .. Chito Rafferty

Born: December 12, 1917
Died: September 04, 1994

Trivia: Though he rose to movie fame as Chito Jose Gonzalez Bustamente Rafferty, the heavily accented Irish-Mexican saddle-pal of RKO western star Tim Holt, actor Richard Martin was neither Irish nor Mexican. Born in Washington State, Martin grew up in a predominantly Mexican neighborhood in West Hollywood where he became adept at imitating the Latino speech patterns of his playmates. Signed to an RKO contract in 1943, he created the Chito Rafferty character in the big-budget war picture Bombardier. He went on to comical-sidekick assignments opposite such cowboy heroes as James Warren and Robert Mitchum, then was dropped by RKO in 1945 when the studio temporarily disbanded its "B"-western unit. Martin briefly ran a Hollywood restaurant before returning to films as the all-American leading man of the Universal serial The Mysterious Mr. M (1946). He came back to RKO in 1947, reviving Chito Rafferty in the studio's Tim Holt western series, which lasted until 1952. Typecast in Hispanic roles, Richard Martin had trouble finding work after the cessation of the Holt series, so he bade adios to Hollywood and became a successful insurance salesman.

Mauritz Hugo (Actor)

Born: January 12, 1909
Died: June 16, 1974

Trivia: A narrow-faced supporting actor from Sweden, dark-haired Mauritz Hugo (born Mauritz Hugo Ekelöv) was especially effective in action serials of the 1940s and 1950s, and was perhaps at his very best as Barnett, the villainous saloon-keeper in one of Republic's final chapterplays, The Man with the Steel Whip (1954). The son of a pioneer movie theater proprietor, the adventurous Hugo emigrated to the United States at the tender age of 15. After a stint as a salesman, Hugo became a stock company player and may have been in Hollywood films as early as 1938. He was firmly established as a competent supporting actor by 1943 and, having dropped any trace of an accent along the way, was never cast as a "foreigner." Often appearing in Westerns, Hugo was equally proficient in serials, of which he did at least seven. One of the first actors to embrace television, the dapper actor played an important guest-star role in a dual episode of Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe and also appeared on such programs as The Cisco Kid, Sky King, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Bewitched, and Family Affair. He retired around 1970 and died at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

John M. Pickard (Actor) .. Dawson

Born: June 25, 1913
Died: August 04, 1993

Trivia: A graduate of the Nashville Conservatory and the model for U.S. Navy recruiting posters, John Pickard entered films in 1946 following a four-year stint in the navy. Pickard played supporting roles in scores of Westerns and action dramas before reaching stardom as Captain Shank of the U. S. Cavalry on the NBC television Western series Boots and Saddles. Filmed entirely on location at Kanab, UT, the series enjoyed a two-season run (1957-1958) and also featured Gardner McKay as Lieutenant Kelly. Pickard earned a second stab at small-screen stardom in Gunslinger (1961) and played supporting roles in nearly every other popular television drama, from Gunsmoke to Simon and Simon. He was tragically killed by a rampant bull while vacationing on a family farm in his home state of Tennessee.

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