Trivia: Marlon Brando was quite simply one of the most celebrated and influential screen and stage actors of the postwar era; he rewrote the rules of performing, and nothing was ever the same again. Brooding, lusty, and intense, his greatest contribution was popularizing Method acting, a highly interpretive performance style which brought unforeseen dimensions of power and depth to the craft; in comparison, most other screen icons appeared shallow, even a little silly. A combative and often contradictory man, Brando refused to play by the rules of the Hollywood game, openly expressing his loathing for the film industry and for the very nature of celebrity, yet often exploiting his fame to bring attention to political causes and later accepting any role offered him as long as the price was right. He is one of the screen's greatest enigmas, and there will never be another quite like him. Born April 3, 1924, in Omaha, NE, Brando's rebellious streak manifested itself early, resulting in his expulsion from military school. His first career was as a ditch digger, but his father ultimately grew so frustrated with his son's seeming lack of ambition that he offered to finance whatever more meaningful path the young man chose to pursue. Brando opted to become an actor -- his mother operated a local theatrical group -- and he soon relocated to New York City to study the Stanislavsky method under Stella Adler. He later worked at the Actors' Studio under the tutelage of Lee Strasberg, and his dedication to the principles of Method acting was to become absolute. After making his professional debut in 1943's Bobino, Brando bowed on Broadway a year later in I Remember Mama; for 1946's Truckline Cafe, the critics voted him Broadway's Most Promising Actor.Brando's groundbreaking star turn in the 1947 production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire delivered on all of that promise and much, much more; as the inarticulate brute Stanley Kowalski, Brando stunned audiences with a performance of remarkable honesty, sexuality, and intensity, and overnight he became the rage of Broadway. Hollywood quickly came calling, but he resisted the studios' overtures with characteristic contempt -- he was a new breed of star, an anti-star, really, and he refused to play ball, dismissing influential critics and making no concessions toward glamour or decorum. It all only served to make Hollywood want him more, of course, and in 1950 Brando agreed to star in the independent Stanley Kramer production The Men as a paraplegic war victim; in typical Method fashion, he spent a month in an actual veteran's hospital in preparation for the role.While The Men was not a commercial hit, critics tripped over themselves in their attempts to praise Brando's performance, and in 1951 it was announced that he and director Elia Kazan were set to reprise their earlier work for a screen adaptation of Streetcar. The results were hugely successful, the picture winning an Academy Award for Best Film; Brando earned his first Best Actor nomination, but lost despite Oscars for his co-stars, Vivien Leigh, Karl Malden, and Kim Hunter. Again with Kazan, he next starred in the title role of 1952's Viva Zapata! After walking out of the French production Le Rouge et le Noir over a dispute with director Claude Autant-Lara, Brando portrayed Mark Antony in the 1953 MGM production of Julius Caesar, sparking considerable controversy over his idiosyncratic approach to the Bard and earning a third consecutive Oscar bid. In 1954, The Wild One was another curve ball, casting Brando as the rebellious leader of a motorcycle gang and forever establishing him as a poster boy for attitude, angst, and anomie. That same year, he delivered perhaps his definitive screen performance as a washed-up boxer in Kazan's visceral On the Waterfront. On his fourth attempt, Brando finally won an Academy Award, and the film itself also garnered Best Picture honors. However, his next picture, Desiree, was his first disappointment. Despite gaining much publicity for his portrayal of Napoleon, the project made a subpar showing both artistically and financially. Brando continued to prove his versatility by co-starring with Frank Sinatra in a film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Guys and Dolls. Another Broadway-to-screen adaptation, The Teahouse of the August Moon, followed in 1956 before he began work on the following year's Sayonara, for which he garnered yet another Oscar nomination.In 1958's The Young Lions, Brando co-starred for the first and only time with Montgomery Clift, another great actor of his generation; it was a hit, but his next project, 1960's The Fugitive Kind, was a financial disaster. He then announced plans to mount his own independent production. After both Stanley Kubrick and Sam Peckinpah both walked off the project, Brando himself grabbed the directorial reins. The result, the idiosyncratic 1961 Western One-Eyed Jacks, performed respectably at the box office, but was such a costly proposition that it could hardly be expected ever to earn a profit. In 1962, Mutiny on the Bounty underwent a similarly troubled birthing process; Brando rejected numerous screenplay revisions, and MGM spent a record 19 million dollars to bring the picture to the screen. When it too failed, his diminishing box-office stature, combined with his increasingly temperamental behavior, made him a target of scorn for the first time in his career. The downward spiral continued: Brando himself remained compulsively watchable, but suddenly the material itself, like 1963's The Ugly American, 1966's The Chase, and 1967's A Countess From Hong Kong, was self-indulgent and far beneath his abilities. His mysterious career choices, as well as his often inscrutable personal and professional behavior -- he was quoted as declaring acting a "neurotic, unimportant job" -- became the topic of much discussion throughout the industry. He continued to push himself in risky projects like 1967's Reflections in a Golden Eye, an adaptation of a Carson McCullers novel in which he portrayed a closeted homosexual, but the end result lacked the old magic. While Brando still commanded respect from the media and his fellow performers, much of Hollywood began to perceive him as a bad and unnecessary risk, a perception which features like 1968's Candy, 1969's Queimada!, and 1971's The Nightcomers did little to alter. The Brando renaissance began with 1972's The Godfather; against the objections of Paramount, director Francis Ford Coppola cast him to play the aging head of a Mafia crime family, and according to most reports, his on-set behavior was impeccable. Onscreen, Brando was brilliant, delivering his best performance in well over a decade. He won his second Academy Award, but became the subject of much controversy when he refused the honor, instead sending one Sacheen Littlefeather -- supposedly a Native American spokeswoman, but later revealed to be a Hispanic actress -- to the Oscar telecast podium to deliver a speech attacking the U.S. government's history of crimes against the native population. Controversy continued to dog Brando upon the release of 1973's Last Tango in Paris, Bernardo Bertolucci's masterful examination of a sexual liaison between an American widower and a young Frenchwoman; though critically acclaimed, the picture was denounced as obscene in many quarters.Despite his resurrection, Brando did not reappear onscreen for three years, finally resurfacing in The Missouri Breaks opposite Jack Nicholson. Although he had by now long maintained that he continued to act only for the money, the eccentricity of his career choices allowed many fans to shrug off such assertions; however, never before had Brando appeared in so blatantly commercial a project as 1978's Superman, earning an unprecedented 3.7 million dollars for what essentially amounted to a cameo performance. His next appearance, in Coppola's 1979 Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now, was largely incoherent, while for 1980's The Formula, he appeared in only three scenes. And for a decade, that was it: Brando vanished, living in self-imposed exile on his island in the Pacific, growing obese, and refusing the few overtures producers made for him to come back to Hollywood. Only in 1989 did a project appeal to Brando's deep political convictions, and he co-starred in the anti-Apartheid drama A Dry White Season, earning an Academy Award nomination for his supporting role as an attorney. A year later, he headlined The Freshman, gracefully parodying his Godfather performance. Tragedy struck in 1990 when his son, Christian, killed the lover of Brando's pregnant daughter, Cheyenne; a long legal battle ensued, and Christian was found guilty of murder and imprisoned. Even more tragically, Cheyenne later committed suicide. The trial placed a severe strain on Brando's finances, and he reluctantly returned to performing, appearing in the atrocious Christopher Columbus: The Discovery in 1992. He also wrote an autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me. Don Juan DeMarco, co-starring Johnny Depp, followed in 1995, and after 1996's The Island of Dr. Moreau, Brando starred in Depp's directorial debut The Brave. In 1998, he appeared in Yves Simoneau's Free Money, headlining a cast that included Donald Sutherland, Mira Sorvino, Martin Sheen, and Charlie Sheen.Again absent from the public eye for a spell, Brando made news again in 2001 as health problems forced him out of a cameo role in director Keenan Ivory Wayans' horror spoof sequel Scary Movie 2 (he was replaced on short notice by actor James Woods). Brando made his first film appearance in three years with a considerably more prestigous role in director Frank Oz's one-last-heist thriller The Score (2001). Though the film's production was plagued with the by-then de rigeur rumors of Brando's curious on-set tirades and bizarre behavior, filmgoers remained eager to see the actor re-teamed with former Godfather cohort Robert DeNiro, with Edward Norton and Angela Bassett rounding out the cast. Later that year, director Francis Ford Coppola added to Brando's legend by lengthening his infamously slurred speeches for the director's recut Apocalypse Now Redux.Absent from the screen for the next three years, Brando passed away suddenly in 2004 of pulmonary fibrosis. While The Score was his last onscreen performance, shortly before his death he recorded voice parts for an animated film called Big Bug Man and a Godfather videogame. Marking an increasingly popular trend, the visage of Brando was even resurrected for a "new" performance in director Bryan Singer's big-budget Superman Returns in the summer of 2006. Culled from old outtakes from the first two films, the digitally manipulated clips added to the film's passing-of-the-torch feel.

Trivia: Whether he was called "The Voice," "Ol' Blue Eyes," or "The Chairman of the Board," Frank Sinatra's nicknames all conveyed the adulation and respect reserved for a man who was commonly thought of as the best American popular singer of the 20th century. Sinatra's voice, whether manifested in song or spoken word, caressed the ears of many a listener for more than five decades. Sinatra's legacy -- countless songs and more than 70 films -- continue to ensure him the kind of popularity that has reached beyond the grave to elevate him past the status of mere icon to that of cultural institution.Born Francis Albert Sinatra on December 12, 1915, Sinatra grew up poor in Hoboken, NJ. After working for a newspaper, he organized the Hoboken Four, a singing group. He got his first break when he won first prize on radio's "Major Bowes Amateur Hour," and went on to perform in nightclubs and on radio. Sinatra then landed the job of vocalist with the Harry James band, and later switched to Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. It was during his tenure with Dorsey's group that Sinatra made his first two films in uncredited roles as a singer in the bands in Las Vegas Nights (1941) and Ship Ahoy (1942). In 1942, Sinatra's attempt to become a solo artist met with great success, especially in the hearts, minds, and ears of many American women and girls, who flocked to his performances with a fervor that would be replicated two decades later with the arrival of the Beatles. Soon, Sinatra was the "dream-date" idol of millions of American girls and, for several years, was enormously popular on-stage in addition to other venues, including radio, records, and nightclubs. To complement his popularity as a singer, Sinatra began acting, playing in a number of light musical films throughout the '40s. His first real acting role came in Higher and Higher (1943); other notable movies from this period in his career included Take Me out to the Ballgame (1949), co-starring Gene Kelly and Esther Williams, and On the Town, also made in 1949 and co-starring Kelly, who co-directed the picture with Stanley Donen. Sinatra suffered a career setback in 1952 when his vocal cords hemorrhaged and he was dropped by MCA, the monolithic talent agency. Having established a shaky screen career, he fought back and landed the role of Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity (1953) after begging Columbia for the part and then agreeing to take it for a mere 8,000 dollars. His performance won him the 1954 Best Supporting Actor Oscar and a Golden Globe, and, in the process, resuscitated his faltering career. Sinatra appeared in several more movies in the '50s, receiving a 1956 Best Actor Oscar nomination and a British Academy Award (BAFTA) for his portrayal of a drug addict in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955). In addition, he took home a Golden Globe for his performance in Pal Joey (1957). Soon Sinatra was back on top as a performer, earning the nickname "The Chairman of the Board." Sinatra continued to do frequent film work, making a screen appearance with his Rat Pack colleagues Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop in Ocean's Eleven (1960). Most notably, Sinatra gave a subtle, troubled portrayal of the haunted Captain Bennett Marco in John Frankenheimer's Cold War classic The Manchurian Candidate. His last role was as an aging detective in The First Deadly Sin (1980). Sinatra also appeared on various television shows during the '80s and went on to have hit records as late as the early '90s. His four wives included actresses Ava Gardner and Mia Farrow, and he fathered actor/singers Frank Sinatra Jr. and Nancy Sinatra, as well as another daughter, Tina. Sinatra died of a heart attack on May 14, 1998, in Los Angeles. He is buried in Palm Springs, CA.

Trivia: A luminous beauty, Jean Simmons was a star in her native Britain and in the U.S. who first appeared onscreen at age 14 in Give Us the Moon (1944), but did not become a true star until she played Estella in David Lean's Great Expectations (1946). In 1948, she was handpicked by Laurence Olivier to play the doomed Ophelia in his classic version of Hamlet and won a Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival and an Academy Award nomination for her efforts. Simmons traveled to Hollywood in 1950 after marrying Stewart Granger. Their marriage lasted a decade and Simmons then became Mrs. Richard Brooks in 1960, the year he starred her in Elmer Gantry. During the '50s and '60s, Simmons had an extremely busy film career appearing in everything from costume epics to romances to musicals to straight dramas. Simmons received an Oscar nomination in 1969 for The Happy Ending. By the mid-'70s, Simmons started working less frequently and divided her time between features and television work. In the late '80s, she had a burst of character roles, but thereafter, her forays into acting became increasingly sporadic. She died at age 80 in January 2010.

Trivia: Band singer Vivian Blaine was signed by 20th Century-Fox in 1942 as yet another of that studio's potential Betty Grable replacements. Vivian was given a major boost when assigned the female lead in the Laurel and Hardy comedy Jitterbugs (1943), which showcased her talents in three well-mounted production numbers. She went on to bigger and better screen assignments in such lavish Fox musicals as Something for the Boys (1944), State Fair (1945) and Three Little Girls in Blue (1947). She left Fox in 1947 to pursue a nightclub career, which turned into a nightmarish experience when she was booed off the stage by fanatical fans of her opening act, Martin and Lewis. Vivian survived this setback by creating the role of Miss Adelaide in the blockbuster 1950 Broadway musical Guys and Dolls, repeating this triumph in the London production and the 1955 film version. In 1951, Vivian co-starred with Pinky Lee on the popular musical comedy TV series Those Two. Active in film character roles into the 1980s, Vivian Blaine also played a recurring part on the satirical TV soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976-77).

Trivia: Rotund musical comedy actor Stubby Kaye was a 1939 winner on Major Bowes' Amateur Hour radio program. He spent much of World War II touring USO bases, developing an ingratiating comic style that has dimmed but little with the passage of time. Earlier efforts by movie historians to determine Mr. Kaye's real name have been fruitless, but it should be noted that someone named "Stubby Kruger" appeared as comedy relief in several PRC films of the early 1940s. Kayes' popularity soared when he created the role of Nicely-Nicely Johnson in the 1950 Broadway hit Guys and Dolls, a part that he re-created with equal success in the 1955 film version. Another Broadway-to-Hollywood triumph for Kaye was the part of Marryin' Sam in the musical version of Li'l Abner. In 1965, Kaye hosted a Saturday morning TV kiddie series titled Shenanigans, commuting on a weekly basis between the U.S. and London, where he was simultaneously hosting a similar children's TV program. Stubby Kaye's last screen appearance was as the ill-fated funster Marvin Acme in 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He made his final television appearance that same year in the telepic The Big Knife.

Trivia: Taking up dramatics while attending the University of Pittsburgh, Regis Toomey extended this interest into a profitable career as a stock and Broadway actor. He specialized in singing roles until falling victim to acute laryngitis while touring England in George M. Cohan's Little Nellie Kelly. In 1929, Toomey made his talking-picture bow in Alibi, where his long, drawn-out climactic death scene attracted both praise and damnation; he'd later claim that, thanks to the maudlin nature of this scene, producers were careful to kill him off in the first or second reel in his subsequent films. Only moderately successful as a leading man, Toomey was far busier once he removed his toupee and became a character actor. A lifelong pal of actor Dick Powell, Regis Toomey was cast in prominent recurring roles in such Powell-created TV series of the 1950s and 1960s as Richard Diamond, Dante's Inferno, and Burke's Law.

Trivia: Versatile American entertainer Johnny Silver has played character roles on stage, screen, television, and radio. He also performed in nightclubs, vaudeville, and even grand opera. His daughter, Stephanie Silver, became an actress. His other daughter, Jennifer, became a singer/songwriter.

Trivia: The archetypal side-of-the-mouth Runyonesque gangster, Sheldon Leonard's actual mean-streets experience was confined to travelling with a fairly benign teenaged gang in a New York suburb. In fact, if we are to believe his future business partner Danny Thomas, Leonard never met a bonafide gangster until Thomas introduced him to one in the mid-1950s! A graduate of Syracuse University, Leonard began his acting career on radio and the stage, appearing in such Broadway productions as Kiss the Boys Goodbye and Having Wonderful Time. Starting with 1939's Another Thin Man, Leonard made a good living as a movie mob boss, henchman, and all-around tough guy. He played a rare leading role (and a romantic lead, to boot) in PRC's Why Girls Leave Home (1944). Leonard was also a regular on radio's Jack Benny Program, playing a laconic racetrack tout. During the 1950s and 1960s, Leonard became a successful television producer, overseeing such sitcoms as The Danny Thomas Show, The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show and Gomer Pyle USMC. He also spearheaded I Spy, the first TV action series with an African American star (Bill Cosby). His television activities extended to the domain of Saturday morning cartoons, as the voice of animated character Linus the Lionhearted. Sheldon Leonard continued producing into the mid-1970s, renaming his production company Deezdemandoze, in honor of his patented gangster patois. Leonard passed away in his home at age 89.

Trivia: Broadway actress Kathryn Givney first came to Hollywood in 1930 to repeat her stage role as "golf widow" Mrs. Bascomb in the film version of the hit musical Follow Through. She then returned to the stage, reemerging before the cameras as a character actress in 1948. Usually cast as imperious dowagers, she is best remembered for such characterizations as the haughty Mrs. Rhinelander in My Friend Irma and Salvation Army general Matilda B. Cartwright in Guys and Dolls. Kathryn Givney was also a familiar presence on television; one of her best TV assignments was as a reclusive old woman who "kidnaps" housewife Donna Stone on a mid-'60s installment of The Donna Reed Show.

Trivia: Yes, that was her real name. Born in Massachussetts, Veda Ann Borg established herself as a model in New York in the early 1930s. Though she'd never had any previous acting experience, Veda was given a secret screen test by Paramount in 1936 and signed on the spot. After a few years of nondescript roles, Veda was nearly killed in a serious automobile accident in 1939. Her face completely reconstructed by plastic surgery, Veda emerged from the bandages with a harder, more distinctive countenance than before--one that proved ideal for the many brassy chorus girls, gun molls and "kept women" that she would portray over the next twenty years. Usually laboring away in B pictures, Veda began picking up some impressive "A" credits in the 1950s, notably as Vivian Blaine's showgirl pal in the mammoth musical Guys and Dolls (1955). Her last appearance was as an bedraggled Indian woman in the John Wayne-directed The Alamo (1960). For eleven years, Veda Ann Borg was the wife of director Andrew V. McLaglen.

Trivia: Probably no one came by the label "Runyon-esque" more honestly than Polish-born actor George E. Stone; a close friend of writer Damon Runyon, Stone was seemingly put on this earth to play characters named Society Max and Toothpick Charlie, and to mouth such colloquialisms as "It is known far and wide" and "More than somewhat." Starting his career as a Broadway "hoofer," the diminutive Stone made his film bow as "the Sewer Rat" in the 1927 silent Seventh Heaven. His most prolific film years were 1929 to 1936, during which period he showed up in dozens of Warner Bros. "urban" films and backstage musicals, and also appeared as the doomed Earle Williams in the 1931 version of The Front Page. He was so closely associated with gangster parts by 1936 that Warners felt obligated to commission a magazine article showing Stone being transformed, via makeup, into an un-gangsterish Spaniard for Anthony Adverse (1936). For producer Hal Roach, Stone played three of his oddest film roles: a self-pitying serial killer in The Housekeeper's Daughter (1938), an amorous Indian brave in Road Show (1940), and Japanese envoy Suki Yaki in The Devil With Hitler (1942). Stone's most popular role of the 1940s was as "the Runt" in Columbia's Boston Blackie series. In the late '40s, Stone was forced to severely curtail his acting assignments due to failing eyesight. Though he was totally blind by the mid-'50s, Stone's show business friends, aware of the actor's precarious financial state, saw to it that he got TV and film work, even if it meant that his co-stars had to literally lead him by the hand around the set. No one was kinder to George E. Stone than the cast and crew of the Perry Mason TV series, in which Stone was given prominent billing as the Court Clerk, a part that required nothing more of him than sitting silently at a desk and occasionally holding a Bible before a witness.

Trivia: A former boxer, John Indrisano entered films via the sponsorship of several Hollywood sports fans, notably Mae West, who cast Indrisano in a small role in Every Day's a Holiday (1937). Sometimes typecast as a pugilist, Indrisano was more often seen as a trainer or referee. Non-boxing fans can spot him in such "civilian" roles as the chauffeur in Murder My Sweet (1944), one of his many film noir appearances. He also served as a technical advisor for the prizefight scenes in such films as The Kid From Brooklyn (1946) The Set Up (1949) and Carmen Jones (1954). John Indrisano was 62 years old when he hung himself in his San Fernando Valley home.

Trivia: American actor Harry Tyler wasn't really as old as the hills when he started his film career in 1929; in fact, he was barely 40. Still, Tyler's wizened, gimlet-eyed face was his fortune, and he spent most of his movie years playing variations of the Spry Old Timer. Tyler began his stage career as a boy soprano in 1901, under the aegis of producer Flo Ziegfeld and Ziegfeld's wife Anna Held. He married Gladys Crolius in 1910, and for the next twelve years they toured vaudeville in a precursor to Burns and Allen's smart guy/dumb dora act. Returning to the legitimate stage in 1925, Tyler journeyed to Hollywood when talking pictures took hold four years later. His inaugural screen appearance was a recreation of his stage role in The Shannons on Broadway. Harry Tyler played bits and featured roles as janitors, sign painters, philandering businessmen, frontier farmers and accident victims from 1929 until his farewell appearance in John Ford's The Last Hurrah (1958).

Trivia: Though he claimed to be a born-and-bred Californian, Julian Rivero was actually born in Texas. Rivero started out as a Shakespearean actor under the tutelage of Robert B. Mantell. He made his film debut in the New York-filmed The Bright Shawl (1923), then relocated in Hollywood, where he remained active until 1973. Most often cast in Westerns, he played opposite such horse-opera heroes as Buck Jones, Hoot Gibson, and Harry Carey. His parts ranged from such bits as the barber in John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1947) to the major role of ruthless Mexican General Santa Anna (which he played sympathetically) in Heroes of the Alamo (1937). The addition of a well-groomed, snow-white beard enabled Rivero to play dozens of aristocratic Latin American patriarchs in the 1950s and 1960s. Julian Rivero was the husband of former Mack Sennett bathing beauty Isabelle Thomas.

Trivia: In his autobiography The Moon's a Balloon, David Niven recalled the kindnesses extended to him by Hollywood's dress extras during Niven's formative acting years. Singled out for special praise was a dignified, frequently bearded gentleman, deferentially referred to as "The Major" by his fellow extras. This worthy could be nobody other than the prolific Major Sam Harris, who worked in films from the dawn of the talkie era until 1964. Almost never afforded billing or even dialogue (a rare exception was his third-billed role in the 1937 John Wayne adventure I Cover the War), Harris was nonetheless instantly recognizable whenever he appeared. His output included several of John Ford's efforts of the 1940s and 1950s. Drawing upon his extensive military experience, Major Sam Harris showed up in most of the "British India" pictures of the 1930s, and served as technical advisor for Warners' Charge of the Light Brigade (1935).

Trivia: A stage actor from 1938, American-born Frank Richards made his earliest recorded-film appearance in 1940. Generally cast as stubble-chinned heavies and slick gangsters, he also served as an "art director" for the 1946 Western Rustler's Roundup. More notable among his 200 or so on-camera television credits was his bad-guy role on the 1951 Superman episode "A Night of Terror." Richards' last film was John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence in 1974. He died in 1992.

Trivia: Versatile American character actor Kay Kuter has worked steadily on stage, radio, screen and especially television. He is the son of distinguished art director Leo Kuter.

Trivia: Actor Earle Hodgins has been characterized by more than one western-film historian as a grizzled, bucolic Bob Hope type. Usually cast as snake-oil salesmen, Hodgins would brighten up his "B"-western scenes with a snappy stream of patter, leavened by magnificently unfunny wisecracks ("This remedy will give ya a complexion like a peach, fuzz 'n' all..."). When the low-budget western market died in the 1950s, Hodgins continued unabated on such TV series as The Roy Rogers Show and Annie Oakley. He also made appearances in such "A" films as East of Eden (55), typically cast as carnival hucksters and rural sharpsters. In 1961, Earle Hodgins was cast in the recurring role of wizened handyman Lonesome on the TV sitcom Guestward Ho!

Trivia: A rugged and trustworthy Western hero from Boston, silent screen cowboy Franklyn Farnum's appeal was closer to William S. Hart than Tom Mix. Farnum's road to screen stardom began in vaudeville and musical comedy. While he was not related to stage and screen stars William Farnum and Dustin Farnum, two legendary brothers who also hailed from Boston, he never really dissuaded the name association, and while he never achieved the same success as the other Farnums, it was not for lack of trying. Onscreen from around 1914, Franklyn Farnum was usually found in inexpensive Westerns and reached a plateau as the star of the 1920 serial The Vanishing Trails and a series of oaters produced independently by "Colonel" William N. Selig, formerly of the company that bore his name. In 1918, Farnum received quite a bit of press for marrying screen star Alma Rubens, but the union proved extremely short-lived. As busy in the 1920s as in the previous decade, Farnum made the changeover to sound smoothly enough, but he was growing older and leading roles were no longer an option. He maintained his usual hectic schedule throughout the following three decades, more often than not playing villains and doing bit parts, working well into the television Western era. For many years, Farnum was the president of the Screen Extras Guild. In 1961, Franklyn Farnum died of cancer at the Motion Picture Country Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Trivia: American actress Lynn Bernay began her career as a dancer during the early 1950s. She later began acting on stage and in "B" movies. During the mid 1970s, Bernay began working as a wardrobe mistress.