Trivia: Arguably the most popular -- and certainly the busiest -- movie leading man in Hollywood history, John Wayne entered the film business while working as a laborer on the Fox lot during summer vacations from U.S.C., which he attended on a football scholarship. He met and was befriended by John Ford, a young director who was beginning to make a name for himself in action films, comedies, and dramas. Wayne was cast in small roles in Ford's late-'20s films, occasionally under the name Duke Morrison. It was Ford who recommended Wayne to director Raoul Walsh for the male lead in the 1930 epic Western The Big Trail, and, although it was a failure at the box office, the movie showed Wayne's potential as a leading man. During the next nine years, be busied himself in a multitude of B-Westerns and serials -- most notably Shadow of the Eagle and The Three Mesquiteers series -- in between occasional bit parts in larger features such as Warner Bros.' Baby Face, starring Barbara Stanwyck. But it was in action roles that Wayne excelled, exuding a warm and imposing manliness onscreen to which both men and women could respond. In 1939, Ford cast Wayne as the Ringo Kid in the adventure Stagecoach, a brilliant Western of modest scale but tremendous power (and incalculable importance to the genre), and the actor finally showed what he could do. Wayne nearly stole a picture filled with Oscar-caliber performances, and his career was made. He starred in most of Ford's subsequent major films, whether Westerns (Fort Apache [1948], She Wore a Yellow Ribbon [1949], Rio Grande [1950], The Searchers [1956]); war pictures (They Were Expendable [1945]); or serious dramas (The Quiet Man [1952], in which Wayne also directed some of the action sequences). He also starred in numerous movies for other directors, including several extremely popular World War II thrillers (Flying Tigers [1942], Back to Bataan [1945], Fighting Seabees [1944], Sands of Iwo Jima [1949]); costume action films (Reap the Wild Wind [1942], Wake of the Red Witch [1949]); and Westerns (Red River [1948]). His box-office popularity rose steadily through the 1940s, and by the beginning of the 1950s he'd also begun producing movies through his company Wayne-Fellowes, later Batjac, in association with his sons Michael and Patrick (who also became an actor). Most of these films were extremely successful, and included such titles as Angel and the Badman (1947), Island in the Sky (1953), The High and the Mighty (1954), and Hondo (1953). The 1958 Western Rio Bravo, directed by Howard Hawks, proved so popular that it was remade by Hawks and Wayne twice, once as El Dorado and later as Rio Lobo. At the end of the 1950s, Wayne began taking on bigger films, most notably The Alamo (1960), which he produced and directed, as well as starred in. It was well received but had to be cut to sustain any box-office success (the film was restored to full length in 1992). During the early '60s, concerned over the growing liberal slant in American politics, Wayne emerged as a spokesman for conservative causes, especially support for America's role in Vietnam, which put him at odds with a new generation of journalists and film critics. Coupled with his advancing age, and a seeming tendency to overact, he became a target for liberals and leftists. However, his movies remained popular. McLintock!, which, despite well-articulated statements against racism and the mistreatment of Native Americans, and in support of environmentalism, seemed to confirm the left's worst fears, but also earned more than ten million dollars and made the list of top-grossing films of 1963-1964. Virtually all of his subsequent movies, including the pro-Vietnam War drama The Green Berets (1968), were very popular with audiences, but not with critics. Further controversy erupted with the release of The Cowboys, which outraged liberals with its seeming justification of violence as a solution to lawlessness, but it was successful enough to generate a short-lived television series. Amid all of the shouting and agonizing over his politics, Wayne won an Oscar for his role as marshal Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, a part that he later reprised in a sequel. Wayne weathered the Vietnam War, but, by then, time had become his enemy. His action films saw him working alongside increasingly younger co-stars, and the decline in popularity of the Western ended up putting him into awkward contemporary action films like McQ (1974). Following his final film, The Shootist (1976) -- possibly his best Western since The Searchers -- the news that Wayne was stricken ill with cancer (which eventually took his life in 1979) wiped the slate clean, and his support for the Panama Canal Treaty at the end of the 1970s belatedly made him a hero for the left. Wayne finished his life honored by the film community, the U.S. Congress, and the American people as had no actor before or since. He remains among the most popular actors of his generation, as evidenced by the continual rereleases of his films on home video.

Trivia: Gray-haired and dignified, Reginald Barlow was a busy presence in Hollywood films of the 1930s. Having toured with a minstrel group from the age of nine, Barlow later served in no less than three wars, including World War I, during which he was made a colonel. Returning to acting in 1916, Barlow appeared in a few silent films, most prominently perhaps the low-budget Love's Flame (1920), for which he billed himself "Colonel Reginald Barlow." Turning to films permanently after the changeover to sound, the now veteran performer usually played men of means, military officers, senators, and bankers -- turning up as a chaplain in Ann Vickers (1933), the Duke of Newcastle in Last of the Mohicans (1936), the sheriff in Tower of London (1939), and the professor ostracizing mad scientist George Zucco in The Mad Monster (1942).

Trivia: Stage actor/director Arthur Hoyt first stepped before the movie cameras in 1916. During the silent era, Hoyt played sizeable roles in such major productions as Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and The Lost World (1925). In sound films, he tended to be typecast as a henpecked husband or downtrodden office worker. One of his mostly fondly remembered talkie performances was as befuddled motel-court manager Zeke in It Happened One Night (1934). Despite advancing age, he was busy in the late 1930s, appearing in as many as 12 pictures per year. In his last active decade, Arthur Hoyt was a member of writer/director Preston Sturges' unofficial stock company, beginning with The Great McGinty (1940) and ending with The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947).

Trivia: Briton Alec B. Francis spent the early part of his professional life as a barrister. He switched to acting in the 1890s, utilizing his delicate features and kindly demeanor to play a variety of middle-aged character parts. Emigrating to the U.S., he made his first films for the Vitagraph Company in 1911. His movie bow was in Vanity Fair, which starred Helen Gardner and John Bunny. Slight of stature, Francis often found himself cast as the hero's avuncular confidante or comic sidekick, as in the recently rediscovered 1915 version of Alias Jimmy Valentine. His most frequent screen persona was as the wise old man (be he pauper or prince) who'd garnered enough life experiences to solve all the problems of the younger leading characters; a typical Francis role was the happy-go-lucky blind gent in The Man Who Had Everything (1921). Francis effortlessly survived the transition to sound, surprising one and all as the mystery murderer in The Bishop Murder Case (1930), then appearing in such roles as Mr. Brownlow in the 1933 version of Oliver Twist and the King of Hearts in that same year's filmization of Alice in Wonderland. Alec B. Francis died after an emergency operation at the age of 65.

Trivia: Long-legged, dark-haired Broadway actress Natalie Kingston entered films at the Mack Sennett studios in 1924, as a potential replacement for Sennett's resident "classy lady" Madeline Hurlock. She almost immediately co-starred with baby-faced Harry Langdon in a series of wistful comedies bearing such titles as Remember When? (1925) and Her First Flame (1927). She went on to play decorative leading lady roles in feature films, and twice appeared as Jane in a brace of late silent/early talkie Tarzan serials. Natalie Kingston closed out her film career in B-pictures in 1933.

Trivia: Gawky, loose-limbed Al St. John performed from childhood with his family in vaudeville and burlesque around his home state of California, perfecting an athletic bicycle act that would stand him in good stead for the remainder of his career. Despite his parents' misgivings about "the flickers," St. John was persuaded to enter films by the success of his uncle, Mack Sennett star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. St. John became a "Keystone Kop" in that famous congregation's very first film, The Bangville Police (1913), supported Charles Chaplin and Marie Dressler in the feature comedy Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), and then followed Arbuckle to Comique, where he and the young Buster Keaton functioned as "second bananas" to the hefty star. On his own, St. John starred in Educational comedies (one, The Iron Mule [1925], directed by his now disgraced uncle under the pseudonym of William Goodrich), all along developing his patented rube personality complete with oversized overalls and porkpie hat.St. John himself later claimed that a deal with the Fox company went sour and that he suddenly found himself more or less blacklisted by the major studios. He did appear in one of Roscoe Arbuckle's comeback shorts, Buzzin' Around (1933), but by the mid-'30s he seemed all washed up. To keep food (and, it was rumored, quite a bit of spirits) on the table, St. John switched gears and began pursuing a career in independently produced B-Westerns. He played a variety of characters, both major and minor, before almost accidentally stumbling over the particular role that would sustain him for the rest of his career and make him perhaps the favorite sidekick among kids -- that of the limber, baggy-pants braggart Fuzzy Q. Jones.Poverty Row company Spectrum had originally intended for Melody of the Plains (1937) to co-star singer Fred Scott with Fuzzy Knight but he proved unavailable and the script was simply never changed. St. John became so popular in the role that, by 1940, he was playing Fuzzy in no less than three Western series simultaneously, PRC's Billy the Kid and Lone Rider programmers and Republic Pictures' Don "Red" Barry vehicles. He remained with the Billy the Kid/Billy Carson Westerns when star Bob Steele was replaced by Larry "Buster" Crabbe and was still Fuzzy Q. Jones in 1947 when Crabbe left in favor of Humphrey Bogart-lookalike Al "Lash" LaRue. In quite a few of these downright poverty-stricken potboilers, St. John provided the only glimmer of entertainment. As LaRue often remarked, "Fuzzy could stumble over a match stick and spend 15 exciting minutes looking for the match." In other words, kids didn't really go to see a Buster Crabbe or Lash LaRue Western, they went to see Fuzzy.Al St. John was unique among B-Western sidekicks in that he actually carried his films rather than the easily disposable leading men. Both Crabbe and LaRue were well aware of that and remained steadfast in their praise for the diminutive performer. When the LaRue era finally ended with a short-lived television series, Lash of the West (1953), St. John returned to the boards and continued making personal appearances until his death from a heart attack.

Trivia: A graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, blonde Evelyn Knapp made her Broadway debut in Channing Pollock's Mr. Moneypenny (1928). With a proven track record of more than 20 Vitaphone short subjects and a series of comedy two-reelers with George LeMaire, she was awarded a contract with Warner Bros. and made an auspicious screen debut opposite Grant Withers in Sinner's Holiday (1930). The secondary team of James Cagney and Joan Blondell ran away with most of the notices but at least one critic thought Knapp gave a "credible performance" as a naive girl caught between rum runners and a young carnival barker.In typical Warner fashion, Knapp was hurried from one project to another with very little thought to the appropriateness of the vehicles. From a muscular Northwest adventure with Charles Bickford, River's End (1931), she was rushed into playing George Arliss' refined daughter in The Millionaire (1931) with barely a chance to shift gears. In all her films, Knapp was pleasant and unobtrusive and in 1932, motion picture advertisers voted her a WAMPAS Baby Star. Being inconspicuous, however, was not exactly a star-making trait and Warners dropped her option, despite a starring role opposite John Wayne in the 1933 . Freelancing, she reportedly beat 50 actresses for the title role in Universal's remake of The Perils of Pauline (1934) and although Knapp was hardly in a league with the original Pauline, silent serial queen Pearl White, the chapterplay has proven the production for which she is best remembered. It was downhill from there, alas, and Knapp spent her remaining years in films in low-budget fare.