Trivia: Rugged Canadian-born leading man Rod Cameron entered films as a stunt man and stand-in, doubling for such actors as Fred MacMurray and Buck Jones. His earliest speaking part, in 1939's The Old Maid, ending up on the cutting room floor; within one year, however, he was a busy Paramount contract player, his roles increasing in size with each passing year. After wrapping up his Paramount responsibilities in 1942, Cameron was starred in the Republic serial Secret Service in Darkest Africa (1943). He spent the rest of the 1940s as a western leading man at both Republic and Universal. In 1953, Cameron and producer Richard Irving collaborated on the first of three syndicated television series, City Detective. The 65-episode series was sold to 117 markets, a record at the time, and made more money for Cameron than any of his movie endeavors. The second Cameron/Irving TV project, 1956's State Trooper, was even more successful, clocking in at 104 episodes. Cameron's third syndicated series, Coronado 9, was released in January of 1960. Rod Cameron's last professional years were spent in such potboilers as Evel Knievel (1971), Psychic Killer (1975) and Love and the Midnight Auto Supply (1978).

Trivia: A former drama student at Missouri's Stephens College, redheaded leading lady Anne Gwynne was signed to a Universal Pictures contract in 1939. Pretty and vivacious, Gwynne was a welcome presence in Universal's "B" product, appearing in many of the studio's horror films (The Black Cat, The Strange Case of Dr. Rx, Weird Woman, House of Frankenstein et. al.). She also played the villainous Sonja in the 1940 serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe and appeared with Abbott and Costello in Ride 'Em Cowboy (1941). Free-lancing after Universal cut her loose in 1945, Gwynne played Tess Trueheart in RKO's Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (1947). She left films briefly in the mid-1950s, making an undistinguished comeback in Teenage Monster (1958), as the mother of the title character. Gwynne was coaxed out retirement once more in 1970 for Adam at 6 AM, playing the wife of another veteran of Hollywood's "B" mills, Richard Derr. Anne Gwynne is the mother of actress Gwynne Gilford.

Trivia: While the name and face may not be familiar, the voice of Reed Hadley will be instantly recognizable to filmgoers of the 1940s. Working as an actor by night and floorwalker by day, the tall, spare Hadley began picking up radio gigs in the 1930s. His best-known airwaves assignment was the voice of western hero Red Ryder. In films from 1938, Hadley spent his first few years before the camera bouncing around between heroes and heavies; he starred in the 1939 serial Zorro's Fighting Legion, and was seen briefly as a burlesqued Hollywood matinee idol in W.C. Fields' The Bank Dick (1940). Signed by 20th Century-Fox in 1943, Hadley appeared onscreen and served as the offscreen narrator of such "docudramas" as House on 92nd Street (1945), Call Northside 777 (1947) and Boomerang (1947). From 1950 through 1953, Hadley starred as Captain Braddock, the unctuous, chain-smoking star/narrator of the popular TV series Racket Squad; in 1954, he played a similar role on the 39-week series Public Defender. Considering the fact that Reed Hadley's deep, persuasive voice was his fortune, it is ironic that his last screen role was a non-speaking supporting part in Roger Corman's The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967).

Trivia: A pretty, athletic leading lady with a refreshing down-to-earth quality, Cathy Downs worked as a model before signing a 20th Century-Fox contract in 1944. She was co-starred in several major Fox productions of the postwar years, and played the title role in John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946). Inexplicably, however, her career degenerated after 1947 into lower-berth programmers and cheap horror films like She-Creature (1956) and The Amazing Colossal Man (1957). Cathy Downs was married to actor/producer Joe Kirkwood, with whom she appeared in the Joe Palooka TV series of the early 1950s.

Trivia: American filmmaker Blake Edwards was the grandson of J. Gordon Edwards, director of such silent film epics as The Queen of Sheba (1922). Blake started his own film career as an actor in 1943; he played bits in A-movies and leads in B-movies, paying his dues in such trivialities as Gangs of the Waterfront and Strangler of the Swamp (both 1945). He turned to writing radio scripts, distinguishing himself on the above-average Dick Powell detective series Richard Diamond. As a screenwriter and staff producer at Columbia, Edwards was frequently teamed with director Richard Quine for such lightweight entertainment as Sound Off (1952), Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder (1953), and Cruisin' Down the River (1953). He also served as associate producer on the popular syndicated Rod Cameron TV vehicle City Detective the same year. Given his first chance to direct a movie in 1955, Edwards turned out a Richard Quine-like musical, Bring Your Smile Along; ironically, as Edwards' prestige grew, his style would be imitated by Quine. A felicitous contract at Universal led Edwards to his first big box-office successes, including the Tony Curtis film Mister Cory (1957) and Cary Grant's Operation Petticoat (1959).In 1958, Edwards produced, directed, and occasionally wrote for a hip TV detective series, Peter Gunn, which was distinguished by its film noir camerawork and driving jazz score by Henry Mancini. A second series, Mr. Lucky (1959), contained many of the elements that made Peter Gunn popular, but suffered from a bad time slot and network interference. (Lucky was a gambler, a profession frowned upon by the more sanctimonious CBS executives.) The show did, however, introduce Edwards to actor Ross Martin, who later appeared as an asthmatic criminal in Edwards' film Experiment in Terror (1962). Continuing to turn out box-office bonanzas like Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and Days of Wine and Roses (1962), Edwards briefly jumped on the comedy bandwagon of the mid-'60s with the slapstick epic The Great Race (1965), which the director dedicated to his idols, "Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy." (Edwards' next homage to the duo was the far less successful 1986 comedy A Fine Mess). In 1964, Edwards introduced the bumbling Inspector Clouseau to an unsuspecting world in The Pink Panther, leading to a string of money-spinning Clouseau films starring Peter Sellers; actually, The Pink Panther was Edwards' second Clouseau movie, since A Shot in the Dark, although released after Panther, was filmed first. Despite the carefree spirit and great success of his comedies, Edwards hit a snag with Darling Lili (1969), a World War I musical starring Edwards' wife Julie Andrews. The film was a questionable piece to begin with (audiences were asked to sympathize with a German spy who cheerfully sent young British pilots to their deaths), but was made incomprehensible by Paramount's ruthless editing. Darling Lili sent Edwards career into decline, although he came back with the 1979 comedy hit 10 and the scabrous satirical film S.O.B. (1981). Edwards' track record in the 1980s and '90s was uneven, with such films as Blind Date (1987), Sunset (1988), and Switch (1991). The director was also unsuccessful in his attempts to revive the Pink Panther comedies minus the services of Sellers (who had died in 1980) as Clouseau. Still, Edwards always seemed able to find someone to bankroll his projects. And he left something of a legacy to Hollywood through his actress daughter Jennifer Edwards and screenwriter son Geoffrey Edwards.In 2004, just when the world began to think it might never again hear from Edwards, the filmmaker gave a slapsticky acceptance speech in response to an honorary Academy Award. He died six years later, of complications from pneumonia, at the age of 88.

Trivia: Six-foot-tall American actor Rory Mallinson launched his screen career at the end of WW II. Mallinson was signed to a Warner Bros. contract in 1945, making his first appearance in Price of the Marines. In 1947, he began free-lancing at Republic, Columbia and other "B"-picture mills. One of his larger roles was Hodge in the 1952 Columbia serial Blackhawk. Rory Mallinson made his last film in 1963.

Trivia: Dutch-born character actor Charles Judels' expertise with dialects served him well throughout his fifty-year career. After several seasons in vaudeville, Judels made his Broadway debut as a snotty Frenchman in The Ziegfeld Follies of 1912. He went on to provide comedy relief for such stage musicals as Nobody Home (1914) and George M. Cohan's Mary (1920). In films from 1915, Judels was a fixture of the Vitaphone short-subject product in the early 1930s, starring in his own series of 2-reelers and providing support to such comedians as Jack Haley and Shemp Howard. His feature-film assignments found him playing Italians, Greeks, Slavs, Germans and Spaniards (he also served as dialogue director for 1928's Mother Knows Best, which curiously contained no dialect humor whatsoever!) Film buffs will remember Charles Judels as the cheese-store proprietor in Laurel & Hardy's 1938 effort Swiss Miss (his musical number with Stan and Ollie was, alas, left on the cutting room floor), the plot-motivating murder victim in the early "film noir" Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), and the voice of Stromboli and the Coachman in the Disney cartoon feature Pinocchio (1940).

Trivia: Blessed with matinee idol looks, an athletic physique, and a generous supply of talent, Francis J. McDonald entered films in 1912 after brief stage experience. A popular leading man of the teen years, McDonald segued into villainous characterizations in the 1920s, notably as the title character in Buster Keaton's Battling Butler (1926). He remained busy during the talkie era, primarily as a mustachioed heavy in "B" westerns and a featured player in the films of Cecil B. DeMille. Francis J. McDonald was at one time the husband of the "ever popular" Mae Busch.

Trivia: J. Farrell MacDonald was one of the most beloved and prolific character actors in Hollywood history. A former minstrel singer, MacDonald toured the U.S. in stage productions for nearly two decades before he ever set foot in Tinseltown. He made his earliest film appearances in 1911 with Carl Laemmle's IMP company (the forerunner of Universal); within two years he was a firmly established lead actor and director. While functioning in the latter capacity with L. Frank Baum's Oz Film Company, MacDonald gave much-needed work to up-and-coming extras Hal Roach and Harold Lloyd. When Roach set up his own production company in 1915 with Lloyd as his star, he signed MacDonald as director (both Roach and Lloyd would hire their one-time employer as character actor well into the sound era). In the 1920's, MacDonald had returned to acting full time, appearing extensively in westerns and Irish-flavored comedies. A particular favorite of director John Ford, he was prominently featured in such Ford silents as The Iron Horse (1924), The Bad Man (1926) and Riley the Cop (1927, as Riley). He also showed up as Kelly in some of Universal's culture-clash "Cohens and Kellys" comedies. With a voice that matched his personality perfectly, MacDonald was busier than ever in the early-talkie era, usually playing such workaday roles as cops and railroad engineers; in 1932 alone, he showed up in 18 films! Even when his footage was limited, he was always given a moment or two to shine, as witness his emotional curtain speech in Shirley Temple's Our Little Girl. He kept up his workload into the 1940s, often popping up in the films of John Ford and Preston Sturges. His later roles often went unbilled, but he gave his all no matter how fleeting the assignment. One of his choicest roles of the 1940s was as the Dodge City barkeep in Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946). J. Farrell MacDonald continued working right up to his death in 1952; one of his last assignments was a continuing character on the Gene Autry-produced TV series Range Rider.

Trivia: In films since the earliest days of sound, distinguished-looking Henry Hall specialized in playing small-town doctors, lawyers, benign businessmen, or the heroine's father, often in low-budget Westerns and frequently unbilled. On Broadway in the first decade of the 20th century, Hall spent his final years as a resident at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Trivia: Actor Stanley Andrews moved from the stage to the movies in the mid 1930s, where at first he was typed in steadfast, authoritative roles. The tall, mustachioed Adrews became familiar to regular moviegoers in a string of performances as ship's captains, doctors, executives, military officials and construction supervisors. By the early 1950s, Andrews had broadened his range to include grizzled old western prospectors and ageing sheriffs. This led to his most lasting contribution to the entertainment world: the role of the Old Ranger on the long-running syndicated TV series Death Valley Days. Beginning in 1952, Andrews introduced each DVD episode, doing double duty as commercial pitchman for 20 Mule Team Borax; he also became a goodwill ambassador for the program and its sponsor, showing up at county fairs, supermarket openings and charity telethons. Stanley Andrews continued to portray the Old Ranger until 1963, when the US Borax company decided to alter its corporate image with a younger spokesperson -- a 51-year-old "sprout" named Ronald Reagan.

Trivia: American actor Jeff York inaugurated his film career in the late '30s at Paramount, under the "nom de stage" of Granville Owen. York spent the postwar years as an MGM contractee, then freelanced into the 1950s. From 1954 to 1958, he was most often to be found in the film and TV projects of the Walt Disney Studios, playing major roles in Davy Crockett and the River Pirates (1956, as keelboatman Mike Fink), Westward Ho, the Wagons! (1956), and The Great Locomotive Chase (1956). His best-remembered assignment under the Disney banner was the role of shiftless Bud Searcy in Old Yeller (1957), a character he reprised in the 1963 sequel Savage Sam. In 1959, Jeff York co-starred with Ray Danton, Roger Moore, and Dorothy Provine in the Warner Bros. TVer The Alaskans.

Trivia: A graduate of Columbia University and a veteran stage actor, New York-born Charles La Torre played the Italian military officer Tonelli in Casablanca (1942). That was perhaps a highlight in a screen career spent portraying every ethnic type possible, from a Portuguese café proprietor in The Hairy Ape (1944) to an Arabic villain, Abdullah, in Bomba and the Hidden City (1950). This Charles La Torre, who appeared in hundreds of feature films, comedy shorts, and television shows from 1941-1966, should not be confused with Charles Latorre, an African-American player who appeared in several Oscar Micheaux films of the late '30s.

Trivia: A gray-haired, distinguished looking actor from the legitimate stage, Frank Dae usually played pompous judges, police chiefs, and senators. Busiest in the 1940s, when he appeared in literally hundreds of films (often unbilled), Dae's career lasted well into the '50s and also included some television work.

Trivia: One of the most popular, and recognizable, character actors in B-Western history, pudgy, mustachioed Bud Osborne (real name Leonard Miles Osborne) was one of the many Wild West show performers who parlayed their experiences into lengthy screen careers. Especially noted for his handling of runaway stagecoaches and buckboards, Osborne began as a stunt performer with Thomas Ince's King-Bee company around 1912, and by the 1920s he had become one of the busiest supporting players in the business. Rather rakish-looking in his earlier years, the still slender Osborne even attempted to become a Western star in his own right. Produced by the Bud Osborne Feature Film Company and released by low-budget Truart Pictures, The Prairie Mystery (1922) presented Osborne as a romantic leading man opposite B-movie regular Pauline Curley. Few saw this little clunker, however, and Osborne quickly returned to the ranks of supporting cowboys, often portraying despicable villains with names like Satan Saunders, Piute Sam, or Bull McKee. Playing an escaped convict masquerading as a circuit rider in both the 1923 Leo Maloney short Double Cinched and Shootin' Square, a 1924 Jack Perrin feature Western, Osborne even demonstrated an affinity for comedy. The now veteran Bud Osborne continued his screen career into the sound era and became even busier in the 1930s and 1940s. As he grew older and his waistline expanded, Osborne's roles became somewhat smaller and instead of calling the shots himself, as he often had in the silent era, he now answered to the likes of Roy Barcroft and Charles King. But he seems to pop up in every other B-Western and serial released in those years, appearing in more than 65 productions for Republic Pictures alone. By the 1950s, the now elderly Osborne became one of the many veteran performers courted by maverick filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr., for whom he did Crossroad Avenger: The Adventures of the Tucson Kid (1954), an unsold television pilot, Jailbait (1954), Bride of the Monster (1955), and Night of the Ghouls (1958). When all is said and done, it was a rather dismal finish to a colorful career.

Trivia: American actor Trevor Bardette could truly say that he died for a living. In the course of a film career spanning three decades, the mustachioed, granite-featured Bardette was "killed off" over 40 times as a screen villain. Entering movies in 1936 after abandoning a planned mechanical engineering career for the Broadway stage, Bardette was most often seen as a rustler, gangster, wartime collaborator and murderous backwoodsman. His screen skullduggery carried over into TV; one of Bardette's best remembered video performances was as a "human bomb" on an early episode of Superman. Perhaps being something of a reprobate came naturally to Trevor Bardette -- or so he himself would claim in later years when relating a story of how, as a child, he'd won ten dollars writing an essay on "the evils of tobacco," only to be caught smoking behind the barn shortly afterward.

Trivia: The brother of Buck Bucko, American screen actor Roy Bucko usually played ranch hands or rustlers in "B"-westerns. The Bucko brothers almost always appeared together in their films, including The Man from Black Hills (1952), their final (credited) work.

Trivia: In films from 1929, mustachioed, businesslike actor Wheaton Chambers could frequently be found in serials, including Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1939), The Adventures of Red Ryder (1940), The Purple Monster Strikes (1945) and The Crimson Ghost (1946). In bigger budgeted pictures, he played more than his share of bailiffs, guards and desk clerks. In the 1951 sci-fi masterpiece The Day the Earth Stood Still, Chambers plays the jeweller who appraises Klaatu's (Michael Rennie) extraterrestrial diamonds. When he was afforded screen billing, which wasn't often, Wheaton Chambers preferred to be identified as J. Wheaton Chambers.

Trivia: A diminutive, pot-bellied supporting player in B-Westerns, Ben Corbett had enjoyed some success at the famous rodeo at Pendleton, OR, and at New York's Madison Square Garden, where his roping and "Roman" riding skills reportedly won him several trophies. Entering films as a riding double for William Desmond and Antonio Moreno in Vitagraph Westerns and action melodramas in the 1910s, Corbett later became a member of Western star Hoot Gibson's stock company at Universal. That studio saw enough comedic potential in the former stunt man to team him with the equally diminutive Gilbert "Pee Wee" Holmes as Magpie and Dirtshirt in a series of rural comedy shorts set in the fictive community of Piperock. The series, which was released on Universal's "Mustang Brand" in the mid-'20s, counted among its leading ladies such future stars as Janet Gaynor and Fay Wray. In the 1930s, Corbett's character of Magpie returned in several independently produced "Bud 'n Ben" western shorts and the now veteran supporting player later became Tim McCoy's sidekick at low-budget Victory Pictures. He seems to have popped up in every other low-budget Western thereafter, usually appearing unbilled. B-Western compiler Les Adams has verified Corbett's presence in about 185 Westerns and half a dozen serials between 1930 and the actor's retirement in the early '50s, but there may actually have been many more. History, alas, has not been kind to the rustic B-Western perennial, whose arcane comedy relief, most fans of the genre agree, often seems more a hindrance than a help in keeping a plot moving.

Trivia: Lanky character actor Tom Fadden first trod the boards when he joined an Omaha stock company in 1915. Fadden went on to tour in top vaudeville with his actress wife Genevieve. From 1932 to 1939, he was seen on Broadway in such productions as Nocturne and Our Town. He made his first film in 1939. Fadden's better-known screen roles include the tollhouse keeper in It's a Wonderful Life (1946)--which led to choice appearances in subsequent Frank Capra productions--and "possessed" townman Ira in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). In 1958, he was seen on a weekly basis as Silas Perry on TV's Cimarron City. Tom Fadden's cinematic swan song was 1977's Empire of the Ants.

Trivia: American small-part player Billy Wayne was active from 1935 to 1955. Wayne spent most of his film career at Universal, with a few side trips to Fox and Paramount. He was often cast as a chauffeur, usually an all-knowing or sarcastic one. Billy Wayne also played more than his share of cabbies, sailors, reporters, photographers, and assistant directors (vide W.C. Fields' Never Give a Sucker an Even Break).