Trivia: From the chorus ranks of Broadway's George White's Scandals, Alabama-born Dorothy Sebastian was recruited for films in 1925. The high point of her brief starring career came when she was teamed with Joan Crawford and Anita Page for a popular series of MGM romantic dramas, released on both sides of the talkie revolution: Our Dancing Daughters (1928), Our Modern Maidens (1929) and Our Blushing Brides (1930). She was also well-served in 1929's Spite Marriage, wherein she was cast opposite her then-lover Buster Keaton as a tempestuous stage actress (years later, Keaton and Sebastian were reunited in the inexpensive 2-reel comedy Allez Oop [1935]). Sebasian went into semi-retirement in the mid-1930s upon her marriage to future Hopalong Cassidy star William Boyd. When the Boyds divorced in 1936, Dorothy attempted a comeback, but the parade had passed her by. Dorothy Sebastian spent her last working years playing unstressed bit roles in such A pictures as The Women (1939) and Reap the Wild Wind (1942).

Trivia: Actor/writer Robert Middlemass was most closely associated with George M. Cohan during his Broadway years, appearing in such Cohan productions as Seven Keys to Baldpate and The Tavern. Before the 1920s were over, Middlemass had written or co-written several plays and one-act sketches, the most famous of which was The Valiant. Though he appeared in the 1918 feature film 5000 a Week, his screen career proper didn't begin in 1934, when he showed up as a foil for the Ritz Brothers in the New York-filmed comedy short Hotel Anchovy. For the next decade, Middlemass was based in Hollywood, essaying various authority figures in approximately two dozen films. Robert Middlemass' better screen roles include the flustered sheriff in the Marx Bros. Day at the Races (1937) and impresario Oscar Hammerstein in The Dolly Sisters (1945).

Trivia: American character actor Earl Dwire was most closely associated with the B-Western movie mills of the 1930s. Dwire frequently played the antagonist in the low-budget vehicles of such cowboy stars as Bob Steele and Johnny Mack Brown. In the early '30s, he was virtually a regular in the John Wayne Westerns produced by the Lone Star outfit. He also occasionally accepted such contemporary minor roles as a priest in Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) and a gangster in Accidents Will Happen (1939). Earl Dwire's last known film credit was the Universal serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940).

Trivia: Lanky, Montana-born Fred Burns, a former bronco-buster for the Buffalo Bill and Miller 101 Wild West shows, played Western leads opposite Lillian Gish at Biograph in the very early 1910s and later rode in The Birth of a Nation (1915). Like brother Bob Burns, the distinguished-looking, gray-haired Fred eventually drifted into supporting and bit roles, almost always portraying a sheriff or deputy. He seems to have retired after Gene Autry's Barbed Wire (1952), in which, unbilled as usual, he played a rancher.

Trivia: Hawk-nosed character actor Ed Brady entered films around 1913. Brady spent most of the silent era working in serials and westerns, with a few big-budget diversions like Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings. He made a smooth transition to talkies as "Greasy" in The Virginian. One of his largest roles was as Marxist rabble-rouser and petty thief Max Helstrum in Son of Kong (1933), the semicomic sequel to the classic monster show King Kong. Occasionally billed as Edward J. Brady, the actor continued showing up in bits and featured roles until his death in 1941.

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: A skinny supporting player and stunt-rider in scores of B-Westerns from 1934-1955, Charles "Art" Dillard could play any role needed, from a nasty henchman to an upstanding townsperson and everything in between. He was even a Native American on occasion, like in the 1943 Republic serial Daredevils of the West. Retiring in the early '50s after nearly 200 Westerns and serials, not to mention such television shows as The Gene Autry Show and Wild Bill Hickock, Dillard resided at the time of his death in Chatsworth, CA, the location site of countless B-Westerns and serials.

Trivia: Ted Mapes grew up on his father's wheat ranch in Nebraska. Upon attaining adulthood, Mapes took on a variety of manual-labor jobs, ending up as a furniture hauler in Los Angeles. Through a movie-studio connection, he landed a job as a grip on the 1929 Doug Fairbanks-Mary Pickford talkie Taming of the Shrew. By the mid-1930s, he'd moved away from the technical side of the business and was working as a stunt man and supporting actor. Mapes performed stunts for such major action stars as John Wayne, Charles Starrett, Joel McCrea and James Stewart. He also doubled for Gary Cooper (whom he closely resembled) in 17 different films, and essayed speaking roles in 13 Republic serials. After retiring from the stunt game, he kept active in Hollywood as an advisor for the American Humane Association, seeing to it that movie animals were properly trained and cared for on the set. In 1978, Ted Mapes was elected to the Stuntman Hall of Fame.

Trivia: Former rodeo performer Frank McCarroll made his first film, Big Calibre, in 1935. From that point onward, until his retirement in 1951, McCarroll appeared in nothing but westerns. He played dozens of small roles as gunmen, posse leaders and the like, and also served as stunt double for some of the biggest stars in the shoot-'em-up genre. Ironically, Frank McCarroll died in an accidental fall in his own home.

Trivia: Bald-pated, raspy-voiced stage and vaudeville comedian James C. Morton came to films in 1930. Working almost exclusively in short subjects, Morton spent the better part of his movie career with the Hal Roach and Columbia comedy units. He provided support for such two-reel funsters as Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges, Andy Clyde, Charley Chase, ZaSu Pitts, Thelma Todd, Patsy Kelly, Leon Erroll, and Our Gang. His film roles ran the gamut from bartenders to high-ranking military officers; he was frequently decked out with a lavish toupee, which inevitably ended up on the floor in a mangled heap. He was at his best as the cunning woodchopper who talks bandits Laurel and Hardy out of their money in The Devil's Brother (1933); as Paul Pain, "the heartthrob of millions," in Three Stooges' A Pain in the Pullman (1936), and frontier sharpster Quackenbush in Gene Autry's Public Cowboy No. One (1937), one of his handful of Western-feature assignments. Reportedly, James C. Morton served as director of the 1918 film A Daughter of Uncle Sam.

Trivia: In films from 1937, silver-haired American actor Forbes Murray could be described as a less-costly Claude Rains. Murray lent his middle-aged dignity to such serials as The Spider's Web (1938), Mandrake the Magician (1940), Lone Ranger (1938), Perils of Nyoka (1942), Manhunt of Mystery Island (1945), and Radar Patrol vs. Spy King (1950). He also showed up in quite a few comedies, notably as the bank president who finances the college education of Laurel and Hardy ("Diamonds in the rough," as he describes them) in A Chump at Oxford (1940). Forbes Murray was active at least until 1955.

Trivia: Hank Patterson is best known to audiences for his portrayal of farmer Fred Ziffel on Green Acres -- for five seasons, his laconic character and the antics of his pig Arnold helped make life hopelessly confusing for series protagonist Oliver Wendell Douglas (Eddie Albert). Patterson, along with his younger contemporary Arthur Hunnicutt, was one of a handful of character actors who cornered the market on portraying cantankerous old coots, usually in a rural setting, in movies and on television during the middle of the 20th century. With his deep, resonant voice, which could project even when he spoke in the softest tones, Patterson could also evoke menace and doom, an attribute that producers and directors sometimes utilized to great effect on programs like Twilight Zone. He was born Elmer Calvin Patterson in Springville, AL, in 1888, but by the 1890s his family had moved to Texas, and Patterson spent most of his boyhood in the town of Taylor. His main interest was music, and he studied in hope of a serious performing career, but was forced to enter showbusiness as a vaudeville pianist, playing with traveling shows. By the end of the 1920s, he'd made his way to California, and he entered the movie business as an actor -- despite his lack of formal training -- during the 1930s. Patterson's earliest identified screen work was an uncredited appearance in the Roy Rogers Western The Arizona Kid (1939). His first credited screen role was in the drama I Ring Doorbells, made at Producers Releasing Corporation. Patterson spent the next nine years working exclusively in Westerns, starting with Thomas Carr's The El Paso Kid, starring Sunset Carson. Among the best of the oaters that Patterson worked in were Edwin L. Marin's Abilene Town and Henry King's The Gunfighter, but most of the pictures that he did were on the low-budget side, and far less prestigious. He played a succession of blacksmiths, hotel clerks, farmers, shopkeepers, and other townsmen, usually bit roles and character parts. Beginning with Jack Arnold's Tarantula, Patterson moved into occasional modern character portrayals as well. Patterson also appeared on dozens of television series, ranging from The Abbott & Costello Show (where he played a very creepy mugger in "Lou Falls for Ruby") to Perry Mason. He was nearly as ubiquitous a figure on Twilight Zone as he was in any Western series, appearing in at least three installments, most notably as an old man in a modern setting in "Kick the Can," and as an ominous general store proprietor in "Come Wander With Me." It was the 19th century and rural settings, however, that provided his bread and butter -- he had appeared in several episodes of Gunsmoke, and in 1963 became a continuing character on the series in the role of Hank Miller, the Dodge City stableman. That same year, Patterson took on the semi-regular role of farmer Fred Ziffel in the rural comedy Petticoat Junction; and in 1965, that role was expanded into the series Green Acres -- eventually, he even portrayed Fred Ziffel in episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies as well. The association of his character with the utterly surreal (and extremely popular) porcine character of Arnold the Pig (also known as Arnold Ziffel) ensured that Patterson was one of the most visible supporting players on the series. Ironically, by the time he was doing Green Acres, Patterson was almost completely deaf, but the producers loved his portrayal so much, that they worked around this by having the dialogue coach lying on the floor out-of-shot, tapping at his leg with a yardstick when it was his cue to speak a line. Patterson passed away in 1975 of bronchial pneumonia at the age of 86. He was the great-uncle of actress Tea Leoni.

Trivia: Michigan-born Jack Perrin moved to California with his family in the early 1900s. Perrin launched his film career in 1914 as a bit player and extra, working his way up to leading roles by 1917. After serving on a submarine in WWI, he resumed his movie work, attaining stardom in the 1919 Universal serial Lion Man. Handsome and athletic, Perrin became a popular Western star in the 1920s. Throughout the silent era, he worked for most of the major Western units (Universal, Pathe, First National) and not a few of the minor ones (Rayart, Mascot). In 1929, he was starred in the first all-talkie B-Western, Overland Bound. Perrin spent the early '30s laboring away for such Poverty Row concerns as Aywon and Big Four, where, despite shabby production values and substandard sound recording, he and his "wonder horse" Starlight remained Saturday-matinee favorites. He also briefly co-starred with Ben Corbett in a series of three-reel Westerns, released under the blanket title Bud and Ben. After his final starring series for producer William Berke in 1936, Perrin settled into character roles, both large (Davy Crockett in the 1937 serial The Painted Stallion) and small (the prison guard who escorts James Cagney to the hot seat in 1938's Angels With Dirty Faces). In 1956, Jack Perrin, together with several other former B-Western favorites, rode alongside Col. Tim McCoy in the "Cavalry rescue" sequence in Around the World in 80 Days (1956).

Trivia: American actress Ruth Robinson made a solitary screen appearance in 1911 before returning to the stage. She resumed her film activities in 1936, playing a minor part in the Boris Karloff melodrama The Walking Dead. For the next two decades, she showed up in such stern-faced roles as missionaries, housekeepers, prison matrons, and society spouses. In 1956, Ruth Robinson appeared fleetingly as the title character in the speculative The Search for Bridey Murphy.

Trivia: The quintessential silent screen villain, tall (6'1"), mustachioed Lloyd Whitlock is perhaps best remembered as one of the kidnappers in Mary Pickford's Sparrows (1926) and for playing innumerable blackguards in B-Westerns and serials of the 1930s and 1940s. Trained as a civil engineer, Whitlock toured with several stock companies prior to making his screen debut with New York's Biograph company in the very early 1910s. By the mid-1910s, he had become a featured actor for Kleine, Kalem, and Universal and was already more often than not cast as lecherous blackmailers, crooked lawyers, medical hacks, and the like. He made the transition to sound with ease but quickly began showing up in Poverty Row productions and is memorable as the airline manager in the John Wayne serial Hurricane Express (1932) and as the boss villain in four of Wayne's Lone Star Westerns for Monogram. Although his roles greatly diminished in importance from the mid-'30s on, Whitlock remained a busy supporting actor through the 1940s.

Trivia: On screen from the late '20s, roly-poly B-Western and serial perennial Jack Kirk (born Kirkhuff) began turning up in low-budget Westerns after the advent of sound, usually as a member of various music constellations bearing names like "Range Riders" and "Arizona Wranglers." He later essayed scores of scruffy-looking henchmen and, as he grew older and more settled, began playing bankers, sheriffs, and ranchers. Under term contract with B-Western industry leader Republic Pictures from July 12, 1943, to July 11, 1944, Kirk found roles increasingly more difficult to come by thereafter and left films in 1948 to work on a fishing vessel in Alaska. The former actor reportedly died of a massive heart attack while in the process of unloading a night's catch.