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Actors with western credits.
Actors with western credits.
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- Actor
Joe Phillips was born on 12 May 1913 in Terry, Montana, USA. He was an actor. He died on 19 October 1972 in Los Angeles, California, USA.217 westerns, 1936-1972.
70 feature westerns.
Jack Slade (1955). 1955. Pony Express rider. Uncredited.
1913-1972, 59,- Doris Brook is known for The Phantom Cowboy (1935), The Beast of Borneo (1934) and Wilderness Mail (1935).
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Michael Vandever was born on 10 March 1937 in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for Batman (1966), The Twilight Zone (1959) and Mackenzie's Raiders (1958). He was married to Janet. He died on 5 July 2021 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Writer
Lew Meehan (birthname James Llewellyn Meehan)was born September 7, 1890 in Red Lake Falls, Minnesota and died on August 10, 1951 in Los Angeles, California. His film career began in 1921 and ended in 1944, albeit he appears in a stock footage montage, as a police car driver (from "Waterfront Lady" (1935)) in 1947's "Dick Tracy Meets Grusome". His flat-and-crooked nose and morose appearance relegated he spend most of his 200-plus film career as an uncredited henchman with few lines of dialogue but, once in a while,he moved upward to the position of dog-kicking henchman or even a credited none-to-bright hired gunman in "The Red Rope (1937)". His 1942 World War II draft registration card has his occupation as...Freelance actor-motion pictures... and the "person who will always know your address " line listed Screen Actors Guild, with a notation of "(no relatives)".- Arthur Rankin was born on 30 August 1895 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for To Have and to Hold (1922), The Great Adventure (1921) and The Truth About Husbands (1920). He was married to Marian Mansfield and Mignon Audrey Klemm. He died on 23 March 1947 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Doye O'Dell was born on 22 November 1912 in Gustine, Texas, USA. He was an actor, known for Vice (2018), Heldorado (1946) and Hit Parade of 1947 (1947). He was married to Ella Mae McLeod, Joan Barton and Ruth Southard. He died on 3 January 2001 in Northridge, California, USA.30 westerns, 40-63.
15 feature westerns.
1912 - 2001, 88.- American actor who had a brief flirtation with stardom before settling into character roles and bit parts. Born in rural South Dakota (according to government records, though some sources say Walsh County, North Dakota) as Robert C. Oakes, the son of a horse rancher, he moved with his family to Culbertson, Montana (not his birthplace as some sources have it), where he grew up. The family moved again and he graduated from high school in Helena. A brief attendance at Montana Wesleyan College was interrupted by the offer of a job driving a tour bus in Yellowstone National Park.
Drifting down to Los Angeles in the early 1920s, he got work as an auto mechanic, but his ranch-honed cowboy skills got him bit parts in pictures at Paramount when director John Waters offered him work in a series of Westerns. Paramount recognized possibilities in the tall, rugged, handsome cowboy and put him (with a new name, Lane Chandler) into leading roles, first in Westerns, then in contemporary films opposite some of the biggest star actresses of the time, Clara Bow, Greta Garbo, Betty Bronson, and Esther Ralston. As silent films were phased out, Chandler found his stock slipping at Paramount, which had begun to overtly favor Gary Cooper in his place. He began appearing in lower-budgeted Westerns, first in leads, then as second leads to stars such as John Wayne and Jack Hoxie. During this period he free-lanced at Big 4, Syndicate Pictures and Kent (see Willis Kent) Pictures, all a far cry from his days under contract with Adolph Zukor. Despite the relatively poor production values, several of his early talkies (The Hurricane Horseman (1931) and The Cheyenne Cyclone (1931)) rise above similar fare in entertainment value. Unfortunately, Chandler was also forced to work on other lesser productions helmed by hack directors such as J.P. McGowan who cared more about quickly earning a paycheck than the product itself. His association with Kent ended in 1930s and Chandler drifted to another independent outfit called Empire Pictures which promised to produce 6 films, although only 2 were ultimately shot, the entertaining quickies The Lone Bandit (1935) and The Outlaw Tamer (1935). Now in his mid-30's Chandler found his career in irreversible decline and settled into supporting roles. A favorite of director Cecil B. DeMille, Chandler worked in many DeMille films, often in tiny bit parts, though he claimed these were his favorite parts. Eventually Chandler no longer commanded roles of any substance and he spent the remaining 35 years of his career in progressively smaller supporting parts, playing in hundreds of films, often uncredited. A stalwart of television Westerns of the 1950s, he was a familiar face to movie fans for nearly fifty years. An astute businessman with industrial and property holdings, he died in Los Angeles in 1971 at 73. - A tall, powerfully built man, Douglas Kennedy entered films after graduating from Amherst. Making his debut in 1940, he appeared in many westerns and detective thrillers, often as a villain. World War II interrupted his career, and he spent the war years as a Signal Corps officer and an operative in the OSS and US Army Intelligence. After the war he returned to Hollywood, where he began playing supporting roles in larger films and an occasional lead in a lower-budget film. He is most fondly remembered, though, by audiences of the 1950s for two roles: his western TV series Steve Donovan, Western Marshal (1955), and as one of the policemen taken over by the Martians in the sci-fi classic Invaders from Mars (1953).
- Actor
- Stunts
- Additional Crew
Jack Hendricks was born on 9 July 1903 in Pickens County, South Carolina, USA. He was an actor, known for Mark of the Lash (1948), Gun Grit (1936) and Caryl of the Mountains (1936). He died on 29 May 1990 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Jim Corey was born on 22 March 1889 in Buffalo, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for The Border Legion (1924), Gold Mine in the Sky (1938) and The Lost Jungle (1934). He was married to Sylvia Frey. He died on 26 March 1950 in Burbank, California, USA.
- Ken Mayer was born on 25 June 1918 in San Francisco, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Little Big Man (1970), Space Patrol (1950) and Jack the Giant Killer (1962). He died on 30 January 1985 in North Hollywood, California, USA.
- Tom Seidel was born on 11 March 1917 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. He was an actor, known for 20, 000 Men a Year (1939), Moonlight and Cactus (1944) and Man with Two Lives (1942). He was married to Jean Hagen. He died on 7 December 1992 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actor
- Stunts
- Producer
Jack Perrin was born in Three Rivers, MI, on July 25, 1896. His father, a real estate investor, had an eye on the burgeoning prospects in Los Angeles and moved his family there when Perrin was about four. Jack literally grew up witnessing the birth of the film industry, which exploded there in 1913, after Universal and Famous Players (later known as Paramount) moved out in an attempt to escape Thomas Edison's patent war. Perrin entered films in 1915, reportedly with Mack Sennett (these details are in dispute), before enlisting in the Navy in World War I. Discharged in 1919, he returned to Hollywood and landed a contract with Universal, which lasted until 1921. He was cut loose from what was then the largest studio in the world and made the rapid descent into the world of low-budget westerns by outfits like Rayart (later to become Monogram), Aywon and Arrow Pictures. During this period he would work for companies at the very bottom of the Hollywood food chain, headed by ultra-low-budget specialists like Harry S. Webb and the legendary cheapskate Robert J. Horner.
By the latter part of the 1920s Perrin's fortunes rose to the point where he returned to Universal for a series of Canadian Mountie adventure pictures (on a personal level, he met and married Universal star Josephine Hill in 1920 and the marriage would last until 1937). Although he seemed to possess all the assets necessary for cowboy stardom, fate would not be particularly kind to Jack Perrin. At the beginning of the "talkie" period he left Universal and went back to working for the likes of Webb and Horner again. Things got so bad that in the mid-'30s he wound up having to sue Horner in order to get paid for appearing in several of Horner's films (he won). The quality of these productions was, to be charitable, dismal and Jack's popularity correspondingly suffered. He bowed out as a leading man under an ostensible partnership with veteran low-budget producer William Berke in 1936.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Considering the kind of scruffy, backwoods, uneducated, Deep-South hillbilly types he played, many people would be surprised to hear that Ken Curtis wasn't actually born in the south but in the small town of Las Animas, Colorado, the son of the town sheriff. They would probably be even more surprised to learn that he began his show business career as a singer in the big-band era, and was a vocalist in the legendary Tommy Dorsey orchestra. He entered films in the late 1940s at the tail-end of the singing-cowboy period in a series of low-budget Westerns for Columbia Pictures. When that genre died out, Curtis turned to straight dramatic and comedy parts and became a regular in the films of director John Ford (who was his father-in-law). Curtis branched out into film production in the 1950s with two extremely low-budget monster films, The Killer Shrews (1959) and The Giant Gila Monster (1959), but he is best known for his long-running role as Festus Hagen, the scruffy, cantankerous deputy in the long-running TV series Gunsmoke (1955).- Joan Curtis is known for Where Trails End (1942), Stranger from Santa Fe (1945) and Hot Rhythm (1944).
- Eddie Acuff is one of those wonderful supporting actors who peopled the fascinating world of Hollywood's A, B or Z movies. In a career spanning eighteen years he appeared in an amazing almost 300 movies and one TV episode! His appearances could be invisible (when deleted), hardly visible (he portrayed an endless series of cabbies, reporters, cameramen, cowboys, hamburger vendors, orderlies, ticket agents, militiamen, bus drivers, the lot...), short but recurring (he was the accident-prone mailman in the 'Blondie' series after Irving Bacon gave up the part) or more fleshed out, notably as the sidekick in various serials. Anyway, he nearly always played - in a very talented way - the wise-cracking guy who "knows better". Born on June 3rd 1903, Edward Acuff was drawn to acting under the influence of his maternal uncle, who had been a performer on showboats along the Mississippi. Before going to Hollywood, Eddie Acuff started a theater career, and even played on Broadway (in minor roles of course) in plays such as 'The Dark Hour', 'Heat Lightning' or 'Yellow Jack'. From 1934 to 1951 (five years before his untimely death following a sudden heart attack), Eddie Acuff worked and worked and worked. Only a few of his films are classics (The Petrified Forest (1936), They Drive by Night (1940), High Sierra (1940), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), Johnny Allegro (1949))...So what? Seeing but a glimpse of Acuff is always a dose of pleasure guaranteed. Eddie Acuff is buried at the North Hollywood Pierce Brothers Valhalla Memorial Park.
- Yvonne Pelletier was born on 6 November 1915 in Port Haney, British Columbia, Canada. She was an actress, known for The Crystal Cup (1927), Riders of the Purple Sage (1931) and Children of Divorce (1927). She was married to Robert Lincoln Springfels. She died on 9 October 1995 in Canoga Park, California, USA.
- Actor
- Writer
Kenne Duncan was born on 17 February 1902 in Chatham, Ontario, Canada. He was an actor and writer, known for Night of the Ghouls (1959), Manhunt of Mystery Island (1945) and The Astounding She-Monster (1957). He died on 5 February 1972 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Yuma Kid, Silver Spurs (1936). 1936.
- Stunts
- Actress
Definitely not your average 'prairie flower', brunette Evelyn Ruth Finley was known as the most accomplished stunt rider in the western genre. Famous director William A. Wellman was one of many who regarded her as the best in the business. She worked with horses from early childhood and grew up a tomboy on her father's ranch. Her dad had promised 'to put her into pictures', but how she eventually arrived in Hollywood is unclear. Winning a beauty contest as 'Miss Albuquerque' might have helped. The year was 1936 and her first picture was as stunt double to Jean Parker. By 1940, Evelyn was under contract at Monogram where her skills in the saddle quickly promoted her to leading lady opposite the likes of Tex Ritter, Tom Keene, Johnny Mack Brown and Buster Crabbe. As blonde Eve Anderson, she got to star in one of the last serials made at Columbia, Perils of the Wilderness (1956). However, Evelyn preferred the stunt work to acting, often doubling on horseback for glamorous stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Loretta Young. She remained involved in her area of expertise, either actively or as technical adviser, well into the 1980's. When not working in the film industry, she toured as an equestrian performer at different circuses. Evelyn was inducted into the Stuntmen's Hall of Fame.- Writer
- Script and Continuity Department
- Additional Crew
Frances Kavanaugh was born on 5 February 1915 in Dallas, Texas, USA. Frances was a writer, known for Forbidden Jungle (1950), The Fighting Stallion (1950) and The Enchanted Valley (1948). Frances was married to Robert L. Hecker. Frances died on 23 January 2009 in Encino, California, USA.- Eleanor Hansen was born on 13 September 1917 in Terre Haute, Indiana, USA. She was an actress, known for Flaming Frontiers (1938), The Mad Miss Manton (1938) and Russian Dressing (1938). She died on 27 May 2013 in San Diego, California, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Russell Arms played Chester Finley opposite Doris Day in "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" (Warner Bros. 1953). Chester, a nerd in love with Marjorie Winfield, Day's character, was Marjorie's piano teacher, a rival to Bill Sherman, played by Gordon MacRae. Arms, in 1953, was not yet a featured player on NBC-TV's "Your Hit Parade." He became one of the program's four regular singers in 1954.- Tall in the saddle, and dark and handsome to boot, he may be little remembered today when compared to a William S. Hart, Tom Mix or Hoot Gibson, but cowboy hero Roy Stewart was arguably one of the best known of the silent screen back then. While touring with the famous Floradora Girls, Stewart entered films in the early 1910s in support roles until signing with Triangle in 1916 and emerging as a star. Known for his engaging, dimpled grin, he proved a solid and rugged hero and churned out during the course of his career hundreds of two-fisted two-reelers such as The Learnin' of Jim Benton (1917), Cactus Crandall (1918), which he co-wrote, and The Sagebrusher (1920), not to mention reenacting a number of tales from the Old West and portraying such legendary figures as Buffalo Bill and Daniel Boone. Out of the saddle Stewart was quite at home in plush drama and served as a perfect leading man for the likes of Lillian Gish in __House Built Upon Sand, The (1916), Bessie Love in A Daughter of the Poor (1917) and Mary Pickford in her classic silent Sparrows (1926). Come the advent of sound, Stewart lost his footing and was relegated to support roles as a character actor. He continued working until his sudden death in 1933 of a heart attack in his Los Angeles home at the age of 49.
- Actor
- Stunts
- Producer
American cowboy star of silent pictures. He studied science in school but dropped out to pursue a rodeo career. With some success, he was asked to appear in a number of film shorts, all before his eighteenth birthday. He worked for The American Film Manufacturing Company, but was soon signed by Universal Pictures and appeared in Western serials and short features there. He took some time away from movies to travel the country in a Wild West Show, then returned and did numerous Westerns for Triangle and Universal. He agreed to make a series of pictures in Central and South America, but eventually returned to Universal. With the arrival of sound pictures, he shifted into supporting roles before retiring from the screen in 1935, at the age of 45. He died in Los Angeles thirty-eight years later.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Buck Jones was one of the greatest of the "B" western stars. Although born in Indiana, Jones reportedly (but disputedly) grew up on a ranch near Red Rock in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), and there learned the riding and shooting skills that would stand him in good stead as a hero of Westerns. He joined the army as a teenager and served on US-Mexican border before seeing service in the Moro uprising in the Philippines. Though wounded, he recuperated and re-enlisted, hoping to become a pilot. He was not accepted for pilot training and left the army in 1913. He took a menial job with the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West Show and soon became champion bronco buster for the show. He moved on to the Julia Allen Show, but with the beginning of the First World War, Jones took work training horses for the Allied armies. After the war, he and his wife, Odelle Osborne, whom he had met in the Miller Brothers show, toured with the Ringling Brothers circus, then settled in Hollywood, where Jones got work in a number of Westerns starring Tom Mix and Franklyn Farnum. Producer William Fox put Jones under contract and promoted him as a new Western star. He used the name Charles Jones at first, then Charles "Buck" Jones, before settling on his permanent stage name. He quickly climbed to the upper ranks of Western stardom, playing a more dignified, less gaudy hero than Mix, if not as austere as William S. Hart. With his famed horse Silver, Jones was one of the most successful and popular actors in the genre, and at one point he was receiving more fan mail than any actor in the world. Months after America's entry into World War II, Jones participated in a war-bond-selling tour. On November 28, 1942, he was a guest of some local citizens in Boston at the famed Coconut Grove nightclub. Fire broke out and nearly 500 people died in one of the worst fire disasters on record. Jones was horribly burned and died two days later before his wife Dell could arrive to comfort him. Although legend has it that he died returning to the blaze to rescue others (a story probably originated by producer Trem Carr for whatever reason), the actual evidence indicates that he was trapped with all the others and succumbed as most did, trying to escape. He remains, however, a hero to thousands who followed his film adventures.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
A pioneering cowboy star of silent and early talking Westerns, Hoot Gibson was one of the 1920s' most popular children's matinée heroes. In his real life, however, he had a rather painful rags-to-riches-and-back-to-rags career, a problem that seemed to plague a number of big stars who fell victim to their high profile and wound up living too high on the hog.
An unfortunate byproduct of stardom is, of course, the misinformation that is often fed to the public over the years by either overzealous publicity agents or the actor himself. The many variations of just how Gibson earned the name tag "Hoot" is one of them: (1) As a youth, he loved to hunt owls; (2) while a teenager working on a rodeo ranch, other ranch hands called him "Hoot Owl" and that the name was shortened to just "Hoot"; (3) he picked up the nickname while a messenger with the Owl Drug Company; and (4) while touring briefly in vaudeville, he would hoot when the audience cheered and, thus, the nickname.
What facts are known about Hoot is that he was born Edmund Richard Gibson on August 6, 1892, in Tekamah, Nebraska. As a child he grew up among horses and received his first pony at the age of 2-1/2. His family moved to California when he was 7. At age 13 the adventurous youth ran away from home and joined a circus for a time. Later work included punching cows in both Wyoming and Colorado (at the time, a territory and not a state). While working on the Miller 101 Ranch at Fort Bliss, Oklahoma, as a horse wrangler, Hoot developed a strong, active interest in the rodeo scene--in particular, bronco busting. In 1907 he signed a four-year contract with the Dick Stanley-Bud Atkinson Wild West Show, which toured throughout the US and (later) Australia.
By 1910 Hoot had found an "in" to the movie business as one of the industry's first stuntmen (for which he was paid $2.50 for performing stunts or training horses). Director Francis Boggs was looking for experienced cowboys and stunt doubles to appear in his western short Pride of the Range (1910) starring Tom Mix; both Hoot and another future cowboy star, Art Acord, were hired. Hoot lost a solid Hollywood contact in Boggs, however, when the director and his working partner, producer William Nicholas Selig, were both shot in October, 1911, by a mentally disturbed employee (Selig was injured, but Boggs was killed). Gibson managed to find other stunt work in director D.W. Griffith's western short The Two Brothers (1910) and several others for the next few years.
Acting, at this point, was not his bread-and-butter income. Hoot still continued to forge a name for himself on the rodeo circuit with his pal Acord. In 1912, at age 20, he won the title "All-Around Champion Cowboy" at the famed annual Pendleton (Oregon) Round-Up. He also won the steer-roping World Championship at the Calgary Stampede. While on the circuit, he met fellow rodeo rider Rose August ("Helen") Wenger. They eventually married (there is still some question about whether they legally exchanged vows) and she took on the marquee name of Helen Gibson. She even found film stunt work herself and eventually was chosen to replace Helen Holmes as star of the popular movie serial The Hazards of Helen (1914) during mid-filming. Hoot himself had a minor role in the Universal cliffhanger.
Hoot picked up a couple of more strong connections in the film industry with western star Harry Carey and director John Ford. Gibson gained some momentum as a secondary player in a few of their films, including Cheyenne's Pal (1917), Straight Shooting (1917), The Secret Man (1917) and A Marked Man (1917). With the outbreak of World War I, however, Gibson's film career was put on hold. He joined the US Army, eventually attaining the the rank of sergeant while serving with the Tank Corps, and was honorably discharged in 1919. He returned immediately to Universal and was able to restart his career, quickly working his way up to co-star status in a series of short westerns, most of which were directed by his now close friend Ford. The two-reelers usually co-starred either Pete Morrison or Hoor's wife Helen, or sometimes both. Films such as The Fighting Brothers (1919), The Black Horse Bandit (1919), Rustlers (1919), Gun Law (1919), The Gun Packer (1919) and By Indian Post (1919) eventually led to his solo starring success.
During this prolific period, he was frequently directed by George Holt (The Trail of the Holdup Man (1919)), Phil Rosen (The Sheriff's Oath (1920)) and Lee Kohlmar (The Wild Wild West (1921)). It was at this time that he and wife Helen separated and divorced. In the early 1920s, Hoot went on to marry another Helen--Helen Johnson. They had one child, Lois Charlotte Gibson, born in 1923. The couple divorced in 1927.
Superstardom came with the John Ford (I)full-length feature western Action (1921), which was taken from "The Three Godfathers" story. It starred Hoot, Francis Ford and J. Farrell MacDonald as a trio of outlaws on the lam who find a baby. From that point on, both Hoot and Tom Mix began to "rule the west". Gibson's light, comedic, tongue-in-cheek manner only added to his sagebrush appeal, especially to children and women. His vehicles were non-violent for the most part, and he rarely was spotted carrying a gun while riding his palomino horse Goldie. Not a particularly handsome man, his boyish appeal and non-threatening demeanor were his aces in the hole--a major distinction that separated him from the more ascetic cowboy stars of the past.
By 1925 Hoot was making approximately $14,500 a week and spending it about as fast as he was making it. He successfully made the transition to talkies and, in 1930, married popular Jazz-era actress Sally Eilers, a third party to his previous divorce. The couple made three features together: The Long, Long Trail (1929), Trigger Tricks (1930) and Clearing the Range (1931). When she found celluloid success on her own with Bad Girl (1931), Sally decided to split from Hoot professionally and personally. They divorced in 1933.
Hoot lost his Universal contract in 1930, which signified the start of his decline. While he secured contracts with lesser studios during the early 1930s, such as Allied Pictures and First Division Pictures, the quality of his films suffered. By this time Hoot had already begun to feature race cars and airplanes in his pictures. such as The Flyin' Cowboy (1928) and The Winged Horseman (1929). Airplanes in particular became a large, expensive passion of his. In 1933 he crashed his biplane during a National Air Race in Los Angeles, which had pitted him against another cowboy star, Ken Maynard. Fortunately, he survived his injuries.
With the advent of talking films, singing cowboys such as Gene Autry and Roy Rogers were becoming the new rage, and both Hoot and Tom Mix felt the kick. Yet he managed a couple of "comebacks" by pairing up with others stars. He joined old silent film teammate Harry Carey and 'Guinn Big Boy Williams' in the "Three Mesquiteers" western Powdersmoke Range (1935), and was billed second to Ray Corrigan in the Republic serial The Painted Stallion (1937).
Hoot left films and toured with the Robbins Brothers and Russell Brothers circuses during 1938 and 1939 before retiring from show business altogether. His multiple divorces and reckless spending habits had taken their toll on his finances. For a time he found work in real estate before Monogram Pictures offered the stocky-framed actor a chance to return in 1943. Hoot teamed up with cowboy star Ken Maynard in the popular "Trail Blazers" series, and the duo were later joined by Bob Steele. Chief Thundercloud replaced a difficult Maynard on a couple of the films, but by the end of the series Gibson and Steele were riding alone together. The nearly dozen films in the series began with Wild Horse Stampede (1943) and ended with Trigger Law (1944), the latter being his last hurrah in films.
Hoot then returned to real estate. By the time he appeared as a surprise guest on the popular sitcom I Married Joan (1952) starring Joan Davis, his Western features of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as those of Maynard, Steele and others were a large staple of films seen by a TV audience that couldn't get enough Western fare. He did a favor for old friend John Ford by appearing in a cameo role in the director's 1959 film The Horse Soldiers (1959). His last movie spotting was a guest cameo in the "Rat Pack" film Ocean's Eleven (1960).
Hoot married a fourth and final time on July 3, 1942, to one-time radio singer and actress Dorothea Dunstan. This marriage took hold and lasted for 20 years until his death. By the 1960s Gibson was on the verge of financial collapse after a series of bad investments. Diagnosed with cancer in 1960, rising medical costs forced him to find any and all work available. He was relegated at one point to becoming a greeter at a Las Vegas casino and, for a period, worked at carnivals.
It was an unhappy end for a cowboy who brought so much excitement and entertainment to children and adults alike. Gibson died of cancer at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, California, just a couple of weeks after his 70th birthday. He was interred in the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. In remembrance, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and, in 1979, was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.- Lem Sowards was born on 17 October 1892 in Missouri, USA. He was an actor, known for Red Blood (1925). He died on 20 August 1962 in Sawtelle, California, USA.
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Prolific western utility player, in Hollywood from 1932. Noticeable for his dusky looks, hypnotic stare and crocodilian smile, Price was perhaps one of the busier small-part actors of the period, as attested by the fact, that -- in 1939 alone -- he worked for 52 weeks and earned $2700. He served in the military during the latter stages of World War I and thereafter acted on stage in the Midwest. Except for a part in a failed 1929 Broadway play, he did not make much of a splash on the Great White Way but apparently also sidelined as a playwright. From the early 30's, he was seldom out of film work, amassing numerous credits as nervous or craven second-string henchmen, Mexican bandidos, maniacal killers, gamblers, barflys and even the odd lawman in westerns. He was especially active for Republic and Monogram, supporting popular sagebrush heroes Johnny Mack Brown, William Boyd, Tex Ritter, Bob Steele and Charles Starrett. Price made occasional appearances in crime and science fiction serials. He received his most prominent billing (fourth) as 'the Phantom Ruler' in Republic's The Invisible Monster (1950). Price was known for his distinctively well-intoned, quiet delivery. Not surprisingly, then, that he was employed by Lippert Productions as a dialogue coach/director towards the latter stages of his career, from 1948 to 1955.- Actor
- Production Manager
Fred Hoose was born on 4 March 1868 in Burlington, Vermont, USA. He was an actor and production manager, known for Western Mail (1942), Wild Horse Stampede (1943) and East Side Kids (1940). He died on 12 March 1952 in Los Angeles County, California, USA.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
The son of a rancher-turned-politician, Guinn Williams was given the nickname "Big Boy" (and he was, too - 6' 2" of mostly solid muscle from years of working on ranches and playing semi-pro and pro baseball) by Will Rogers, with whom he made one of his first films, in 1919. Although his father wanted him to attend West Point (he had been an officer in the Army during World War I), Williams had always wanted to act and made his way to Hollywood in 1919. His experience as a cowboy and rodeo rider got him work as a stuntman, and he gradually worked his way up to acting. He became friends with Rogers and together they made around 15 films. Additionally,in a film that has recently received critical acclaim, he appeared alongside Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor in the silent film Lucky Star (1929), playing a brute vying for the affections of Janet Gaynor in competition with a returning war veteran, played by Charles Farrell. He then easily made the transition from silents to talkies. Although he also starred in a series of low-budget westerns in the early and mid-1930s, he really came into his own as a supporting player in the late 1930s and early 1940s, especially at Warner Bros., where he appeared in such resoundingly successful westerns as Dodge City (1939) and Santa Fe Trail (1940) with his friends Errol Flynn and Alan Hale. Williams specialized in the somewhat dim and quick-tempered but basically decent sidekick, a role he would play for the next 20 years or so. He also made sound films other than westerns, and was in, for example, A Star Is Born (1937). Late in his career, he won the hearts of TV viewers in a regular role as Pete, the comedic roadie in Circus Boy (1956). In the early 1960s Williams' health began to deteriorate, which was noticeable in his last film, The Comancheros (1961), in which he had a small part and, sadly, did not look well at all. He died of uremic poisoning shortly afterwards.- Actor
- Additional Crew
Perennial film western heavy I. Stanford Jolley could be spotted anywhere and everywhere in dusty "B" fare from 1935 on. Often mustachioed, this freelancing, wideset-eyed, black-hatted villain, who showed up in Hollywood following vaudeville and Broadway experience, could be counted on to give the sagebrush hero a devil of a time before the film's end.
Born on October 24, 1900, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and raised in nearby Morristown, Jolley was nicknamed "Ike" (short for his given name "Isaac") by his parents but "Stan" by his friends. Of French and English descent, his entertainment-minded father, Robert B. Jolley, at one time owned and operated a traveling circus and carnival before becoming a successful restaurateur and opening an electrical contracting service. Jolley worked at his father's electrical store following high school for a time but then drifted around for a few years while searching for a passionate direction in life.
Around the time he married Emily Hacker in 1921, he took an interest in performing and started in vaudeville for both the B.F. Keith and Marcus Loew circuits. He also performed on stage and in stock shows, which led to a role as a blind man on Broadway in "Humoresque" in 1926. His father's death interrupted his acting pursuits, and he returned home to New Jersey in 1929 in order to handle the family's business affairs when the Great Depression brought his father's company to virtual bankruptcy.
In 1935, Jolley took a chance and moved his family (which now included two children) out west in order to reignite his acting career. His raw, sunken-cheeked, cold-eyed features seemed ideal for westerns and he found initial work in the genre in extra parts, wherein he learned how to ride horses on the spot. Although one of his first bits was in the Bette Davis drama Front Page Woman (1935), it wasn't long before he was firmly entrenched in oaters, playing uncredited bits throughout the rest of the 1930s. Slowly but surely he transitioned to featured roles in the WWII era, playing a reliable adversary to such cowboy heroes as Ray Corrigan in Trail of the Silver Spurs (1941) and Boot Hill Bandits (1942); Tom Keene in Arizona Roundup (1942); George Houston in Border Roundup (1942) and Outlaws of Boulder Pass (1942); Robert Livingston in Death Rides the Plains (1943) and Wolves of the Range (1943); Russell Hayden in Frontier Law (1943); Buster Crabbe in the western serial Blazing Frontier (1943), The Kid Rides Again (1943), and Lightning Raiders (1945)_; Dave O'Brien in Return of the Rangers (1943) and Outlaw Roundup (1944); and Tex Ritter in Oklahoma Raiders (1944), Gangsters of the Frontier (1944), and The Whispering Skull (1944).
Jolley's array of gunslingers, henchmen, and outlaws continued into the postwar years, but he wasn't completely confined to westerns. He also made appearances in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) starring Errol Flynn and Bette Davis, The Ape (1940) with Boris Karloff (in which Jolley's little boy Stan Jolley appeared as an extra in a soda shop), Corregidor (1943) with Otto Kruger, the serial Batman (1943), Charlie Chan in the Chinese Cat (1944) with Sidney Toler, The Desert Hawk (1944) with Gilbert Roland, The Crimson Ghost (1946), the serials King of the Rocket Men (1949) and Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere (1951), Joan of Arc (1948) with Ingrid Bergman, and Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) with John Wayne.
Come the 1950s, however, Jolley was almost completely confined in films and on TV to the western genre. On the small screen he became a familiar nemesis to "The Lone Ranger" and also played guest villain to "Annie Oakley," "Hopalong Cassidy, "The Cisco Kid," "Kit Carson," "Cheyenne" and "Daniel Boone". Jolley's baritone voice was also used on radio for such shows as The Lux Radio Theatre. He continued to act past age 70, including in his last film, Night of the Lepus (1972), directed partly by his son Stan Jolley, who also became an Oscar-nominated art director.
The heavy-smoking character actor was diagnosed with emphysema in his final years and died of the respiratory illness on December 6, 1978, at the Motion Picture and TV Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.- Born Gordon Nance in 1904 on a farm in Pattonsburg, Missouri -- a small town about 60 miles northeast of Kansas City -- the future "Wild Bill Elliott" grew up around horses. His father was a commissioner at the Kansas City Stockyards. and at age 16 Elliott won a first-place ribbon in that city's annual "American Royal Horse and Livestock Show." After a move to California, he appeared in a few productions at the Pasadena Playhouse, where he was spotted by a talent scout. He made his first movie in 1925. A steady stream of movies followed, first silents and then talkies, in which he played too great a variety of roles to be "typed." In many of these movies he was billed as "Gordon Elliott." In 1938, however, Columbia cast him as the lead in its 15-chapter serial, The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (1938), and Elliott's identification with westerns began. He even began to adopt the names "Bill" or "Wild Bill." He also became famous for using the line, "I'm a peaceable man ... " (which was inevitably followed by an outburst of violence). Elliott reached his peak of popularity at Columbia when he was teamed with Tex Ritter for a series of films. In 1943 he left Columbia for Republic, where his westerns had somewhat larger budgets. This was followed by a move to Monogram (later Allied Artists) in 1951. He was now back in low-budget B-westerns, the last one appearing in 1954. There followed five other B pictures in which he played a Los Angeles police detective. He filmed "pilots" for two potential TV series, "Marshal of Trail City" and "Parson of the West," but neither of them sold. His film career over, Elliott settled in Las Vegas where he hosted a weekly TV show in which he interviewed guests and showed some of his old movies. He also became a pitchman for a cigarette company. In 1961 his 34-year marriage to Helen Josephine Meyer ended and he took Dolly Moore as his second wife. He died of lung cancer in 1965 and is buried in Las Vegas at Palm Memorial Park.
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Bob Card was born on 4 May 1887 in Iowa, USA. He was an actor, known for Ridin' the Cherokee Trail (1941), Terror of the Plains (1934) and Across the Plains (1939). He was married to Hazel. He died on 7 April 1970 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
John James was born on 7 August 1913 in Wichita Falls, Texas, USA. He was an actor, known for Flying Tigers (1942), Murder by Invitation (1941) and Thundering Trails (1943). He was married to Jacqueline James. He died on 20 May 1960 in New York City, New York, USA.- Actor
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Stuntman and actor Boyd Stockman was born on February 12, 1916 in Red Rock, Grant County, New Mexico. Boyd moved to California in the early 1940's where he and his brother worked for the Bakersfield Land and Cattle Company. Stockman began his film business career doing stunts at Monogram Pictures in the mid-1940's after he was spotted roping cattle at the L.A. Coliseum Rodeo by fellow stuntmen Joe Yrigoyen and Andy Jauregui, who suggested to Stockman that he try his hand in the movies. An expert horseman and team driver, Boyd was usually cast in Westerns as a stagecoach driver. Moreover, Stockman was also a regular in Gene Autry Western programmers made by Columbia. His career as both an actor and stuntman in Westerns spanned over three decades altogether. Boyd returned to his native state of New Mexico in the mid-1970's. Stockman died at age 82 on March 10, 1998 in Silver City, New Mexico.- Actor
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Joe McGuinn was born on 21 January 1904 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Billy the Kid Outlawed (1940), The Officer and the Lady (1941) and Mysterious Doctor Satan (1940). He died on 22 September 1971 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Arthur Scofield Franz was born in Perth Amboy, NJ, to Dorothy and Gustav Franz, German immigrants. He was a reliable character actor in many 1940s and 1950s "B" pictures, often cast as a friendly small-town businessman or professional (as in The Doctor and the Girl (1949)) or the lead's sympathetic friend (as in Invaders from Mars (1953)). He wasn't confined to just "B" pictures, however. He had good parts in such major productions as Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and Alvarez Kelly (1966) and acquitted himself well. However, the film he's probably best remembered for is Edward Dmytryk's solid little "B" thriller The Sniper (1952), in which he turned in an outstanding performance as a mentally unstable ex-soldier in San Francisco who, after being rejected by a woman he was interested in, snaps and terrorizes the city by taking out his old army rifle and stalking and picking off women.
- Clancy Cooper was born on 23 July 1906 in Boise, Idaho, USA. He was an actor, known for The Wild North (1952), Street of Chance (1942) and Railroaded! (1947). He was married to Elizabeth Murray Keyser. He died on 14 June 1975 in Hollywood, California, USA.
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Gene Alsace was born on 4 August 1902 in Colorado, USA. He was an actor, known for Gun Smoke (1935), The Fighting Stallion (1950) and Adventures of Red Ryder (1940). He was married to Dorothy Coburn, Bonnie Brown Halvorsen, Marguerite Hazel Roberts, Jeanne and Vera T. Camron. He died on 16 June 1967 in Paradise, California, USA.- Lynton Brent was born on 2 August 1897 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Mysterious Doctor Satan (1940), Mr. Wong, Detective (1938) and The Intruder (1933). He died on 12 July 1981 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Jimmy Martin was born on 10 August 1927 in Sneedville, Tennessee, USA. He was an actor, known for Five Red Herrings (1975) and High Lonesome: The Story of Bluegrass Music (1992). He died on 14 May 2005 in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.- Actor
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Frosty Royce was born on 20 December 1910 in El Reno, Oklahoma, USA. He was an actor and producer, known for The Littlest Hobo (1958), Oklahoma Renegades (1940) and Prairie Gunsmoke (1942). He died on 16 May 1965 in Studio City, California, USA.- Actor
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One of the great stars of American Westerns, and a very popular leading man in non-Westerns as well. He was born and raised in the surroundings of Hollywood and as a boy became interested in the movies that were being made all around. He studied acting at Pomona College and got some stage experience at the Pasadena Community Playhouse, where other future stars such as Randolph Scott, Robert Young, and Victor Mature would also get their first experience. He worked as an extra after graduation from the University of Southern California in 1928 and did some stunt work. In a rare case of an extra being chosen from the crowd to play a major role, McCrea was given a part in The Jazz Age. A contract at MGM followed, and then a better contract at RKO. Will Rogers took a liking to the young man (they shared a love of ranching and roping) and did much to elevate McCrea's career. His wholesome good looks and quiet manner were soon in demand, primarily in romantic dramas and comedies, and he became an increasingly popular leading man. He hoped to concentrate on Westerns, but several years passed before he could convince the studio heads to cast him in one. When he proved successful in that genre, more and more Westerns came his way. But he continued to make a mark in other kinds of pictures, and proved himself particularly adept at the light comedy of Preston Sturges, for whom he made several films. By the late Forties, his concentration focused on Westerns, and he made few non-Westerns thereafter. He was immensely popular in them, and most of them still hold up well today. He and Randolph Scott, whose career strongly resembles McCrea's, came out of retirement to make a classic of the genre, Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (1962). Scott stayed retired thereafter; McCrea made a couple of appearances in small films afterwards, but was primarily content to maintain his life as a gentleman rancher. He was married for fifty-seven years to actress Frances Dee, who survived him.- Actor
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Jerry Brown was born on 13 February 1915 in Texas, USA. He was an actor, known for Rolling Thunder (1977), Oklahoma Crude (1973) and Temple Houston (1963). He died on 9 July 1979 in Los Angeles County, California, USA.- Actor
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Mickey Finn was born in 1919 in Hugo, Oklahoma, USA. He was an actor, known for The Spider (1958), Shirley Temple's Storybook (1958) and Taras Bulba (1962). He died on 24 April 1989.- Genial, fair-haired and boyishly handsome, lanky actor John Lupton's biggest claim to fame was as the co-star of the western TV series Broken Arrow (1956). A reliable actor, if not particularly distinctive, he enjoyed a four-decade-long career on stage, film and TV. Born on August 22, 1928, in Highland Park, Illinois, the son of a newspaper writer, Lupton was raised in Milwaukee where he settled on pursuing an acting career after appearing in a couple of high school plays. He began paying his dues with a local stock company and also performed children's theater. He eventually trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Lupton made his Broadway debut in a minor part in the Mae West showcase "Diamond Lil" (1949), and subsequently co-starred with Susan Peters in "The Glass Menagerie", then was cast in the Katharine Hepburn 1950 tour of "As You Like It. It was Hepburn who helped introduce him to films...and MGM.
As a Metro contract player, Lupton found the going rough, playing bit parts as a spear-carrier in Julius Caesar (1953) and a village idiot in Scandal at Scourie (1953). After two years the studio declined to pick up his option and Lupton began to freelance. One of his better roles was in support of Tab Hunter Battle Cry (1955) in which he played a young soldier who is killed in battle just after learning his girl back home, played by Anne Francis, was prostituting herself. He went on to appear as a rookie type in a number of late 1950s action-oriented yarns, including The Great Locomotive Chase (1956), Drango (1957), Taming Sutton's Gal (1957), Gun Fever (1958) and The Man in the Net (1959). In a departure from the norm, Lupton later found an isolated film lead playing the famous outlaw in the witless cult horror entry Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966).
The actor found earnest roles in TV dramatic showcases as well, such as Robert Montgomery Presents (1950), Playhouse 90 (1956) and Studio One (1948). All this culminated in the "Broken Arrow" TV series in which Lupton played government agent Tom Jeffords, a role originated by James Stewart in the 1950 feature film of the same name, endeavoring to keep the peace between white settlers and Apaches and their honorable and charismatic chief, Cochise, (played by Michael Ansara).
Lupton's career maintained its pace into the next decade as a result of his long-running role as Tommy Horton on the daytime soap Days of Our Lives (1965), as well as in commercials and in a slew of made-for-TV movies. He also guested on such popular programs as Wagon Train (1957), Gomer Pyle: USMC (1964), The F.B.I. (1965), Ironside (1967), Kung Fu (1972), Cannon (1971), Harry O (1973), Charlie's Angels (1976), The Rockford Files (1974) and B.J. and the Bear (1978).
Lupton's first marriage, which produced a daughter, ended in divorce. A second marriage to Dian Friml, the granddaughter of "The Vagabond King" composer Rudolf Friml, lasted until his death. He was seen less and less into the 1980s and later found full-time employment with a computer firm, appearing in guest roles on the sly. Volunteer work included serving with the Multiple Sclerosis Association and the Special Olympics.
John Lupton's last film, Body Shot (1994), was released the year of his death. He died of undisclosed causes on November 3, 1993, at age 65. Wife Dian died in 2005. - Actor
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Veteran stuntman and stunt coordinator Henry Wills was born on a cattle ranch in Arizona in 1921. After graduating high school he headed to Hollywood, and was soon working as an extra, mainly in westerns. He picked up some extra money doing stunt work, and soon began to concentrate on that field. He gained a reputation as one of the best horsemen in the business, specializing in horse falls--he's estimated to have done over 1400 of them in his career--transfers from horses to wagons and stagecoaches, and bulldogging (jumping off his horse to take down a rider on another horse), etc. His first job as a full-fledged Stunt Coordinator was on The Magnificent Seven (1960), and he became a Second-Unit Director on Major Dundee (1965). He worked on many of the top TV westerns, and was stunt coordinator and Second Unit Director on the hit series The High Chaparral (1967). He died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, CA, in 1994.- Actor
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Al St. John was born on 10 September 1893 in Santa Ana, California, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Billy the Kid in Texas (1940), Prairie Badmen (1946) and Billy the Kid Trapped (1942). He was married to Yvonne June Villon Price Pearce (actress), Lillian Marion Ball and Flo-Bell Moore. He died on 21 January 1963 in Lyons, Georgia, USA.- Jack O'Shea was born on 6 April 1906 in San Francisco, California, USA. He was an actor, known for G-Men Never Forget (1948), Ride, Ryder, Ride! (1949) and Outlaws of the Plains (1946). He was married to Patricia Elizabeth Garry and Peg Harrington. He died on 1 October 1967 in Paradise, California, USA.
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A storybook hero, the original screen cowboy, ever forthright and honest, even when (as was often the case) he played a villain, William S. Hart lived for a while in the Dakota Territory, then worked as a postal clerk in New York City. In 1888 he began to study acting. In 1899 he created the role of Messala in "Ben-Hur", and received excellent reviews for his lead part in "The Virginian" (1907). His first film was a two-reeler, His Hour of Manhood (1914). In 1915 he signed a contract with Thomas H. Ince and joined Ince's Triangle Film Company. Two years later he followed Ince to Famous Players-Lasky and received a very lucrative contract from Adolph Zukor. His career began to dwindle in the early 1920s due to the publicity surrounding a paternity suit against him, which was eventually dismissed. He made his last film, Tumbleweeds (1925), for United Artists and retired to a ranch in Newhall, CA. By that time audiences were more interested in the antics of a Tom Mix or Hoot Gibson than the Victorian moralizing of Hart. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery, NY.- Actor
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Charles K. French was born on 17 January 1860 in Columbus, Ohio, USA. He was an actor and director, known for The Abysmal Brute (1923), Hands Up! (1926) and Gentle Julia (1923). He was married to Doris Herbert, Isabelle Gurton and Helen French. He died on 2 August 1952 in Hollywood, California, USA.- American cowboy and actor Slim Whitaker was working the rodeo circuit at age 17, eventually becoming a cowhand on the Chowchilla Ranch in central California. In 1912 he was hired as a riding extra and stunt man by Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson for westerns being filmed in Niles Canyon, CA. During the silent era his peers were Hal Taliaferro, Al Bridge, Charles King, Ken Maynard, Yakima Canutt, Walter Brennan, Hoot Gibson, a very young John Wayne and many others. He was one of the most prolific of the B-western bad guys and supporting actors. His movie career spanned 36 years, from the silents through the post-World War II period, and he appeared in over 300 films.
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The son of a physician, Horace Murphy started his career as a child actor on showboats on the Mississippi. He later played the cornet in the band and eventually became half-owner of the showboat "Cottonblossom Floating Palace". After two seasons he sold his interest and organized a string of dramatic tent shows from New Orleans to Los Angeles, each of which also had a baseball team. Later he sold these and built two theaters, one in Los Angeles and one in Burbank. He entered movies in 1936 and went on to a career mostly in B-Westerns. He is perhaps best known as "Ananias", Tex Ritter's partner in a string of films. He also appeared on radio with Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.- Mexican character actor who achieved his greatest success in U.S. films. He was born in Mexico city, living in numerous places throughout the country. He received a private education in Houston, Texas as a teenager, but dropped out and roamed about doing an assortment of jobs. His family, however, brought him back to Mexico City, where he subsequently found work in the struggling Mexican film industry. He appeared in many Mexican films before director John Huston offered him the role of Gold Hat in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Bedoya stole the scenes in which he appeared as the smiling cutthroat and delivered the famous line about not needing any "stinking badges". He made a number of popular films in the U.S. in the next nine years, but a drinking problem destroyed his health. He died of a heart attack at the age of 53.
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Bill Coontz was born on 28 August 1917 in Johnson, Iowa, USA. He was an actor, known for Convoy (1978), Plunderers of Painted Flats (1959) and Frankenstein's Daughter (1958). He died on 7 April 1978 in Van Buren, Arkansas, USA.- Actor
- Writer
David Brian was born Brian James Davis on August 5, 1914 in New York City. After graduating from City College, he found work as a doorman before entering show business with a song-and-dance routine in vaudeville and nightclubs. He did a wartime stint with the United States Coast Guard and returned to acting on the New York stage after World War II.
Persuaded by Joan Crawford to try his hand at film acting, he joined her in Hollywood and, in 1949, signed a contract with Warner Brothers. In his feature debut, Flamingo Road (1949), he played a political boss infatuated with Crawford's carnival girl. His most critically acclaimed performance was as the fair-minded, resourceful Southern lawyer defending condemned but innocent Juano Hernandez from a lynch mob in Intruder in the Dust (1949). For this role, he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award as Best Supporting Actor.
Brian portrayed a powerful gang leader in The Damned Don't Cry (1950), again opposite Crawford. In spite of his commanding presence in the film, his performance was somewhat compromised by a cliche-laden screenplay. In This Woman Is Dangerous (1952), it was Crawford who played the criminal and Brian the role of her insanely jealous paramour. For the remainder of the decade and into the 1960s, Brian played an assortment of western heavies on the big screen -- notably raider leader Austin McCool in Springfield Rifle (1952) and saloon owner Dick Braden in Dawn at Socorro (1954) -- and did the same with equal verve on television, in Gunsmoke (1955). An incisive actor with sardonic looks and a hard edge to his voice, he was often typecast as ruthless or manipulating types. Somewhat against character, he essayed a weakling in the ground-breaking airborne drama The High and the Mighty (1954).
On the right side of the law, he starred as crusading District Attorney Paul Garrett in Mr. District Attorney (1954), reprising his earlier role on radio. In 1968, he also made a contribution to Star Trek (1966) as John Gill, a Federation cultural observer on the planet Ekos whose experiment in creating a government based on National Socialist principles goes disastrously wrong. In private life, he was a celebrated fundraiser for the Volunteers of America, a non-profit charitable organization. On July 15, 1993, David Brian died at age 78 of cancer and heart disease in Sherman Oaks, California.- Actor
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Slim Andrews was born on 8 December 1906 in Gravette, Arkansas, USA. He was an actor, known for Arizona Frontier (1940), Ridin' the Cherokee Trail (1941) and Rollin' Home to Texas (1940). He was married to Lucille. He died on 3 April 1992 in Gravette, Arkansas, USA.- Chubby Johnson was born Charles Rutledge Johnson on August 13, 1903, in Terre Haute, Indiana. He made a living as a journalist and did not become a movie actor until he was in his 40s, making his debut in the Randolph Scott oater Abilene Town (1946) in support of Scott, Ann Dvorak and Edgar Buchanan. He continued to practice his craft as a member of the press, serving as a radio announcer as well as pounding the keys as a columnist, until he was nearly 50. Chubby appeared in the Errol Flynn horse opera Rocky Mountain (1950) as part of an army of quirky character actors, including Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams and Slim Pickens. Chubby then quit the Fourth Estate for a Hollywood career.
When Republic Pictures sought a replacement for Eddy Waller to play sidekick to B-movie cowboy star Allan Lane in the Rocky Lane series, Chubby filled in for most of 1951-52. He also starred in the TV series Sky King (1951) as ranch foreman Jim Bell. The low-budget series, a spin-off from a five-year-old radio show in which individual episodes were made for approximately $9,000 each, ran on NBC from Sept 16, 1951, until Oct 26, 1952. The series was then picked up by ABC, which ran the same NBC episodes from November 8, 1952, until September 12, 1954. A season of new episodes was aired in 1955.
Chubby freelanced as a character actor after these stints on the TV, appearing in support of James Stewart in the Anthony Mann classic Bend of the River (1952), and in their The Far Country (1954), which also featured character actor par excellence Walter Brennan, the movies' first triple-Oscar threat. Chubby then went on to appear in support of Doris Day in Calamity Jane (1953), Audie Murphy in Gunsmoke (1953), Ronald Reagan in Law and Order (1953), Barbara Stanwyck and Ronnie again in Cattle Queen of Montana (1954) and James Cagney in Tribute to a Bad Man (1956), one of the legend's rare forays into the western.
Other stars Chubby supported were Richard Chamberlain and Claude Rains in Twilight of Honor (1963), the 1963 courtroom drama that won the ill-fated Nick Adams a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination; James Garner in Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969); and Burt Reynolds in his audacious debut as a big-screen star as the eponymous Sam Whiskey (1969). He also appeared uncredited in the classic High Noon (1952).
After appearing as a regular in the short-lived series Frontier Doctor (1956), Chubby appeared as Concho on another TV western, Temple Houston (1963), which starred Jeffrey Hunter. He also guested on many other TV westerns, including Bonanza (1959), Gunsmoke (1955) and The Rifleman (1958).
Chubby continued to appear in films until 1969, with Sam Whiskey (1969) serving as the nightcap to his career. He died on Halloween Day 1974 from complications from a leg infection. - Eddy Waller worked in vaudeville and the theater before he entered movies in 1936. Within a few years he was being cast in character parts. In the 1940s he would be a mainstay in the westerns of Republic Pictures and would work with just about every cowboy actor from Tim Holt to Rocky Lane. With Lane, Eddy's billing would be as high as second, as he played grizzly old prospector Nugget Clark, adding the comic relief to a picture with such pearls as "He is as square as the day is long". The "B" western finally died out in the 1950s, and so did Eddy's career.
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American character actor, mainly in Westerns in comic or rustic roles. Born Norton Earl Worden in Rolfe, Iowa, during his parents' visit to a relative's home there, he was raised on a cattle ranch near Glendive, Montana. Educated at Stanford and the University of Nevada as an engineer, he trained as an Army pilot, but washed out of flight school. Worden toured the country in rodeos as a saddle bronc rider and broke his neck in a horse fall in his 20s, but didn't know it until his 40s. Chosen along with Tex Ritter from a rodeo at Madison Square Garden in New York to appear in the Broadway play "Green Grow the Lilacs", the play from which the musical "Oklahoma" was later derived, he afterward drove a cab in New York, then worked on dude ranches as a wrangler and as a guide on the Bright Angel trail of the Grand Canyon. Recommended by Billie Burke to several movie producers, Worden became friends with John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and later John Ford, all of whom provided him with much work. He was married to Louise Eaton, who predeceased him. Following his wife's death, he shared his house with Jim Beaver for several years, thus generously helping the young actor gain a foothold in Hollywood. He died in his sleep at 91, survived by his adopted daughter Dawn Henry.- Actor
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American leading man and character actor of the silent period. Born in Crystal City, Missouri(though a number of popular reference works list Switzerland and Kokomo, Indiana). He is listed in the 1880 census as living in Kokomo at the age of two years. This means his date of birth must have been 1878. His father, Paul Santschi was born in Sigriswill, Switzerland and came to the U.S. as a child. Tom Santschi promoted the myth that he was born in Switzerland since it seemed much more exciting than being born in Crystal City or Kokomo. After performing as an amateur actor, he made his professional stage debut at age 19, and worked for the next decade in the theatre. He landed a small role in a film produced by Selig Polyscope, and over the next few years rose from bit player to leading man. He directed and wrote a few of his films. Following the First World War, he became more frequently seen in supporting roles, often as villains. He worked consistently until his death in 1931.- Actor
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American leading man of silent Westerns whose career was much overshadowed by that of his more famous brother Jack Hoxie. He grew up in the backwoods and mountains of Idaho. His older brother had become a champion rodeo rider, a talent he parlayed into early success in cowboy movies. Following in his brother's footsteps, Al Hoxie moved to Los Angeles, not yet twenty years old. His brother Jack soon got him work as a stuntman and wrangler, and Al doubled for his brother and other actors in numerous films of the early 1920s. He began to get bit parts, and then bigger roles, in his brother's films and then on his own. A Poverty Row studio called Anchor Films saw potential in the strapping cowboy with the famous (last) name. They signed him to play the lead in a series of Westerns, which then led to a new series contract with producer Bud Barsky. None of these pictures ventured far beyond mediocre, and with the coming of sound in the late 1920s, Hoxie, with no great following, quit the business. He returned to his Northwest roots for several years, then returned to Los Angeles, this time to work as a conductor on the Red Line streetcars. For a few years he was a forest ranger, then went into law enforcement, first for the Anaheim, California, police department, and then for the Patton State Hospital. While there, Hoxie regained some public attention by disarming a deranged man with hostages. He was presented California's highest award for bravery, the California Medal of Honor. He retired thereafter and spent his remaining years in Redlands, California, where he died in 1982, seventeen years after the death of his more famous older brother.- Actor
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One of the finest teamsters in Hollywood screen history, Osborne handled the reins for horse-drawn coaches and wagons in countless westerns and historical photoplays from the early 20's through late 50's. And with his weathered, rumpled look, his Texas drawl and his nasal twang, he was often called upon to portray a seedy outlaw in any of those same westerns.- Actor
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American B-Western star and singing cowboy Monte Hale was born Samuel Buren Ely in 1919 in Ada, Oklahoma, to Herod and Helen Ely. He learned to sing and play guitar at an early age. In Houston and later Galveston, Texas, he played for vaudeville shows and local rodeos. During World War II a job as a replacement guitar player with the Stars Over Texas War Bond Drive led to a friendship with several Republic Pictures stars and staff. At the completion of the tour, the Republic contingent recommended young Hale to studio president Herbert J. Yates. Hale went to California and met Yates, who saw promise in the tall, good-looking musician, and signed him to a seven-year contract, and promptly discarded his birth name for the more appealing name of Monte Hale. After a quick apprenticeship in a couple of bit parts, Hale was given the lead in Home on the Range (1946), which led to a five-year run as one of Republic's popular singing-cowboy stars.
Following the demise of the "B" western in the early 1950s, Hale toured the country as part of a musical cowboy act in rodeos and circuses. He made a few television guest appearances and taught James Dean his rope tricks during their work together on Giant (1956). Hale thereafter retired from films. In his later years, he wrote songs and continued making appearances at Western film fan conventions.- Music Artist
- Actor
- Producer
After high school Gene Autry worked as a laborer for the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad in Oklahoma. Next he was a telegrapher. In 1928 he began singing on a local radio station, and three years later he had his own show and was making his first recordings. Three years after that he made his film debut in Ken Maynard's In Old Santa Fe (1934) and starred in a 13-part serial the following year for Mascot Pictures, The Phantom Empire (1935). The next year he signed a contract with Republic Pictures and began making westerns. Autry--for better or worse--pretty much ushered in the era of the "singing cowboy" westerns of the 1930s and 1940s (in spite of the presence in his oaters of automobiles, radios and airplanes). These films often grossed ten times their average $50,000 production costs. During World War II he enlisted in the US Army and was assigned as a flight officer from 1942-46 with the Air Transport Command. After his military service he returned to making movies, this time with Columbia Pictures, and finally with his own company, Flying A Productions, which, during the 1950s, produced his TV series The Gene Autry Show (1950), The Adventures of Champion (1955), and Annie Oakley (1954). He wrote over 200 songs. A savvy businessman, he retired from acting in the early 1960s and became a multi-millionaire from his investments in hotels, real estate, radio stations and the California Angels professional baseball team.- Emberry Cannon Gray was born on April 7, 1885 in Leon, Chickasaw Nation in present day Oklahoma. His family moved to Cache, Indian Territory within two years. The small town of Cache was near Fort Sill. Emberry's mother was 1/4 Chickasaw. His father had been a Texas Ranger in the Trinity Division and later served in the Confederate Army.
Emberry grew up among the Apache, Comanche and Kiowa as Cache was the commercial center of their territories. He and his brothers played with the children of Comanche Chief Quanah Parker. His parents became good friends with the Parker family. By the time Emberry was seven years old, he had started going by the name "Bee Ho". Quanah Parker gave him this name, which means "Brother of the Cripple" since Bee Ho's brother, Emmet Gray, was stricken with polio as a small boy and walked with a crutch for the remainder of his life. In about 1902, Bee Ho and his younger brother, Weaver, rode sixty miles on one horse to the town of Chickasha. They made the journey to view the Pawnee Bill Wild West exhibition. They were very impressed with the trick ropers and began teaching themselves rope tricks using clothesline and anything else they could spin. Within two years, both were performing with Wild West shows. Both brothers would enjoy amazing fifty-year careers in western performance.
Bee Ho's skills included extremely intricate rope tricks, horse riding tricks, knife throwing, whip tricks, banjo and comedy.
He joined several major Wild West shows including Colonel Cummins' Wild West Indian Congress and Rough Riders of the World, Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West (which later featured Buffalo Bill and carried his name in the title), California Frank's All-Star Wild West, and The Irwin Brothers Cheyenne Frontier Days Wild West Show. He operated his own Wild West show called Bee Ho Gray's Wild West for a few years starting in 1919. He also performed with various circuses including the Shriner's and Ringling Brothers.
In about 1912, Bee Ho accompanied Sioux Chief Iron Tail to Washington D.C. and New York where he modeled for artist James Earle Fraser as he worked on designs for the new Buffalo Nickel. He supposedly traveled with Iron Tail to act as an interpreter.
Bee Ho won the World Champion Trick and Fancy Roper title at The Winnipeg Stampede in 1913 and held that title until 1916 when he lost it to Chester Byers.
Bee Ho and his wife, Broadway actress, equestrienne and horse trainer Ada Sommerville, spent many years as Vaudeville performers with both the B.F. Keith, Orpheum and Western circuits. Their show usually received top billing and was sought after across the country. They maintained a packed schedule of performances and literally played thousands of venues and shows during their career.
Bee Ho performed in Erich von Strohiem's "Greed" in 1924. Bee Ho's performance was apparently cut from the film when the length was reduced by about 80%. According to a 1926 Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Republican newspaper article, Bee Ho displayed his skill with knife throwing in the film.
Bee Ho also performed in a number of more obscure, early western films from the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Bison Films and The Vitaphone Corporation including "Hey! Hey! Westerner".
In May and June 1922, Bee Ho and Ada Sommerville were featured in a Broadway musical called "Red Pepper". The stars of the show were the famous minstrel duo, McIntyre and Heath. The show then went on the road for one year, closing in North Dakota in June 1923.
Bee Ho added a trained coyote to his act in the early 1930s and began making radio appearances with his witty Oklahoma comedy. He appeared on stage and on the radio with personalities such as Bing Crosby, Will Rogers, Fred Stone, Joe E. Brown, Mary Beth Hughes, Eddie Nugent, Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson, Ken Maynard and many others. Many of the western stars who performed in the first half of the 1900s got their start with him at the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West as they saw their way of life on the open range disappearing.
Ada Sommerville died in 1940 at the age of sixty-eight. Bee Ho continued with his act using other assistants to fill her role, but the days of Vaudeville were over and his career was relegated to county fairs, small corporate events and school benefits. He died in Pueblo, Colorado on August 3, 1951 at the age of sixty-six while visiting his sisters. Many of his friends and family members never knew what became of him. He is buried at the Mountain View Cemetery in Pueblo, Colorado. - Actor
- Stunts
- Soundtrack
Kermit Maynard was born on 20 September 1897 in Vevay, Indiana, USA. He was an actor, known for The Fighting Texan (1937), Valley of Terror (1937) and Phantom Patrol (1936). He was married to Edith Jessen. He died on 16 January 1971 in North Hollywood, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Bobby Larson was born on 27 March 1930 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Five Little Peppers in Trouble (1940), Five Little Peppers at Home (1940) and Out West with the Peppers (1940). He died on 1 May 2002 in Logan, Utah, USA.- He fit the "tall, dark and handsome" Hollywood prototype beautifully and while the solidly built Greg McClure made a robust dent in Hollywood films after a "Cinderella Man" breakthrough toward the end of WWII, his name would be quickly forgotten following his early retirement.
He was born Dale D'Orr on April 5, 1915, in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of attorney Paul Bardsdale D'Orr. The family moved to Oakland, California when he was still young, and his parents divorced when he was but 12 years old. His stepfather was the pulp fiction writer Walter Easton, whose surname he eventually took.
After his years as a junior college football player in Oakland and playing football, he and brother Harvey relocated to Hollywood where they started a bodybuilding gym. An interest in acting led Greg to scout out stage and film extra work. With little on his resume except non-speaking soldier bits in such films as The Iron Major (1943) and See Here, Private Hargrove (1944), a change audition for the lead role in the Bing Crosby produced film The Great John L. (1945) led to a surprising hire. His marquee name was immediately changed to "Greg McClure" for the Irishman's part.
McClure's nascent leading man career lost its momentum when he was suddenly drafted into the Army not long after the film's release. Freelancing after his honorable discharge, he supplemented his erratic acting career by running a gym that included several film stars as clients. Later featured roles included a number of brutish boxers in such films as Bury Me Dead (1947), Lulu Belle (1948), Joe Palooka in the Big Fight (1949) and Roaring City (1951); the role of "Hammerhead" Hogan in the action adventure Thunder in the Pines (1948); a henchman in the Batman and Robin (1949) serial; a featured role in the "Cold War" espionage film Sky Liner (1949); one of the infamous Daltons in The Dalton Gang (1949); and a private in the war drama Breakthrough (1950);
McClure was forced to leave performing altogether in 1951 after it became known that he was a Communist sympathizer. In later years Greg found varied jobs as a soft drink exec, produce market manager, carpenter and handyman. He moved in with one of his four daughters from his first marriage following his second wife's death, McClure died at the age of 97 on December 7, 2012. - Director
- Actor
- Writer
J.P. McGowan was born on 24 February 1880 in Terowie, South Australia, Australia. He was a director and actor, known for The Lost Express (1917), Hills of Missing Men (1922) and Do or Die (1921). He was married to Mrs. Kaye Swart Northrop, Leona (Lorna) Haviland and Helen Holmes. He died on 26 March 1952 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Actor
- Producer
- Music Department
Russell "Lucky" Hayden was born as Hayden Michael Lucid, the son of Francis Lucid and Minnie Harvey Lucid on June 12, 1912 in Chico, California. In his early Hollywood career, he worked primarily behind the scenes as a film cutter, assistant cameraman, and sound recorder. In 1937, he began his acting career, taking on the name Russell Hayden to honor his friend, cameraman Russell Harlan. That year, he made his screen debut in Paramount's 10th Hopalong Cassidy film, Hills of Old Wyoming (1937). After that film, it was evident Hayden was the perfect replacement for his friend and YMCA roommate, James Ellison, to portray the youthful sidekick to William Boyd in the wildly successful Hopalong series. Hayden played the role of "Lucky Jenkins" in a total of 27 Hoppy films. Today, out of all six of Hoppy's young pals, Lucky remains the most popular. Russell Hayden's acting and producing career spanned 26 years, playing in 80 films and television shows. In 1947, he was in a film called Trail of the Mounties (1947), where he played the heroic lead as well as the villain. In 1950, he and James Ellison starred together in a series of 11 films in which he and Ellison were cast as lawmen of the west. The same year, he appeared in multiple episodes of The Marshal of Gunsight Pass (1950), and also appeared in one episode of The Gene Autry Show (1950). Between the 1952 and 1953, he and Jackie Coogan starred in a short-running western series called Cowboy G-Men (1952), making a total of 39 episodes. While working in Hollywood, Russell Hayden teamed up with fellow actor Dick Curtis to help create Pioneertown, a western movie set that has been used in many films. Russell Hayden was married twice, first to actress Jan Clayton (aka Jane Clayton) in 1938. They met during the filming of Sunset Trail (1938), one of three Hopalong films in which they acted together. The two had their only child, Sandra Hayden, in 1940. After the couple's divorce in 1943, Hayden married actress Lillian Porter in 1946. The two remained married until his death in 1981.- Dale Van Sickel was born on 29 November 1907 in Eatonton, Georgia, USA. He was an actor, known for Radar Patrol vs. Spy King (1949), Zombies of the Stratosphere (1952) and The Crimson Ghost (1946). He was married to Iris Van Sickel. He died on 25 January 1977 in Newport Beach, California, USA.
- Pat J. O'Brien was born on 2 December 1902 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for Tailspin Tommy in the Great Air Mystery (1935), The House of Terror (1928) and Tim Tyler's Luck (1937). He died on 23 March 1973 in Santa Barbara, California, USA.
- Leon Beaumon - also credited as Leon Beauman, Beaumont, and Leon Duval
- was a minor stage and film actor during the 1920s and 1930s. He was
Leon's filmography is largely a mystery, due to the passage of time and his legendary attempts to hide his true age; thus he gave few details of his Hollywood career to his children. From a scrapbook, archival sources, and his lifelong friend and fellow actor, the late Bob St. Angelo, it is known so far that he had credited roles in A Fight to the Finish (1925), Clancy of the Mounted (1933), Pioneer Trail (1938) and The Law Comes to Texas (1939). He had uncredited roles in Cleopatra (1934), Folies Bergère de Paris (1935), Fugitive at Large (1939), Les Misérables (1935), Call of the Wild (1935), The Freshman (1925), The Mighty Barnum (1934) The Sea Wolf (1930), The Wizard of Oz (1939), The Vagabond King (1930) and Western Frontier (1935). He often played the bad guy in Ken Maynard's westerns. During his acting days, Leon ran an ice cream shop in Hollywood. He was also an inventor, creating one of the first wireless radios, the record changer on record players, and numerous other gadgets. During World War 2, Leon joined the Army Air Corps and remained stateside. Subsequently he became a real estate broker, and eventually an industrial landlord. Leon remained single until 1961 when he married Theresa (Hermine Gruber). They made their home in a Los Angeles suburb and had three children, Florence, Anthony and Monique. Leon never retired, even putting a roof on a building when he was in his 70s. His beloved wife preceded him in death, in 1978. Leon passed away from cancer in 1981, at the age of 83. His nephew and his nephew's wife, Jim and Marj Smerber, generously took care of him in his illness and finished rearing his minor children. - Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Marshall Reed was born on 28 May 1917 in Englewood, Colorado, USA. He was an actor and producer, known for The Madmen of Mandoras (1963), Shirley Temple's Storybook (1958) and They Saved Hitler's Brain (1968). He was married to Carlyn Miller. He died on 15 April 1980 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Stunts
- Additional Crew
Cowboy actor Buddy Roosevelt was born Kenneth Stanhope Sanderson in Meeker, Colorado, in 1898. His parents were emigrants from England, and at age 16 Kenneth got a job with the C.B. Irwin WIld West Show. When the show traveled to Southern California in 1914, the young Sanderson learned that stunt work in the burgeoning film industry paid much better, and was quite a bit safer, than busting broncs and the kind of roping, trick riding and other hard and dangerous tasks required of a Wild West show performer, and he soon got a job doing stunts in westerns for pioneering producer Thomas H. Ince at his Inceville studio, and often performed as a stunt double for William S. Hart. When the US entered World War I in 1917 Roosevelt enlisted in the Navy and was aboard the USS Norfolk when it was sunk. As if that wasn't enough, he contracted the Spanish flu during the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed millions worldwide, but he managed to survive both the sinking and the flu and returned to Hollywood at war's end.
Going back to stunt work, he was the stunt double for matinee idol Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik (1921), the picture that made Valentino a star. After more stunt work and small parts in a few films, Sanderson was hired by shoestring producer Lester F. Scott Jr. to star in a series of low-budget westerns. Scott didn't think that "Kenneth Sanderson" was enough of a cowboy name so he changed it to Buddy Roosevelt. The newly renamed cowboy actor made Rough Ridin' (1924) for Scott, the first of 25 that Roosevelt would make for him. Budgets for these pictures were usually less than $25,000--a paltry sum even for the early 1920s--but Scott had the sense to hire veteran supporting characters and efficient directors like a young Richard Thorpe (later to become a mainstay at prestigious MGM) and the pictures proved popular and made money. Unfortunately for Roosevelt, however, Scott signed two more cowboy actors, Jay Wilsey and Hal Taliaferro, which meant that the low budgets on Roosevelt's films got even lower.
In 1928 Roosevelt left Scott for another "B" outfit, Rayart Pictures, but the films he made for that company weren't much of an improvement over his Scott opuses (and in many cases were even worse). After a half-dozen of Rayart's "extravaganzas", Roosevelt managed to get a good role in a big picture for a major studio--The Cisco Kid in In Old Arizona (1928) for Fox. As luck would have it, though, Roosevelt broke his leg shortly before filming was to start. He was replaced by Warner Baxter, who went on to win an Academy Award for the part, which started him on a long and distinguished career. Buddy, on the other hand, went back to making "B" (and even lower-grade) horse operas. He signed with cheapjack producer/director Jack Irwin for a trio of oaters that were barely released. Irwin ran out of money on the third of this trio, "Valley of Bad Men"--which was apparently NEVER released--and Roosevelt was once again out of a job. He did some stunt work and got some small parts in small films, and eventually signed with low-rent specialist Victor Adamson (aka Denver Dixon) for a series of extremely low-budget westerns for Adamson's Superior Talking Pictures outfit. Supposedly shot in only a few days on budgets that were so low that Superior could only afford to pay Roosevelt $250 for each one, these films have gained a reputation for incoherence, ineptness and cheapness that few others have achieved, even to this day.
These pictures finished Buddy Roosevelt's career as a "star", but he still remained active in the business, doing stunt work and appearing in small parts and bit roles until he retired after making his last film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), in 1962. He died in his home town of Meeker, Colorado, on October 6, 1973.- Actor
- Stunts
John Beach was born on 9 November 1903 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Blue Montana Skies (1939), Hopalong Rides Again (1937) and Heroes of the Hills (1938). He was married to Constantine Johnston. He died on 23 October 1997 in Palm Beach, Florida, USA.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Eddie Dew was born on 29 January 1909 in Sumner, Washington, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Trail to Gunsight (1944), The Old Texas Trail (1944) and Beyond the Last Frontier (1943). He was married to Mary Dew. He died on 6 April 1972 in Burbank, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Brooklyn-born Don Diamond's most famous role is probably that of the scheming and ambitious, but inept and somewhat cowardly, underling Crazy Cat to Frank DeKova's Chief Wild Eagle in the cult western comedy series F Troop (1965). By the time he got that role he had been an actor for quite some time, starting out in radio in the early 1940s, where he discovered that he had a knack for picking up dialects, especially Spanish. He became so proficient in it that many believed he was actually Spanish or Mexican, when in reality his family came from Russia. His facility in that dialect got him the role as the Mexican sidekick of Kit Carson in the early TV series The Adventures of Kit Carson (1951). He also landed a recurring part as a Spanish corporal, "Corporal Reyes", in the Disney TV series Zorro (1957). In addition to his TV and film work, he did much voice-over work in both cartoons and commercials, such as voicing Toro from the DFE series, Tijuana Toads.- Jack Luden's story is one of the saddest in Hollywood. He was born as Jacob Benson Luden in Reading, Pennsylvania, with a silver spoon in his mouth; his uncle was the millionaire founder of Luden's Cough Drops and he attended the finest schools on the east coast. But he was restless, possessing an impulsive rebellious streak and opted for an acting career. Against enormous odds, he won a contest to attend the Paramount Pictures' School of Acting on Long Island, New York in 1925 where he stood in good stead with classmates Thelma Todd and future all-American star, Charles 'Buddy' Rogers. Paramount ordered him to Hollywood the following year and he acted in various films both there and on loan to FBO during the sound transition period. His personal heyday lasted for about 3 years; his studio had faith and patience in him, and he earned enough money to indulge his passion for sailing, and bought a boat. Possessing good looks, passable voice and a degree of acting talent, he should have been on the fast track toward stardom but his studio faced hard times after 1930 and somehow Luden was lost in the shuffle. More seriously, he acquired a heroin habit (possibly as early as 1929) and found it impossible to keep it hidden. Released from his Paramount contract --- some accounts claim he simply walked out --- having never achieved stardom, Luden found himself adrift and was known to commit wholesale shoplifting to support his drug habit. His life between 1930-36 is largely a mystery. He apparently gave up any pretext of hiding his drug addiction. His father died in the mid-1930s and his immediate family, by what accounts there are, expressed dismay over his lifestyle. He was reputedly arrested several times during this period for petty theft, but details are lacking and there's no indication that anyone ever associated his crimes to his faded Hollywood career. Luden somehow managed to re-enter the film business and came to the attention of veteran low-budget Gower Gulch producer, Larry Darmour who rode on the coattails of Columbia's ascent out of the ranks of Poverty Row studios. Columbia boss Harry Cohn was loathe to ignore the profits to be mined in Saturday afternoon matinées and gave Darmour a unit. His features were budgeted at $100,000 or less and, typical for the era, he sought to brand his western stars, making them more easily marketable to kids. This was Luden's second and last big break. He was cast as "Breezy" through four productions in 1938. Relatively speaking, Columbia's western efforts were top notch entertainment compared to the cinematic gruel spewing from the likes of its neighbors along Gower (an arguable exception would be Republic, despite its far lower budgets). Whether Darmour or Cohn were initially aware of the extent of his drug addiction is open to speculation, but it's probable that his relative obscurity in Hollywood was initially considered an asset since his police record didn't prevent him from this last stab at stardom. In any event, Luden once again failed to click with the targeted audience and he was cut from Columbia. He ended his film career in the early 1940s making minor, uncredited walk-ons. He made a half-hearted attempt at forming a film production company in the late 1940s that went nowhere (given his reputation, it was likely a scam). Married three times, he turned to drug dealing to support his increasingly expensive heroin habit. It's easy to speculate how failing in Hollywood affected him, but the undeniable fact was that Luden was completely comfortable being a low-life; his favorite saying was "a crooked buck is sweeter than an honest dollar." Not exactly the desired credo of an actor who once aimed, albeit half-heartedly, to be a cowboy star and idol of children. He was arrested for possession and writing bad checks and was sent to San Quentin State Pennitentiary. Luden, ultimately his own worst enemy, died there 9 months into his sentence from a heart attack at age 49 in 1951.
- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Writer
One of the great stars of early American Westerns. McCoy was the son of an Irish soldier who later became police chief of Saginaw, Michigan, where McCoy was born. He attended St. Ignatius College in Chicago and after seeing a Wild West show there, left school and found work on a Wyoming ranch. He became an expert horseman and roper and developed a keen knowledge of the ways and languages of the Indian tribes in the area. He competed in numerous rodeos, then enlisted in the U.S. Army when America entered the First World War. He was commissioned and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. At the end of World War I, he returned to his ranch in Wyoming, only to be called by Governor Bob Carry to the post of Adjutant General of Wyoming, a position he held until 1921. The position carried with it the rank of Brigadier General (a brevet promotion) and it has been reported that this made him the youngest general officer in the U.S. Army. His reputation as a friend to the Wind River Reservation Indians, both Arapahoe and Shoshone, preceded him and in 1922, he was asked by the head of Famous Players-Lasky, Jesse L. Lasky, to provide Indian extras for the Western extravaganza, The Covered Wagon (1923). He resigned from the state position and recruited several hundred Indians to the Utah movie location. When the film wrapped, he was asked to choose several Indians to accompany him to Hollywood. There the production company developed a live 'prologue' to be presented just prior to the movie showing. The idea was a success and McCoy and his Indian group toured the U.S. and eventually, Europe as well. After touring this country and Europe with the Indians as publicity, McCoy returned to Hollywood and used his connections to obtain further work in the movies, both as a technical advisor and eventually as an actor. MGM speedily signed him to a contract to star in a series of Westerns and McCoy rapidly rose to stardom, making scores of Westerns and occasional non-Westerns. In 1935, he left Hollywood, first to tour with the Ringling Brothers Circus and then with his own Wild West show. His 1938 Wild West Show cost over $300,000 to mount and closed in bankruptcy in just 28 days. He returned to films in 1940, in a series teaming him with Buck Jones and Raymond Hatton, but World War II and Jones's death in 1942 ended the project. McCoy returned to the Army for the war and served with the Army Air Corps in Europe, winning several decorations and a promotion to full Colonel. He retired from the army and from films after the war, but emerged in the late 1940s for a few more films and some television work. In 1942 he ran for the Republican Nomination for the U.S. Senate in Wyoming. He was defeated and returned to Hollywood and an uncertain future. In 1946 he sold his Wyoming ranch and moved to Bucks County, Pennsylvania and the life of the gentleman farmer. While living there, he met and married Danish writer Inga Arvad. He later built a home in Nogales, Arizona where Inga subsequently died in 1973. He spent his later years as a retired rancher. He died at the U.A. Army hospital at Ft. Hauchuca, Arizona on January 29 1978 at the age of 86.- Michael Chapin was born on July 25, 1936 in Hollywood, California, USA as Michael Edward Chapin. He is an actor, known for Under California Stars (1948), Strange Bargain (1949) and Buckaroo Sheriff of Texas (1951). He was married to Carolyn Joyce Martin for nearly 40 years, until her untimely death in 2005. Michael was the first of the three children in his family who reached stardom in Hollywood. He was cast as the Buckaroo Sheriff of Texas in Republic's Rough Riding Kids series in the 50's. His younger brother, Billy Chapin, starred as the Kid From Left Field, and was the boy chased by Robert Mitchum across the country in The Night of The Hunter. And his baby sister, Lauren Chapin, starred for many years as the young "Kitten" on the Father Knows Best t.v. sitcom. Michael began at the age of 6 months, as a number of other child actors did, as a poster child for a local milk producer. He went on to work as a child actor in Radio, Stage, Screen, Television, and even did some modeling. He retired at 18, while ahead of the game he says. Michael's family spans 5 generations, from grandmother to grandchildren, in the entertainment business, a fact he is both proud of and honored by. As an adult, he has had multiple careers in education, technology, and continues authoring.to this day.
- Actress
- Writer
- Director
Victoria Forde was born in New York City on April 21, 1896. The city in which she came into the world was the entertainment capital of the world at that time. Broadway and the fledgling film industry were located there. Victoria gravitated toward that entertainment field. She was just 16 years old when she appeared in her first silent motion picture called Sheridan's Ride (1913) in 1913. Two other that year quickly followed, Pedro's Dilemma (1912) and His Only Son (1912). Although she was a good actress, there were so many competitors for parts, Victoria made relatively few movies. She had met Tom Mix on the set of one of the Westerns the two appeared in. They married in 1918. After filming Western Blood (1918) that same year, Victoria retired from films to a life of domesticity. She died on July 24, 1964, in Beverly Hills, California. She was 68 years old.- Actor
- Producer
- Art Department
John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in Iowa, to Mary Alberta (Brown) and Clyde Leonard Morrison, a pharmacist. He was of English, Scottish, Ulster-Scots, and Irish ancestry.
Clyde developed a lung condition that required him to move his family from Iowa to the warmer climate of southern California, where they tried ranching in the Mojave Desert. Until the ranch failed, Marion and his younger brother Robert E. Morrison swam in an irrigation ditch and rode a horse to school. When the ranch failed, the family moved to Glendale, California, where Marion delivered medicines for his father, sold newspapers and had an Airedale dog named "Duke" (the source of his own nickname). He did well at school both academically and in football. When he narrowly failed admission to Annapolis he went to USC on a football scholarship 1925-7. Tom Mix got him a summer job as a prop man in exchange for football tickets. On the set he became close friends with director John Ford for whom, among others, he began doing bit parts, some billed as John Wayne. His first featured film was Men Without Women (1930). After more than 70 low-budget westerns and adventures, mostly routine, Wayne's career was stuck in a rut until Ford cast him in Stagecoach (1939), the movie that made him a star. He appeared in nearly 250 movies, many of epic proportions. From 1942-43 he was in a radio series, "The Three Sheets to the Wind", and in 1944 he helped found the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a Conservative political organization, later becoming its President. His conservative political stance was also reflected in The Alamo (1960), which he produced, directed and starred in. His patriotic stand was enshrined in The Green Berets (1968) which he co-directed and starred in. Over the years Wayne was beset with health problems. In September 1964 he had a cancerous left lung removed; in 1977 when Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope was being made, John Waynes archive voice was used for the character Garindan ezz Zavor, later in March 1978 there was heart valve replacement surgery; and in January 1979 his stomach was removed. He received the Best Actor nomination for Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and finally got the Oscar for his role as one-eyed Rooster Cogburn in True Grit (1969). A Congressional Gold Medal was struck in his honor in 1979. He is perhaps best remembered for his parts in Ford's cavalry trilogy - Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950).- Actor
- Soundtrack
Newill, one of Hollywood's largely unsung singing cowboys, began his career as a tenor with the Los Angeles Light Opera company in the early 30's. By the middle of the decade, he fronted the microphone as a vocalist with various society orchestras, including those of Gus Arnheim, Phil Harris and Eddy Duchin. He was briefly on air with the Burns & Allen radio show (broadcast by CBS) and also had a spell in vaudeville. In 1937, he was spotted by one of the myriad of talent scouts roaming the state and so commenced on the Hollywood western trail. His first port of call was Poverty Row outfit Grand National, a studio which inaugurated filming the popular boys adventure yarn Renfrew of the Royal Mounted. After the initial two instalments, Newill appeared as the titular hero in another five (with ever-declining production values) for Monogram. He was briefly on loan-outs to Fox and RKO between 1941 and 1942 and made Decca recordings with the Victor Young Orchestra. He then popped up as Texas Ranger Jim Steele in 14 episodic low-budget westerns for bottom-of-the-drawer company PRC. In between filming, he and co-star Dave O'Brien also tried their hand at goat farming. In 1944, Newill was replaced by Tex Ritter and left the range (and screen acting) for greener pastures on the New York stage. In the 1950's and 60's, he undertook a variety of occupations: operating a sawmill, disk-jockeying for a classical radio station, running a kiddies ride business and even trying his hand (without much financial success) at making fiberglass speedboats. He retired in 1971.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Allen Case grew up in Dallas, Texas, and attended Southern Methodist University for two years. After performing for several months on a local TV variety program, he moved to New York and successfully tried out for a singing spot on Arthur Godfrey's morning show. This led to several nightclub engagements and parts in two Broadway-bound musicals, "Reuben Reuben" and "Pleasure Dome", both of which closed out of town. More work followed in nightclubs and on Broadway, as well as an occasional return to the Arthur Godfrey show and an appearance on Jack Paar. A small part in the movie version of Damn Yankees (1958) meant a move to California which led to roles on such TV westerns as Bronco (1958), Wagon Train (1957), Gunsmoke (1955), Have Gun - Will Travel (1957), The Rifleman (1958) and Sugarfoot (1957). Then it was back to New York for the off-Broadway production of "Once Upon a Mattress". Case left that job to co-star with Henry Fonda in the TV series, The Deputy (1959), which ran for two years (76 episodes) on NBC. Though it made no use of his singing ability, this western represented the high point in Allen Case's career.- José Luis Tortosa was born in 1896 in Spain. He was an actor and writer, known for De la sartén al fuego (1935), El capitán Tormenta (1936) and El día que me quieras (1935). He died in 1963 in the USA.
- One of those wonderfully busy character actors whose face is familiar if not his name, mild-mannered actor Byron Foulger began performing with community theater, and stock and repertory companies after graduating from the University of Utah. He met his future wife, character actress Dorothy Adams, in one of these companies. The marriage lasted nearly five decades and ended only with his death.
Making his Broadway debut in a 1920 production of "Medea" that featured Moroni Olsen as Jason (of the Argonauts), and went on to appear in several other Olsen Broadway productions and in close succession (including "The Trial of Joan of Arc," "Mr. Faust" and "Candida"). While touring the country with Olsen's stock company, he ended up at the Pasadena Playhouse where he both acted and directed. Thereafter he and wife Dorothy decided to settle in Los Angeles.
Together the acting couple tried to stake a claim for themselves in 30s and 40s Hollywood films. Both succeeded, appearing in hundreds of film parts, both together and apart, albeit in small and often unbilled bits. A man of meek, nervous countenance, Foulger's short stature and squinty stare could be used for playing both humble and shady fellows. In the 1940s, the actor became a part of Preston Sturges' company of players, appearing in five of his classic films -- The Great McGinty (1940), Sullivan's Travels (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1943) and The Great Moment (1944).
Although predominantly employed as an owlish storekeeper, mortician, professor, or bank teller, his better parts had darker intentions. He was exceptional as weaselly, mealy-mouthed, whining henchmen who inevitably showed their yellow streak by the film's end.
The character actor eased into TV roles in the 1950s and '60s, displaying a comedy side in many folksy, rural sitcoms. His final regular TV role was as train conductor Wendell Gibbs in the final years of the Petticoat Junction (1963) series. The father of actress Rachel Ames, Foulger died of a heart ailment on April 4, 1970, coincidentally the same day the final new episode of Petticoat Junction (1963) was broadcast. . - Actor
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Neal Hart was born on 7 April 1879 in Staten Island, New York, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Butterfly Range (1922), Lure of Gold (1922) and South of Northern Lights (1922). He was married to Lula Gertrude Pielstick. He died on 2 April 1949 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Blackie Whiteford was born on 27 April 1889 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for The Man from New Mexico (1932), The Fighting Coward (1935) and The Black Coin (1936). He was married to Alma Bennett. He died on 21 March 1962 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.
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The son of a day laborer, William Boyd moved with his family to Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he was seven. His parents died while he was in his early teens, forcing him to quit school and take such jobs as a grocery clerk, surveyor and oil field worker. He went to Hollywood in 1919, already gray-haired. His first role was as an extra in Cecil B. DeMille's Why Change Your Wife? (1920). He bought some fancy clothes, caught DeMille's eye and got the romantic lead in The Volga Boatman (1926), quickly becoming a matinée idol and earning upwards of $100,000 a year. However, with the end of silent movies, Boyd was without a contract, couldn't find work and was going broke. By mistake his picture was run in a newspaper story about the arrest of another actor with a similar name (William 'Stage' Boyd) on gambling, liquor and morals charges, and that hurt his career even more. In 1935 he was offered the lead role in Hop-a-Long Cassidy (1935) (named because of a limp caused by an earlier bullet wound). He changed the original pulp-fiction character to its opposite, made sure that "Hoppy" didn't smoke, drink, chew tobacco or swear, rarely kissed a girl and let the bad guy draw first. By 1943 he had made 54 "Hoppies" for his original producer, Harry Sherman; after Sherman dropped the series, Boyd produced and starred in 12 more on his own. The series was wildly popular, and all recouped at least double their production costs. In 1948 Boyd, in a savvy and precedent-setting move, bought the rights to all his pictures (he had to sell his ranch to raise the money) just as TV was looking for Saturday morning Western fare. He marketed all sorts of "Hoppy" products (lunch boxes, toy guns, cowboy hats, etc.) and received royalties from comic books, radio and records. He retired to Palm Desert, California, in 1953. In 1968 he had surgery to remove a tumor from a lymph gland and from then on refused all interview and photograph requests.- George Bancroft was raised in Philadelphia and attended high school at Tomes Institute (Philadelphia). He won an impressive appointment to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis and graduated as a commissioned officer. He served in the Navy for the prescribed period of required service but no more. He decided to turn to show business, first as a theater manager. He worked in the old and fading minstrel show variety format into the 1920s but then decided to try his hand at acting. By 1923, he was good enough for Broadway and spent about a year there doing two plays. But he was already good enough for some early camera work for by 1921, so he had made his first appearance in the silent movie medium. Being a big man with dark features, he was a natural for heavies. And it seemed that early Westerns were an easy fit as well after his first four films. Through 1924 and into 1925, he did four, culminating with pay dirt in his appealing performance as rogue Jack Slade in the James Cruze Western The Pony Express (1925). With him was another up-and-coming character actor, Wallace Beery. Bancroft's acting made Paramount Pictures take a look at him as star material. His roles as tough guy took on more flesh into the later 1920s, especially in association with director Josef von Sternberg and his well-honed gangster films that started with Underworld (1927). Their work culminated with Sternberg's Thunderbolt (1929) for which Bancroft received an Oscar nomination. He was tops at the box office.
Bancroft's various on-screen personas as bigger-than-life strong man was not far from his off-screen character as Hollywood notability got to him. It was recalled that he became more difficult to deal with as his ego grew. At one point, he refused to obey a director's order that he fall down after being shot by the villain. Bancroft declared, "One bullet can't kill Bancroft!" Although he stayed busy through the 1930s, he was older and stouter -- the stuff of featured characters. And Bancroft was also getting a lot of competition from younger character actors. In the early '30s, his roles continued to typecast him as lead heavies, but increasingly, he was cast as second tier -- if with more variety -- in later roles. He was paper editor MacWade in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936); a doctor in A Doctor's Diary (1937); a few sea captains along the way; and most memorably Marshal Curly Wilcox in the John Ford Western (his first with sound) Stagecoach (1939). Here he is particularly engaging tough lawman but with a big heart. Into the 1940s, he only did a handful of films. But he again had a rogue's spotlight with another name director -- Cecil B. DeMille -- in one of his always epic yarns. This time it was a Texas Ranger chasing a murderer over the Canadian border in North West Mounted Police (1940) with a stellar cast including Gary Cooper, everybody's favorite blond Madeleine Carroll, and Paulette Goddard as fleeing criminal, Jacques Corbeau's (Bancroft) daughter. By 1942, Bancroft had decided to move on, retiring with the intention of becoming a Southern California rancher. He quietly assumed this new role for a long run of 14 years before his passing. - Actor
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Born of African and West Indian ancestry on July 2, 1927 in New York City, Brock Peters set his sights on a show business career early on, at age ten. A product of NYC's famed Music and Arts High School, Peters initially fielded more odd jobs than acting jobs as he worked his way up from Harlem poverty. Landing a stage role in "Porgy and Bess" in 1949, he quit physical education studies at CCNY and went on tour with the acclaimed musical. His film debut came in Carmen Jones (1954), but he really began to make a name for himself - having dropped his real name, George Fisher, in 1953 - in such films as To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and The L-Shaped Room (1962). He received a Tony Award nomination for his starring stint in Broadway's "Lost in the Stars" in 1973. He also appeared in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), two sequels to the popular Star Trek films. Brock Peters died at age 78 of pancreatic cancer on August 23, 2005.- Actress
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Betty Miles was born on 11 January 1910 in Santa Monica, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Lone Star Law Men (1941), Sonora Stagecoach (1944) and The Return of Daniel Boone (1941). She died on 9 June 1992 in California, USA.13 westerns, 40-45.
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1910 - 1992, 82.- Bill Borzage was born on 4 March 1892 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. He was an actor, known for Way Down East (1935). He died on 7 June 1973 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Cameron Mitchell was the son of a minister, but chose a different path from his father. Prior to World War II, in which he served as an Air Force bombardier, Mitchell appeared on Broadway, and, in 1940, an experimental television broadcast, "The Passing of the Third Floor Back". He made his film debut in What Next, Corporal Hargrove? (1945), but continued with stage as well as film work. He gained early recognition for his portrayal of Happy in the stage and screen versions of "Death of a Salesman". Still, out of more than 300 film and TV appearances, he is probably best remembered for his work on The High Chaparral (1967) TV series in which he, as the happy-go-lucky Buck Cannon, and Henry Darrow, as Manolito Montoya, stole the show.- Actor
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Victor Lundin was born on 8 December 1929 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964), Ma Barker's Killer Brood (1960) and Batman (1966). He was married to Amelia Pryharski and Christa Friedlander. He died on 2 July 2013 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
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Don Collier made over 200 credited movie and television appearances. He performed with John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Anthony Quinn, Dean Martin, Tom Selleck, James Arness, and even Elvis Presley. His first role was as an extra in 1948 in the western Massacre River (1949). This was followed by two more westerns -- Davy Crockett, Indian Scout (1950) and Fort Apache (1948) with John Wayne. He later appeared in three more John Wayne movies.
In 1959, Collier won the leading role of U.S. Deputy Marshal Will Foreman in the NBC series, Outlaws (1960). Starring with Don were Barton MacLane and Jock Gaynor. The second season of Outlaws (1960) found Will Foreman as a full-fledged Marshal. New characters were played by Bruce Yarnell, Slim Pickens, and Judy Lewis.
Collier kept busy appearing on all the other western TV shows, such as Bonanza (1959), Gunsmoke (1955), Wagon Train (1957), Branded (1965), and Death Valley Days (1952). In 1968, he was cast as the foreman of the ranch The High Chaparral (1967) in David Dortort's latest western series of the same name. Working alongside a extremely talented and experienced cast, his portrayal of Sam Butler was fundamental to the success of the highly acclaimed show, which ran until 1971. Even his commercials took advantage of his cowboy persona, when he became a 1980s icon as The Gum Fighter for Hubba Bubba Bubble Gum. More movies and TV kept him busy. Then he went further back in time when he was called on play the recurring role of William Tompkins in The Young Riders (1989).
He continued to guest star on TV in and out of the west in Little House on the Prairie (1974), two made-for-TV Gunsmoke movies (Gunsmoke: To the Last Man (1992) and Gunsmoke: One Man's Justice (1994)), a made-for-TV Bonanza movie (Bonanza: Under Attack (1995)), Banacek (1972), The Waltons (1972), Highway to Heaven (1984) and such big-screen movies as Tombstone (1993).
He worked on a western radio drama series titled West of the Story and was sidekick to Fred Imus on Sirius Radio's weekly show, Fred's Trailer Park Bash until Imus' death in 2011. He remained active with public appearances at Western and nostalgia shows like Western Legends Roundup in Kanab, Utah; Territorial Days in Tombstone, Ariz.; and the 50th Anniversary of The High Chaparral event being hosted in Sept. 2017 in Hollywood.- Actor
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Buzz Barton was born on 3 September 1913 in Gallatin, Missouri, USA. He was an actor, known for Rough Ridin' Red (1928), The Bantam Cowboy (1928) and Pals of the Prairie (1929). He was married to Thelma Doyle. He died on 20 November 1980 in Reseda, California, USA.