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George Randolph Scott was an American film actor whose career spanned the years from 1928 to 1962. As a leading man for all but the first three years of his cinematic career, Scott appeared in a variety of genres, including social dramas, crime dramas, comedies, musicals, adventure tales, war films, and a few horror and fantasy films. However, his most enduring image is that of the tall-in-the-saddle Western hero. Out of his more than 100 film appearances over 60 were in Westerns; thus, "of all the major stars whose name was associated with the Western, Scott [was] most closely identified with it."
Clarence Linden Crabbe II, known professionally as Buster Crabbe, was an American two-time Olympic swimmer and film and television actor. He won the 1932 Olympic gold medal for 400-meter freestyle swimming event, which launched his career on the silver screen and later television. He starred in a variety of popular feature films and movie serials released between 1933 and the 1950s, portraying the top three syndicated comic-strip heroes of the 1930s: Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers.
Rory Calhoun was an American film and television actor, screenwriter and producer. He starred in numerous Westerns in the 1950s and 1960s, and appeared in supporting roles in films such as How to Marry a Millionaire (1953).
Lester Alvin Burnett, better known as Smiley Burnette, was an American country music performer and a comedic actor in Western films and on radio and TV, playing sidekick to Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and other B-movie cowboys. He was also a prolific singer-songwriter who is reported to have played proficiently over 100 musical instruments, sometimes more than one simultaneously. His career, beginning in 1934, spanned four decades, including a regular role on CBS-TV's Petticoat Junction in the 1960s.
John George Agar Jr. was an American film and television actor. He is best known for starring alongside John Wayne in the films Sands of Iwo Jima, Fort Apache, and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. In his later career he was the star of B movies, such as Tarantula, The Mole People, The Brain from Planet Arous, Revenge of the Creature, Flesh and the Spur and Hand of Death. He was the first husband of Shirley Temple.
Phil Karlson was an American film director. Karlson directed 99 River Street, Kansas City Confidential and Hell's Island, all with actor John Payne, in the early 1950s.
Tristram Chockley Coffin was a film and television actor from the latter 1930s through the 1970s, usually in westerns or other B-movie action-adventure productions.
George Sherman was an American film director and producer of low-budget Western films. One obituary said his "credits rival in number those of anyone in the entertainment industry."
John Wilkinson English was a British film editor and film director. He is most famous for the film serials he co-directed with William Witney for Republic Pictures such as Zorro's Fighting Legion and Drums of Fu Manchu.
Myron Daniel Healey was an American actor. He began his career in Hollywood, California during the early 1940s and eventually made hundreds of appearances in movies and on television during a career spanning more than half a century.
Blazing the Overland Trail is a 1956 American Western Serial film directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet and starring Lee Roberts. It was the 57th and last serial produced by Columbia and the last serial ever produced by any studio. Republic Pictures, the only other serial-producing studio in the mid 1950s, had ceased its serial production the previous year with King of the Carnival.
Robert Lenard Lippert was an American film producer and cinema chain owner. He was president and chief operating officer of Lippert Theatres, Affiliated Theatres and Transcontinental Theatres, all based in San Francisco, who eventually owned a chain of 139 theatres.
Gordon Donald Shirreffs was an American author, known mostly for writing Western and juvenile novels. He also wrote a teleplay. Two of his novels, Judas Gun and Rio Bravo, were made into movies. One of his short stories became the movie The Lonesome Trail (1955).
Stanley Wilson was an American musical conductor, arranger and film composer. Wilson was one of the most prolific collaborators in the Hollywood music industry for more than three decades. The creator of original themes and incidental music for several TV series, he also composed, arranged, or orchestrated more than 100 films. Wilson is considered "truly outstanding and most deservedly well loved of all the music directors".
Hell Bent for Leather is a 1960 American CinemaScope Eastmancolor Western film directed by George Sherman starring Audie Murphy, Felicia Farr, Stephen McNally and Robert Middleton. The film was based on the 1959 novel Outlaw Marshal by Ray Hogan and filmed on location in the Alabama Hills of Lone Pine, California.
John H. Auer was a Hungarian-born child actor who, on coming to the Americas in 1928, became a movie director and producer, initially in Mexico but, from the early 1930s, in Hollywood.
Gunpoint is a 1966 American Western film directed by Earl Bellamy and starring Audie Murphy, Joan Staley and Warren Stevens. It was Murphy's final film for Universal Pictures.
Audie Murphy was a highly decorated American soldier and Medal of Honor recipient who turned actor. He portrayed himself in the film To Hell and Back, the account of his World War II experiences. During the 1950s and 1960s he was cast primarily in westerns. While often the hero, he proved his ability to portray a cold-blooded hired gun in No Name on the Bullet. A notable exception to the westerns was The Quiet American in which he co-starred with Michael Redgrave. Murphy made over 40 feature films and often worked with directors more than once. Jesse Hibbs who directed To Hell and Back worked with the star on six films, only half of which were westerns. When promoting his 1949 book To Hell and Back he appeared on the radio version of This Is Your Life. To promote the 1955 film of the same name, he appeared on Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town. He was a celebrity guest on television shows such as What's My Line? and appeared in a handful of television dramas. Murphy's only television series Whispering Smith had a brief run in 1961. For his cooperation in appearing in the United States Army's Broken Bridge episode of The Big Picture television series he was awarded the Outstanding Civilian Service Medal.
Robert "Bob" Reeves was an American Western movie actor.
A serial film,film serial, movie serial, or chapter play, is a motion picture form popular during the first half of the 20th century, consisting of a series of short subjects exhibited in consecutive order at one theater, generally advancing weekly, until the series is completed. Generally, each serial involves a single set of characters, protagonistic and antagonistic, involved in a single story, which has been edited into chapters after the fashion of serial fiction and the episodes cannot be shown out of order or as a single or a random collection of short subjects.
