Margaret Marquis (Last of the Warrens, Brand of Outlaws, Cassidy of Bar 20)

A daughter of Alex Marquis, who was a captain of waiters at the famous Brown Derby, and a graduate of UCLA, Margaret Marquis (born in Denver, CO, in 1917) attended the Edward Clark Theatrical Academy and was discovered at age 14 performing in a playlet with the Clark Little Theater. The result was the role of Margie Jones in Penrod and Sam (1931) and she later appeared in such fare as Eight Girls in a Boat (1934) and the original Andy Hardy movie, A Family Affair (1937). She played Andy's girlfriend Polly Benedict in the latter (the role portrayed by Ann Rutherford in the subsequent series) and was seen about town with costar Mickey Rooney. She escaped becoming the first of many Mrs. Rooneys by instead marrying a Santa Monica chiropractor, whom she would eventually divorce in 1937. But not until having won the honor of possessing “the most perfect back,” named so by a group of Burbank chiropractors that undoubtedly included her soon-to-be ex-husband! Marquis had made her initial Westerns opposite Bob Steele in Last of the Warrens (1936), in which she is lusted after by none other than Blackie himself, Charlie King, and Brand of Outlaws (1936). She is King's stepdaughter in the latter and actually has a mother (Virginia True Boardman), a true rarity in a B-Western. To be truthful, Marquis isn't more than adequate in either but she positively shines as John Elliott's headstrong daughter in the Hopalong Cassidy entry Cassidy of Bar 20 (1938). The Cassidy Westerns treated actresses better than anyone else on the Hollywood prairie in those years, the writers actually creating multi-faceted women and not just the usual pallid rancher's daughter. In Cassidy both Hoppy (William Boyd) and his sidekicks, Lucky Jenkins (Russell Hayden) and Pappy (Frank Darien, who briefly stood in for Gabby Hayes who had defected for Republic Pictures) are provided with leading ladies. Nora Lane offered Hoppy age-appropriate romantic interest, leaving Margaret Marquis to woo Hayden and vinegar-faced stage actress Gertrude W. Hoffman to make a bit of hay with hayseed Darien. It is indeed ironic that the much married Boyd, who had finally found lasting happiness with starlet Grace Bradley, 18 years his junior, felt uncomfortable romancing much younger leading ladies in his guise as Hopalong Cassidy. From the outset of the series, Boyd left it to his younger co-stars, from Jimmy Ellison to Rand Brooks, to lust after the girls while occasionally, and very politely, pay court himself to the likes of Nora Lane, Charlotte Wynters and Natalie Moorhead, actresses perhaps no longer in the first bloom of youth. Margaret Marquis, meanwhile, appeared in films until the early 1940s and retired.

Helen Mowery (The Fighting Frontiersman)

Although seemingly interchangeable with a host of other Columbia starlets, blonde Helen Mowery, of Casper, WY (born 1923), had apprenticed at the famed Pasadena Playhouse and her saloon belle in the Durango Kid Western The Fighting Frontiersman (Columbia, 1946) reflects that. Mowery's Dixie King, while pretending to do the bidding of her nasty boss, Robert Filmer, to con a confession out of poor old Emmett Lynn as to the whereabouts of a cache of Santa Ana gold, actually aligns herself with Charles Starrett and his alter ego, the Durango Kid. She becomes an integral part of the plot in this above-average B-Western, a rare enough occurrence in a series entry, and delivers a forceful performance. In fact, Mowery's interaction with the delightful Lynn remains a highlight of the show.

Mary Ware (Hoppy's Holiday, The Dead Don't Dream)

“It's your happiness. It's all that counts,” Rand Brooks tells his fiance, Mary Ware, who instead of marrying him and settling down to raise prairie young uns together has decided to return East. Which, of course, should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever watched a B-Western like The Dead Don't Dream (1948). Heroes and their sidekicks just don't get themselves hitched. Perish the though! It does remain unusual, though, for a sidekick to come this close to the altar and not since Maudie Prickett pursued Smiley Burnette has one made such a narrow escape as the redoubtable Mr. Brooks makes here. Miss Ware, meanwhile, who apparently attempted to change her image by billing herself “Mary Tucker” in this one, had earlier starred in the very low-budget Secrets of a Sorority Girl (1945) in which, as a tag line reported, she was one of those “CAMPUS CUTIES ON THE LOOSE … Living Only for Thrills and Headed for Heartbreak.” You would have thought that some fresh air out West would have been just the ticket after all that, but perhaps The Dead Don't Dream's silly House of Mystery plot with sliding panels and other leftovers from the silent screen era or the previous Hoppy's Holiday (1947), put her off for good. They almost did me. Mary was her old self, Mary Ware, as Andrew Tombes' daughter in Hoppy's Holiday, which is the one where William Boyd, as Hoppy,spots a horseless carriage and boldly predicts that there will be “dozens around before long.” Unlike The Dead Don't Dream, Hoppy's Holiday is played mainly for laughs, throwing the film to sidekick Andy Clyde and proving mostly that self-producing Boyd was running out of ideas and was willing to try anything at this late day and age.

Donna Hamilton (Gunmen of Abilene)

The main reason that Republic's Rocky Lane series remains so popular with fans today is the nearly non-stop action and overall no-nonsense approach to B-Western film-making. All the Republic expertize is on display in these little oaters and hero Allan Lane is at all time surrounded by the best talent the company could provide. Which was considerable and included the always popular, and always hissable, Mr. Roy Barcroft. Even Rocky's sidekick, Eddy Waller, is more than tolerable, his comedic antics, such as they were, never slowing the flow of things. Needless to say, feminine allure was kept to a minimum; in fact, some Rocky Lanes dispensed with pulchritude entirely. In Gunmen of Abilene (1950), Miss Donna Hamilton achieves the customary high billing (fourth in this case, following Lane, Waller and Barcroft) but appears only briefly in four scenes. Mainly to accompany a small boy (Duncan Richardson) going by the usual B-Western tyke name of “Dickie.” Dickie's familial relations are a bit murky, at least to this viewer. He calls Waller “Gramps” and Hamilton “Aunt,” and the latter is apparently Waller's niece. All of which matters little to the overall plot, which has evil general store proprietor Peter Brocco attempting to rid himself of the townspeople in general and Sheriff Waller in particular because there are valuable minerals in them thar hills. Gunmen of Abilene proved Donna Hamilton's only film role of any importance. Reportedly discovered by Joan Crawford (!), Hamilton was a Goldwyn Girl before signing with 20th Century-Fox. She did the usual leg-work for that company and was promoted as “The Kiss Girl” and performing a walk-on in the June Haver musical I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now (1947). That, alas, was the highlight of Miss Hamilton's screen career. Until Gunmen of Abilene. If you could call a minor role in a Rocky Lane Western a highlight.

Kay Christopher (South of Rio, Code of the Silver Sage)

The best way to describe Kay Christopher, “Miss Photo Flash of 1945,” is cute as a button. And a competent little actress to boot. At least competent enough for what she was required to do as leading lady to Monte Hale in South of Rio (Republic, 1949), in which she takes over her murdered father's frontier newspaper and proves herself to be something of a women's rights advocate, West of the Pecos-style; or Rocky Lane in Code of the Silver Sage (Republic, 1950), in which she enjoys something rare in a B-Western: a love interest. No, not Rocky himself, who is too manly and no-nonsense for mushy stuff like romance, but Richard Emory, the son of silent screen actors Ella Hall and Emory Johnson, who plays a young military officer falsely accused of conspiracy to assassinate the president of the United States. Hailing from Evanston, IL, and best known for playing Dick Tracy's girlfriend Tess Truehart in Dick Tracy's Dilemma (RKO, 1947) – she replaced contract starlet Anne Jeffreys, who was busy playing in a New York revival of “Street Scene” – Kay Christopher later married Los Angeles attorney Henry Taecker, Jr., whom she had met while attending Northwestern, and ended her screen and television career in 1954. On October 8, 1961 newspapers could report that the couple's Bel Air home had burned to the ground and that Kay Christopher was searching for important personal belongings. Happily, she managed to locate a personal treasure, a small gold medal the navy had awarded posthumously to her brother, who had perished in WWII. The brush fires that were ravaging the posh Bel Air estates that week also claimed the homes of Burt Lancaster and Zsa Zsa Gabor. Fred MacMurray barely managed to rescue his wife, June Haver, and their two daughters.

Doris Houck (Two-Fisted Stranger, Heading West, Landrush)

Of all the B-Western series, with the possible exception of Republic's Rocky Lanes, the Columbia Durango Kids needed leading ladies the least. In fact, in later years, the series often dispensed with them entirely. With no one the wiser, truth be told. But if there actually was a girl involved, she was involved even more peripherally than usual for the genre and was mainly there for the studio to trot out one of their many contract starlets, each and every one of whom studio czar Harry Cohn believed to possess the potential to become another Rita Hayworth. Doris Houck (1921-1965) did three Durangos in a row and you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart: she was the daughter of a mine owner in Two-Fisted Stranger, a banker in Heading West and a newspaper editor in Landrush. All of these fathers are single, widowers presumably, a very common occurrence in B-Westerns, where the survival rate of women seems to have been tragically low. A B-Western father is also always quite elderly and played by distinguished types like Davison Clark (Two-Fisted Stranger) and Nolan Leary (Heading West), if not downright geriatric like Landrush's dear old Emmett Lynn, who could easily have been Miss Houck's grandfather. In any case, Doris Houck's characters in all three films are virtually indistinguishable, as, truth be told, are the general plots: Charles Starrett plays someone named Steve who is really the masked defender of the weak, the Durango Kid, Smiley Burnette does his usual shtick (Heading West is the one where he performs magic tricks, and he is seconded by vinegar-faced Maudie Prickett in Stranger), and the main villain appears law abiding on the surface. For Houck, these Durangos were meant to keep her in front of the camera – just like the studio's many crime series entries – while she waited for that big break that would bring stardom. It was not to be, alas. Originally a chorus girl, Idaho-born, Los Angeles reared Doris Houck, who sometimes billed herself as Doris Colleen (notably in the Stooges' public domain classic Brideless Groom where she sticks Shemp Howard's head in a vise), danced at New York's Riviera Club and was featured with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra at Nils T. Granlund's famed Los Angeles landmark The Florentine Gardens. That led to her stint with Columbia but little else. Off screen, she dabbled in writing (one gossip column tidbit had her authoring a tome entitled “Analysis of the Hairy Ape,” presumably referring to Eugene O'Neill's classic play), and was at one time rumored to be close to marrying handsome cartoonist Peter Arno, but that union proved short-lived. Of longer duration, but a lot messier, was a marriage to Los Angeles Vice Squad Officer Fred Otash which ended in an especially acrimonious divorce in 1952. (The 220 pound Otash, who became a private detective and later hooked up with Swedish bombshell Anita Ekberg, once testified before a state Senate investigation committee that “Communists and sex deviates [should] be ousted from the movie industry, that male movie stars stay with their wives and female movie stars stay with their husbands.” Bitter much?) Doris Houck disappeared from the news following her divorce from Otash.

Ms. Houck's husband, Fred Otash, has turned up in a couple of very interesting publications recently, including a reprint of James Spada's biography of Peter Lawford, "Peter Lawford: The Man Who Kept The Secretts" (New York, NY: Author & Co., 2011), where Spada has Lawford contacting Otash on the morning of Marilyn Monroe's death. Otash at the time resided at 1342 N. Laurel in West Hollywood, a home that still exists. The former vice squad detective is also mentioned -- at length in fact -- in Samuel Bernstein's treatise on sleaze-merchant Confidential Magazine, "Mr. Confidential: The Man, His Magazine & The Movieland Massacre That Changed Hollywood Forever" (Los Angeles, CA: Walford Press, 2011). The juxtaposition of the two books is quite revealing: Otash clearly worked both side of the street, so to speak, like providing material for Bob Harrison's Confidentialrag, mostly outing gay Hollywood, while at the same time aiding Lawford keep whatever secrets the death of Monroe may or may not have revealed.

Phyllis Planchard (The Westward Trail)

I readily admit to have a fondness for the PRC Eddie Deans. Yes, the studio spared every expense (PRC, in its day, was referred to either as “Pretty Rotten Crud” or, charmingly, “Prick Prod.”), with ramshackle sets, dreary and often dark location work, and less than stellar supporting casts. But Eddie Dean was a wonderful singer and despite a bit of ungainliness a pleasant enough presence, and sidekick Roscoe Ates actually manages to elicit a snicker or two, his much vaunted politically incorrect stuttering much overstated. Their camaraderie seems genuine and the plots usually progress with little or no fuss. But as Boyd Magers points out in his Western Clippings review of The Westward Trail (1948), this particular series entry falls much below par, especially in the casting. Usually, PRC would hire competent enough leading ladies like former Columbia starlet Shirley Patterson or Jack Holt's daughter Jennifer, but once in a while the studio would look elsewhere, if you get my drift. Because how else would you account for the presence here of a bleach blonde chorus girl type who looks like she has been around the block a few times. And supposedly portraying a serious young woman resettling in the West to save her younger brother (Steve Drake) from the bad influence of life back East. Unfortunately, as played by Phyllis Planchard (1923-2011), the young lady appears in great need to be saved herself. Miss Planchard is described as a former model in several sources and she played minor tough girls in such genre flicks as Roadblock (1951) and Women's Prison (1955), rather more obvious casting than the naïve prairie flower she plays in Westward Trail. She is joined in the latter by one Eileene Hardin, who one paper described as “a rodeo queen from a farm near Topeka, Kansas," and whose acting abilities remain exactly like someone from a farm near Topeka, Kansas.

This little oater, in retrospect, was fraught with tragedy. The young man who played Miss Planchard's wayward brother and billed himself “Steve Drake” was in reality one Dale Fink who, according to one report, had developed his muscles “driving an ice route back in Tulsa, OK.” “It was Steve's intention to carry on his father's ice business,” the story continued, “but he learned, during a Hollywood vacation one summer, that there was a future for good-looking young men and made new plans.” Alas, there was to be no future for the handsome newcomer. Reported a local San Fernando Valley newspaper on December 20, 1948: “Death today ended the meteoric career of young actor Steve Drake, who died from injuries suffered in an early morning automobile crash. The 25-year-old’s car ran out of control at a corner in the San Fernando Valley near Sherman Oaks, where he lived with his parents at 4135 Allott Boulevard. His car left the pavement and overturned early in the morning on Sunday as he drove south of Balboa Boulevard at Victory Boulevard. He died [at Burbank's St. Joseph Hospital] a few hours later.”

As for Phyllis Planchard, she drifted out of the business of show in the mid-1950s, only to turn up again in a news report very late in her life. And a sad ending to what was once a vibrant young starlet it proved to be. In May of 2000 Planchard became a ward of the Los Angeles County. The L.A. Times (4-11-2008) takes up the case from there:

“A B-movie actress and model in the 1940s, Phyllis Planchard always loved to dress in stylish clothes. A poetry lover, she collected the works of Robert Frost and Shelley. She cherished a 1920s maple bedroom set that once belonged to her parents. Planchard, then 77, was placed in the public guardian’s hands in May 2000 after exhibiting signs of confusion and mental decline. She owned a house in North Hollywood, but police found her living in her car. She was taken to a Burbank hospital, then discharged to a nursing home in Glendale. After becoming her conservator, the public guardian moved her possessions to a county warehouse in Pico Rivera. Attorney Lisa MacCarley, appointed to represent Planchard, said in court filings that she had asked that at least a few personal items, particularly clothes, be brought to the nursing home. On photos from her acting days, Planchard wrote across the bottom: “A beautiful Phyllis loves clothes!” But for seven months, Planchard lived in an almost bare room. She wore used clothing — even underwear — donated by her care home, mostly from patients who had died. “It’s about human dignity. She was aware she had clothing and it wasn’t brought to her,” MacCarley said. Planchard’s nursing home complained about her treatment to professional conservator Dan Stubbs, who asked a probate court to remove the public guardian from the case. Agency officials said an employee eventually brought Planchard some belongings and ordered her new clothes. Nonetheless, in 2001 a judge decided Planchard was better off out of the public guardian’s hands. The court named Stubbs as her caretaker.”

It is difficult, in hindsight, to watch The Westward Trail, this otherwise long-forgotten little oater, without pondering the vagaries of life.