Sheila Stuart (Oregon Trail)

Sheila Stuart plays the bit role of a nurse in the 1945 Sunset Carson oater Oregon Trail, whose leading lady -- almost needless to say -- is Peggy Stewart (no relation). Sheila was under contract to Republic Pictures 7-24-1944 through 1-23-1945. This appears to have been her only Western -- she played bits in mostly comedies and musicals -- and I have included her, well, because I own the photo.

For the sake of completion, this is what Republic offered Sheila Stuart to say and do in Oregon Trail: (To a recuperating Sunset Carson:) “You'll have to ask the doctor” and (showing in Peggy Stewart): “There's someone to see you.” She says both lines with conviction. More conviction, in fact, than the many lines uttered by one Steve Winston, who plays the much more important role of the town newspaper editor. Winston, who had drifted around Hollywood for a couple of years going nowhere fast, made his sole Republic appearance here and one can only surmise that his presence was to offset the amateurish line readings of star Sunset Carson. But Carson's aw shucks style is actually charming and fits his character whereas Mr. Winston is merely wooden and off-putting. Much more infectious is the veteran Mary Carr, of Little Rascals fame, who plays Peggy Stewart's grandma and at one point sizes up the hunky Sunset with what appears to be a wee bit of geriatric lust. Not too coincidentally, perhaps, Mrs. Carr was the mother of the film's director, Thomas Carr.

An explanation:

Followers of this blog – and I believe there are a few of you – will probably have noticed that the ladies I have chosen to profile here aren't the well-known heroines of B-Westerns, the Dale Evanses or even the Jennifer Holtses. Frankly, those gals have been covered elsewhere, most notably Chuck Anderson's Old Corral website, which I highly recommend. I have always liked to delve into the obscure, and some of these girls that showed up in Westerns, for good or bad, were indeed obscure.

Mary Russell (The Silver Trail)

While under contract to Republic Pictures Mary Russell appeared in a bit in Gene Autry's The Big Show (1935) and was the leading lady in The Three Mesqueteers' Riders of the Whistling Skull (1937). But I have chosen to concentrate on her co-starring role opposite former silent screen hero Rex Lease and canine star Rinty, Jr. in Reliable's The Silver Trail (released 1937). Both Mary and the ubiquitous Tom London go undercover in this pleasant, if very low-budget, little oater, where Rex is searching for his mining partner, who, it turns out, has fallen victim to unscrupulous Ed Cassidy. Lawman Tom pretends to be the local town idiot and Mary, another victim of Cassidy's scheming the villain's secretary. Considering that The Silver Trail probably was produced in mere days, Miss Russell's performance is actually typical of a studio starlet and not the high school play prowess of the young ladies usually found in these dusty locations. (Prettier even than the average Hollywood starlet, Mary Russell had little competition from The Silver Trail's only other female cast-member, the ever-popular Mrs. Emma Tansey, here playing Rex Lease's mother and looking far older than her supposed 66 years of age. Emma's son, Sherry, appears as one of Ed Cassidy's henchmen.)

Nee Marymarcia Kalbach (yes, her first name was spelled like that) and hailing from Oakland, CA (where she had attended Piedmont High School), Mary Russell was awarded her new moniker by Warner Bros. in 1934, but only after having verified the spelling with a numerologist. Or so her publicity claimed. The same ad campaign also claimed that she had been discovered by none other than veteran comedienne Louise Fazenda while working as a stylist in a San Francisco department store. Than may be, but before that she had apparently also been a photographer's model, appeared on stage at San Francisco's Fulton Theatre and performed in plays on radio station KLX. She did her usual starlet duties in Hollywood but earned a bit of negative publicity in 1938 when she divorced her husband of less than a year, Paul D. Ames, who described himself as a "play producer." Mary's grounds for divorce was that Paul was "lazy and jealous."

Helen Ericson (Courageous Avenger)

Helen Ericson actually sees quite of bit of action for a no-budget western heroine in Courageous Avenger (1935). The fiance of hero Johnny Mack Brown, Helen can only watch as her brother (stuntman Wally West) is killed by Warner Richmond and his gang before suffering the indignity of actually being kidnapped herself by said Mr. Richmond. Johnny saves her, of course, but it is touch and go for a moment there -- what with the endless riding to and fro endemic to these cheezy independents -- before the happy couple can get to the altar and then off on their long-awaited honeymoon.

When I say "independent," I probably should clarify that Supreme Pictures, the producer of Courageous Avenger, was an A.W. Hackel company that would merge with Republic Pictures later that year. From 1936 onwards, the Bob Steele and Johnny Mack Brown westerns would thus be released by Herbert Yates' upstart Republic, awarding these films a perceived veneer that they could not really live up to.

Helen Ericson (1915-1984), meanwhile, had worked in a five and dime store in her hometown of Worcester, MA, when her actor brother, Frank, persuaded the producers of the New York revival of “Of Thee I Sing” (1933) to put her in the chorus of that successful show. She appeared in the original Broadway production of “As Thousands Cheer” before casting director Max Arnow brought her to the attention of first Warner Bros. then Fox, who signed her to a contract. After playing mostly the typical starlet roles, she was chosen as “Light” in the Shirley Temple version of The Blue Bird (1940), but that Wizard of Oz wannabe proved less than popular and she retired to marry Chicago fur magnate Philip Berman, with whom she would become a mother of two and a grandmother of five.

Lynn Gilbert (Universal serials)

Lynn Gilbert, nee Helen McHale (b. Chicago 1913), was Mrs. Gilbert E. Keebler, a Chicago socialite matron when she reportedly mailed a photo of herself to Universal. The result: a role as a nasty gun-moll in the 1937 serial Secret Agent X-9, where she menaced the studio's premiere serial queen, Jean Rogers; and the Johnny Mack Brown Western chapterplay Wild West Days (1937), where she actually replaced Miss Rogers, who was on to bigger and better things at the studio. The Western serial offered the usual, prominent heroine billing but very little screen time. And that, as they say, was that for Lynn Gilbert's screen career. At one point, she divorced Mr. Keebler, an attorney, and in 1939 wed prominent Hollywood producer, and erstwhile head of Paramount Pictures, B.P. Schulberg. Their elopement made headlines but we don't know how long Miss Gilbert was Mrs. Schulberg and thus the stepmother of writer Budd Schulberg.

Gail Sheridan (early Hopalong Cassidy Westerns)

Paramount starlet Gail Sheridan gets to use her acting chops in her very first scene in The Return of Hopalong Cassidy (1936) when she is forced to witness nasty Morris Ankrum rope and then drag her defenseless wheelchair-bound father (John Beck) down the main street of Mesa Grande, an unusually vile treatment that culminates in the elderly newspaperman's death. It is as shocking and memorable an opening of any Western, let alone a series B-Western but, alas, for the remainder of Hopalong Cassidy Returns Sheridan is upstaged by silent screen star Evelyn Brent, whose haughty saloon keeper and town czarina comes complete with a wardrobe that is more Paramount than Kernville. While Evelyn, who has that certain age William Boyd liked in a leading lady, makes eyes and at Hoppy, Gail, in her small town gingham dress (albeit still with full Max Factor eyeliner and plucked brows) romances Hoppy's younger brother Buddy (William Janney) who is standing in for James Ellison's Johnny Nelson. (Ellison was elsewhere at Paramount co-starring in Cecil B. DeMille's over-produced The Plainsman.) But it is Evelyn Brent that you remember from The Return of Hopalong Cassidy, not Miss Sheridan.

Sheridan had to contend with another former silent screen diva in her second Hopalong Western, Hills of Old Wyoming (1937) but unlike the still smoldering Evelyn Brent, matronly Clara Kimball Young was well past her sell by date as a leading lady (and was she ever young in films?) Clara plays Gail's mother and together they run the Indian reservation Trading Post, Gail making eyes at Lucky (Russell Hayden) while Ma squabbles with ornery old Windy Halliday (George “Gabby” Hayes). Sheridan still wears gingham dresses but someone got to her makeup person and she looks much more to the prairie born than in the previous effort.

From Seattle, WA, Gail Sheridan (b. 1915) had been a dancer with former silent screen star Theodore Kosloff and Rita Hayworth's father, Eduardo Cansino, before becoming a member of Sam Goldwyn's 1935 “Troupe of Beauty” (i.e. Goldwyn Girls; future serial heroine Jinx Falkenberg was also among the group of beauties). She earned a Paramount contract in 1936 after, studio publicity claimed, “six months enrollment” in the studio acting school. Sheridan's two Hopalong Cassidy appearances marked the highlights of her brief 1937-1937 screen career and her show business past must have been a dim memory when she passed away from cancer in 2007.

Doris Day (Saga of Death Valley)

Despite her famous name, in retrospect at least, it is not Doris Day you remember from Saga of Death Valley (1940), an above-average Roy Rogers series entry that co-stars future Republic cowboy hero Donald Barry shortly before he added that "Red" that would dog him forever. Barry plays Roy's long-lost brother who has been raised to do evil by the man (Frank M. Thomas) who kidnapped him as a child. And evil he certainly does, including killing Doris rancher father, Lew Kelly. Such nefarious goings-on must be punished, of course, and Saga of Death Valley ends with Barry dying in brother Roy's arms and not a dry eye in the house.

Confusingly, not only was this earlier Doris Day (1910-1998) also blonde, she was a band singer to boot. A vocalist with Station WLW in Cincinnati, she replaced Marion Mann as Bob Crosby's girl singer in 1940. Following what can only be termed a mild screen career, she made her Broadway debut in “Susan and God” (1943), the role played by Rita Hayworth in the 1940 screen version starring Joan Crawford. This Broadway version of Rachel Crothers' 1937 play starring Gertrude Lawrence lasted only eight performances.

Peggy Stratford (Two-Gun Law)

Peggy Stratford plays Ed LeSaint's comely daughter in Two-Gun Law (1937), a fairly interesting early Charles Starrett Western in which Charles Middleton is a good-bad man with the literary sounding name of Wolf Larson. As usual, the heroine, Miss Stratford, earns second billing but this time she actually gets to romance the hero and the final scene has them joyfully handcuffed together by Sheriff Lee Prather with matrimony in mind.

Despite her name, Peggy Stratford hailed from Nicaragua. A well-known tennis player and a graduate of UCLA, she played Shakespeare with Fritz Leiber and toured with Paul Lukas before signing a term contract with 20th Century-Fox in 1936. She didn't do much more than perform cheesecake duty there and it was on to Republic and a bit in The Leavenworth Case (1936). From there she landed at Columbia, where in addition to Two-Gun Law she also played in three Charley Chase short subject comedies, including the title role in The Wrong Miss Wright (1937). And that was the last we saw of Miss Stratford.

Mary Castle (Texans Never Cry & Prairie Roundup)

How in tarnation, you may ask, did that frightful-looking Minerva Urecal ever manage to beget a cutie like Gail Davis? Well, this bizarre mother and daughter duo appears in Gene Autry's Texans Never Cry (1951), a better-than-average entry with a better than average heroine in the redoubtable Miss Davis who, in the style of her Annie Oakley of television fame, mistakenly decks poor Pat Buttram in the opening scene in a misguided effort to demonstrate how Gene Autry had just incapacitated villainous Richard Powers (aka Tom Keene). Alas, this time Autry regular Davis isn't the top-billed female. That distinction, courtesy, no doubt, of the powers at be at Columbia, belongs to one Mary Castle, whose resemblance to the studio's reigning queen bee, Rita Hayworth, is hardly coincidental. And to make sure you get the point, the screenplay actually names Miss Castle's tough-talking character Rita. Mary, or rather Rita, makes eyes at Gene (why these dames make fools of themselves over someone as, well, homely as Gene Autry is one of those inexplicable Hollywood mysteries) despite the fact that she is the girlfriend of Richard Powers and that her father, the town's newspaper publisher, is also in Powers' employ. The girls are front and center in this Western, unusual, to be sure, but much appreciated when played by the likes of Castle, Davis, and Urecal all three of whom had a way with a line.

Mary Castle didn't have to share the screen with other dames in her second Columbia Western, the Durango Kid effort Prairie Roundup (1951), but that did not mean more screen time. She plays a fiery lady trail boss who's being swindled by nefarious Frank Fenton. To the rescue comes Charles Starrett, alias the Durango Kid, who is wanted for murder in the killing of a Durango impersonator (don't ask) and the inevitable Smiley Burnette who, at this late stage in his career has rid himself of some of his most annoying comedic habits and is almost watchable. This is a typical Durango Western, short on logic and long on riding and shooting. It does, however, come with a nifty little scene where a bartender blithely pours an unused drink back in the bottle while its owner is passed out.

Mary Castle's face, they claimed, had been surgically altered by Columbia Pictures to make her look like the studio's biggest box-office draw, Rita Hayworth, who kept threatening to leave Hollywood for good. Mary did indeed resemble Hayworth, albeit in a rather toughened version, but it was Universal-International and not Columbia that offered her the best opportunities, Texans Never Cry and Prairie Roundup notwithstanding. Those, however, were mostly secondary roles and Mary Castle probably gladly accepted an offer from Republic Pictures to co-star as railroad detective Frankie Adams on the television Western Stories of the Century (1954). Off-screen, she dated a host of Hollywood bachelors, including an Orbach department store heir and screenwriter Cy Bartlett, but her name was increasingly mentioned on police blotters for behaving drunken and disorderly, and she was eventually replaced by a more sober Kristine Miller on Stories. At one point in 1957 she was arrested and charged with biting a couple of Hollywood deputies and the following year ended up in a Malibu emergency room after taking a nude dip in the ocean while drunk. Castle's dipsomania seemed to have culminated with an attempted suicide by hanging while in the Beverly Hills drunk tank in 1959. The following year, she was discovered sleeping it off in a Hollywood parking lot. By then, sadly, her career had come to an end. She died age 67 in Palm Springs, CA, in 1998.

Linda Brent (Death Valley Rangers)

Linda Brent and ranger Bob Steele meet cute in Death Valley Rangers (1943), the fourth of Monogram's geriatric Trail Blazers Westerns starring Ken Maynard and Hoot Gibson. Bob, you see, climbs on board Steve Clark's stagecoach only to plant himself right on top of Miss Brent's new hat. Do they eventually come to a romantic understanding? Have you ever seen a Hollywood B Movie? Actually, the romantic interludes follow in the patented B-Western tradition of more aw shucks! than heavy petting. Correctly considering themselves a bit long in the tooth for even the timid love making of the kind displayed in Death Valley Rangers, Maynard and Gibson had left it to former star Bob Baker in previous series entries but Maynard reportedly did not get along with Baker and brought in Bob Steele who, although no spring chicken himself, handles the matter as if to the manor born. As, in fact, does Linda Brent who is both comely and capable.

Born in Shanghai, China to an Irish father and a Russian mother (nee Vassilieva), Linda Brent (1919-1994) didn't become an American citizen until November of 1942. By then, she had been voted the “prettiest white girl in Shanghai,” had appeared in local plays in Los Angeles and at the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco, had married and divorced MGM contract player Steve Cornell (who then, allegedly, disappeared in order to avoid the draft), became Orson Welles' comely assistant in his famous wartime magic act at the Hollywood Wonder Show, and dated movie tough guy Lyle Talbot. She was rumored to be close to marrying the latter but that apparently never happened. Instead she wed another screen tough, John Kellogg, and their 1951 divorce created unfortunate headlines that bespoke of physical abuse and a failure to pay child support. In contrast to all this, Linda Brent's screen career, which also included the Bob Livingston “Johnny Rapidan” Western The Laramie Trail (1944) and a host of chorus girl and handmaiden roles, seems little more than an afterthought. On screen and television until the early 1960s, Linda Laura Brent died in obscurity in Los Angeles on 7 May 1994.