Kathy Frye (Crossed Trails)

Five-year-old Kathryn Frey was a member of Hollywood's legendary children troupe the Meglin Kiddies (Shirley Temple was, famously, one of the graduates of the group) when she was picked to play the Indian Prince in Max Reinhardt's lavish A Midsummer Night's Dream (Warner Bros., 1935). She became Kathy Frye and performed a Spanish dance in Gene Autry's Mexicali Rose (Republic, 1939), one of Gene's very best New Deal Westerns. She was one of the children in Luana Walters' orphanage, a nearly bankrupt institution threatened by William Royle and his nasty oil company. During the ensuing melee, little Kathy and her friend Hardie Albright get themselves both kidnapped and teargassed in a fiery finale. Fast forward a decade and a nearly grown Kathy turns up at Monogram in Johnny Mack Brown's Crossed Trail (1948), perhaps no match for Gene Autry in his heyday but pleasant nonetheless. The distaff side is very well represented in Crossed Trails (1948),which has former MGM contract starlet Lynne Carver decked out as a spirited prairie version of Lillian Russell and utilizing every trick in the book to persuade Johnny to use his influence over teenage landowner Kathy, whose land Lynne's boss (Douglas Evans) desires. Despite the period trappings, Frye plays her part like a typical 1940s movie brat, much in the style of Paramount's teenyboppers Diana Lynn or Mona Freeman, or David Selznick's equally adolescent Shirley Temple. A bit tomboy, a bit coquette, and quite a bit irritating. It was, of course, a stock character on its way out in a post war era of teenagers beginning to find the voice that would eventually lead to the Blackboard Jungles and the Rebels Without a Cause of the mid-1950s. Frye also did the low-budget wartime drama Women in the Night (Film Classics, 1948), as Virginia Christine's doomed daughter (the film is in public domain and available everywhere), and then retired.

NOTE: Playing a small part as William Royle's secretary in Mexicali Rose is Kaaren Verne, a glamorous supporting player and sometimes leading lady who, late in life, became a huge thorn in the side of Donald Trump.

Betty Lou Head & Early Cantrell (West of the Alamo)

In the Jimmy Wakely oater West of the Alamo (Monogram, 1946) Betty Lou Head is that almost unheard of creature in a B-Western: a young married woman. Soon enough, alas, Betty Lou is made a widow by somebody impersonating local saloon owner Jane Morgan, and she decides to take the law into her own hands in a surprisingly potent scene where she confronts Jimmy Wakely, the sheriff (ubiquitous bit player Roy Butler) and sundry saloon denizens. Despite all this action, Betty Lou, of course, isn't the leading lady of West of the Alamo; that distinction goes instead to Iris Clive as the aforementioned saloon keeper falsely accused of heading a gang of road agents. Iris, who struts around the place like a junior league Joan Crawford in the much later Johnny Guitar (Republic, 1954), comes complete with a sister played by one Early Cantrell (1916-1998), who mostly spends her time looking bemused at the comedic song styling of Lee “Lasses” White. Texas-born Earlyne Cantrell (1916-1998), her real name, reportedly dabbled in spiritualism from a very young age and after the demise of her minor screen career, which also included a couple of Shemp Howard comedy shorts, she and her husband since 1946, Robert Chaney, founded “Astara,” an early “new age” occult religion. Earlyne Chaney authored several books, including “Remembering: The Autobiography of a Mystic” (Upland, CA: Astara, 1981).

NOTE: The life dates given for Early Cantrell on Imdb are incorrect; these dates, undoubtedly originally located on the find-a-grave website, belong instead to a somewhat older male.

"Meanwhile ... Back at the Ranch"

This will be a work in constant progress. Or least as constant as an elderly, childless shut-in like myself can make it. Here I will discuss that strange and ephemeral of screen apparitions: Women in B-Westerns and Serials. The leading ladies, the duennas, the villainesses (few and far between), the towns women, and Rose Plumer.

We all know that Gene Autry didn't actually kiss his horse, Champion. But he almost never kissed the girl either. The reason is obvious: the small fry at the Saturday matinee would not have approved. To put it mildly. But, despite the umbrage certain to be taken by the kids in the theater, producers thought leading ladies were necessary for the adults, and besides a cheap Western was the ideal way to screen test a possible starlet or get in good with somebody you wanted to bed. Or am I being too cynical?

I shall return with a more thorough discussion about these women and how they came about and were written. Or not written, as the case may be. Hope you'll like it. But, if not, well, I tried my best.

All Movie Guide (now, apparently, Rovi!?)

I was an associate editor with the former All Movie Guide 1998-2003, a salaried position that in the end end resulted in more than 3000 essays on everything classic and not so "classic" movie lore. A lot of silent screen stuff and plenty of B-Westerns. Between Hal Erickson and myself, we pretty much covered the whole range in those heady years at AMG. Although I'm thoroughly retired I still receive hundreds of e-mails regarding many of the personalities I covered. I don't know how to put this delicately, but I am not keeping anything from you. In other words, please don't waste your time enquiring abut your mother's great uncle Jeb, who appeared in a Jack Hoxie movie back in 1923. Whatever I wrote about Uncle Jeb, that was it. That was what I had been able to unearth. Granted, I didn't go to the end of the world uncovering this material, i.e. did on site research at the Margaret Herrick Library, UCLA or Lincoln Center. What we editors were asked to do was to write brief articles, encyclopedic-style, of literally thousands of performers and behind the scenes talent. Often, I don't even recognize the name of the person some relative is searching for; after all, I wrote at a furious pace. And I really didn't keep any notes. I sold my stuff to AMG and that, as they say, was that. As I stated before, I'm now very much retired. To a thatched roof cottage on the edge of the marshland in Southern Jylland, Denmark. 5km, in fact, from the German border. I have a minor heart problem, which sometimes makes concentration a bit of a chore (the medicine, will do that to you) but, who cares? I have all the time in the world. So I thought I would get back into the swing of things, so to speak, at my own, leisurely pace. I don't plan to publish any more books. Don't have the patience and they really aren't worth the trouble, economically. Recently, I came across a wonderful (and highly recommended) blog about bit players and movie extras,
http://morethanyouneededtoknow.typepad.com/the_unsung_joe/2010/11/eddie-hall.html
This blog is so well written -- in fact, much better writing here than you come across even from major publishers -- that it gave me the idea for this one. So blame the guy behind "Unsung Joe" for "suggesting" this blog!