Phyllis Adair (Gunning for Vengeance)

There is a lesson to be learned here somewhere: Don't be nasty to an adorable 10-year-old motherless girl (and weren't they all?), even if, as a saloon proprietress, you have the perfect right to find the child's presence in your establishment unwanted. But, for Heaven’s sake, be nice about it and do not do rough up the little tot like Phyllis Adair does in the 1946 Durango Kid oater Gunning for Vengeance. Because the only way you could possibly redeem yourself is to take a bullet shielding the same little girl (Marjean Neville) from her would-be abductors. Which, again, is what Phyllis does. So be that a lesson to you! The outcome of all this, however, is one of the better Durango Kids thanks in no small ways to Miss Adair's tough gal performance.

Phyllis Adair, her publicity claimed, came from European nobility, her father, George Wilsnack, being “the great-grandson of Count von Wilsnack” while her mother, the former Louise Wingertier, came from a Swiss family “that dated back several hundred years.” So, there!

Besides her no less than five B-Westerns, Adair is mainly remembered as Irish starlet Peggy Cummins' stand-in in the first, abandoned, version of the much-hyped Forever Amber (finally released in 1947 starring Linda Darnell). Apparently, Miss Cummins was too nervous and inexperienced to handle this arguably the most heralded film role since Gone With the Wind's Scarlett O'Hara. To make it easier for Cummins, Phyllis was used to block scenes with the other players and then gracefully step aside when time for the actual filming. According to Gary A. Smith's fine “Forever Amber: From Novel to Film” (Duncan, OK: BearManor Media, 2010), she was hired for $200 a week.

For the record, Phyllis Louise Wilsnack's life dates are: Chicago, IL, 1 May 1919-Los Angeles, CA, 23 February 1990. Her name at the time of death was given as Phyllis Stevenson.

Mildred Law: Columbia Starlet in Lawless Empire

Columbia starlet Mildred Law plays handsome Tex Harding's sister in Lawless Empire (1945), a fine if somewhat poverty-stricken entry in the studio's long-lasting Durango Kid series starring Charles Starrett. In the opening sequence, Tex, a preacher, and Mildred attempt to save the Murphy family from evil raiders and are about to succumb to Ethan Laidlaw and his henchmen when rescued in the nick of time by the masked Durango. Then, in a rare contemplative moment, the brother and sister act perform Reverend W.B. Stevens' "Farther Along," but for the remainder of the hour or so, the screen is taken over by the usual fightin' and shootin' and Dub Taylor shtick. And that is just fine.

A pretty but unexceptional brunette starlet, Mildred Law earned a quite thorough writeup in a newswire story. Usually these studio plants were quite empty (and empty headed) but in Miss Law's case there was actually some substance and I have decided to offer the story in its entirety:

"Hollywood, May 15 [1944] — (INS)—

Out of the first ten dollars she ever earned, Mildred Law, new Columbia starlet, spent $1.39 for a cotton print dress and the remainder of it for a pair of dancing shoes. She prized the shoes highly
and does yet, for that matter, for she still keeps them as mementos. Miss Law earned the ten dollar bill when she was 12. It was at a home talent show for the Knights of Columbus back in her hometown of Boston. She was billed 'Little Miss Twinkletoes. Her indulgent mother, realizing that most girls of 12 would have reversed the procedure by paying the larger share of the award for a dress, sensed the trend of her daughter's tendencies toward a dancing career and willingly purchased additional shoes for the girl.

Signed by Columbia.

From then on Miss Law danced, and later sang her way through school, several road shows and then into Monte Prosser's Cobacabana Club in New York where she was signed by a Columbia talent scout. Her first work in the legitimate theatre was in 1940 in 'Too Many Girls,' with Hal LeRoy, Dick Kollman, Desi Arnaz and Eddie Bracken. She danced with LeRoy and was an understudy for the leading feminine player [Leila Ernst]. When the lead became ill, Miss Law stepped into the spot. That was her first singing role. Later she replaced the ingenue, Leila Ernst, in 'Pal Joey,' playing opposite Gene Kelly. After that run she appeared in vaudeville and night clubs and was featured as a dancer with troupes headed by the bands of Rudy Vallee, Eddy Duchin and Glen Gray. She was also vocalist with the bands of Vaughn Monroe and Don Bestor. In 1943 she appeared in 'Artists and Models but left that show to go to the Cobacabana. She was there twenty weeks and then came to Hollywood under a Columbia contract. Miss Law was born Mildred McMurray, the daughter of Thomas McMurray, a Boston police captain, and Elizabeth McMurray. Because she is 'John Law's daughter' she changed her name to Mildred Law and has been known by that name throughout her career.

Only Girl.

She was the only girl in the family of four children. One of her brothers, Norman, is now in the navy; Robert is in an eastern school and Warren, the eldest son, was killed in action while piloting a combat plane over France in March. On the personal side, Miss Law is five feet four and three quarter inches in height and weighs 118. She has blue eyes and brown hair. She is fond of swimming, riding and tennis and has an ambition to become a concert pianist but says she cannot find the time to study. She loves dogs, but has been unable to own one because she has resided in hotels most of her life. She likes broiled steaks but abhors liver. She can cook, but says she's most adept at opening cans. And if she had to chose an activity other than her present career Miss Law says she would want to b e a housewife."

Mildred Law left the screen after Lawless Empire, probably to marry, but did appear on television in the 1950s before disappearing from the Hollywood radar screens altogether.

Nanette Parks (Texas Panhandle)

To be quite frank, Nanette Parks (1922-2004), albeit personable and cute, is not what you remember from the 1945 Durango Kid Western Texas Panhandle starring Charles Starrett and his regular sidekicks Tex Harding and Dub Taylor. But how could anyone, least of all an ingenue, stack up against the formidable Jody Gilbert, a fine lump of a woman who flings about poor Dub as if he were a Raggedy Ann doll. The gargantuan Miss Gilbert plays the town blacksmith and her scenes with Taylor remain highlights of this standard Durango oater about land grabbers. Add to that the yodelin' Carolina Cotton, future wife killer Space Cooley and his Western swing band and the usual B-Western sturm und drang and there is little that Nanette Parks can do other than grab on to the scenery for dear life. Which she does prettily enough.

The titian-haired (as her publicity never failed to state) daughter of a ditsctrict court judge in St. Paul, MN, Nanette Parks had appeared in community theater and then the Pasadena Playhouse (which, if we believe the Hollywood publicity hacks, was just lousy with starlets in the early 1940s) before signing with Columbia Pictures in December of 1944. She made quite a splash as pert journalism student Laura Jessup in Snafu (1945), a rollicking WWII farce about a family insisting on babying a returning veteran that had enjoyed a successful Broadway run. Parks was then rumored to be about to marry Jack Moss, a producer and Gary Cooper's former business manager, but that apparantly didn't happen and she signed instead with Paramount. For her 21st birthday, the studio generously announced that she would star in "Catalina," a proposed Technicolor musical with Sterling Hayden, but when the camera began rolling, the project had become a 19 minute short entitled Tropical Masquerade (1948) and instead of Hayden featured such lesser talents as Tito Guizar and Sally Rawlinson, the brunette daughter of former serial star Herbert Rawlinson. At least the project retained the Technicolor aspect. Unfortunately, Paramount already had Diana Lynn, Mona Freeman and Wanda Hendrix under contract, all fresh-faced ingenue types, and Nanette Parks apparently drew the shortest straw. By late 1948, she had left screen acting altogether. She apparently died at the age of 82 in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Or at least that's what we can learn from the IMDb. However, as the poster below suggests, the truth is a great deal happier. Apparently, Miss Parks retired to marry the future Vice Admiral Edward S. Briggs in 1949, and the couple live today on a cul-de-sac in Escondido, CA.

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.

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.

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.