From my collection: Duff Whitney

In 1944 marine sergeant Duff Whitney, of Sacramento, CA escorted Lana Turner to a benefit and someone from Lana's entourage encouraged the handsome soldier to “come to the studio after the war.” In 1946, Whitney did just that -- and was met with apparent apathy. The male acting drought was of course over now that Hollywood's established heroes had returned safely to home and hearth and young Duff was just another pretty face on the lot. As the Imdb reveals, Whitney became an extra. In fact, we don't hear about the former marine until 1951, when veteran producer Harry Sherman, of Hopalong Cassidy fame, announced that Duff Whitney, “a Gregory Peckish-looking newcomer,” would play Beau Tyler, “Hashknife Hartley” by any other name, in a western movie series based on W.C. Tuttle's sagebrush stories. Sadly, Sherman died shortly thereafter and nothing came of the project. Whitney instead turned up as a bit player in A Star is Born (1954). And that, as they say, was that.

Also arriving in Hollywood in 1944, but as far as can be determined, not in uniform of any kind, Lane Watson was under contract to International Pictures in 1946. Prior to that, Watson had been another bit player/extra but the affiliation with a rising company like International boded well. The production entity, founded by Louis B. Mayer's son-in-law William Goetz, operated out of Universal City and would actually merge with that company in 1947 to become Universal-International, only to be swallowed whole by Lew Wasserman's MCA. Not that any of these behind-the-scenes shenanigans did anything for Lane Watson, who disappears from view around the same time. Except, that is, for advertizing Carling's Red Cap Ale, “Better Than Beer,” alongside the likes of television personality Betty Oakes.

Betty Alexander (Dangerous Venture)

Under contract at various times to Warner Bros. and RKO, Betty Alexander was always better known for her off-screen activities than what she said or did on. In December of 1943, she announced her engagement to a young flyer from Houston, TX, Robert W. Abercrombie, but although a child was soon on the way, the union was apparently shortlived. But while still Mrs. Abercrombie, soldiers in Alaska voted her “the girl we'd most like to woo in an igloo.” Or so her publicity claimed.

By 1948, Betty Alexander's name was mentioned in connection with John Roosevelt, the late president's youngest son, but while he agreed to have met the RKO starlet, he denied having taken her "nightclubbing." Perhaps that was why she was soon seen instead on the arm of B-movie actor Roger Pryor. But rather than Pryor, in 1951 she wed the co-owner of the Ritz Carlton Hotel.

Dangerous Venture

In Dangerous Venture (United Artists, 1947), Betty Alexander performs more than her usual model and background duties. Indeed, in this latter-day Hopalong Cassidy Western, in which the Bar 20 boys return to the majestic Lone Pine locations in the shadow of Mt. Whitney, Betty plays a lady doctor. Not an ordinary frontier medic, mind you, but a genuine archeologist, a fact she makes clear by at all time sporting a Panama hat. Betty and the shadowy Dr. Atwood (Douglas Evans) are searching for Aztec treasure, she to preserve history and prove that the legendary Aztecs came this far north, he, well you can guess. Happily, Hoppy (William Boyd) and California Carlson (Andy Clyde) are along for the ride to provide protection. The least said about Rand Brooks, who took over from Russell Hayden as Hoppy's young sidekick Lucky Jenkins, the better. Suffice it to say, the ungainly Mr. Brooks makes googly eyes to Miss Alexander throughout.

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.

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.