Blanca Vischer (Billy the Kid's Gun Justice, 1940)

Blanca Vischer, as Juanita, is listed last in the on-screen credits and just below the only other cast-member, Julian Rivero.

(Four spots above, veteran bit player Al Ferguson found himself billed “Furgusan”! Imagine that, the person creating the billing card didn't know the good old Scottish name of Ferguson!! As usual with low-rent companies like PRC, no one would spend a dime correcting such mistakes. And Al even played the Boss Villain in this one!!!)

Why the character of Juanita is even included in this otherwise pleasant enough little land swindle oater starring Bob Steele remains a mystery, however; she has but one cute, if brief, sequence with “Fuzzy” St. John, who plants himself on top of an old stove in full aw shucks! embarrassment from running into such a fine-looking senorita. But that is about she is given to do, at least in the surviving copy, and one can only surmise that Miss Vischer knew or dated someone involved with the production. (She was a cantina girl in Billy the Kid's Range War, 1941.) Meanwhile, whatever pulchritude Billy the Kid's Gun Justice has is provided by the ever-popular Louise Currie.

Blanca Vischer (1915-1969) hailed from Guatemala but her official biography noted that she had spent her childhood in Germany and had later graduated from Hollywood High School. She was one of the “Golden Girls” (no, not those Golden Girls) in the 1934 actioner Wild Gold (Myrla Bratton and Peter Lorre's wife Suzanne Kaaren were also included) and she did her fair share of Spanish-language versions of Hollywood films. Vischer's screen career was surprisingly lengthy and lasted into the 1950s. She remained very much part of Hispanic Hollywood.

Suzi Crandall (Mark of the Lash)

Let me put it this way: Mark of the Lash (1948), from producer Ron Ormond's Western Adventures series, is so poverty stricken that the Boss Villain is played by Marshall Reed, usually found as third henchman through the door. Ormond filmed at the Jack Ingram ranch off of Mulholland in Calabasas, and you can only laugh when hero Lash La Rue promises sidekick "Fuzzy" St. John that he will find him in town and don't you worry. Find him? The ramshackle Ingram Western town has but five or six buildings. Of course he'll find him! If nowhere else then in Mr. Reed's downmarket saloon. He also finds Suzi Crandall (who had replaced Western regular Peggy Stewart) and her rancher brother, Jimmie Martin, victims of said Marshall Reed, she a pretty blonde and as fine a little B-Western actress as any, he, well, let's just say that Jimmie hadn't learned much from high school plays. Happily, as in all the Lash La Rues, PRC or Ron Ormond, Al "Fuzzy" St. John soon takes center stage and all is well with the Western world. Especially when he attempts to roll a cigarette with one hand only to loose all the tobacca!

Miss Chicago 1942, Suzi Crandall is remembered today, if remembered at all, for some RKO comedy shorts she did with rubber-legged Leon Errol and for co-starring in her own series (with Robert Neil), “The Newlyweds.” Off-screen, she was briefly linked with male starlet Tom Drake, but gossip maven Louella Parsons didn't take the romance serious. Nor should she have considering that Drake was almost certainly gay. She also dated George Raft (who certainly wasn't gay) before reportedly marrying an airfield operator. She later taught modelling.

Elaine Morey/Janet Warren (Wild Horse Phantom)

The only reason for Elaine Morey's presence in Wild Horse Phantom (1943), an otherwise highly amusing Buster Crabbe/Billy Carson western from PRC, is that a girl was customary. She has exactly two brief scenes as Budd Buster's daughter in this tale of missing loot, greedy bankers, haunted mines and, of course, Fuzzy Q. Jones (Al St. John). Most of the action takes place inside said mine with Fuzzy scared out of his wits and good old henchie Frank Ellis awarded more to say and do than he probably ever got, before or after. Wild Horse Phantom remains a prime example of how to create an entertaining hour or so on a shoestring budget. But Elaine has very little to do with its success.

Hailing from Santa Ana, CA, (born around 1922) and a graduate of Hollywood High School, Elaine Morey entered films with Universal in 1941. She performed the usual cheesecake duty and turned up in Abbott and Costello comedies and graced the background of the studios patented horror flicks and teenage musicals. She was in Law of the Range (1942) with Johnny Mack Brown but Nell O'Day had the nominal female lead in that one.

In February of 1943, Morey married Robert W. Major of Ogden, UT, described as a “dramatic coach and former Warner Bros. dialogue director,” and threatened to leave films for good. “I am definitely giving up acting after my marriage,” she told a Utah newspaper just before the nuptials. “I love a home and children and I am madly in love with my husband. So I shall devote my life to those things and those people I love and leave the screen to others.” She also stated, “I am a convert to the Mormon church and I plan to devote much of my time to studying its principles and taking a prominent part in its activities.” Alas, exactly seven months later another, much more disturbing, story hit the wires:

HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 20.—(INS)—

A widespread police search was launched today for Elaine Morey, 22, blonde motion picture actress who has been mysteriously missing for several days. Her husband. Robert W. Major, dramatic coach, said the actress disappeared last week after leaving a note which read:

'Good-bye forever. I am going away.'

Miss Morey was depressed since receiving an unfavorable interview in regard to a movie job at a major studio, Major told police.

Happily, Elaine returned safe to home and hearth soon enough but perhaps this kind of negative publicity persuaded her that a name change might be in order. By 1945 she had become Janet Warren and appeared in a couple of Charlie Chan whodunits and Republic's Winter Wonderland (1947), an outdoorsy comedy-drama with Lynne Roberts. Today, she is best remembered for her one starring role as Hans Conried's wife in Arch Oboler's Sci-Fi satire The Twonky (1951, released 1953).

Mary Moore Maynard (The Purple Monster Strikes, Return of the Lash)

Chapter 12 of the Republic serial The Purple Monster Strikes (1945) concludes with a fantastic bitch-fight cliffhanger between heroine Linda Stirling and the evil Marcia from Mars, i. e. beautiful Mary Moore. After a furious car chase between the familiar boulders of the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, CA, the chapter ends with both ladies plunging to certain death from a cliff high above the desert floor. Of course, in the takeout in chapter 13, only Miss Moore perishes, Miss Stirling instead landing unharmed in a crevice in the rocks conveniently filled with plush greenery. Marcia had arrived on planet Earth in the previous chapter to help the title menace (Roy Barcroft) but then spent most of her time assuming the body of lab assistant Helen (Rosamonde James, a fashion model and one of Republic's contracted saloon “dancing girls”). In other words, although leading the second card of supporting players in the opening credits, Mary Moore has actually little to do other than run around prettily in her skimpy outfit. Which, as it turns out, was pretty much par for the course for the former Universal handmaiden and Goldwyn Girl.

Her exotic dark beauty explained by her Osage Indian heritage, Mary Moore (b. 1922) had been in the 1939 (and final) edition of the “George White's Scandals” on Broadway, a colorful variety show featuring the likes of Ann Miller and the Three Stooges. And the George White girls, of course, a sort of lower rent version of the Ziegfeld show girls. This was probably were she met Russ Murray, whom she would marry in 1944 and then divorce less than a year later. By then, Russ had left show business and become an army lieutenant. As stated above Mary was a harem girl in Universal's Arabian Nights (1942) and joined the Goldwyn troupe in Danny Kaye's Up in Arms (1944) and Wonder Man (1945). A walk-on in the Monogram Charlie Chan mystery The Shanghai Cobra (1946) followed and then she changed her name to Mary Maynard for her only leading role, Lash LaRue's Return of the Lash (1947). But to make sure the industry knew that she wasn't a complete neophyte, she listed herself as “Mary Moore Maynard” in the 1946 Academy Players Directory.

She plays the sister of former juvenile actor Brad Slaven and they sit on valuable land now that the railroad is coming to town. Only bad old George Chesebro (in a rare boss villain role) knows this, however, and sooner than later the siblings are held hostage. To the rescue come Lash LaRue and his trusted sidekick Fuzzy Q. Jones (beloved Al St. John) and … well, you can easily guess the rest. Mary Maynard is pretty but has very little to do other than serve coffee and look frightened. That, of course, is par for the course in a PRC western like Return of the Lash. It would be her final film under either name.