Wiilliam Boyd (1895-1972)

William Boyd (June 5, 1895 – September 12, 1972) was an American actor. Born William Lawrence Boyd in Hendrysburg, Ohio, located 26 miles east of Cambridge, Ohio, he was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1918 he went to Hollywood, where he became famous as a leading man in silent film romances with a yearly salary of $100,000. He was the lead actor in Cecil B. DeMille's The Volga Boatman (1926) and in D. W. Griffith's Lady of the Pavements (1929).
By the end of the 1920s, Boyd's career had begun to deteriorate, and he was without a contract and going broke. Then Boyd's picture was mistakenly run in a newspaper story about the arrest of another actor with a similar name (William "Stage" Boyd) on gambling and liquor charges, which further hurt his career. In 1935, he was offered the lead role in the movie Hop-Along Cassidy. He changed the original pulp-fiction character, written by Clarence E. Mulford, from a whisky-guzzling wrangler to a cowboy hero who did not smoke, drink, or swear and who always let the bad guy start the fight. Boyd would be indelibly associated with the Hopalong Cassidy character, and he gained lasting fame in the Western film genre because of it. Both Clark Gable and Robert Mitchum got their first big break in movies playing villains in westerns starring Boyd. Anticipating television's rise, Boyd purchased the rights to the character of Hopalong and the 66 Hopalong Cassidy movies.[1] In 1949 he released the movies to television, where they became extremely popular and began the long-running genre of westerns on television. Along with other cowboy figures, such as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, Boyd licensed merchandise, including such products as Hopalong Cassidy watches, cups and dishes, comic books and cowboy outfits.[1] Boyd identified with his character, often dressing as a cowboy in public,[1] and used his fame and his fortune to meet with children around the world, and underscore for them the fine qualities of the Hopalong Cassidy figure he portrayed. As a private individual and an actor, he was a hero to a generation of American children. The Hopalong Cassidy films remain available for broadcast and are on DVD in restored form. Boyd appeared as Hopalong Cassidy on the cover of numerous national magazines, such as the August 29, 1950, issue of Look [1], and the November 27, 1950 issue of Time. William Boyd died in 1972 in Laguna Beach, California, and was buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. He is survived by his fifth wife, actress Grace Bradley Boyd (born 21 September 1913). For his contribution to the motion picture industry, William Boyd has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1734 Vine Street. In 1995, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Since 1991, the Friends of Hoppy Fan Club has held the Hopalong Cassidy Festival in Cambridge, Ohio, near Boyd's home town.

(From Wikipedia)

Here’s a nice tribute to Boyd from Youtube:

George O'Brien (1899-1985)

George O'Brien (April 19, 1899 – September 4, 1985) was an American actor, popular during the silent film era and into the talkie era of the 1930s, best known today as the lead actor in F. W. Murnau's 1927 film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. Born in San Francisco, California, O'Brien was the oldest son of Daniel J. and Margaret L. (Donahue) O'Brien; O'Brien's father later became the Chief of Police for the City of San Francisco (Dan O'Brien ordered the arrest of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle in September 1921 at the scandalous Labor Day party held by Arbuckle). After his retirement from that office, Dan was the Director of Penology for the State of California.
In 1917 O'Brien enlisted in the United States Navy to fight in World War I, serving on a Submarine chaser. He volunteered to act as a stretcher bearer for wounded Marines and was decorated for bravery. Right after the war O'Brien became Light Heavyweight champion of the Pacific Fleet. O'Brien came to Hollywood in his early twenties hoping to become a cameraman and did work as an assistant cameraman for a while, for both Tom Mix and Buck Jones. He began his acting career in bit parts and as a stuntman. One of his earliest roles was in the 1922 George Melford-directed drama Moran of the Lady Letty, most notable for starring Rudolph Valentino. In 1924 O'Brien received his first starring role in the drama The Man Who Came Back opposite the English actress Dorothy Mackaill. That same year he was chosen by the famed movie director John Ford to star in The Iron Horse opposite actress Madge Bellamy. The film was an immense success at the box-office and O'Brien made nine more films for Ford. In 1927 he starred in the F. W. Murnau-directed Sunrise opposite Janet Gaynor, which won three Academy Awards. O'Brien would spend the remainder of the 1920s as an extremely popular leading man in films, often starring in action and adventure roles alongside such popular actresses of the era as Alma Rubens, Anita Stewart, Dolores Costello, Madge Bellamy, Olive Borden (with whom he was linked romantically during the 1920s) and Janet Gaynor. With the advent of sound, George O'Brien became a popular star of Westerns and rarely took parts outside of the Western film genre. Throughout the 1930s, O'Brien was a consistent Top Ten box-office draw appearing in scores of Westerns, often atop his horse named Mike. During World War II, O'Brien re-enlisted in the United States Navy where he served as a beachmaster in the Pacific and was decorated several times. He left service with the rank of commander. He later joined the United States Naval Reserve and retired with the rank of captain in 1962, having four times been recommended for the rank of admiral. Following his service in World War II, O'Brien would occasionally take feature parts in films directed by his old friend and mentor John Ford including Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and Cheyenne Autumn. While serving in the Naval Reserve, O'Brien took on a project for the Department of Defense as part of President Eisenhower's "People to People" program. He was project officer for a series of orientation films on three Asian countries. One of these films, on Korea, was directed by his old friend, John Ford. The other two countries covered were Formosa (Taiwan) and the Philippines. O'Brien dated actress Olive Borden from 1926 until 1930. He married the actress Marguerite Churchill on July 15, 1933 and the couple had a son, Darcy O'Brien in 1939 who would become a successful writer and a daughter, Orin O'Brien who would become a double bassist with the New York Philharmonic. A third child, Brian, died in infancy. The couple divorced in 1948. O'Brien suffered a stroke in 1981 and was bedridden the last few years of his life. He died in 1985 in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. For his contribution to the motion picture industry, George O'Brien was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6201 Hollywood Blvd., in Los Angeles, California.

(From Wikipedia)