Career: Wayne began doing bit parts in westerns and adventures and appeared in about 70 movies before his breakthrough role in John Ford's Stagecoach (1939). He went on to star in more than 20 John Ford pictures, including Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Grande (1950), The Searchers (1956) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Other notable films included Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), The Alamo (1960), The Green Berets (1968), True Grit (1969) and The Shootist (1976). He died of stomach cancer on June 11, 1979 at the age of 72.

Career: Widmark was performing in a stage production in Chicago when 20th Century Fox signed him to a seven-year film contract. His first movie role was Kiss of Death (1947), a part that earned him a Golden Globe and his only Academy Award nomination. His early films were The Street with No Name (1948), Road House (1948) and Yellow Sky (1948) and he quickly developed a reputation for playing movie villains. After demanding more diverse roles, he went on play a wide range of parts in the likes of Panic in the Streets (1950), No Way Out (1950), Night and the City (1950), Broken Lance (1954), The Alamo (1960), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and Madigan (1968). He made the transition to the small screen in 1971 with the TV movie Vanished, and he reprised his detective role from Madigan in six TV movies. After a career that had seen him star in more than 60 films, he retired from acting in 2001. After a long illness, he died in 2008 at the age of 93.