A big star in his time, Johnny Mack Brown is rarely heard of now.
Like Wayne, he was a football star but a much better player. He was named MVP of the 1925 Rose Bowl in which Alabama beat heavily favored Washington. I believe Alabama won their first national title that year.
I used to see a lot of those Johnny Mack Brown films from Supreme Pictures (distributed by Republic, c. 1935-37) on television. Never saw his later, long-running westerns for Universal and then Monogram, until more recent decades. I think Brown was probably my mother’s favorite. I had an uncle whose favorite was Bob Steele. My grandfather was partial to William S. Hart.