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A former cowpuncher, stage driver, city marshal, and member of the famous Miller 101 Wild West Show crew, American action lead Neal Hart entered films in 1916 on the strength of his kinship with Western star William S. Hart, reportedly his cousin. Neal made himself indispensable to the sprawling Universal company as an assistant to director George Marshall, by writing scenarios, and eventually by starring in a steady stream of low-budget Westerns, all the while increasing his salary from five dollars a day to a reported 500 dollars a week. Leaving Univeral in 1920, Hart made a series of pictures for Poverty Row company Pinnacle before embarking on a long association with low-budget entrepreneur William Steiner. Hart produced, wrote, and starred in scores of Western programmers throughout the decade but, like most Gower Gulch mavericks, he was to find the advent of talkies a tough challenge. No longer a star, Neal Hart nevertheless gamely went on appearing in B-Westerns until 1949, the year of his death from lung cancer. The veteran cowboy star died at the Motion Picture Country Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.