Having played one of the students in the Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland songfest Strike up the Band (1940), brunette starlet Melinda Leighton did her fair share of B-Westerns -- including Gene Autry's Cowboy Serenade (1942) -- before changing her name to Linda Johnson and earning a starring role opposite Kane Richmond in the Columbia serial Brick Bradford (1947). Those were the highlights in a screen career that came to a close with a 1953 episode of the popular television series The Cisco Kid.