The Big Picture
William Boyd played the iconic Western hero Hopalong Cassidy in 66 films, becoming a popular counter-cultural cowboy who wore black and maintained a moral demeanor. Boyd bought the rights to Hopalong Cassidy after the film series ended and continued the story on television, airing edited versions of the original pictures on NBC and later producing a brand-new series that ran for two seasons. Before becoming Hopalong Cassidy, Boyd had a diverse career as a romantic hero in the 1920s and faced challenges when his career almost ended after being confused with another actor.
Not all Western stars become major icons in the same way that John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and James Stewart do. Some faithfully play frontier-based heroes for years without any real recognition for their contributions to the genre, despite their popularity with audiences at the time. One such Western star is none other than William Boyd, who for nearly two decades played the same cowboy in the bulk of his on-screen appearances, a hero known as Bill “Hop-Along” Cassidy. If you haven’t heard of Hopalong Cassidy before, mount your horse and ride with us. It’s time for a lesson in Western genre history.
Hop-a-Long Cassidy
An evil ranch foreman tries to provoke a range war by playing two cattlemen against each other while helping a gang to rustle the cattle.
Release Date August 23, 1935
Director Howard Bretherton
Cast William Boyd , James Ellison , Paula Stone , George ‘Gabby’ Hayes
Runtime 60 minutes
Main Genre Western
Writers Clarence E. Mulford , Doris Schroeder , Harrison Jacobs
William Boyd Played Hopalong Cassidy in 66 Western B-Movies
In the early 20th century, author Clarence E. Mulford penned a tale of Western fiction that centered on a cowboy named Hopalong Cassidy. This character, it turns out, would start to take on a life of his own, and by the late 1940s, Mulford had written nearly 30 novels centered on Cassidy and the Bar-20 Ranch heroes. Many consider Mulford the first author to generate a shared continuity among his Western tales, an idea other creatives such as Louis L’Amour, Craig Johnson of Longmire fame, C.J. Box, Dark Wind’s Tony Hillerman, and other Western fiction authors ran with themselves. But Hopalong Cassidy wouldn’t be contained on the page forever, and by 1935 the character appeared in the self-titled feature Hop-a-long Cassidy with William “Bill” Boyd in the titular role.
Despite being 40 years old at the time, audiences loved the counter-cultural cowboy who wore black instead of white while retaining a moral demeanor. There’s a myth out there that Boyd may not have been the studio’s first choice, but he was certainly the obvious one in the end. Before the year was up, Paramount Pictures put all their effort into releasing two more Hopalong Cassidy movies, The Eagle’s Brood in October and then Bar 20 Rides Again in early December. Clocking in at almost 60 minutes per feature, this trilogy of Mulford-inspired serials only served as the foundation for what would become a much greater franchise, possibly one of the greatest in the era. Paramount released five more Boyd-led Hopalong Cassidy movies the following year, and another six the next. It seemed like there was no slowing Cassidy and his companions down, even if not all the supporting cast members stuck around for subsequent features.
In 1941, a new record of 10 different Hopalong Cassidy B-pictures were made, beginning with Doomed Caravan in January and concluding with Secret of the Wastelands in November of that year. But after the 41st entry, Paramount opted to sell some of its assets, including the Hopalong Cassidy pictures. United Artists bought the rights, and in the last few months of 1942 released both Uncover Man and Lost Canyon. From there, the franchise continued with seven films in 1943 and four in 1944 before taking a year-long break. Longtime Hopalong Cassidy producer Harry Sherman took a step back from the series after 54 installments and handed the duties off to Boyd, who produced the final batch of films, from 1946’s The Devil’s Playground to Strange Gamble in 1948. After 66 total productions and an uncredited appearance in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth, the Hopalong Cassidy film series had come to an end. Boyd has since received a Guinness World Record for “Most Hollywood film performances in the same role,” a record he’s retained for nearly 80 years.
William Boyd Bought the Rights to Hopalong Cassidy for a Western TV Series
Image via NBC
Following the end of the Hopalong Cassidy movies, William Boyd wasn’t satisfied with where the movies left off. The actor/producer fought hard to secure the rights to the character back from United Artists in an effort to continue the story on his own. In many ways, Boyd had become Hopalong Cassidy off-screen as much as on, and that’s the way the public saw him too. “In Author Clarence Mulford’s original pulp-paper stories, Hoppy had been a ragged, tobacco-chewing, whiskery cowpoke who walked with a bad limp,” noted TIME Magazine in 1950. “But Boyd made him a veritable Galahad of the range—a soft-spoken paragon who did not smoke, drink, or kiss girls, who tried to capture the rustlers instead of shooting them, and who always let the villain draw first if gunplay was inevitable.” Boyd, who had been married to five different women at the time before settling with Grace Bradley, had effectively become this character in real life.
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So, to continue as his trademark cowboy, Boyd would have to fight back, and boy did he ever. Though it took him a while, the B-Western actor mustered up $350,000 after mortgaging his car, selling his ranch, and borrowing whatever he could to continue his career as a cowboy, only this time on television. In 1949, Boyd aired edited versions of his original pictures on NBC, which instantly became a hit with stay-at-home audiences. This new “series” became so popular that Boyd decided to film more adventures. Thus, in 1952, the first new episode of Hopalong Cassidy, a brand-new series airing on television, hit screens everywhere. For two seasons and 52 episodes total, Boyd continued to delight viewers as his infamous cowboy until 1955. That’s right, Boyd’s TV adventures as Hopalong Cassidy beat shows like Gunsmoke, Rawhide, and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp to the punch. In fact, he started airing on television around the same time as The Lone Ranger.
Along with securing the rights to the films and airing new episodes of Hopalong Cassidy, the character expanded to comic books and radio as well, with 104 radio shows produced in total. Additionally, the character reportedly outsold Mickey Mouse watches in the early ’50s, appeared on the cover of TIME and LIFE magazines, and even inspired a “Hoppyland” theme park in Venice, California. Of course, the success didn’t exactly last. Hoppyland closed after only a few years, despite Boyd’s regular appearances, and Mickey Mouse is by far the more recognizable character these days. But that shouldn’t minimize the impact that either Boyd or his on-screen counterpart had on the Western genre. Even today, there are still those who look back fondly on William Boyd’s legacy as one of the most friendly cowboys around, and Hopalong Cassidy still pops up now and then (Louis L’Amour even wrote his own Cassidy novels back in the day).
William Boyd’s Hopalong Cassidy Character Changed
When Boyd’s career first kicked off in the 1920s, he was more of a “romantic hero” than a cowboy. Appearing in pictures like A City Sparrow, Changing Husbands, and The Volga Boatman (among plenty of others), Boyd had yet to step into a role he could call his own. In the early 1930s, Boyd’s career almost ended after he was publicly confused in newspapers with a Broadway actor of the same name who was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. All this primed him for what would become his most important role, even if he didn’t feel he could live up to the character himself.
In his later years, Boyd stayed out of the public eye. Deeming himself “not the man people remember as Hopalong Cassidy,” Boyd was a recluse who refused most interviews and other on-screen appearances before his death at the age of 77 in 1972. Interestingly, it was Boyd who talked producer Harry Sherman into changing Cassidy’s character from the “ornery cuss” he was in the original novels to the happy-go-lucky Western hero he became. No doubt, The Loner series creator Rod Serling would’ve disapproved. Boyd’s final role would be in the Hopalong Cassidy television series, effectively concluding his Hollywood career. Thankfully, we live in an age where we can revisit the on-screen adventures of Hopalong Cassidy, a cowboy who refused to ever let us down.
Hop-a-long Cassidy is available to watch on MGM+ in the U.S.
Watch on MGM+