Of the numerous movies to which I helped myself from Vault on Demand during our recent Epix freeview, a little over a dozen of these features were B-westerns starring William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy. Cassidy was a cowpoke created by Clarence Mulford in a series of popular short stories—a whiskey drinkin’, tobacco-chawin’, rough-talkin’ hombre whose wooden leg caused him to walk with a noticeable limp, earning him the nickname “Hop-A-Long.” Movie producer Harry Sherman negotiated a deal with Mulford to bring his literary creation to the silver screen (beginning in 1935 with Hop-A-Long Cassidy) but a few cosmetic changes were made to the movie Hoppy: his beverage of choice was now sarsaparilla, the wooden leg was downgraded to an injury from a bullet wound, and he was so squeaky clean (honest, forthright, kind to kids and animals, etc.) he threatened to make Gene Autry look like one of the Dead End Kids. There would be a total of sixty-six Hopalong Cassidy oaters produced between 1935 and 1948, and Boyd’s Cassidy would become not only one of the motion picture industry’s highly bankable box office mainstays but a real hero to the Saturday matinee crowd (despite that Hoppy was often clad in black…white was the sartorial choice of the good guys in westerns as a rule).
Russell 'Lucky' Hayden and William Boyd |
Hayden, Boyd, and George 'Gabby' Hayes |
Since the earliest of the Hopalong Cassidy films on Epix’s
On Demand was Partners of the Plains
(1938), I haven’t been afforded the opportunity yet to see any of the James
Ellison films. Plains is a very good introduction to the Hoppy features…even
though ‘Gabby’ Hayes is absent from this one (he’s replaced by Harvey Clark as
‘Baldy’ Morton) it’s still business as usual: Hoppy and his friends work on a
ranch where Britisher Lorna Drake (Gwen Gaze) has acquired a controlling
interest, and Lorna—described by her Aunt Martha (Hilda Plowright) as being “a
little willful and spoiled”—clashes almost immediately with foreman
Cassidy. But she’s carrying a torch for
our hero (despite bristling at being told what to do); when Hoppy quits as
foreman, she has the sheriff (Earle Hodgins) arrest him for “stealing” his
beloved horse Topper! (Hoppy doesn’t
have a bill of sale…so in the eyes of the law, he’s a hoss thief.)
Lorna’s romantic designs on Hoppy do not go unnoticed by her
fiancé, Ronald Harwood (John Warburton) …who accepts that Cassidy is the better
man by taking bad advice from ex-convict Scar Lewis (character great Al
Bridge)—great name, by the way—to remove Hoppy as his competition…permanently. Everything comes out in the wash eventually,
with a suspenseful forest fire climax and Lorna’s transformation from spirited
filly to meek and docile submissive.
The young ingenue in Doomed Caravan (1941) is billed as “Georgia
Hawkins” …but old-time radio fans know her as Georgia Ellis, whose
best-remembered role is that of “Kitty Russell” on Gunsmoke.
|
Russell Hopton, Charlotte Wynters |
Roy Barcroft tangles with Hoppy in a lobby card for Renegade Trail (1939) as John Merton looks on (dis)approvingly. |
The ‘Gabby’ Hayes deficit was made up in a few Hopalong
Cassidy films by a character named ‘Speedy’ McGinnis (comically played by Britt
Wood); I’ve only seen Wood in Range War,
so I can’t really give you a full appraisal of what his character added to the
series (a lot of Hoppy fans feel mostly “meh” about Speedy). With Three
Men in Texas (1940), the Hoppy franchise introduced my favorite of the
elderly sidekicks in ‘California’ Jack Carson, played by veteran comedian Andy
Clyde. The fact that I’m such a huge fan of Andy’s admittedly colors my assessment of his contribution to the movie
series…but Texas is a first-rate
oater, and a beloved favorite among Cassidy fans.
TDOY fave Andy Clyde joins Boyd and Hayden. |
Wide Open Town was Russell Hayden’s swan song (after 27 films) with the Hopalong Cassidy franchise; his ‘Lucky’ Jenkins would be replaced by Brad King as “Johnny Nelson.” (When the Hoppy films resumed in 1946—after star Boyd purchased both his old films and the rights to make more—the ‘Lucky’ character returned to the fold, portrayed by Rand Brooks.) After King, the Cassidy series then showcased several rotating young sidekicks including Jay Kirby and Jimmy Rogers—in Bar 20 (1943), the sidekick is played by future TV Superman George Reeves! The presence of the bland Kirby (as “Johnny Travers”) in Border Patrol (1943) didn’t detract from my enjoyment of this film; Hoppy and his crew match wits against an autocratic judge in Orestes Krebs (Russell Simpson), who’s been using kidnapped Mexicans as forced labor in his silver mine. Judge Krebs puts the three comrades on trial that brings new meaning to the term “kangaroo court”—with Robert Mitchum (billed as Bob) as the foreman! (Big Bad Bob appeared in several Hoppy westerns, notably 1943’s Hoppy Serves a Writ [which I haven’t seen] and Leather Burners [which I have].) Patrol was my second favorite among the Epix Hoppys, with fine support from familiar faces like Claudia Drake, Duncan Renaldo, and Pierce Lyden.
The only gripe—and I’ll be honest, it’s a major one—is that
the Epix prints of these movies have, to use the horse parlance, been rode hard
and put up wet. Two of the titles, Doomed Caravan and Wide Open Town, have
running times of fifty-four minutes (most disappointing, since these are two of
the best movies in the series) …leading me to suspect that these versions were
the ones that were cut-up for television by NBC when Hoppy’s adventures came to
small screens in 1949. (Bar 20 Justice [1938] was missing its
opening credits.) A complete collection
of the Hopalong Cassidy films was released to DVD by Echo Bridge in 2009 with
restored prints, and that set, Hopalong
Cassidy Ultimate Collector's Edition, was reissued in 2015 (sans collective lunchbox) …so I’m
entertaining thoughts of grabbing one of these once the financial picture is a
bit rosier here at Rancho Yesteryear.
5 comments:
It's a tad off-topic, perhaps, but your headline reminded me of a tv appearance that Peter Sellers made with Steve Allen, long,long ago.
Sellers was of the opinion that he didn't do American accents particularly well.He went further, stating that whenever he heard most British actors trying to sound American, they usually sounded like sports announcers.
As an example, Sellers spoke this line, which I have never forgotten:
"You're darned tooting, Bud-dy!"
Cold print doesn't really do justice to this; you had to hear Sellers enunciating the daylights out of the line (the hyphen I put in 'Buddy' was deliberate, as was the whole sentence, comes to that).
Just thought I'd throw that in ...
I seem to travel to another realm of existence when in my Hoppy moods. The family sometimes fears I will not be able to return. Sometimes I get the impression they rather hope I will stay there. Sometimes.
Of course, as well you know, Andy Clyde would play "California" on the Hoppy radio show.
I'm sure many of the beat-up prints of Hoppy films, not only came from TV stations, but also from those who traveled small villages and rural areas without theaters, carrying projectors and well-worn prints of Westerns.
Ivan,
NBC sub-channel COZI TV ran the Hoppy movies and TV show on weekends from 2013 through 2015. I wish they would bring them back.
A propos future prized actors in the series: Lee J. Cobb appeared in 2 of them in 1937. He was 26 years old and had already lost his hair, but had not yet acquired his "I need a Bromo seltzer" expression.
Regards,
Barry
Barry reminded me:
NBC sub-channel COZI TV ran the Hoppy movies and TV show on weekends from 2013 through 2015. I wish they would bring them back.
I didn't remember them airing on COZI...but then again, my only exposure to the sub-channel is that some of its programming airs on FETV. Friend of the blog Richard M. Roberts was nice enough to let me know via e-mail that the Hoppy DVD set I mentioned in the post is available from Hamilton Books for $19.95...so I grabbed one this week.
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