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. |
Years before starring opposite Richard Denning on TV/radio's Mr. and Mrs. North, Barbara Britton was paying her sagebrush dues. In Secret of the Wastelands (1941), she plays an archaeologist who literally has to remove her glasses and let down her hair before Hayden's 'Lucky' realizes she's beautiful. |
Wide Open Townwas 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, 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.