Anybody catch the show on History Channel last night?
What a trip down memory lane.
Buck Jones, Tim Holt, Bob Steele, Johnny Mack Brown (my mom went to U. of AL with him), Tex Ritter, Tom Mix, The Durango Kid, Lash LaRue (met him), Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, Gene Autrey, and The King...Roy Rogers.
I spent many a Saturday with these guys at the neighborhood movie. Hopalong Cassidy has one of the most interesting stories. I always wondered where that name "Hopalong" came from. Sometimes it was just "Hoppy". The films were based on a character in 28 western novels written by Clarence E. Mulford in the twenties, thirties, and forties. In the first one, "Bar 20", the character had a limp from some early injury, hence the nickname.
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WILLIAM (BILL) BOYD, a star of the silent movies under contract to Cecil B. DeMille, brought HOPALONG to the screen in a feature produced by Paramount Pictures. Paramount made 34 more pictures with Bill Boyd as Hoppy and United Artists produced 31 others, also with Bill Boyd. Never in Hollywood history has one man played the same character in as many features. When audiences the world over saw the films, Bill Boyd and Hopalong Cassidy became synonymous.
Sixty-six motion picture features starring the same actor. An incredible feat! No wonder, then, that this large body of work led Bill Boyd to television in 1950. Boyd, with remarkable foresight, had purchased the television rights to all the Hoppy motion pictures (which almost bankrupted him) and licensed 52 of them to the NBC Television Network to be telecast as one hour episodes."
http://www.hopalong.com/LEGEND.HTM