B movie cowboys

[trof]

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.

"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

[LynneSin]

1. You mean like Ronald Reagan

I don't think his acting (or polical career) was much more than being a B-Movie Cowboy

[trof]

2. I don't remember seeing any of his movies.

Maybe I just blocked them out?
;-)

[LynneSin]

3. Kinda like how I try to block out those years between 1980-88

:shrug:

[MrBenchley]

4. There was a documentary about Hoppy on the Western Channel

Interestingly, way back in the 50s at the height of his popularity, Boyd refused to appear before racially segregated audiences. He would only appear before racially integrated ones...which caused quite a flap in some areas of the country.

I have heard somewhere that Clayton Moore (The Lone Ranger) also did the same.

[charlie]

5. Boyd had the foresight to buy the television rights

to his movies, but Gene Autry had the foresight to buy television, KTLA. He sold that sucker, the flagship of his Golden West Broadcasting empire, in 1982 for a cooooool $245 million. Pretty sharp businessman, that singing cowpoke.

[trof]

6. I remember Gene Autrey's radio show.

The Doublemint Ranch?
Sponsored by Wrigley's gum.

[charlie]

7. This is damn near unAmerican

but I hated westerns when I was growing up. I didn't have an instinctual dislike of them, it's just that TV was awash with cowboys and there was a dearth of sci-fi and horror, which I loved. I could get the Cisco Kid for breakfast, Roy Rogers at lunch, John Wayne in the afternoon, and Rawhide, Gunsmoke, or Bonanza at night, any day of the week. I'd have to highlight in pen the rare space monster flick in the TV guide so I wouldn't forget, and then stay up waaay late and bend the rabbit ears out of shape to catch a snowy broadcast from 50 miles away. To this day, about the only horse opera from my childhood that I can remember with any fondness is Son of Paleface, only because it was a goofball comedy.