Texas Masquerade

Texas Masquerade calls for William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy to masquerade as tenderfoot from Boston. He takes the place of a lawyer who is coming to visit relatives and take possession of half a ranch that is in his name.

Some night riders have been trying to scare all the ranchers out of a certain Texas valley. Kindly old Russell Simpson has been lending folks money and then collecting on their properties when they can't pay back. Of course Simpson's behind it all, but the question is why he wants this land so badly.

Hopalong Cassidy fans will enjoy Hoppy's time as an eastern dude and he's even got a knowledge of the law that fools Simpson for a bit. Of course in the end the bad guys are rounded up western style.

A gang of outlaws are using force to become possessors of every ranch in the area. Hoppy, of course, is out to stop them in what is an adequate Hoppy western punctuated with some good action - for example, the shootout in the cactus area - and a very good performance by William Boyd, who acts as a greenhorn easterner. His acting is really good, and makes this entry fairly watchable.

I love this Hopalong Cassidy film if only to see Bill Boyd enjoying himself enormously by posing as an eastern lawyer dude, dressed to the nines, and speaking in sophisticated English, even incorporating some legaleze! The cast, as usual, is stellar, including Don Costello as an obnoxious and brutal crime boss. It's not giving anything away to say that, as in many Hoppys, he and his pals are drawn into an adventure that has them helping strangers simply because they need the help.

When the story begins, Hoppy and his pals come upon a guy who has been shot and his attacker is about to finish him off once and for all. Fortunately, Hoppy stops this and arrests the would-be killer.

In the following scene, Hoppy has traveled to Texas and has assumed the identity of the injured man. After all, he wants to figure out why someone was trying to kill him....why preventing him from going to his new ranch was so important. There, Hoppy pretends to be an Eastern dude...and anything but the tough Hopalong Cassidy we all love. So who is behind the attack and why?

William Boyd (Cassidy) posed as an Eastern dude in a few other films....and these were among my favorite roles he played, since his character seemed so wimpy and harmless. It's the closest thing you have to comedy in these films....and make for a nice B-western. Well made and fun.

A gang of outlaws is burning out ranchers and then their front man is buying out the settlers at bargain prices. But when a pal of Hopalong's is killed, Cassidy goes to investigate, disguising himself as foppish, milk-drinking Bostonian to do so in an amusing comic turn.

Boyd, a capable but bland actor was made for this sort of western, and given the series' start at Paramount, it had a level of gloss, both in the writing and production that almost all B westerns lacked. Veteran George Archimbaud directs and the cast includes the always excellent Andy Clyde, Russel Simpson as the lead villain, the almost forgotten J. Farrel MacDonald, and Mady Correll as the female lead -- not the love interest, since Hopalong never smoked, drank or paid attention to women. A pleasant way to kill an hour.