Hop-a-Long Cassidy

William Boyd made his screen debut as Hopalong Cassidy in Hop-ALong Cassidy. He was really William known as Bill Cassidy when he does arrive, but he gets wounded in a gunfight and limped a bit for the duration of the film. The guys in the bunkhouse called him Hopalong after he gave himself that nickname. Throughout the rest of the 66 films and TV shows we rarely heard his Christian name.

The plot is a standard western one, an outlaw gang stirs up a feud between the Bar 20 and a neighboring outfit owned by Robert Warwick. But it takes Bill Boyd to come up with the solution, aided and abetted by James Ellison whom he acquires as a sidekick.

Gabby Hayes is in this as Uncle Ben and he's the usual Gabby Hayes. He proved so popular that Paramount just resurrected him for the next few years before he left the series. Here as the chief villain guns him down it shows the Saturday matinée kids just how dastardly he is. Rather stupidly he leaves him to bleed out rather than finish him off. I guess Paramount did not want to shock the kids whose dimes to see the film and the subsequent series planned.

So Hopalong Cassidy becomes an American institution. Curiously enough Bill Boyd did a few non-Hoppy films after this before settling down into this character permanently.

It was a good beginning for an American institution.

A range war is brewing between the Bar 20 and Meeker ranches, which is being caused by Meeker's foreman Anthony (who is in reality, an outlaw called the Pecos Kid), whose method is to have each ranch be accused at acts of rustling cattle or murder, then the two ranches will start a war against each other. In the meanwhile, Anthony's gang will round up all the cattle from the two ranches, change brands, and sell them at market. It's up to Hoppy, Red, Uncle Ben, and Johnny Nelson (who is a target for Meeker's hands since Johnny is sweet on Meeker's daughter Mary) to clear the Bar 20's name and round up the outlaws. The film is a very good entry in the opening film of the Hopalong series, but far from the best, since the action doesn't really begin past the halfway point of the film. Then on it's gets better building up to a great climax. Good performances by the cast (especially by Hayes as Uncle Ben, in a pre Windy Halliday role), but Thomson is miscast and ineffective as Anthony. Rating, based on B westerns, 6.

It was interesting for me to see this first of the Hopalong Cassidy movies last night. I saw a distinctly different Hopalong than those later movies I have seen. This one had a hard look in his eye that was most menacing and at one point, he was about to draw his gun on his own man, which made for a completely different Hopalong than the one which emerged in time. He actually resembled men of the REAL OLD WEST instead of the watered-down, lip-stick sissy version most of Western characters in the movies had--such as Gene Autry.

I remember last year I got to see the very first episode of Bonanza--the TV Western series. I noticed the same thing there how the Cartwrights were hard, rough and even deadly (the way men were in the REAL WEST) and, having watched the series over several years, I noticed they too mellowed with time.

Otherwise, I certainly enjoyed this first issue of Hopalong Cassidy. He was certainly my HERO as a small boy of 5-6 back in 1953-1954 when I first started watching him on TV. And it was good to view this one.

I won't bother with the plot. Others have already done that. But the point I made is one that clearly stood out to me about this very first movie in the series.

"Hop-a-Long Cassidy" is the first appearance of this western hero. In all, William Boyd made 66 of these films and they tended to be among the better B-series films of the era.

When the story begins, there's some tension between two ranchers...to the point that you know sooner or later violence is going to break out and someone's going to get killed. Into this mess arrives Hopalong who has been summoned by one of the ranchers to help deal with this situation. What no one realizes is that one of the foremen is deliberately stoking fires on both sides...and while the ranches are fighting each other, the foreman and his henchmen are rustling their cattle! Fortunately, Hoppy is NOT a guy to jump headfirst into the problem and his slow, cautious approach is bound to bring answers.

This film is quite different from films from the likes of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. This is no singing cowboy picture and it also is a good bit more violent than most of them as well...with a hanging, plenty of shootings and more! It all makes for a very exciting and more realistic sort of B-western. And, like a B, it runs at about one hour and is relatively low-budgeted...though it does sport an amazingly good cast for such an effort.

I thought the movie had the "feel" of western life..the cattle grazing in the opener..the dust on the outfits (except Johnny's!)You could even see the dust flying in several scenes....good characters, except the foreman (just didn't fit)..Ellison excellent as Johnny..and Hayes, McGlynn as Red and Middleton as Buck--all good...how about the scene where Hoppy appears riding Topper (I guess it was Topper,then) down that steep hill? I like the silent film "leftovers", like Hoppy's steely glare and the gathering of the ranchers scene near the end...Just a very well-done, enjoyable film! This movie borrows plot elements from the book Hopalong Cassidy (1910)-- Meeker, the H2 spread, Thunder Mesa..to name a few. I'm still reading the book, so I don't know all the details..! Interesting note-- the two well-known western character actors--Boyd and Hayes-- are from Eastern locales: Marion, Ohio and Wellsville, NY, respectively. Once again--a top rating for this film! John Field