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Fictional Cattlemen

Hopalong Cassidy: The Bar-20 Foreman Who Became a Western Icon

A limping, tobacco-chewing foreman in pulp stories became the black-clad hero of 66 films and one of television's first merchandising hits.

Who is Hopalong Cassidy?

Hopalong Cassidy is a fictional cowboy, the foreman who bosses the hands at the Bar-20 ranch. He was invented by Clarence E. Mulford, a writer who lived in Brooklyn and, according to the Encyclopedia.com entry on Hopalong Cassidy, had never been West. Mulford sold his early stories to Outing Magazine, and the character took his nickname from a leg wound that left him with a permanent limp.

Dates for the debut vary by source. Some references, including the Wikipedia article on the character, point to 1904, while Encyclopedia.com describes magazine stories published in 1905 and 1906, followed by the first book collection, Bar 20, in 1907. Because sources differ, this profile treats the early 1900s as the safe answer and leaves the exact first printing to a bibliography.

The Bar-20 and Mulford's original cowboy

The first Cassidy was not the polite hero most people remember. Mulford wrote him as a tough, tobacco-chewing redhead who ran the Bar-20 crew. A ranch foreman is the person who turns an owner's plans into daily work: he assigns riders, supervises roundups and branding, and answers for the herd. Mulford's stories used that ordinary cattle-ranch hierarchy as a frame for fights, feuds and practical jokes among the hands.

Between 1907 and 1941 Mulford wrote more than two dozen novels and story collections about the Bar-20 world. That is a long run for a writer working from research and imagination rather than ranch experience, and it shows how strongly readers wanted cattle-country adventure in the first half of the twentieth century.

William Boyd and the Hollywood Hoppy

Producer Harry Sherman bought the screen rights to the Mulford books and formed a production company, with Paramount distributing the films. Actor William Boyd played Cassidy as a dapper, soft-spoken man who usually wore black. The first film, Hop-A-Long Cassidy, came out in 1935. Boyd limped in it, then dropped both the limp and the hyphens in later pictures.

The series ran to 66 titles. This Hoppy never drank, smoked or swore, and his romances were largely avuncular. Each film typically gave him two sidekicks, one young and handsome (originally James Ellison) and one crusty and comic (originally Gabby Hayes). The screen character was close to the opposite of Mulford's rough original, which is the main reason the name means two different things to readers and to moviegoers.

Hopalong Cassidy on radio, comics and television

The character spread across every mass medium of the period. Fawcett added Hopalong to Master Comics at the end of 1942 and launched a Hopalong Cassidy comic in 1943 that ran until 1954, after which DC continued the title until 1959. A newspaper strip drawn by Dan Spiegle and distributed by King Features began in 1949.

A radio show was assembled in 1948 and aired nationally on Mutual and then CBS, with Andy Clyde as California Carlson, ending in late 1952. In 1949 NBC began airing the old films nationally on Friday nights, and in 1951 Boyd produced and starred in a new NBC series with Edgar Buchanan as the sidekick. A Saturday Evening Post article on Hopalong Cassidy and early television covers that move to the small screen.

Why It Mattered

Hopalong Cassidy matters to cattle history less for what it says about ranching than for how it shaped the public picture of a ranch hand. For millions of viewers, the cowboy became a man of manners and fair play, not a rough hired rider, and that image fed later Westerns and the cowboy costume trade.

The commercial story is just as instructive. Encyclopedia.com reports that the television show's popularity fueled one of the first television-driven merchandising booms, with costumes, toys, guns, holsters and badges, and that Boyd controlled the merchandising rights and became a multimillionaire.

  • Mulford built a durable setting, the Bar-20 crew, that other media could borrow for decades.
  • Sherman and Boyd rebuilt the hero for a family audience: no drinking, smoking or swearing.
  • Boyd held the merchandising rights, so the character's popularity paid him directly.
  • Old films were reused on NBC from 1949, an early example of television recycling movie libraries.
  • Comics, radio, a newspaper strip and TV kept the brand in front of children for roughly twenty years.
  • The limit: the polished Hoppy erased Mulford's rougher, limping foreman, and neither version depicts real ranch labor closely.

Hopalong Cassidy and the real cattle foreman

Readers curious about the working side of the job can browse the ranching section of farm.FM ranching coverage, where real foremen, trail drives and ranch operations are covered in detail. Cassidy is a good starting point for the question of how fiction and fact diverge: the real foreman answered to an owner, kept the books straight and watched the weather, and few lived the life of a lone gunman.

For a follow-up on cowboy fiction, try a farm.FM story about the cowboy in popular culture. Hopalong Cassidy turns up in plenty of those conversations because Boyd's version set the template for the screen cowboy that radio, comics and television would repeat well into the 1950s.

Timeline

  1. 1904-1906Clarence Mulford publishes the first Hopalong Cassidy magazine stories (sources differ on the exact year)
  2. 1907The first book collection, Bar 20, appears
  3. 1935Hop-A-Long Cassidy, the first William Boyd film, is released
  4. 1941Mulford's run of more than two dozen Bar-20 books ends
  5. 1942Hopalong begins in Fawcett's Master Comics
  6. 1948A Hopalong Cassidy radio show is assembled
  7. 1949NBC airs the films nationally; a King Features comic strip begins
  8. 1951William Boyd stars in an NBC Hopalong Cassidy series

Frequently asked questions

Who created Hopalong Cassidy?

Writer Clarence E. Mulford created Hopalong Cassidy in magazine stories in the early 1900s, first collected in the 1907 book Bar 20. Mulford lived in Brooklyn and had never been West.

Why is he called Hopalong?

In Mulford's original stories the nickname came from a leg wound that left Cassidy with a permanent limp. William Boyd limped in the first 1935 film, then dropped the limp in later movies.

What is the Bar-20 ranch?

The Bar-20 is the fictional cattle ranch where Cassidy works as foreman, bossing the hands. It anchors Mulford's two dozen or so novels and story collections published between 1907 and 1941.

Who played Hopalong Cassidy?

William Boyd played him in the 66-film series that began in 1935 and in the NBC television series that started in 1951. He wore black, never drank, smoked or swore, and controlled the merchandising rights.

Sources and further reading

Profiles are compiled from public sources and reviewed against them. See our editorial policy to suggest a correction.

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