Tall in the Saddle

Washington's "I Am an American Day" comes a day later this week than the same celebration in the rest of the U.S. The celebration committee made sure of getting such guests of honor as President Truman, scheduled to speak from the Capitol steps. Happily, the new date also fitted the schedule of another highly valued guest not connected with government. The committee was overjoyed that television's Hopalong Cassidy would also dignify the day.

As a crowd-puller, Hopalong would have to concede nothing to the President of the U.S. Last January a crowd of New Yorkers estimated by the police at 350,000 queued up for 25 blocks to shake his hand. This month he drew the largest circus attendance (18,700) ever to pack the Chicago Stadium. For the past year, devoted millions of children and grownups have sat entranced before televised Hopalong Cassidy films.

The Last $300,000. The center of this adulation and applause is 52-year-old, white-haired William Boyd (born in Cambridge, Ohio), who switched in 1935 from romantic roles (The Volga Boatman) to western films. He made 54 Hopalong Cassidy pictures before he was fired in 1943. Because "no one in Hollywood thought of me as anything but Hopalong Cassidy," Boyd found that he could not get another movie job. In no danger of starving, he retired to his California ranch with his fifth wife, exActress Grace Bradley, was down to his last $300,000 when he got his big idea.

Selling the ranch, Boyd put everything he owned into buying up all possible rights to Hopalong Cassidy. After repeated round trips to Fryeburg, Me., he drew up a contract with Author Clarence Mulford, whose original pulp-fiction Hoppy--unlike the softspoken, clean-living movie version--was a cussing, ungrammatical, hard-drinking ranch hand with a game leg.

Released to TV, the old Hoppy films created something of a mass frenzy. Los Angeles' Station KTTV rented one for $250. Twelve months later KTTV showed the same film for the fifth time and paid a rental of $1,000. "People are astonished at the percentage of my fans who are adults," says Boyd. "They're not new fans--they're merely my young fans of 15 years ago grown up a little bit."

Wood on the Fire. But it was the children who put the golden fence posts in Hoppy's old corral. Last year small fry bought 15 million Hopalong comic books. They clamor incessantly for such items as Hoppy roller skates (complete with spurs and jewel-studded ankle straps) and Hopalong bicycles (leather-fringed saddles, handlebars shaped like steer's horns, built-in gun holsters). Because of the craze for Hopalong hats, shirts, chaps, boots, six-shooters and gun belts, Boyd claims that U.S. manufacturers of 56% of all the Western-type merchandise are paying him royalties for Hopalong Cassidy endorsements.

The fever has spread to non-Western fields: there are Hopalong Cassidy cookies, candy bars, wallpaper, soaps and watches. A Hopalong Cassidy comic strip runs in 75 daily and 42 Sunday newspapers; every week a network of 500 Mutual radio stations broadcasts the General Foods-sponsored Hopalong Cassidy show (Sun. 4 p.m. E.D.T.). And Composer Nacio Herb Brown (You Are My Lucky Star, Singin' in the Rain) has signed up for the exclusive privilege of writing songs about Hoppy.

Inundated by the commercial flood, Boyd promises: "We aren't going to overdo it. We'll just keep throwing wood on the fire." But he has endorsed so many products (from bedspreads to pocketknives) that he can't always keep them straight. Of his success Boyd says: "We don't think it's phenomenal. Years ago, a fellow got an idea to build a bridge across San Francisco Bay. People told him he was nuts. One morning we looked up and traffic was going across. Hopalong Cassidy was merely an idea that took 13 years to pay off ... I don't think there's any limit to what can be done with it." On his crowded agenda are Hopalong record albums, 13 new TV shorts, and a Paramount movie in which he will co-star (as Hopalong Cassidy) with Bing Crosby.

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