William Boyd

William Boyd
Chicago (circa 1950)
Born	William Lawrence Boyd June 5, 1898 Hendrysburg, Ohio, U.S.
Died	September 12, 1972
Spouse(s)	Laura Maynard (1917-1921) Ruth Miller (1921-1924) Elinor Fair (1926-1929) Dorothy Sebastian (1929-1935) Grace Bradley (1937-1972)

William Lawrence Boyd (June 5, 1898–September 12, 1972) was an American film actor best known for portraying Hopalong Cassidy.

Biography

Boyd was born in Hendrysburg, Ohio, located 26 miles east of Cambridge, and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1918 he went to Hollywood where he became famous as a leading man in silent film romances with a yearly salary of $100,000. He was the lead actor in Cecil B. DeMille's The Volga Boatman (1926) and in D. W. Griffith's Lady of the Pavements (1929).^{[citation needed]}

By the end of the 1920s his career had begun to deteriorate and he was without a contract and going broke.^{[citation needed]} Boyd's picture was mistakenly run in a newspaper story about the arrest of another actor with a similar name (William "Stage" Boyd) on gambling and liquor charges, which further hurt his career.^{[citation needed]}

Hopalong Cassidy

In 1935 he was offered the lead role in the movie Hop-Along Cassidy. He changed the original pulp fiction character, written by Clarence E. Mulford, from a whiskey-guzzling wrangler to a cowboy hero who did not smoke, drink or swear and who always let the bad guy start the fight. Boyd would be indelibly associated with the Hopalong Cassidy character and he gained lasting fame in the Western film genre because of it.^{[citation needed]} Both Clark Gable and Robert Mitchum got their first big break in movies playing villains in westerns starring Boyd.

Anticipating television's rise Boyd purchased the rights to the character of Hopalong and the 66 Hopalong Cassidy movies.^[1] In 1949 he released the films to television where they became extremely popular and began the long-running genre of westerns on television. Along with other cowboy figures such as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, Boyd licensed merchandise including such products as Hopalong Cassidy watches, cups and dishes, comic books and cowboy outfits.^[1] Boyd identified with his character, often dressing as a cowboy in public,^[1] and used his fame and fortune to meet with children around the world. The Hopalong Cassidy films remain available for broadcast and are on DVD in restored form.

Boyd appeared as Hopalong Cassidy on the cover of numerous national magazines, including the August 29, 1950 issue of Look^[2] and the November 27, 1950 issue of Time.^[1]

Death

Boyd died in 1972 in Laguna Beach, California from complications from Parkinson's disease and heart failure. He was buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. He was survived by his fifth wife, actress Grace Bradley Boyd.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1734 Vine Street. In 1995 he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Posthumous

Since 1991, the Friends of Hoppy Fan Club has held the Hopalong Cassidy Festival in Cambridge, Ohio, near Boyd's birthplace.^{[citation needed]}

Filmography

See also

• Other notable figures in Western films

References

External links

• William Boyd at the Internet Movie Database
• William "Hopalong" Boyd at Allmovie
• http://www.b-westerns.com/hoppy.htm
• Hopalong Cassidy music
• Photos of William Boyd
• Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture entry