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Start/Birth date: | 1865 |
Death/End date: | 1972 |
WILLIAM BILL BOYD, a star of the silent movies under contract to Cecil B DeMille, brought HOPALONG to the screen in a feature produced by Paramount Pictures. Paramount made 34 more pictures with Bill Boyd as Hoppy and United Artists produced 31 others, also with Bill Boyd. Never in Hollywood history has one man played the same character in as many features. When audiences the world over saw the films, Bill Boyd and Hopalong Cassidy became synonymous. From the moment that HOPALONG CASSIDY premiered on NBC, Bill Boyd became an international hero, for the films were telecast not only in America but all over the world as well.
Time Magazine in 1950 said, Boyd made Hoppy a veritable Galahad of the range, a soft spoken paragon who did not smoke, drink or kiss girls, who tried to capture the rustlers instead of shooting them, and who always let the villain draw first if gunplay was inevitable. Boyd himself said, I played down the violence, tried to make Hoppy an admirable character and I insisted on grammatical correct English.