 Abt 1880 - Aft 1950 (~ 71 years)
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| Name |
Clarence E Mulford |
| Born |
Abt 1880 |
Brooklyn, Windham County, Connecticut  |
| Gender |
Male |
| Died |
Aft 1950 |
Fryeburg, Maine |
| Person ID |
I382 |
Jerry Milo Johnson |
| Last Modified |
29 Mar 2015 |
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| Notes |
"The marriage clerk was a meek-looking young man named Clarence E.
Mulford. He sold his first western story, a 6,000 word short story called
[ "The Fight at Buckskin" ], to 'Outing Magazine' in 1907 for $90, and it
was included, along with other bloody tales which followed, in a first
book called 'Bar-20'. Its handsome straight man was a stalwart cowhand
named Buck Peters, but Mulford soon lavished his interest on Buck's
sidekick, a foul-mouthed, whiskey drinking, tobacco-stained onery galoot
who spit a lot and walked on a gimpy leg, [ hop-a-long ], which he got
from a wound in a local gunfight.
Hopalong, a near illiterate who spoke only in 'shore,' 'git,' 'purty' and
'plum-loco' style Western lingo, was vaguely on the side of Good but
managed to reduce the population, redskin or white, by anywhere from two
to 12 souls per episode. He could drop a man while swigging whiskey raw
from a bottle and pause after 'ventilatin' another varmit to pinpoint a
green fly on a nearby wall with a stream of tobacco juice.
For years Mulford ground out this sort of thing, until there were 18
Hopalong volumes. They prospered, although mildly by modern standards,
until Mulford was able, in the mid-20s, to make his first trip West. The
books were translated into several foreign languages.
When Movie Producer Harry ['Pop'] Sherman and actor William Boyd put it
on the big screen, it was an entirely different Hopalong from Mulford's
plug-ugly. Only the first six pictures were based even remotely on the
original yarns and Boyd stopped limping after the first one. [ The wound
healed, the second film explained. ] The dirty
shirt and galluses were replaced by a snappy black outfit with white
piping. Hopalong gave up cut plug and wholesale killing; now he spent all
his time saving the widow's ranch from rustlers and the crooks, out of
the goodness of his heart. He was no shiftless cowpoke but a substantial,
grammatical rancher trying to improve the community. There was always a
hell-bent for leather chase in the last reel, but Hopalong now often only
captured the bad men and killed nobody, after which he might just
possibly have a quick sarsaparilla. Mulford's reaction to what had been
done to his fictional creation was something less than joy. It is said
that upon seeing the first Hopalong Casidy film at the local movie
theater, Mulford passed out in the middle and had to be revived with
smelling salts. After watching the well scrubbed
sarsaparilla drinker in a few films, Mulford was unimpressed and never
went back. In 1926 he moved to Fryeburg, Maine and was visited there by
William Boyd in 1950. Clarence had an eight year old grandson at that
time, named Bruce Perkins."
"Life Magazine" June 12, 1950 and "They
Went Thataway" by James Horwitz 1976
I was told that the phrase "head em off at the pass", was
coined in Hopalong Cassidy.
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: City/Town
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