Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Novel and Short Stories, August 1934

Here's a Sidney Riesenberg cover I like a little more than the one on last Saturday's Western pulp. This issue of WESTERN NOVEL AND SHORT STORIES lives up to its name. Most of the pages are occupied by Clarence E. Mulford's Hopalong Cassidy novel "Black Buttes". I don't know if it was abridged for this pulp appearance. Even at 98 pages of double-columned small print, it probably was. Backing it up are two stories, one by Raymond W. Porter (who I've heard of but never read, as far as I recall) and James Corson (who I've never heard of). 

Overlooked Movies: Texas Masquerade (1944)

As much as I love the series, there are still quite a few Hopalong Cassidy movies I haven’t gotten around to watching yet. Recently we watched one of those, TEXAS MASQUERADE from 1944, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

In this one, Hoppy and his two sidekicks California Carlson (Andy Clyde) and Jimmy Rogers (Jimmy Rogers) interrupt a stagecoach robbery and capture the bandit. They discover that a badly wounded passenger is a Boston lawyer on his way to Texas to claim his half of a ranch. Hoppy decides to take over the man’s identity while the hombre recuperates at the Bar-20. (Don’t ask why the guy was going from Boston to Texas by way of Arizona. Just don’t.) Hoppy’s motivation for this masquerade is pretty flimsy, but of course when he gets to Texas, he finds there’s all sorts of chicanery going on involving the beautiful girl who owns the other half of the ranch, a crooked lawyer, a brutal saloon owner, and a gang of night riders. Never fear, though, Hoppy, California, and Jimmy will set everything right.

Despite those snarky comments aimed at the script, I really had a great time watching this movie. And William Boyd clearly had a great time playing a high-falutin’, fancy-dressed, foppish Boston lawyer who swaggers into the saloon that’s the bad guys’ headquarters and orders milk. Andy Clyde is fine as California, as usual, and Jimmy Rogers does a good job as one of the alternating third wheels in this series. Russell Harlan’s photography is very good, production values are generally high with lots of riding extras and powder burning, and director George Archainbaud keeps things moving along briskly. The movie suffers a little because the villains seem weaker than usual. We know, of course, that they’re never going to stand a chance against Hoppy and his pards, but they never really put up much of a fight until the end.

That final showdown is pretty epic, though, and TEXAS MASQUERADE is also a good example of Crider’s Law: Any movie is improved by the addition of quicksand. I enjoyed this one enough that I think there’s a good chance I’ll be watching another Hopalong Cassidy movie pretty soon.

Overlooked Old Time Radio: The Santa Claus Rustlers (Hopalong Cassidy, April 15, 1952)

Andy Clyde as California Carlson and William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy, from one of their movies.

I recently came across a Christmas episode of the HOPALONG CASSIDY radio show, "The Santa Claus Rustlers", which seems like a nice thing to write about today on Christmas Eve. Hoppy is a longtime favorite character of mine, both the original version in books by Clarence E. Mulford and the version played in movies, on TV, and in this radio show by William Boyd.

In "The Santa Claus Rustlers", Hoppy and his sidekick California Carlson (played by the great Andy Clyde) are on their way back to the Bar-20 ranch after selling some cattle, but on the way they encounter a ranching family that's being plagued by rustling. Hoppy and California befriend the young couple and their two children, of course, and decide to stick around for Christmas and find out who's behind all the widelooping. Could it be the somewhat sinister and unfriendly ranch hand, Johnny No-Name?

There are a couple of twists in the plot, but nothing you won't see coming. However, being a Christmas episode, the whole thing is rather gentle and heartwarming, and I enjoyed it. William Boyd and Andy Clyde are top-notch as Hoppy and California, as always. One oddity is that the episode originally aired on April 15, 1952, instead of around Christmas. Why that was, I have no idea.

"The Santa Claus Rustlers" is available numerous places on-line for your listening pleasure. It might be a nice way to spend half an hour on Christmas Eve for some of you.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Hopalong Cassidy's Western Magazine, Winter 1951

We now know, of course, that the four Hopalong Cassidy novels published in this short-lived pulp under the pseudonym "Tex Burns" were actually the work of Louis L'Amour, which isn't surprising considering that during the late Forties and early Fifties L'Amour was a prolific contributor to all the Western pulps in the Thrilling Group and was a favorite of editorial director Leo Margulies. I'm not the biggest L'Amour fan in the world (although there was a time when I was), but I've read his Hopalong novels and they're pretty good balancing acts between Clarence E. Mulford's original character (which was the way L'Amour wanted to write them) and the movie version of Hoppy popularized by William Boyd (which was what Margulies wanted). And this is a nice cover featuring Boyd-as-Hoppy by George Rozen.