June 24, 2024: WesternStudying: Hopalong Cassidy

[75 years agothis week, the firstnetwork TV Western, HopalongCassidy debuted. Few genres havebeen influential for longer or across more media, so this week I’ll AmericanStudyHopalong and other Westerns—add your responses & analyses in thecomments, pardner!]

On how theTV show built on an established character, and two important ways it changedthings.

When HopalongCassidy premiered on NBC onJune 24th, 1949, it did so as an extension of nearly a half-centuryof cultural representations of the character. Hopalongwas originally created in a 1904 short story by author , who wouldover the next thirty-five years write 28 novelsand numerous additional stories about the character. Even more popular were the 66 films produced between1935 and 1948 (for an average of nearly five films per year, if you’re counting),all starring William Boydin the title role. So when Boyd bought the rights to the character from Mulfordand to the films from producer Harry Sherman, sold those rights to NBC, and beganplaying the character in the TV series in June 1949 (and in aradio show that launched around the same moment), he knew that he and theshow would have a built-in, longstanding, and multimedia audience, making thisfirst TV Western not nearly as much of an unknown quantity as that phrase mightsuggest.

While the charactermight not have been new in 1949, the genre of the TV Western unquestionablywas. Even though the first few episodes were edited versions of existingHopalong films (before original TV episodes began to be produced and aired), theystill aired once a week in a scheduled time slot on a national television network.And I would argue that this represented a significant evolution in the existingform of storytelling known as the serial—not the 19th century genreof serializedprint publications that audiences could acquire and then read when and howthey wanted; nor the early 20th century genre of film serials that required goingto a movie theater to catch the new episode; but a serialized TV show, graduallyreleased installments that every audience member would watch in their own home butall at precisely the same time (particularly in that early era before later evolutionslike reruns and home video). Phrases like “appointment television” and “must see TV” emerged downthe road to describe particular shows or time slots, but in truth thoseconcepts were never more relevant than for this first generation of TV shows,which audiences had to see at that precise moment or risk missing out on thatpart of the story entirely.

Perhaps thatserialization contributed to the immense popularity of the Hopalong TVshow, or perhaps it was just the built-in audience for the character by then—butwhatever the case, the show was indeed a mega-hit, and that popularity led toother significant cultural shifts. To cite one of the most individuallystriking examples, in 1950 the character of Hopalong Cassidywas the first licensed image featured on a children’s lunchbox, and shortlythereafter sales for the AladdinIndustries lunchboxes overall rose from 50,000 to 600,000 per year. That’s justthe tip of the iceberg of the more than $70 million worth of Hopalong products producedin 1950 alone, much of it directly targeted kids as the primary audience—asillustrated by the reference to “Hopalong boots” as a desired present in MeredithWilson’s hit song “It’sBeginning to Look a Lot like Christmas” (1951). Kids had no doubt been partof the audience for Western films (and books, and radio shows, and etc.)throughout the genre’s history, but the TV show’s popularity nonetheless reflecteda potent evolution and emphasis of that children’s entertainment side to thiscultural form.

NextWestern tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Westerns you’d analyze?