A Year: Day to Day Men: 5th of June
La Pièce de Résistance
June 5, 1895 was the birthdate of American film actor William Boyd.
William Boyd’s breakout role was Jack Moreland in Cedil B DeMille’s silent 1925 “The Road to Yesterday”, Boyd’s performance in the film was praised by critics, while movie-goers were equally impressed by his easy charm, charisma, and intense good-looks. Due to Boyd’s growing popularity, DeMille soon cast him as the leading man in the highly acclaimed silent drama film, “The Volga Boatman”.
Boyd’s role in that film firmly established him as a matinee idol and romantic leading man; he began earning an annual salary of $100,000. He acted in DeMille’s big lavish production “The King of Kings” and later in the 1928 DeMille production “Skyscraper” playing the lead role of Blondy. In 1931 his picture was mistakenly run in a newspaper story about the arrest of another actor, William “Stage” Boyd, on gambling charges. This story damaged his career, despite having been shown false; and Boyd became virtually bankrupt.
In 1935 William Boyd was offered the supporting role of Red Conners in the movie “Hop-Along Cassidy”. He asked for the title role and won it. The original role of tlhe Hop-Along Cassidy character, written by Clarence E. Mulford for pulp magazine serials, was changed from a hard-drinking, rough-living red-headed wrangler to a cowboy hero who did not smoke, swear, or drink alcohol and who always let the bad guy start the fight. Although Boyd never lived in real life as a cowboy and disliked Western music, he became indlibly associated with the Hop-Along character and, like the cowboy stars Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, gained lasting fame in the Western film genre.
The films were more polished and impressive than the usual low-budget “program westerns”. The Hop-Along Cassidy adventures usually boasted superior outdoor photography of scenic locations and name supporting players familiar from major Hollywood films. Big-city theaters, which usually wouldn’t play Westerns, noticed the high quality of the productions and gave the series more exposure than other cowboy films could hope for.
The series of films ended in 1948 as interest in the character waned and fewer theaters were showing the films. William Boyd bought all the rights to all the Hop-Along Cassidy movies, mortgaging almost everything he owned to meet the price of $350,000 for the rights and the film backlog. He offered a print to a local NBC television station; it was so well received Boyd released the entire library to the national network, beginning the long-running genre of Westerns on television. Boyd’s gamble paid off, making him the first national TV star and restoring his personal fortune.
William Boyd estimated in 1940 (after only 5 years of the thirteen-year role) that he had starred in 28 outdoor films in which he fired 30,000 shots and killed at least 100 villians. He wore out 12 costumes and 60 ten-gallon hats, rode his horse Topper more than 2000 miles and rode herd on 5000 head of cattle. A score or more of heroines had been saved, but were never kissed.