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The stories of kids and how they react with rapture to the sight and sound of Bill "Hopalong Cassidy" Boyd could
reach from Christmas Day till the Fourth of July — but the nicest stories concern Bill, himself.
He's that rarest of actors — a happy man with a sense of responsibility to the public. He is passionately in love with his beautiful wife who is just as passionately in love with him. Her name was Grace Bradley and when she was just a sassyfaced little girl she fell in love with him at first sight, when he was the star of "The Volga Boatman." She never dreamed she'd grow up to marry him, but now that she has, she is just as fascinated by him as the enraptured thousands who sit enthralled, watching him on their television screens.
His wildfire success today as Hoppy didn't just happen. He almost went broke, trying to retain the rights to this Western character — and do you know why? Because it was just a good part? No. That was a proportion of it, but the real reason, in Bill's words, is, "I knew Hoppy was something I could do good with."
Bill now heads the seven companies it takes to keep Hoppy in full circulation. On the radio, his Hoppy series is just starting over five hundred and sixteen stations. Last year the Hoppy comic books sold more than fourteen million comics. All the movie rights are his. Topper is his personal property and as for those Hopalong Cassidy guns, shirts, lassoes, neckerchiefs and the like, Bill personally oversees every bit of them. He won't tolerate anything shoddy. He believes in the kids just as much as they believe in him.
If Bill had been willing, five years ago, to make quick money with Hoppy, he could have saved his great ranch down in the Santa Monica mountains, overlooking the Pacific, which he loved completely. He sold the ranch at a loss rather than turn Hoppy into a series of cheap gangster pictures.
Then if he had been willing to put out clothes for kids that weren't fireproof, sunproof, color proof and boy proof, he could have saved the fine apartment to which he moved, and Gracie wouldn't have been so long between dresses. Gracie learned to cook, instead, and they went into a tiny threeroom house, just living room, (Continued on page 85)
By RUTH WATERBURY
He loves them, too
-and that's why the kids
believe in him. But
his audience is even wider
than that, for everyone
who likes a squareshooter
has made a hero out of Hoppy
Bill Boyd in Hopalong Cassidy can be televiewed on Sundays at 5:30 P.M., EST, on WNBT.
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RADIO MIRROR TELEVISION SECTION