The CISCO KID

THE CISCO KID and HOPALONG CASIDY....TWO EARLY FILM, RADIO & TV COWBOY STARS

The CISCO KID is a fictional character found in numerous film, radio, television and comic book series based on the fictional Western character created by O. Henry in his 1907 short story "The Caballero's Way", published in the collection Heart of the West, as well as in Everybody's Magazine, v17, July 1907. Originally a murderous criminal in O. Henry's story, the Kid was depicted as a heroic Mexican caballero later in films, radio and television

adaptations.

FILMS

Numerous films have featured the character, beginning in the silent film era with The Caballero's Way (1914). There is a disagreement as to who actually played the part of the Cisco Kid. In the cemetery records of Stanley Herbert Dunn it is stated that he played the part, but IMDb states that William Robert Dunn played the part.

For his portrayal of the Kid in the early sound film In Old Arizona (1928), Warner Baxter won the second Best Actor Oscar. This film was a revised version of the original story, in which the Kid is portrayed in a positive light. It was directed by Irving Cummings and Raoul Walsh, who was originally slated to play the lead until a jackrabbit jumping through a windshield cost him an eye while on location. In 1931, Fox Film Corporation produced a sound version with Baxter, Conchita Montenegro, and Edmund Lowe.

The film series began with The Return of the Cisco Kid (1939), featuring Baxter in the title role with Cesar Romero as his sidekick, Lopez, Chris-Pin Martin as the other sidekick, Gordito ("Fatty"), Lynn Bari as his mistaken love interest, Ann Carver, Henry Hull as her wayward grandfather, and Ward Bond in the lowest-billed role as "Tough", whose one scene shows him beaten into unconsciousness by the unscrupulous Sheriff McNally (Robert Barrat).

Romero took over the lead role of Cisco and Martin continued to play Gordito in six further films before the series was suspended with America's entry into World War II in 1941. Duncan Renaldo took over the reins as the Kid when Monogram Pictures revived the series in 1945 with The Cisco Kid Returns, which also introduced the Kid's best-known sidekick, Pancho, played by Martin Garralaga. Pancho also became established as his sidekick in other media. Neither Gordito nor Pancho is in the original story. After three Renaldo/Cisco films, Gilbert Roland played the character in a half-dozen 1946–1947 films beginning with The Gay Cavalier (1946). Renaldo then returned to the role with Leo Carrillo as Pancho. They made five films, with Renaldo assuming the flowery "Charro" suit in the final film. He would wear that throughout the TV series that followed.

RADIO

The Cisco Kid came to radio October 2, 1942, with Jackson Beck in the title role and Louis Sorin as Pancho. With Vicki Vola and Bryna Raeburn in supporting roles and Michael Rye announcing, this weekly series continued on Mutual until February 14, 1945. It was followed by a thrice weekly series on a Mutual-Don Lee regional network in 1946, starring Jack Mather in the title role, who continued to head the cast in the syndicated radio series of more than 600 episodes from 1947 to 1956. For this version, Pancho was originally played by Harry E. Lang. Following Lang's death in 1953, Mel Blanc played the role until the series ended.

Aimed at youngsters, the radio series depicted the Cisco Kid as a virtuous wanderer and quasi-Robin Hood figure, often erroneously believed to be on the wrong side of law due to his habit of tangling with "the rich and greedy" who are victimizing the poor.

Episodes ended with one or the other of them making a corny joke about the adventure they had just completed. They would laugh, saying, "'Oh, Pancho!" "'Oh, Cisco!", before galloping off, while laughing.

TELEVISION SERIES and MOVIE

Renaldo returned to the role for the popular 156-episode Ziv Television series The Cisco Kid (1950–1956), notable as the first TV series filmed in color.

For the 1950s TV series, the Cisco Kid's sidekick Pancho was portrayed by Leo Carrillo, riding a Palomino named Loco. The Cisco Kid's horse was named Diablo.

After a long absence, the character galloped back onto TV screens in the 1994 made-for-TV movie The Cisco Kid, starring Jimmy Smits with Cheech Marin as Pancho.

The TV episodes and the 1994 movie, like the radio series, ended with one or the other of them making a corny joke about the adventure they had just completed. They would laugh, saying, "Oh, Pancho!" "Oh, Cisco!", before galloping off, while laughing, into the sunset, and Spanish-styled Western theme music was heard as the credits rolled. Throughout the TV series, Carillo addressed Renaldo as "Cisco", and others (mostly Anglo characters) refer to him as "the Kid" (Renaldo was 46 years old when the TV series began). Although both Pancho and Cisco are clearly identifiable as Mexicans, throughout the entire series they spoke to each other in English, with Pancho speaking a thickly accented and very tortured English, as if the two of them were not both fluent and comfortable in English: however Carillo had been using this characterization in movies already for many years.

While the character's real name is never mentioned on the TV series, most fans and followers from the movie series in the 1940s and the books know that he is Juan Carlos Francisco Antonio Hernandez. In Series 1, Ep. 2, 20:59 "Counterfeit Money" Pancho identifies himself as "Pancho [Francisco] Fernando Miguel de Gonzalez".

COMICS

Cisco Kid Comics, a one-shot comic book by Baily Publishing, appeared on newsstands in 1944.

Dell Comics published 41 issues of The Cisco Kid from 1950 to 1958.

José Luis Salinas and Rod Reed drew the Cisco Kid comic strip, syndicated by King Features from 1951 to 1967.

Moonstone Books has, as of 2009, published six graphic novels about the Kid

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HOPALONG CASIDY or Hop-along Cassidy is a fictional cowboy hero created in 1904 by the author Clarence E. Mulford, who wrote a series of short stories and novels based on the character.

In his early writings, Mulford portrayed the character as rude, dangerous, and rough-talking. He had a wooden leg which caused him to walk with a little "hop", hence the nickname. The character was played by movie actor William Boyd starting in 1935. The Cassidy character in films was adapted from Mulford's books and transformed into a clean-cut, sarsaparilla-drinking hero. Sixty-six popular films appeared, only a few of which were loosely based on Mulford's stories.

FILM HISTORY

As portrayed on the screen, white-haired Bill "Hopalong" Cassidy was usually clad strikingly in black (including his hat, an exception to the Western film stereotype that only villains wore black hats). He was reserved and well spoken, with a sense of fair play. He was often called upon to intercede when dishonest characters took advantage of honest citizens. "Hoppy" and his white horse, Topper, usually traveled through the West with two companions—one young and trouble-prone with a weakness for damsels in distress, the other older, comically awkward and outspoken.

A few actors of future prominence appeared in Cassidy films, notably Robert Mitchum, who appeared in seven films at the beginning of his career.

The 66 Hopalong Cassidy pictures were filmed by independent producers who released the films through the studios. The first "Hoppies", as the films were known, were distributed by Paramount Pictures to favorable returns, and United Artists was the distributor after Paramount. They were noted for fast action and outdoor photography (usually by Russell Harlan). Harry Sherman wanted to make more ambitious movies and tried to cancel the Cassidy series, but popular demand forced Sherman back into production, this time for United Artists. Sherman gave up the series in 1944, but William Boyd wanted to keep it going. To do this, he gambled his future on Hopalong Cassidy, mortgaging most of what he owned to buy the character rights from Mulford and the backlog of movies from Sherman.

In the first film, Hopalong Cassidy (then spelled "Hop-along") got his name after being shot in the leg. Hopalong's "drink of choice" was the nonalcoholic sarsaparilla.

TELEVISION

Boyd resumed production in 1946, on lower budgets, and continued through 1948, when "B" westerns were being phased out.

Boyd thought Hopalong Cassidy might have a future in television, spent $350,000 to obtain the rights to his old films, and approached the fledgling NBC network. The initial broadcasts were so successful that NBC could not wait for a television series to be produced and edited the feature films to broadcast length.[4] On June 24, 1949, Hopalong Cassidy became the first network Western television series.

The series and character were so popular that Hopalong Cassidy was featured on the cover of national magazines such as Look, Life, and Time. Boyd earned millions as Hopalong ($800,000 in 1950 alone),[mostly from merchandise licensing and endorsement deals. In 1950, Hopalong Cassidy was featured on the first lunchbox to bear an image, causing sales of Aladdin Industries lunch boxes to jump from 50,000 units to 600,000 units per year. In 1950, more than 100 companies manufactured $70 million of Hopalong Cassidy products, including children's dinnerware, pillows, roller skates, soap, wristwatches (made by Timex), and jackknives.

There was a new demand for Hopalong Cassidy features in movie theaters, and Boyd licensed reissue distributor Film Classics to make new film prints and advertising accessories. Another 1950 enterprise saw the home-movie company Castle Films manufacturing condensed versions of the Paramount films for 16 mm and 8 mm film projectors; they were sold through 1966. Also, in January 1950 Dan Spiegel began to draw a syndicated comic strip with scripts by Royal King Cole; the strip lasted until 1955.

Thanks to the earlier series which showed edited versions of his films, Boyd began work on a separate series of half-hour westerns made especially for television; Edgar Buchanan was his new sidekick, Red Connors (a character from the original stories and a few of the early films). The theme music for the television show was written by Nacio Herb Brown (music) and L. Wolfe Gilbert (lyrics). The show ranked number 7 in the 1949 Nielsen ratings, number 9 in the 1950-1951 season and number 28 in 1951-1952. The success of the show and tie-ins inspired juvenile television westerns such as The Range Rider, Tales of the Texas Rangers, Annie Oakley, The Gene Autry Show, and The Roy Rogers Show.

After Boyd's death, his company devoted to Hopalong Cassidy, U.S. Television Office, retained control of Cassidy films but, by the mid-1960s, had withdrawn them from television and sales in home movie markets. This remained the situation until the mid-1990s, after many Cassidy fans had died, when the company made available to The Western Channel a package series of restored and cleaned negative-based prints of the films to cable TV. These remained available on that channel until 2000, when they were again withdrawn. Minimal effort was made at that time, nor has it been made since, to offer the films for home video, excepting two packages of compressed, multi-title Hopalong Cassidy anthology DVDs, the first requiring purchase of the entire TV series to obtain copies of about a dozen films and then, in 2014, a reissue of the remaining stock of these same DVD pressings combined with the remaining titles in a first-time pressing.

The TV series can be currently seen on Cozi TV and on Encore's western channels in 2018.

RADIO

The success of the television series made Boyd a star. The Mutual Broadcasting System began broadcasting a radio version, with Andy Clyde (later George MacMichael on Walter Brennan's ABC sitcom The Real McCoys) as the sidekick (except for episodes 28 to 53 of the 105 episode series, when, for reasons unknown, he was replaced by several different radio actors). The show was syndicated from 1940 to 1950, then began broadcast on Mutual on January 1, 1950. At the end of September, the show moved to CBS Radio, where it ran until 1952.

HOPPYLAND PARK

On May 26, 1951, an amusement park named Hoppyland opened in the Venice section of Los Angeles. This was an expansion and retheming of Venice Lake Park (opened the previous year) as Boyd became an investor. Standing on 80 acres (320,000 m2) it included a roller coaster, miniature railroads, pony rides, boat ride, Ferris wheel, carousel, and other thrill rides along with picnic grounds and recreational facilities. Despite Boyd's regular appearances as Hoppy at the park, it was not a success and shut down in 1954.

In other media

In the closing chapter of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, the eponymous anti-hero's father, Henry C. Gatz, filling out his son's early character, is described "..pull(ing) from his pocket a ragged old copy of a book called Hopalong Cassidy. ‘Look here, this is a book he had when he was a boy. It just shows you.’"

COMIC BOOKS and COMIC STRIPS

Fawcett Comics published a Hopalong Cassidy comic book one-shot in 1943, followed by an ongoing series from 1946–1953 (numbered #1 through 85), when the company ceased publishing. DC Comics took over the title in 1954 with issue #86,[publishing it until issue #135, in 1959.

Mirror Enterprises Syndicate distributed a Hopalong Cassidy comic strip starting in 1949; it was bought out by King Features in 1951, running until 1955. The strip was drawn by Dan Spiegle.