Hopalong Cassidy
January 1, 1950 – March 15, 1952 · 105 broadcasts
Hopalong Cassidy brought the clean-cut, black-clad cowboy hero to radio in a half-hour Western that ran from 1948 to 1952, mixing new adventures with adaptations of the wildly popular William Boyd films. The series was born of television: when Boyd's 66 Cassidy movies found a huge new TV audience, a radio show followed, transcribed by Commodore Productions in 1948-49 and aired afterward over a winding network path -- syndicated, then Mutual from January 1950, then CBS that September. Boyd owned the character outright and starred in every episode, the lead anchored by Andy Clyde as comic sidekick California Carlson -- though for a curious stretch of episodes 28 through 53, Clyde was replaced by a rotating cast of substitutes for reasons never explained. The screen and radio Hoppy was a sarsaparilla-drinking, children-friendly hero, a deliberate softening of author Clarence E. Mulford's original literary Cassidy, who was "rude, dangerous, and rough-talking" and limped from a leg wound. "Hoppy" became one of the first great multimedia sensations. The licensing blitz spun off Capitol Records "record readers," Fawcett and DC comic books, a King Features comic strip, and even Hoppyland, a Los Angeles amusement park that opened in 1951 with Boyd himself as an investor.
105 of 105 broadcasts available to stream
Episode Spine
Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.
1941
1950
1951
1952
Hopalong Cassidy brought the clean-cut, black-clad cowboy hero to radio in a half-hour Western that ran from 1948 to 1952, mixing new adventures with adaptations of the wildly popular William Boyd films. The series was born of television: when Boyd's 66 Cassidy movies found a huge new TV audience, a radio show followed, transcribed by Commodore Productions in 1948-49 and aired afterward over a winding network path -- syndicated, then Mutual from January 1950, then CBS that September. Boyd owned the character outright and starred in every episode, the lead anchored by Andy Clyde as comic sidekick California Carlson -- though for a curious stretch of episodes 28 through 53, Clyde was replaced by a rotating cast of substitutes for reasons never explained. The screen and radio Hoppy was a sarsaparilla-drinking, children-friendly hero, a deliberate softening of author Clarence E. Mulford's original literary Cassidy, who was "rude, dangerous, and rough-talking" and limped from a leg wound. "Hoppy" became one of the first great multimedia sensations. The licensing blitz spun off Capitol Records "record readers," Fawcett and DC comic books, a King Features comic strip, and even Hoppyland, a Los Angeles amusement park that opened in 1951 with Boyd himself as an investor.
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