Sentimental Sierra Journey : Festival Draws Widow to Set of Hopalong Films, Honeymoon

The car Grace Boyd was riding in headed up a narrow canyon that cuts through brown hills just west of this tiny town on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada.

“Now this looks familiar,” said Boyd, the widow of William (Hopalong Cassidy) Boyd, as the huge boulders and spectacular rock outcroppings of the Alabama Hills came into view.

Familiar indeed. Since 1920, when Fatty Arbuckle filmed a comedy Western here called “The Round-Up,” the rocky hills below Mt. Whitney have been one of Hollywood’s favorite Western movie locations.

And no actor made more shoot-’em-ups in this picturesque setting than the silver-haired cowboy hero who always wore black and a friendly smile. As Grace Boyd says, “We used to say Bill knew every gopher in the Alabama Hills.”

A chance to tour the actual locations where Tom Mix, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, John Wayne--and dozens of other cowboy heroes--filmed their sagebrush sagas was one of the attractions at the second annual Sierra Film Festival held here last weekend.

Fittingly, the two-day festival of films, stunt shows and panel discussions with celebrity guests such as George Montgomery, Virginia Mayo, Iron Eyes Cody and movie badman Pierce Lyden of Orange was dedicated to Hoppy himself.

But for guest of honor Grace Boyd, who had driven up from her home near Dana Point with friends, it was a sentimental journey: Not only had she accompanied her husband on all his location trips, they even spent their 1937 honeymoon in Lone Pine.

For Grace Boyd, it was the first time she had been back to Lone Pine in 40 years.

But before taking a nostalgic drive into the Alabama Hills late Saturday afternoon to visit the two-bedroom cabin they had lived in while on location, the effervescent seventysomething Boyd was the object of affection for hundreds of Hoppy fans.

She was asked to autograph everything from movie stills and lobby cards to a cowboy boot. One middle-aged woman even approached her, asking would “Mrs. Cassidy” please sign her festival program.

That wasn’t the first time that has happened to Boyd, whose screen-legend husband died in Laguna Beach in 1972 at the age of 77.

“In all those years, I don’t think I heard ‘Mrs. Boyd, ‘ “ she said, adding that she is only occasionally asked for an autograph at home. “And when it happens, I’m always astounded. That was so long ago, most people weren’t even born.”

Grace Boyd clearly enjoys her role as “Mrs. Hopalong Cassidy.” Even more, she loved being Mrs. William Boyd.

Her presence on a celebrity panel discussing the old movie-making days in Lone Pine elicited several impromptu testimonials from those who knew the Boyds.

Said Rand Brooks, who played young “Lucky” Jenkins in many of the Hoppy films: “They were the happiest married couple I ever met in my life.”

“She had a great man and she’s a great lady,” Cody said.

And in discussing Grace Boyd, former Republic Studios action director William Witney put it this way: “She met a Prince Charming on a big white horse.”

It was indeed a fairy-tale romance.

Like many young girls growing up in the silent-movie era, Grace Bradley of Brooklyn fell in love with the handsome, prematurely white-haired William Boyd when she was 12 years old and he was a dashing Hollywood leading man on the silver screen. “I had his name on my school books,” she recalled in an interview.

She was a New York nightclub dancer when Paramount brought her out to Hollywood in the ‘30s. She danced and played minor roles in several pictures, graduated to parts as “the other woman” in a number of films and then got the lead in such films as “Redhead.” She also played one of Bob Hope’s ex-wives in “The Big Broadcast of 1938,” Hope’s first picture.

It wasn’t until two years after William Boyd made his first “Hopalong Cassidy” Western in 1935--a role that revived his declining career--that the 42-year-old Boyd met the young actress who would become his fifth--and last--wife.

“Everybody knew I had this mad crush on him,” said Boyd, who met her screen hero through a mutual friend. He proposed three nights after they met.

“He said, ‘I would have proposed the first night except I was afraid I’d scare you to death,’ ” she recalled.

They were married three weeks later. The day after their wedding, they drove to Lone Pine so Bill could finish the movie he was working on.

Although she appeared in 26 films, Grace Boyd abandoned her own acting career in order to devote herself full time to being a wife. “That’s what I wanted,” she said. “I didn’t feel I could handle the career and take care of him too.”

With his black hat, two ivory-handled six-shooters and white horse named Topper, Hopalong Cassidy generated legions of fans at Saturday matinees around the world. But it was not until the films were shown on television that Hoppy became a show-business phenomenon.

During World War II, Bill Boyd shrewdly began buying up all the rights--including those for television--to the character created by Western novelist Clarence E. Mulford.

To raise the money, the Boyds sold their grand home north of Malibu--”a mini San Simeon,” Grace said--and moved into an apartment in Hollywood. They also bought up the old Hoppy pictures, even at one point borrowing $2,000 on their car so that they could tie up loose ends in New York. “We were,” Boyd recalled, “down to absolutely nothing.”

The gamble paid off. In 1948, KTLA began showing the old movies in Los Angeles. The next year NBC began airing the films and by 1950 they had become so popular the network ordered 40 new half-hour episodes.

By then the burgeoning baby-boom generation had made Hoppy a household word, prompting manufacturers to produce more than 2,000 different products carrying his name.

For the Boyds, who received a percentage of every Hoppy lunch box, cap pistol and cowboy outfit sold, it was a bonanza. One year, sales of Hoppy merchandise totalled nearly $60 million.

The actor, who once said, “Hoppy is the good side of Bill Boyd,” retired from movie making in 1953 but continued making personal appearances. At the peak of Hoppy-mania, he drew a crowd of more than 300,000 fans in New York City, and he was a fixture in the Rose Parade until 1961, the year his faithful steed Topper died.

The Boyds, who had moved to Palm Desert in the mid-’50s, began spending summers at the now-defunct Dana Strand Beach and Tennis Club. “He played golf and we both loved the ocean,” said Boyd.

Despite their years of public attention, they were private people with few close friends. “The fact is that we were so perfectly happy to be together we didn’t really need other people,” she said. After undergoing surgery for the removal of a tumor in his neck in 1969, Bill Boyd refused to do any more interviews. “I’m not the man people remember as Hopalong Cassidy,” he said at the time. “I don’t want to tamper with their memories.”

The “silver-haired paragon of Western virtue,” as the obituary in The Times called him, died from a combination of Parkinson’s disease and congestive heart failure in 1972.

For Grace Boyd, who had only been separated from her husband two nights in their 35 years of marriage, it was a difficult period of adjustment. For one thing, she didn’t know how to drive. “Frankly, I didn’t think I’d survive,” said Boyd. “I had to make a whole new life.”

Moving to Orange County full time, she began doing volunteer work at South Coast Community Hospital. That was where her husband had died and where she still teaches a class in t’ai chi ch’uan, the ancient Chinese mind and body discipline.

Childless, she became close friends with Eugene Mak, who had been Bill Boyd’s doctor. Mak, his wife, Jane, and their three children have become, Boyd said, “like family.”

It was the Maks, along with friends Lew and Joan Hanson of Dana Point, who accompanied Boyd to Lone Pine. Although she has received offers to appear at various Western film festivals, the Sierra Film Festival was her first.

As Boyd says, Lone Pine is special.

And late Saturday afternoon, as Mt. Whitney cast its long shadow across the valley, Boyd returned to the tiny cabin she and Hoppy once shared in the Alabama Hills. Locals call it the Hoppy Cabin.

“I don’t want to disturb your privacy,” Boyd told a young girl who met her at the gate on the driveway leading down to the cabin. “I just want to take a peek. It was a long time ago.”

At first, the girl, who was about to drive away with friends, thought a horde of tourists had descended on her home. But when she was told who the petite blonde in the purple and turquoise suede outfit was, she smiled and unlocked the gate.

They had been expecting Boyd earlier in the day, the girl said, leading the way onto the front porch, past the wishing well that had been there during Boyd’s day.

Once they were inside the small living room, the girl, 13-year-old Ali Stewart, introduced herself, her younger sister and a girlfriend. She said her parents had been leasing the cabin for 15 years and that fans once made off with the original front door and most of the wooden shutters.

“They’d probably take it piece by piece if you let them,” Boyd told Stewart.

Curious to see the swimming pool--”it was always so cold you didn’t dare get wet”--Boyd walked around the side of the house, past a barking dog, to the back yard. She discovered, however, that the old pool nestled between two large boulders had been filled years ago.

“You’re very nice to let us come by here and take your time,” she said to the three girls, taking a final look around.

“Bye. Take care,” she said finally, her voice tinged with emotion. “Take care of this place.”

Boyd walked quietly back up to the road where her friends were waiting, but by the time she reached the car she was her old self.

“What’s next on the schedule, Gracie?” Mak said.

Mrs. Hopalong Cassidy smiled:

“Champagne!”