No Home for Hoppy : Hopalong Cassidy Is a Good Guy Down on His Luck--When a Downey Antique Store Folds, So Will Its Museum of the Cowboy

Gene Autry has his vast museum in Griffith Park. Roy Rogers’ famed horse, Trigger, is stuffed and mounted at his museum in Victorville. Will Rogers has a whole state park in Pacific Palisades.

And then there’s Hopalong Cassidy, the classic good guy among the celluloid cowboys.

He has a corner of an antique store in Downey.

It’s there that No. 1 fans Bob and Linda Szabat in 1991 established the Hopalong Cassidy Museum with a collection of 1,500 items, including Hopalong Cassidy lunch boxes, comic books, movie stills, signed photographs and an original script for the 1937 film “Hills of Old Wyoming.”

They may not have the real silver handguns used in his films, but there are a couple of replicas in a display case. For fans of old Hoppy, portrayed by the late William Boyd in 66 films from 1935 to 1948 and later on television, it’s all spread out in the living room-size area, free for the gazing--at least through the end of the month.

Then it will close.

The couple dedicated to preserving the memory of their film hero have lost a 2 1/2-year shootout with the local economy. They will hang up their guns Jan. 28 because the store is going bankrupt. “We have traffic, but people just aren’t buying,” said Bob Szabat, 48.

He opened the museum as a tribute to a boyhood idol, a silver-haired paragon of Western virtue who never smoked, drank, swore or made love.

“He was always doing for the guy who couldn’t do for himself, helping the underdog,” Szabat said. A loner growing up, he identified with the self-reliance and unwavering individuality of Boyd’s character.

“In a saloon, he would order milk or sarsaparilla,” the antique dealer said. “Now people might have looked at him funny, but it taught kids not to worry about what people think. It was teaching a way out of peer pressure.”

The Downey exhibit is not the only tribute to Hopalong Cassidy in the nation.

There is one in Boyd’s hometown of Cambridge, Ohio, as well. And the University of Wyoming has the only remaining artifacts directly connected to Boyd: a few articles of clothing, a saddle and the two pistols used in his films.

The shortage of such items was one of the problems in creating a Hopalong Cassidy museum, no matter how small. Because of the low budgets of Boyd’s pictures, he would wear the same clothes until they wore out, Szabat said.

The rarest item in his museum is one of five pony saddles bearing Hopalong’s name and likeness that Boyd presented to the winners of a comic book contest in the late 1940s. The saddle was a surprise gift to Bob Szabat from his wife.

“It’s made Christmases nice,” Linda Szabat said. “I’ve always tried to find something to give him for the museum.”

Bob Szabat began collecting Hoppy items in the late 1970s, starting with a few comic books, buttons and a couple of movie posters.

He later began collecting videotapes of Hoppy’s movies. So visitors to the museum can see Hoppy--along with his classic sidekick, the white-whiskered Gabby Hayes--chasing the bad guys on a small television screen in a corner of the exhibit.

Hayes died in 1969, Boyd in 1972.

More than 6,000 people have signed the registration books of the museum at 8618 Firestone Blvd., and Szabat estimates that about 10,000 have seen the memorabilia.

“It was the closest we came to myths,” one visitor, Gregory F. Nighswonger, 42, of Bellflower, said during a recent visit. “There was a sense of right and wrong that was clear to young kids.”

Nighswonger said he has been a fan of Westerns since he was a boy. “I remember having a lot of this stuff,” he said of the Hoppy paraphernalia.

Szabat said he has had visitors from as far as New York, Florida, Washington and Pennsylvania. “I like to watch people’s faces as they come through here,” he said.

The exhibit room takes up just 225 square feet near the rear entrance of the Szabats’ sprawling store that sells a mix of antiques, old posters and records, and used furniture. They blame the economy, and the closing of nearby military facilities, for its demise.

The Szabats are not sure what they will do with their Hoppy collection.

Since announcing that they will close the museum, they have received several requests to house the collection in restaurants, and are considering lending the items to the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles. But only temporarily.

Bob Szabat is intent on reopening his own museum someday, somewhere.

“I do know I want to be near it,” he said of the collection. “I come in here every day to check things. I’ve seen it probably 5,000 times and I still enjoy it.”