Keeping the Cowboy Alive

Keeping the Cowboy Alive. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.?By now you know that I’m a bit of a cowboy fan. I enjoy reading western novels and will always find time to watch a good western on TV especially my favorite, Hopalong Cassidy. He was the cattle ranchers, cattle rancher. And while the image of “Hoppy” from the movies is a far cry from the original character created by writer Clarence Mulford, he has become an icon. Unfortunately actor William Boyd is no longer with us but I recently ran into “Hoppy” at a cowboy festival in California.

SULLIVAN: So I started going around to nursing homes and senior citizens and father-son banquets and things like that and presented a slide show dressed like Hopalong Cassidy.

That was about 20 years ago and now Joe “Hoppy” Sullivan makes appearance all over the U.S. as Hopalong. He is the “official” Hopalong impersonator since a chance meeting at a cowboy festival.

SULLIVAN: (I) met the Hopalong Cassidy people that weekend. I met Grace his widow, Grace Bradley Boyd and so got a phone call about the next week and they had been kind of watching me over the weekend and they kind of liked what I was doing and they authorized me to do Hoppy and boy that just opened a lot of doors.

Sullivan has the complete look down from the dimpled Stetson hat to the boots.

SULLIVAN: A major part of this whole thing really is the costume because I think it was so unique in the fact that it really started out as being all blue. I call it a police officer’s blue that he wore back when he made the movies. It took me probably about 5 years to really get the outfit down as it should be and it all has to be tailor made, all hand made. There’s really nothing you can buy except the hat.

Even the unique neckerchief slide is an authentic vertebra from a calf like the original. Sullivan spent years working as a salesman for seed companies in the Midwest and was a fan of the old westerns like Hopalong and others. He does say that Boyd really made the character over from the literary ranch hand.

SULLIVAN: He was just on the verge of being a crook but he did enough good things it kept him on the side of the law and I think Boyd wanted to clean him up and to present this Hopalong Cassidy character in the movies as someone at that time that the kids could look up to.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.