William Boyd
A Western-genre narrative, loosely woven from old clips from B-Western features.
A collection of behind the scenes and home movies from the golden age of Hollywood.
The story of Smokey the Bear, from cub in the woods to the Washington Zoo and the Forestry Service campaign.
To ensure a full profitable season, circus manager Brad Braden engages The Great Sebastian, though this moves his girlfriend Holly from her hard-won center trapeze spot. Holly and Sebastian begin a dangerous one-upmanship duel in the ring, while he pursues her on the ground.
Hopalong Cassidy was television's first western program. The series aired on NBC and stared William Boyd as the cowboy Hopalong Cassidy.
Finishing a trail drive, Hoppy and the boys head to town and immediately get caught up in the conflict between school teacher Miss Abott and next door saloon owner Mawson. When Miss Abott disappears, Hoppy gets a clue to her location and rescues her from Mawson's cabin. It looks like Mawson is the man he wants, but Hoppy finds an item that indicates otherwise.
Lee Garvin has eloped with the daughter of a railroad man who didn't approve of the marriage. Hoppy steps in when the young man is framed for murder.
A banker is trying to cheat people out of their silver-rich land. Hoppy learns that the banker is in league with an outlaw gang.
Three bodies turn up in a frontier hotel. Hoppy solves the murders and chases the killers through unusually misty and dark locations.
One of Hoppy's Bar 20 ranch hands is tricked into participating in nefarious activities after being subjected to hypnosis.
Hoppy is an agent of the federal government investigating the counterfeiting of both U.S. and Mexican money. His only clues are the name "Mordigan" and a drawing of a comet.
A bad guy has used several murders to drive all the inhabitants out of town in order to give his gang access to the oil which lies under the land.
At the reading of his late cousin's will, California learns the estate will be divied among whoever remains of the seven relatives. With one already dead, another immediately murdered, and the Lawyer telling them the ranch is almost worthless, Hoppy investigates.
Hoppy, California, and Lucky travel to Mesa City for a short vacation. California buys new clothes and carrying his old ones in a suitcase, bumps into escaping bank robbers in the dark. His suitcase gets switched with that of the robbers and he is seen with the money. Hoppy must find the money that has mysteriously disappeared and also the robbers so that he can clear California who is now in jail.
Sue Morgan gets Hoppy and his friends to join their expedition looking for Indian artifacts. Expedition leader Atwood makes a deal with nearby cattle rustler Morgan to loot the Indian treasures instead and sell them. Hoppy is on to their plan and pretending to leave follows them. Not only is he outnumbered by Morgan's men, but California has himself about to be sacrificed in an Indian ritual.
The son of an Army friend is about the join an outlaw gang. Hoppy prevents this and brings the gang to justice.
Hoppy finds a wounded girl and later finds Judge Morton who claims the girl is his daughter and he is looking for her. But Hoppy soon learns the girl is looking for stolen gold she wants to return and the Judge in not her father but only wants the gold. Hoppy and the girl find the gold but the Judge and his men find Hoppy and the boys and trap them in a cabin.
When he runs for sheriff, Hoppy is beaten by Jerry Doyle, the gutless wonder voted for by every crook in town. When Hoppy moves to have the new sheriff impeached, outlaw leader Tad Hammond hires forty gunslingers to stop him. Stop Hoppy? Hah!
Julie's husband has been murdered and land agents want her to sign away her property rights. Hoppy warns against this but she does so anyway. It looks as though she will be unable to deliver the timber called for in her agreement. Hoppy has to make the lumber deal happened and solve the murder.
A gang of outlaws are using force to become possessors of every ranch in the area.
When three Texas Rangers try to investigate kidnapped Mexicans being used as forced labor in the mines of Silver Bullet, they are framed for murder by the town's corrupt sheriff.
While oil drilling, Hoppy and California discover an underground well - a potential threat to Jebb Hardin's monopoly on water in the region.
When Hoppy's falsely accused young friend is killed while supposedly trying to escape from jail, an embittered Hoppy is blamed and drummed out of the Texas Rangers.
Before he was killed by Mark Foster's men, Bud Lawton willed part ownership in his ranch to Hoppy and his two pals. When the three arrive they find a fake posing as Lawton. When they expose the imposter, Foster gets the Sheriff to jail them for Lawton's murder.
As rustled cattle have mysteriously disappeared, Johnny sends for his friend Hoppy, Hoppy arrives and immediately suspects Dan Slack. Realizing his telegram about Slack was intercepted, he locks up the operator Lafe knowing he can escape. Tailing Lafe he finds a secret entrance to a mine and inside finds the missing cattle. But Slack's men also find him just as the cattle are stampeded through the mine shaft.
Posing as a cattle buyer, Hoppy crosses over into Oklahoma where the Jordan brother's and their outlaw gang operate outside the law. After receiving an unfriendly reception when he finds them, he, California, and Johnny rustle their cattle and drive across the river into Texas. He hopes they will cross over to retrieve their cattle and then he can arrest them.
Burton is after Clark's ranch. He gets the banker to refuse to renew Clark's note and then sends his men to rustle his cattle. Hoppy is Clark's new foreman and is on to Burton's scheme. But just as he learns of the rustling and is about to go after the gang, the Sheriff arrives and arrests him for hiding Johnny who has been accused of robbery.
A bandit who robs both Americans and Mexicans is causing each side of the border to blame the other. Hoppy has to settle matters.
Hoppy is leading a scientific expedition and the Chinese who have a hidden settlement nearby are trying to stop them. Saulters and his outlaw gang are also in the area looking for a gold mine. When Saulters men attack, the gold mine is found. Hoppy agrees to file for the Chinese and heads after Saulters in the chase to the land office.
Hoppy, Johnny and California go to Arabia to buy some horses. There they get involved with a sheik and a harem and a kidnapping plot.
Stephen Westcott and Ed Martin scheme to put Jane Travers' wagon line out of business. They want to use it take over all the wagon- train traffic going west. Hoppy, California and Lucky must make sure that doesn't happen.
The Bar 20 boys are after Nevada and his gang of cattle rustlers. Hoppy and California join Nevada's gang under assumed names. Johnny and the rest of Bar 20 get directions from Winters and head out looking for Hoppy's signal. But Winters wanders on ahead and gets spotted. This lets Nevada trap them in a canyon and to make matters worse, Hoppy's masquerade has been exposed.
A town bedeviled with outlaws sends for Hoppy, Lucky and California after their own vigilante committee fails to solve the towns problems. Hoppy discovers that the bad guys are led by the town boss, and so are the vigilantes.
Hoppy, Lucky and California search for a mine owned by Trudy Pendleton after it was taken from her by thw swindling gambler Ace Gibson. They find the mine and Hoppy fights Gibson over it.
Hopalong Cassidy and Johnny Nelson ride to the mountains to help a man and his daughter save their logging business from someone who is sabotaging their efforts.
Belle Langtry runs a town being taken over by cattle rustlers. She is also a front for the outlaws, who are led by Steve Fraser. Hoppy gets elected sheriff and cleans up the town with help from the Bar 20 boys.
Hoppy, Lucky and California are chasing cattle rustlers who have been bothering cattle rancher friends of Hoppy. A crooked foreman is the source of the trouble. Johnny and Lucy are the love focus.
Joe Weller has instigated a conflict over water rights between two ranchers. The idea is to have the ranchers do each other in then move in and take over. Hoppy and the good guys won't let this happen.
Hoppy and Lucky have been called in to investigate a series of stage holdups. The robbers are taking gold from Colby's mine and Hoppy suspects it may be ex-outlaw Colby himself. When Speedy strikes gold, Hoppy borrows it and announces a gold shipment hoping to catch the gang and their leader.
U.S. Marshal Hopalong Cassidy is called when a town becomes overun with bad guys. Disguised as a member of a medicine show, Hoppy discovers that the ringleader is none other than sweet li'l ol' Ma Burton.
Hoppy and new sidekick California Carlson head to California to help out Lucky Jenkins.
European bad guy Baron Bendor leads some local townsmen in a plot to obtain horses through theft. Hoppy and his sidekicks Lucky and Speedy must find and expose the horse thieves.
Hoppy and Lucky are headed to South America to deliver a heard of cattle. Bay guy Ralph Merritt gets in their way. For a while.
Hoppy goes to town to help Marshal Windy with some rustlers and winds up helping the widow Joyce when confidence men try to take her herd. King's Men songs include: "Hi Thar Stranger" and "Lazy Rolls the Rio Grande."
Disguising himself as a milquetoast Easterner who writes Western novels, Hoppy enrolls in a dude ranch in order to unmask the murderer of the owner's husband.
This film tells the history of the United States from pre-Revolution through 1939.
Hoppy goes undercover as a gambler from the East when Bar 20 cattle are stolen by unknown rustlers. Brennan/Talbot are twin brothers (one a casino owner, the other a rancher) and Hoppy believes they provide alibis for each other while one is out committing crimes. Hoppy gets a job in the casino to learn more but is exposed when a gambling gunslinger notices him.
Escaped criminal "The Fox" hates Hoppy and a Rurales colonel for imprisoning him and lures Cassidy to Mexico in order to exact his vengeance.
Hopalong Cassidy, boss of the Bar 20 ranch in Texas, rides down the Camino Real in the New Mexico cattle country near Alamogordo, in response to an urgent message from his lifelong sweetheart, Nora Blake, who is in serious trouble. Before he and his saddlemates, "Lucky" Jenkins and "Pappy", can reach her ranch, they are stopped by Clay Allison, a cattle-rustler who is in almost complete control of the district, and wants to extend his holdings by seizing Nora's cattle and driving her out. Seeing Cassidy as a menace to his plans, he has him arrested on a trumped-up charge. Cassidy and his pals shoot their way out of the trouble and reach Nora;s ranch where they learn that Allison's henchmen have murdered her foreman, Tom Dillon, and Allison has sent for a crew of outlaws on the Texas border.
Hoppy's friend Dennis owns a rich gold mine. Frazier who owns the adjoining mine and wants the Dennis mine, has Dennis killed. Hoppy steps in to take over running the Dennis mine and learns Frazier's men sneak into and work the Dennis mine at night. Hoppy captures one of Frazier's men only to be captured in return by Frazier and left to die in a burning building.
Lorna Drake has inherited a ranch. Hoppy teaches her a bit about ranching and handles Scar Lewis, the bad guy, in the process.
The local school is causing Hoppy problems. First Bar 20 cattle are stolen when Hoppy investigates a problem there. Then the new teacher arrives and disrupts the routine of the Bar 20 hands. Later with the Bar 20 hands at graduation, the rustlers are poised to strike again. But there is dissension among them and this will lead to the break that Hoppy needs.
Belle Starr has returned from time in prison only to face a hail of bullets, along with rescue by Hoppy and the Bar 20 gang.
Caldwell and Nixon have their men rob the stage and then critcize the Sheriff for not catching the robbers. With her father the Sheriff under pressure, Mary sends for Hoppy who finds the stolen money and sets a trap to bring in the entire gang.
Hoppy's brother has been murdered and he is on the trail of the murderers. To get them he makes himself seem to be a wanted man.
An evil deputy is using Indian half-breeds to rustle cattle. This causes trouble between the cattlemen and Indians. Hoppy, Windy and Lucky see that justice is served. Songs abound.
The U.S. Army needs more horses for the Spanish-American War. Hoppy must turn his Bar 20 cowhands into Rough Riders to gather up the horses, and of course bad guys try to sabotage the operation.
Hoppy clears Lucky on a charge of bank robbery and foils the plot of a crooked lawyer to rustle a herd of pedigree cattle and take over the valley.
On a cattle drive Hoppy, camp cook Windy, companion Lucky, and young Artie Peters encounter an eccentric professor. The professor professes to be searching for the evolutionary missing link, but in reality he is a cattle rustler who uses his dynamite to scatter the cattle in order capture some of them. Hoppy and Bar 20 guys ultimately capture the professor.
Hoppy goes undercover as an outlaw (which permits him, for once, to drink and be mean to children) to track down a bunch of outlaws operating along the border. Loco, the head bad guy, deflects suspicion from himself by pretending to be a moron.
An evil gang is involved in both cattle rustling and the robbing of stagecoaches. Hoppy must stop them without help from the sheriff who turns out be a major outlaw himself.
Hoppy returns to find Johnny in trouble. Buck Peters has been shot by Porter who made it look like Johnny did it. When Johnny flees he runs into Linda. He takes a liking to her only to learn her father Shanghai is one of Porter's gang. Going after Shanghai, he gets captured by the gang and Porter now plans to kill him. But Hoppy is near by and Johnny will get unexpected help from Shanghai.
Jim Thornton is an independent wildcat driller in Califonia who hits a gusher and overnight riches, and marries his sweetheart that is a singer at a local saloon. But he can't handle being rich, and the marriage is on the rocks.
Reporter Steve Haines (Boyd), on the trail of a business tycoon, follows his subject onto an ocean liner and gets wound up in a cruise full of intrigue, romance and murder.
Hoppy, Johnny and Windy are fighting a malicious gang trying to stop a cattle drive from reaching a drought-stricken North.
A crusading newspaper editor recruits his old friend Hoppy to take the job of Marshall in a town rife with vice and murder directed at helpless miners.
Problems come in the form of one of Hopalong Cassidy's neighbors, but the matter is settled when Hoppy roots out the troublemaker.
An evil ranch foreman tries to provoke a range war by playing two cattlemen against each other while helping a gang to rustle the cattle. Each cattleman blames the other for missing cattle. With the help of Bill Cassidy (Hop-along, because of an earlier bullet wound) and Johnny Nelson, the warring cattlemen join forces to do in the outlaws.
When the outlaw El Toro saves Hoppy's life, Hoppy agrees to find his missing grandson.
Cattle rustler Nevada dreams of living like an emperor in the West. Hoppy and the Bar 20 boys aim to put an end to his dream.
Racehorse-owner Dan Morgan is ruled off the track and out of racing when his horse is doped by a rival owner who knows that Dan's horse can win a high-stakes race. Trying to clear his name, Dan runs into many difficulties and incidents, including a blazing barn filled with valuable horses, before he is able to gather the needed evidence against the guilty man.
A gangster's girlfriend on the run from the police, who suspect her of helping her boyfriend commit a robbery, holes up in a waterfront bar. She stows away on a fishing boat headed out to sea, and winds up falling in love with and marrying one of the fishermen, but doesn't tell him about her past. However, a year after they're married and have a child, her ex-boyfriend gets out of jail and comes looking for her.
A surgeon and an ambulance driver fight racketeers who take over their hospital.
Two friends working a jungle oil field clash when one marries a lady of the evening.
Buck is a hard working lumberjack, but likes to have fun. Buck's father is the foreman and wants Buck to take over when he retires. Buck is in love with Honey, a show-girl on the carnival boat, but she won't live in a lumberjack camp.
Three US sailors aboard a decoy ship fight German U-boats in World War I and try to win Sally who works on the Coney Island midway.
Four battle-weary American soldiers under fire reflect on the women they left behind.
A gambler, hopelessly in debt, agrees to pay off his debt by allowing his creditor to take out a life insurance policy on him and collecting once the one-year suicide clause has elapsed.
Western pardners Jeff and Cash find a baby boy in an otherwise deserted emigrants' camp, and clash over which is to be "father." They are still bitterly feuding years later when they own adjacent ranches. Bill, the foundling whom Cash has raised to young manhood, wants to end the feud and extends an olive branch toward Jeff, who now has a lovely daughter. But during a mining venture, the bitterness escalates. Is Bill to be set against his own adoptive father?
Bill O'Brien is promoted to lieutenant in the police department for his arrest of Mike Patello, gang leader and racketeer, for murder. Ruth Dale, who loves Bill, is concerned when her brother, Johnny, who witnessed the murder, proposes to testify against the racketeer. Meanwhile, Captain Antrim informs Bill that his father has just been released from prison and does not know his son is a policeman. On the way from prison, O'Brien (J. P.) meets Limo, a former cockney pal who recognizes Bill and keeps J. P. from seeing his son; later, J. P. arrives intoxicated and is enraged, forcing Bill to knock him unconscious. J. P. is arrested for robbery but returns the loot to save his son from disgrace; Johnny is killed before testifying against Patello, who is released but confronted by J. P., who proves his guilt and, when he struggles with the police, kills him. Bill plans to resign, but confident of Ruth's love, he decides to remain on the force.
Andy Clyde plays football with the Sennett girls; Mary Pickford's miniature golf course is shown.
A busload of passengers gets stranded in a snowstorm and take refuge in an abandoned church, where they run into a mysterious man who may be on the run from the law.
An odd little film about male bonding. At the end of WW I, two Americans (William Boyd and Robert Armstrong) befriend a simple minded German (Alan Hale) and win him over into becoming an American. All three are still peacetime officers in the US Marines when an unscrupulous character steals Boyd's girl and his two buddies go off to rescue her. When they don't come back, Boyd goes after them to rescue all. This is all done in flashback from a court martial trial for desertion. It's very simple-minded and innocent (silents were that). Mildly interesting to today's audiences, but nothing special. It did receive an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay
A man protective of his brother checks out the girl his brother is in love with, in order to see if she's the real thing or just trying to take advantage of him. Unfortunately, he winds up falling in love with her himself.
A playboy is in love with a woman and enters the army thinking it will improve his chances with her.
Karl, a German diplomat in Paris, discovers that his fiancee, Diane, has been cheating on him. He tells her that he would rather marry a "girl of the streets" than her. Outraged, Diane decides to grant hi his wish, and enlists the services of a Spanish singer/dancer from a disreputable nightclub to pose as a sophisticated, convent-educated singer, and surreptitiously arranges for her to meet Karl.
This is a typically benign silent comedy/drama whose only distinction is that it is set among the skyscrapers of 1928 NYC. Either the location work is real (hard to beleive they'd take chances with the lives of stars) or the matte work is extraordinry for its day. Blondy and Swede are gruff best friends who build skyscrapers. Blondy gets sweet on a girl he saves from a falling beam, Sally, but when he is injured in an accident and temporarily crippled, he rejects her. Swede tries every desperate measure to get Blondy to fight back, to try to walk, even masquerading as stealing Sally away from him. It all comes right in the end. Oscar nomination for Screenplay
Jimmy Bradley, a fireman on the old locomotive No. 99, loves Kate Murphy, daughter of the proprietress of the local lunch counter. His rival, Bat Mullins, is engineer of the new mail train scheduled to make a competition run. When Mullins overturns the new train, Bradley completes the run and earns the contract for his company by delivering the mail in record time on No. 99. A promotion to engineer helps him win Kate.
The King of Kings is the Greatest Story Ever Told as only Cecil B. DeMille could tell it. In 1927, working with one of the biggest budgets in Hollywood history, DeMille spun the life and Passion of Christ into a silent-era blockbuster. Featuring text drawn directly from the Bible, a cast of thousands, and the great showman’s singular cinematic bag of tricks, The King of Kings is at once spectacular and deeply reverent—part Gospel, part Technicolor epic.
During World War I, two American soldiers fight to escape the Germans while squabbling over a beautiful harem girl.
An amateur boxing champion stops at West Point to see a dress parade and falls for the commandant's daughter. He wins an appointment to the Academy and begins a rivalry for her affection.
A race between a British clipper ship and an American ship of a new design will determine the right to transport Chinese tea.
After forming his own studio in 1925, Cecil B. DeMille produced this exuberant blend of orientalist melodrama and gender-bending comedy featuring his THE TEN COMMANDMENTS leading lady Leatrice Joy. An over-protective sea captain forces his daughter Eve to pass as a boy. But she craves romance and sets her sights on a handsome American tourist (Boyd) who still thinks she's a boy when she shanghais him aboard her father's ship; then a lustful Chinese pirate (Walter Long) takes them prisoner. Joy, an appealing comedienne whose career nosedived when talkies came in, sparkles in both her tomboy and love-hungry phases. -Martin Rubin, Gene Siskel Film Center
During the Russian Revolution Princess Vera, though betrothed to Prince Dimitri, is attracted to the peasant Feodor.
During World War I, an American soldier is captured and taken prisoner by the Germans. However, instead of being placed in a prisoner-of-war camp, he is assigned to the small farm of a young woman and her son to help raise crops to help feed the German army and people.
Malena's apparent frigidity toward her husband Kenneth is a result of injustice done in an earlier incarnation when he was a knight and she was a gypsy headed for burning at the stake. This becomes evident when their unconscious minds travel back from a train wreck in the American plains to Elizabethan England.
A bored rich housewife wants to go on the stage, but her husband won't let her. When she meets a despairing actress who looks exactly like her, she suggests they swap places for a little while, giving the actress a break while the rich husband is out of town. But the rich husband comes back early, causing havoc for the actress, plus the rich housewife is finding herself attracted to the actress's boyfriend.
Kerry Harlan (La Rocque) is unable to work because he was injured in a battle with a shark, so his youthful wife Amy (Reynolds) becomes a fashion model. While she is away from home, Bertha, the wife of his surgeon, is trying to force her attentions on Kerry and is accidentally killed in an attempt to evade her husband. After the scandal Amy is courted by Tony Channing, but she returns to her husband and finds him near death from gas fumes. Because they both attempted to make suicide, their spirits are rejected by "the other side," and learning the truth from Bertha's spirit they fight their way back to life. This film is presumed lost.
Wealthy young man Ramon Laredo is abducted and put into service aboard a ship commanded by a none-too-scrupulous smuggler. When the ship encounters the foundering "Lady Letty," some of the Letty's crew is brought aboard, including Letty 'Moran' Sternerson, feisty daughter of the Letty's captain. Moran and Ramon have little use for each other, but when trouble erupts and the smuggler Captain Kitchell turns his evil eye on Moran, it is Ramon who comes to her rescue.
A young man raised in the American South discovers he is an Indian prince whose throne was taken by usurpers.
Teddy Gloucester, one of the group of jazz age "nice people," is caught in a farmhouse during a storm with her intoxicated companion, Scotty. A stranger (Billy Wade) also seeking shelter saves her from Scotty's unwelcome attentions but not from the scandal which results from her father's discovery of her and Scotty--alone--the next morning. Hurt by the snubbing she receives from her friends, Teddy settles down and agrees to become an old-fashioned wife to Billy.
Three castaways all from differing levels of society reach and board a deserted schooner in mid-ocean.
Though betrothed to fellow socialite Richard, Iris weds her chauffeur Tom leaving Richard to marry the family laundress' daughter Shamrock. Class differences lead to divorces and remarriages.
A young woman spurns her too conventional fiancé and flees to an artists' colony.
Mary Maddock becomes a seamstress after her husband Steve wastes their money on booze. Her employer provides her as an escort to accompany millionaire Mallory. Her husband tries blackmailing Mallory and is later killed by the police, leaving Mary free to wed the millionaire.
Jean, a wealthy young Canadian back from a trip to Europe, meets and falls for Carmen, a pretty young Spanish girl. They marry and have a daughter, but soon afterward Jean discovers his wife is having an affair. She takes her daughter and leaves him, and Jean's luck gets even worse--he loses his business in a fire and his thieving father-in-law steals what little money he has left.
Wealthy cripple Markley finances the education of blacksmith's daughter Ruth. When she returns to their small town he asks to marry her, but she runs off with city worker Jim Dirk who is then killed in a subway accident. Markley offers to marry her in name only to protect her new son.
Charles Murdock neglects his fat and lazy wife in favor of Juliet Raeburn but, when Juliet's name is involved in murder, he marries Viola and takes her to Paris.
