Thanks Jim for forming this thread, and for some sort of continuity
I have now copied over, more or less any previous conversation.
Last night I watched Rustler's Valley (1937), which I think was the seventh or eighth Hopalong Cassidy film. A warm and agreeable western of the period, well-shot on beautiful locations and well-acted. Well-written, too. The Hopalong Cassidy films had good writing, at least in the beginning. Not the same experience as reading the books; author Mulford achieved greatness on the page. Whenever I watch a Hopalong Cassidy film, I always think it' so good it could have been better if they had only done this or that, instead of that and this. Close, but no cigar.
Trail Dust (1936) and Borderland (1937) are two of best westerns of the 1930s, I am inclined to think, and by coincidence, they are also two of the strongest and orniest Mulford novels.
Richard
I'm always glad to read or hear recommendations about good books and/or movies. Think I'll follow your recommendations, Richard, and try to acquire those Mulford stories you named above. Also the films.
Display MoreStumpy,
Clarence E. Mulford wrote 28 westerns between 1906 and 1941. He was the real thing. His books reek with authenticity. Trail Dust (1936) is based on the novel of the same name published in 1934. It's a great novel, a vital and important novel. I've invested a good many years of my life researching the cattle trailing industry of the late 1800s in the southwest, but I never came across a story that captures the feel and flavor of the time, let alone the vernacular, with such unerring truth, not even in the eyewitness accounts (which are numerous). Truly an extraordinary little book. Borderland (1937) is based on an earlier Mulford novel called Bring Me His Ears published in 1922. The films are good, but the books are better. You won't be disappointed, either way.
Bypass the VHS. Quality is poor and the films are cut. Get the DVD if you can. It's restored and complete.
Richard
Actually, I was referring to the scripts for the movies. They started out above average and actually achieve something special by the late 1930s. By the 1940s the screenplays got worse and worse as they strayed further and further away from Clarence E. Mulford and the films got cheaper and cheaper until they were hardly better than grade Z fare.
On the other hand, the novels kept getting better and better until the author stopped writing them. He started out with Bar 20, published in 1906. Hopalong Cassidy is one of several cowboys in this story of ranch life in the American west. This novel help to invent what we now know as the western. It defined the western for the 20h century. I believe it was more influential and of more value than The Virginian, which gets more credit than it deserves. Anyhow, Bar 20 was an excellent book, and the following Hopalong Cassidy novels got progressively more brilliant from there.
The novels are a lot more realistic than the films. Cassidy is more fleshed-out, more down-to-earth on the page. He bears no resemblance to William Boyd, who basically re-invents the character for the films. Warner Brothers is tinkering with the idea of reviving the series. Ethan Wayne is just the man to play Hopalong Cassidy. But they'll never even think of him.
I enjoyed reading the Mulford books about Hopalong Cassidy. Louis Lamour also wrote a few just a few years before he died that I read and they were also very good.
I never could understand Lamour's popularity with Western readers. I just never could get that interested in his books.
In Western writers, I started out reading Luke Short, then went to Will Henry and Clay Fisher (same guy with different pseudonyms). I thought Will Henry's "No Survivors" and "From Where the Sun Now Stands" were two of the best Western stories I ever read. For years, I was convinced that Costner's "Dances With Wolves" was made from "No Survivors" but then learned it was another writer.
And I've always enjoyed Lamours books. Probably read at least 90% of his stuff, and more than once. I've also read William Johnstone, Ralph Compton, Matt Braun, Terry Johnston, Owen Wisters The Virginian, Alan Lemay, Elmore "Dutch" Leonard, and Elmer Kelton.
