The Bar 20 Rides Again (Hopalong Cassidy #17)

Clarence E. (Edward) Mulford (Feb. 3, 1883—May 10, 1956) was an American writer who created the famous Western character Hopalong Cassidy. Clarence Mulford was born in Streator, Illinois, in 1883 to a distinguished family that could trace its lineage back to 1643 with more than 20 Mulfords fighting in the American Revolution.

After graduating college, he took a job with the “Municipal Journal and Engineer” newspaper in New York and began writing stories on the side. His first story was published in “Metropolitan” magazine. Then “Outing” magazine began publishing a string of his “Bar 20” short stories with the iconic Hopalong Cassidy character. He has said that his first Western books were written using data about the American West but that his later books were written using information he gathered from his extensive traveling throughout the American West. He kept a card file of data about the West that contained more than 17,000 cards, covering everything from fur trapping and cattle drives to the Pony Express and the freight-wagon industry.

For many years Mulford was very unhappy with the way his character of Hopalong Cassidy was portrayed in the films made from his books. In the novels Cassidy is a grubby, irritable, foul-mouthed, crusty old coot; in the films he was a clean-cut, articulate, courtly, distinguished-looking gentleman, as played by William Boyd. Mulford had always envisioned Cassidy as a rough-and-tumble, hard-drinking and combative man and once said words to the effect that if Cassidy of the movies had ever strayed into the novels, the novel Cassidy’s sidekicks would have shot him. Eventually he came to terms with the disparity, and finally decided to meet with Boyd, which he had steadfastly refused to do. The two actually hit it off and a truce and friendship of sorts developed between them.

By the 1950s Mulford was no longer interested in writing any more Hopalong Cassidy novels. His publisher signed Louis L’Amour to write four books. After he signed, L’Amour found out the publisher wanted the William Boyd sanitized version of Cassidy instead of Mulford’s rough-and-tumble version. L’Amour wrote the novels under the name “Tex Burns”.

Mulford died in Portland, Maine, on May 10, 1956. He had suffered smoke damage to his lungs in a fire in 1947 and died from complications after surgery to repair the damage.

—IMDb Mini Biography By: [email protected]