Clarence Mulford

February 3, 1883 (age 73)

Streator, Illinois, United States

After graduating from high school, Mulford was given the choice of going to work or to college; he chose working on the Municipal Journal and Engineer in New York City. Then, in 1899, he became a clerk in the marriage license bureau at Borough Hall in Brooklyn. At the age of eighteen Mulford sold his first story, "John Barrett, " to Metropolitan magazine. It was a combination Western-detective story that shared first prize in a contest. Mulford had up to then never visited the West, but it was a region that fascinated him. Little did Mulford realize that he was creating a classic Western character when he published a series of connected stories about a ranch, the Bar 20, in Caspar Whitney's Outing Magazine; in 1907 the stories were collected in the book Bar 20. They centered on a rancher named William Cassidy, a Texan who drank whiskey, swore, gambled, engaged in gunplay in the manner of Wild Bill Hickok and John Wesley Hardin, and (in one book) was married. After Cassidy was wounded in the leg in a gunfight, he acquired the nickname "Hopalong. " The book proved so popular that the character was continued in many others: The Orphan (1908), Hopalong Cassidy (1910), Bar 20 Days (1911), The Coming of Cassidy (1913), The Man From Bar 20 (1918), The Bar 20 Three (1921), Hopalong Cassidy Returns (1924), The Bar 20 Rides Again (1926), Hopalong Cassidy Takes Cards (1937), and many more. The Cassidy series numbered twenty-eight books, but, in total, Mulford would write more than a hundred Western novels and short stories. He finally visited the region in 1920, but he never lived there and made only a few other visits. Yet his hardcover books sold more than 1. 5 million copies and were translated into German, Spanish, and Polish. In 1934 Paramount Pictures decided to make a series of films with Cassidy as a hero. William Boyd was to be the villain, but he persuaded the producers to cast him as the hero instead. The films were most successful: sixty-six Hopalong Cassidy films were made. Mulford was appalled when he saw the result, calling the Cassidy in the movie "an absolutely ludicrous character. " In these films Hopalong was a pasteboard character; he dispensed justice with a smoking six-gun, did not drink, and rarely did more than smile at women or help one in distress. Mulford saw only six of the movies. Later he sold the rights to the character to William Boyd. With the royalties he earned from his writings, Mulford in 1926 moved to Fryeburg, Maine. At Fryeburg, Mulford purchased fifty-five acres of land. On this estate, in addition to writing, he indulged his hobbies of building models of steamboats, stagecoaches, covered wagons, flatboats, and other modes of transportation, and of big-caliber revolver shooting. At one point he had the Colt firearms company specially make for him a pair of steel revolvers so strong as to allow chamber pressure that made marksmanship practical at 300 to 500 yards. After World War II, Hopalong Cassidy became a great favorite not only in movies but also in the new medium of television, thereby earning Mulford hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties. A stay-at-home person with modest spending habits, he used the money to establish the Clarence E. Mulford Trust Fund, a charitable and educational foundation intended to benefit worthy persons in the area around Fryeburg. About this same time he grew so angry over high income taxes that he quit writing altogether. In 1954 Mulford gave his manuscripts, books, and card files to the Library of Congress, which valued the materials at $20, 000 for tax purposes. Clarence E. Mulford died on May 10, 1956, of complications from surgery in Portland, Maine.

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Works

book

Johnny Nelson: How a One-Time Pupil of Hopalang Cassidy of the Famous Bar-20 Ranch in the Pecos Valley Performed an Act of Knight-Errantry and What Came of It

(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

Clarence E. Mulford: Collected Works (Illustrated): Six Books Included with Illustrations

(This e-book edition comes with 6 books, illustrations and...)

Black Buttes

(1973, hardcover reprint edition of a title first publishe...)

"Tex"

Johnny Nelson : Hopalong Cassidy #7 (Hopalong Cassidy Series)

Bar-20 Days

Buck Peters: Ranchman

( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultura...)

The Orphan

The Coming of Cassidy

(The trail boss shook his fist after the departing puncher...)

Bring Me His Ears

Clarence Edward Mulford Edit Profile

writer

Background

Clarence Edward Mulford was born on February 3, 1883, in Streator, Illinois, the son of Clarence C. Mulford and Minnie Grace Kline.

Education

Mulford was educated at the public schools of Streator and at Utica, New York, following the family's move there.

Career

After graduating from high school, Mulford was given the choice of going to work or to college; he chose working on the Municipal Journal and Engineer in New York City.

Then, in 1899, he became a clerk in the marriage license bureau at Borough Hall in Brooklyn.

At the age of eighteen Mulford sold his first story, "John Barrett, " to Metropolitan magazine. It was a combination Western-detective story that shared first prize in a contest. Mulford had up to then never visited the West, but it was a region that fascinated him.

Little did Mulford realize that he was creating a classic Western character when he published a series of connected stories about a ranch, the Bar 20, in Caspar Whitney's Outing Magazine; in 1907 the stories were collected in the book Bar 20. They centered on a rancher named William Cassidy, a Texan who drank whiskey, swore, gambled, engaged in gunplay in the manner of Wild Bill Hickok and John Wesley Hardin, and (in one book) was married.

After Cassidy was wounded in the leg in a gunfight, he acquired the nickname "Hopalong. " The book proved so popular that the character was continued in many others: The Orphan (1908), Hopalong Cassidy (1910), Bar 20 Days (1911), The Coming of Cassidy (1913), The Man From Bar 20 (1918), The Bar 20 Three (1921), Hopalong Cassidy Returns (1924), The Bar 20 Rides Again (1926), Hopalong Cassidy Takes Cards (1937), and many more. The Cassidy series numbered twenty-eight books, but, in total, Mulford would write more than a hundred Western novels and short stories. He finally visited the region in 1920, but he never lived there and made only a few other visits. Yet his hardcover books sold more than 1. 5 million copies and were translated into German, Spanish, and Polish.

In 1934 Paramount Pictures decided to make a series of films with Cassidy as a hero. William Boyd was to be the villain, but he persuaded the producers to cast him as the hero instead. The films were most successful: sixty-six Hopalong Cassidy films were made. Mulford was appalled when he saw the result, calling the Cassidy in the movie "an absolutely ludicrous character. " In these films Hopalong was a pasteboard character; he dispensed justice with a smoking six-gun, did not drink, and rarely did more than smile at women or help one in distress. Mulford saw only six of the movies. Later he sold the rights to the character to William Boyd.

With the royalties he earned from his writings, Mulford in 1926 moved to Fryeburg, Maine. At Fryeburg, Mulford purchased fifty-five acres of land. On this estate, in addition to writing, he indulged his hobbies of building models of steamboats, stagecoaches, covered wagons, flatboats, and other modes of transportation, and of big-caliber revolver shooting. At one point he had the Colt firearms company specially make for him a pair of steel revolvers so strong as to allow chamber pressure that made marksmanship practical at 300 to 500 yards.

After World War II, Hopalong Cassidy became a great favorite not only in movies but also in the new medium of television, thereby earning Mulford hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties. A stay-at-home person with modest spending habits, he used the money to establish the Clarence E. Mulford Trust Fund, a charitable and educational foundation intended to benefit worthy persons in the area around Fryeburg. About this same time he grew so angry over high income taxes that he quit writing altogether.

In 1954 Mulford gave his manuscripts, books, and card files to the Library of Congress, which valued the materials at $20, 000 for tax purposes. Clarence E. Mulford died on May 10, 1956, of complications from surgery in Portland, Maine.

Achievements

Clarence Edward Mulford was a prolific writer, who wrote many works of fiction and nonfiction and the creator of the character Hopalong Cassidy. Clarence E. Mulford was extremely pleased that the Institute Littéraire et Artistique de France awarded him a laurette certificate, with gold medal, for his book The Round-Up (1933).