William Boyd

Born: June 5, 1895, Hendrysburg, Ohio
Died: September 12, 1972, (age 77), Laguna Beach, California

William Lawrence Boyd was born in Hendrysburg, Ohio, located 26 miles east of Cambridge, Ohio, he was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1918 he went to Hollywood where he became famous as a leading man in silent film romances with a yearly salary of $100,000.

What do you know about William Boyd? Try this quick quiz.

1. He went to Hollywood in 1919, already gray-haired. His first role was as an extra in what Cecil B. DeMille's 1920 film?

2. His career was derailed in the early 1930s when he was mistakenly identified as a William Boyd who had been arrested for public drunkenness after his own picture was mistakenly used in articles about the arrest. In fact, the culprit was William "Stage" Boyd, an actor who later portrayed the villain in the serial called "The Lost City."

• True or False

3. What was the first Hopalong Cassidy film?

4. Boyd purchased the rights to the character of Hopalong, as well as the rights to the 66 Hopalong Cassidy movies. In the early 1950s, he released the movies to television, where they became extremely popular.

• True or False?

5. What was the name of Hopalong Cassidy's beautiful white horse?

• Topper

• Silver

• Cummings

6. Boyd appeared as Hopalong Cassidy on the cover of numerous national magazines, What magazine did he appear on August 29, 1950

• Look

• Time

• People

7. In 1937, Boyd married for the fifth time. He remainned married until his death in 19972. What was his wife’s name?

• Grace Bradley

• Jean Helen Rogers

• Dawn Helton

8. Oddly, both and experienced their first big breaks in movies playing bearded villains in westerns starring Boyd. Who was NOT a major film star that appears in a film with Boyd?

• Clark Gable

• Robert Mitchum

• Harrison Ford

9. Boyd was Cecil B. DeMille's first choice for Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956). Boyd turned the role down, fearing the Hopalong Cassidy identification would hurt the movie.

• True or False?

10. In 1995, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. What was the year?

• 1995

• 1997

• 1999

William Boyd Answers

1. Why Change Your Wife?

2. True

3. Hop-Along Cassidy

4. True

5. Topper

6. Look

7. Grace Bradley

8. Harrison Ford

9. True

10. 1995