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It's a pretty safe bet that you've never heard of Clarence E. Muford before, but you've surely heard of the Fryeburg resident's greatest creation - the gritty, tough talking cowboy Hopalong Cassidy.
At least he was gritty and tough talking in the novels; when he was brought to the silver screen in 1935, he became somewhat more upstanding (partly because he no longer had the limp, caused by being shot in the leg, that gave him his nickname), making a star out of William Boyd.
Hopalong Cassidy became the first TV western in 1949, and his popularity exploded - in no small part due to the amount of merchandising associated with his name. In 1950 alone, there was $70 million worth of merchandise bearing Hoppy's name - jackknives, bedspreads, soap, rollerskates, and of course, bread. (The word "swell" gets used three times in less than a minute, so you know it's gotta be good.)
If you've got 65 minutes to spare (and I hope you do - this is highly entertaining stuff), you can watch the original Man in Black doing his thing in this 1944 movie, The Lumberjack.
If you haven't got that much time, here's some fistfight footage, topped off by a mushroom cloud, and set to "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" by Elton John. (It works a lot better than it should...)
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