You didn't have many B movie cowboy heroes ever appear in a suit and tie. John Wayne did it in the following year's picture "Dakota", where it suited his profession as a gambler and businessman. William Boyd looks quite dapper in his well tailored suit and tie in this one, until he falls into that oil slick posing as a mud hole. You have to give the guy credit for taking that dive, he sure came out a mess.All in service to the story of course, in which Hoppy poses as an East Coast Boston attorney who was ambushed in the opening sequence. Hoppy and his pals Jimmy (Jimmy Rogers) and California (Andy Clyde) ride in to make the save, but not before attorney James Corwin (Nelson Leigh) got shot for his trouble by bad guy Sam Miller (Frances McDonald). Unless my hearing is worse than I thought, it sounded to me like Sam's last name was Miller, but in the credits he's listed as 'Nolan'. You can judge for yourself.The story is a typical one for Westerns of the era. Greedy town attorney (are there any other kind?) J.K. Trimble (Russell Simpson) is calling in loans on local ranchers and repossessing their properties when they fail to make a payment. The primary reason, as mentioned above, is the fact that most of the land around contains oil deposits, which the astute Hopalong Cassidy recognizes as the mineral resource that's making John D. Rockefeller a wealthy man. Trimble's principal henchman is Ace Maxson (Don Costello), who gets his due in the showdown shootout between Hoppy's good guys and the larcenous Trimble bunch. As for Trimble, well, let's just say he provided new meaning to the term 'oily' businessman.The action takes place in and around the Virginia Curtis (Mady Correll) Ranch in Glenby, Texas, but here's what I don't understand about the story. James Corwin was her cousin from Boston, and half owner of the ranch with Virginia. When he heard from Virginia about Trimble buying up the properties around her under suspicious circumstances, he decided to head West to help her out. My question is - why would he overshoot Texas and wind up near Prescott, Arizona, home of Hoppy's Bar-20 Ranch? The map of the trail Hoppy and his pals took traversed Arizona, New Mexico and Texas before ever arriving in Glenby!

I see reviews of Hopalong Cassidy movies that denigrate them and refer to them as "average" and "another oater." well, to the kids that sat in the movies on Saturday afternoons and ate salty popcorn, they were great entertainment. They saw Hoppy travel to the mountains of South Texas and never gave a thought to the fact there are no mountains in South Texas. It's as flat as a pancake. The cactus and mesquite trees abound there and not the Joshua trees from California such as you see in Texas Masquerade. None of that mattered to us. We saw a straight arrow hero who didn't even kiss a girl. Too mushy for us kids. He stood for what is right and we looked up to him. We need another Hoppy to ride into the lives of today's kids. Too bad those kind of heroes have vanished from the movies.

Texas Masquerade calls for William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy to masquerade as tenderfoot from Boston. He takes the place of a lawyer who is coming to visit relatives and take possession of half a ranch that is in his name.Some night riders have been trying to scare all the ranchers out of a certain Texas valley. Kindly old Russell Simpson has been lending folks money and then collecting on their properties when they can't pay back. Of course Simpson's behind it all, but the question is why he wants this land so badly.Hopalong Cassidy fans will enjoy Hoppy's time as an eastern dude and he's even got a knowledge of the law that fools Simpson for a bit. Of course in the end the bad guys are rounded up western style.

A gang of outlaws is burning out ranchers and then their front man is buying out the settlers at bargain prices. But when a pal of Hopalong's is killed, Cassidy goes to investigate, disguising himself as foppish, milk-drinking Bostonian to do so in an amusing comic turn.Boyd, a capable but bland actor was made for this sort of western, and given the series' start at Paramount, it had a level of gloss, both in the writing and production that almost all B westerns lacked. Veteran George Archimbaud directs and the cast includes the always excellent Andy Clyde, Russel Simpson as the lead villain, the almost forgotten J. Farrel MacDonald, and Mady Correll as the female lead -- not the love interest, since Hopalong never smoked, drank or paid attention to women. A pleasant way to kill an hour.