William DeWolf Hopper (March 30, 1858 – September 23, 1935) was an American actor, singer, comedian, and theatrical producer.

[1]: 10  Hopper was called Willie as a child, and then Will or Wolfie, but when he set out on an acting career he chose his more distinguished middle name as his stage name.

Eventually, he starred in more than thirty Broadway musicals, including Castles in the Air (1890), Wang (1891), Panjandrum (1893), John Philip Sousa's El Capitan (1896), and Reginald De Koven's Happyland.

[2] A lifelong baseball enthusiast and New York Giants fan, he first performed Ernest Thayer's then-unknown poem "Casey at the Bat" to the Giants and Chicago Cubs the day his friend, Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Tim Keefe had his record 19-game winning streak stopped, August 14, 1888.

To accompany a song with a baseball stanza, "Mr. Hopper enacts the pitcher, Mr. [Digby] Bell, with a bird cage on his head and boxing gloves on his hands, plays catcher, while Mme.

Also in 1889, Bell, Hopper and fellow McCaull Comic Opera Company actor Jefferson De Angelis were doing the following skit for their third encore in Boccaccio.

The slider tumbles Bell, and when he rises from the somersault all three yell out to the audience for judgment [a ruling], and go off kicking like Anson and [New York captain Buck] Ewing.

With an insatiable appetite for young actresses, he left a long trail of six wives and countless mistresses in his wake, he became known by the nickname "The Husband of His Country."

[citation needed]Hopper was a part of the Triangle Film Corporation, which he described as “the first great flourish” of a “prattling, infant industry”.