LEGENDARY HEROES #11

THE LONE RANGER

The Lone Ranger was a creation of George Trendle, radio station manager of Detroit's WXYZ, and Fran Striker, a writer at the station.  The Lone Ranger was aired at WXYZ on the evening of January 31, 1933.  The show was an immediate success among children and adults alike.  By 1939 the show was being listened to weekly by 20 million Americans.  It became so popular that it was picked up by the Mutual Broadcasting System and on May 2, 1942, was purchased by NBC's Blue Network that eventually became ABC.  It aired at 7:30 p.m. and the show's announcer urged the audience  to "return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear' followed by "From out of the west with the speed of light and a hearty 'Hi-yo, Silver!' The Lone Ranger rides again."  The theme music has become inseparably associated with the radio series, and was the finale of Rossini's William Tell Overture.  General Mills, maker of Cheerios, Wheaties, and Kix, sponsored the show and offered premiums like the Lone Ranger Six-Shooter Ring and the Lone Ranger Deputy Badge.  In 1947 Cheerios offered a Lone Ranger frontier town in the form of buildings printed on the back side of cereal boxes that could be cut out and collected.

The origin story of the Lone Ranger was that he was the sole survivor of a group of six ambushed Texas Rangers.  The Rangers, led by Captain Dan Reid, are pursuing the Butch Cavendish outlaw gang and are lured into a canyon where they are ambushed.  Later, a Native American named Tonto comes upon the gruesome scene and finds one of the Rangers, Capt. Reid's younger brother John, still alive.  Tonto nurses him back to health.  John Reid tells Tonto that he intends to hunt down Cavendish and his men and bring them all to justice.  To conceal his identity he wears a black mask and the legend is born.  Throughout the radio and subsequent TV series, the Lone Ranger was never seen without his mask or a disguise.  The Lone Ranger never drank, smoked or swore and always used proper grammar.  When forced to use his guns he never shot to kill but rather to disarm, and he verified his identity by presenting a silver bullet.  Most shows ended with someone asking "Who was that masked man?" and in the distance radio listeners would hear the Lone Ranger call "Hi-yo, Silver!  Away!"  The radio series ran for 2956 episodes and ran from 1933-1956.

Novels of the Lone Ranger began being published in 1936.  Gaylord Dubois wrote the first book, but the next 17 editions were written by creator Fran Striker with the last book published in 1956.  Beginning in 1935 the first of 13 Big Little Books were published by Whitman.  King Features distributed a comic strip to newspapers from September 1938 to December 1971 that was drawn by Charles Flanders.  In 1981 the New York Times Syndicate launched a second Lone Ranger comic strip drawn by Russ Heath that ran until 1984.  In 1948 Western Publishing, a partner of Dell Comics, began a comic book series that lasted for 145 issues.  Initially the comic books reprinted the newspaper strips but began original content with issue #38 in August 1951 with art by Tom Gill.  Tonto got his own spinoff in 1951 that lasted for 31 issues, and the Lone Ranger was so popular that even his horse Silver got his own comic book starting in 1952 and lasting for 34 issues.  The Lone Ranger comic book series ended in July 1962.  That same year Western Publishing ended its association with Dell Comics and began its own comic book imprint Gold Key Comics.  In 1964 they began their own Lone Ranger series that ran until 1977.

In 1938 Republic pictures released a Lone Ranger movie serial followed by a sequel in 1939 titled "The Lone Ranger Rides Again".  But the big success of the franchise came with the TV series that ran from 1949-1957 for a total of 221 episodes.  Clayton Moore became the best known portrayer of the Lone Ranger, and his sidekick Tonto was played by Jay Silverheels who was a Mohawk from the Six Nations Indian Reserve in Ontario, Canada.  While the series ran on TV Moore and Silverheels appeared in two feature films that were released to theaters in 1956 and 1958.  After the series ended Clayton Moore continued to make public appearances as the Lone Ranger and in 1979, the new owners of the rights to the character, filed a restraining order that prevented Moore from wearing the iconic mask.  Moore got around this by wearing a pair of Foster Grant wraparound sunglasses.  Moore filed a countersuit and eventually won the right to wear the mask again.  One of the funniest stories I've ever heard involves Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger as told by comedic actor Jay Thomas on the David Letterman talk show.  The telling of the tale became an annual event on Letterman's Christmas show.  I cannot do the story justice by attempting to retell it here so I urge you to seek it out on YouTube.  In the following years networks have tried unsuccessfully to launch new TV series, and really bad movies have been made.  Nothing could compete with the Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels series and films.

Of interesting note is the moral code that the Lone Ranger lived by, as written by Fran Striker in one of the early novels.  "I believe that to have a friend, a man must be one.  That all men are created equal and that everyone has within himself the power to make this a better world.  That God put the firewood there but that every man must gather and light it himself.  I believe in being prepared physically, mentally, and morally to fight when necessary for what is right.  That a man should make the most of what equipment he has.  That this government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall live always.  That men should live by the rule of what is best for the greatest number.  That sooner or later...somewhere...somehow...we must settle with the world and make payment for what we have taken.  That all things change but truth, and that truth alone lives on forever.  And I believe in my creator, my country, and my fellow man."  Pretty wise words, even by today's standards.