On this date in 1949, The Lone Ranger TV show debuted with Clayton Moore as The Lone Ranger and Jay Silverheels playing Tonto.
I didn’t see it. I didn’t even see TV until 1951, and that was in a department store in Kansas City. I saw a Rinso White commercial. Amazing.
Remember the Lone Ranger radio program? “…when out of the past come the thundering hoof-beats of the great horse Silver. The Lone Ranger rides again!” It aired at five o’clock. Brace Beamer played the Ranger. One of my entomology professors at Kansas doted on the program. Ray Beamer (no relation) would dash out of Snow Hall right at five o'clock, when The Lone Ranger came on. His wife Lucy would pick him up in their car, with the radio already blaring away. She’d drive him home and go inside and turn on the radio there. Ray waited in the car until a commercial came on, then he’d race indoors so as not to miss anything. “Who WAS that masked man?”
The Lone Ranger I remember best was from the Saturday morning serials at the Rialto Theater in Kingsville, Texas. At least twelve adventures, each ending with the Lone Ranger in deadly peril. He always escaped the next Saturday morning. We kids would whoop and holler. And help the Ranger yell, “Hi-Yo Silver! Away!” He never killed the bad guys – always shot the guns out of their hands. And left a silver bullet behind, as a souvenir.
Now, there’s a role model that’s sadly lacking today.
Happy trails,
Dac
9/15/2009
“Nothing is more unjust or capricious than public opinion.” –
William Hazlitt