Clayton Moore - The Lone Ranger

Clayton Moore - The Lone Ranger

Clayton Moore, actor who played the Lone Ranger on television, was born 109 years ago today. Moore was the Lone Ranger from 1949-1951 and 1954-1957.

Born in Chicago, he became a circus acrobat by age eight and appeared at the Century of Progress exposition in Chicago in 1934 with a trapeze act. As a young man, Moore worked successfully as a John Robert Powers model. Moving to Hollywood in the late 1930s, he worked as a stunt man and bit player between modeling jobs.

Moore was an occasional player in "B" westerns and the lead in four Republic Studio cliffhangers, and two for Columbia.

He served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II and made training films (Target - Invisible and others) with the First Motion Picture Unit.

Moore's career advanced in 1949, when George Trendle spotted him in the Ghost of Zorro serial. As creator-producer of The Lone Ranger radio show (with writer Fran Striker), Trendle was about to launch the television version. Moore landed the role.

Moore trained his voice to sound like the radio version of The Lone Ranger, which had then been on the air since 1933, and succeeded in lowering his already distinctive baritone even further.

With the first notes of Rossini's "William Tell Overture" and actor Gerald Mohr's "Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear ... ," Moore and co-star Jay Silverheels, in the role of Tonto, made television history as the stars of the first Western written specifically for that medium.

The Lone Ranger soon became the highest-rated program to that point on the fledgling ABC network and its first true hit - earning an Emmy nomination in 1950. Moore starred in 169 episodes of the television show.

After two successful years presenting a new episode every week, 52 weeks a year, Moore had a pay dispute and left the series. Eventually the show's producers came to terms and rehired Moore.

He stayed with the program until it ended first-run production in 1957. He and Jay Silverheels also starred in two feature-length Lone Ranger motion pictures. After completion of the second feature, The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold in 1958, Moore embarked on what would be 40 years of personal appearances, TV guest spots and classic commercials as the legendary masked man.

Silverheels joined him for occasional appearances during the early 1960s. Throughout his career, Moore expressed respect and love for Silverheels.

In 1979, the owner of the Ranger character, Jack Wrather, obtained a court order prohibiting Moore from making future appearances as The Lone Ranger. Wrather anticipated making a new film version of the story, and did not want the value of the character being undercut by Moore's appearances.

Also, Wrather did not want to encourage the belief that the 65-year-old Moore would be playing the role in the new picture. This move proved to be a public relations disaster.

Moore responded by changing his costume slightly and replacing the Domino mask with similar-looking Foster Grant wraparound sunglasses, and by counter-suing Wrather. He eventually won the suit, and was able to resume his appearances in costume, which he continued to do until shortly before his death.

Moore was so identified with the masked man that he is the only person on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, as of 2006, to have his character's name along with his on the star, which reads, "Clayton Moore - The Lone Ranger."

He was inducted into the Stuntman's Hall of Fame in 1982 and in 1990 was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Clayton Moore died on December 28, 1999, in a West Hills, California, hospital after suffering a heart attack at his home in nearby Calabasas. He was 85.

Photo by Mary Ellen Mark