It was on today on some cable movie station. The very first TV episode, which according to my DirecTV info note, was aired September 15, 1949. I was eight months old. I didn’t see it. We didn’t have a TV anyway, until I was about 7.
I came in late, but a bad guy ambushes six Texas Rangers and thinks he has killed all of them. But one survives, though wounded, and drags himself to a spring (in the middle of the prairie?) and lies there mopping his face with his bandanna such that we never see his face.
An Indian (Native American to you) happens by and spots the wounded ranger. While the ranger is telling him about the ambush the Indian notices something around the man’s neck… it’s a medallion. “Wait,” says Tonto, “I know you! You’re Kemosabe!”
Turns out that when both men were kids, Tonto’s family were all killed by bad guys and the boy ranger (he wasn’t a ranger yet, of course, and in the flashback we DO get to see his face) found him and nursed him back to health. The boy ranger gave the Indian boy his horse, and the Indian gave him his ring, which the adult ranger man has turned into a medallion.
Tonto nurses the ranger back to health, and the ranger vows to fight bad men everywhere and make the West safe for habitation. He doesn’t want the man behind the ambush to know he survived, so they dig another grave, supposedly his. Tonto makes a black mask out of the vest of one of the dead rangers (who the surviving ranger says was his brother, last name of “Reed”). He will be The Lone Ranger and he says he will shoot if he has to, but never to kill. Tonto volunteers to be his sidekick (cause he doesn’t have any other offers), and the rest is history.
A made-for-TV adaptation of the original Lone Ranger radio show, broadcast on WXYZ in 1933:
If you’re interested in learning more, I read this book in high school, and it is excellent:
I highly recommend it.
Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger was one of my great childhood heroes. When I was four or five, I thought the show was just the bee’s knees, on the same level of high drama as “The Adventures of Superman.”
I remember seeing this back when I was a kid, but are you sure it was the real first episode? I thought it was a retcon, an origin story that was made and broadcast later on. (Perhaps that it because I saw it only after I has already been watching the show for some time.)
Also, was there a bit about how he somehow found a silver mine, from which he got the silver for his bullets, or was that from a different episode?
The Reid brothers owned a silver mine (this goes all the way back to the original radio scripts). The Lone Ranger did indeed use silver bullets to remind himself of the high cost of human life.
I’ve also heard that the original suggestion to use silver bullets came from Tonto, who said they would fly farther and straighter. Whether this was first mentioned in the radio shows or was added later, I can’t say.
According to Greg Bell on Sirius XM radio classics, Brit Reid is the great grand (something) of the Lone Ranger. Both originated on WXYZ radio in Detroit, and John Reid’s portrait (the Lone Ranger) is shown in the study of Brit Reed (the Green Hornet).
tv didn’t need a real strong background or story as long as each episode had horse riding and gun shooting.
that type of situation would often lead to super cowboy/detective/hero solving who stole the pie off some one’s windowsill.
on radio action scenes weren’t very strong or long. the same story could be recycled in both radio and tv by just changing the villain’s names; though tv could get away with this more effectively because the sets would show difference and so newness.
on radio the Lone Ranger some episodes would get involved in saving the country by preventing rejuvenation of the Civil War or Indian prevention of westward expansion. though being a children’s show you could get away with more (not Moore, he was on tv).
I was a huge fan of the Lone Ranger when I was a kid and I just happened to have watched the first few eps on Netflix a couple months ago. Tonto rescued the soon-to-be Lone Ranger after the ambush and nursed him back to health and I want to say that they had a hidden silver mine that a friend of the Reids was watching for them. Two things that I thought were interesting were that they never fully showed Moore’s face at any time – he was always covered in bandages or something has in the way to shadow his face until he finally donned the mask. The other thing is that LR starts bossing Tonto around pretty early and often in the story. Tonto nursed him back to health but then LR quickly had him doing stuff for him. I think it got better as the stories developed and the show probably was progressive for its time, show the tow to be closer to equal partners than other show might have, but boy did it stick out to me at the time.
Loved that show, along with Superman as a kid. There were also two Lone Ranger movies with Clayton Moore (the only Lone Ranger as far as I’m concerned). The Cisco Kid and Disney’s Zorro were pretty similar type shows as well, but not really as good. Both of those used a light comedic tone that I didn’t like so much. The old west and superheroes were pretty important aspects of my early life.
Supplies, not information. He was always sending Tonto into town to pick up supplies while he stayed behind to set up camp. And Tonto would always get the crap beaten out of him.
Another comic (possibly John Byner) once did a similar routine on (I think) the “Tonight Show.” The dialogue went:
LR: Tonto, I’ll stay here and set up camp. You go into town and get supplies.
T: Uhhhhhh, Tonto have better idea. * Tonto* stay here, set up camp. Kemo Sabe go into town, get supplies!
Byner also did a bit in which Tonto moonlighted as an interior decorator, and the Ranger was bitching about how he had set up camp. The people who owned the rights to the LR threatened to sue him if he ever did it again.
I used to listen to TLR on radio back in the day. Interesting to note that Clayton Moore trained his voice to sound like Brace Beemer, the voice of radio Lone Ranger. Beemer was quite well known for his portrayal, but I think many casual listeners today would assume that Moore was the radio voice, as well. Man, I loved the TV series and the original 1950s movie.
Yes, I know Cosby did a bit on the Lone Ranger (i.e., the one to which the above link leads).
The comic I saw on TV was not, however, Bill Cosby; in fact, he wasn’t even black. Granted, this was a long time ago, but I think I’d remember a little detail like that. The only one I can think of that it might have been is Byner, and the only talk shows I ever watched with any regularity were Johnny Carson’s and Steve Allen’s.
Whoever it was, someone was borrowing heavily from someone else.
Does remind me of Byner too. But I’ve mistaken others for Byner at times, Bill Maher in particular. I don’t think the originator of the joke can be identified, it’s a commonly exploited theme.
