The Lone Ranger (TV series)

Series premise

Six Texas Rangers are ambushed and all are shot, apparently dead. One survivor crawls to a pool of cool water and is found by Tonto, a Native American. Tonto buries the five other rangers, including the survivor's brother, and makes a mask from the dead brother's vest. An empty sixth grave is created to suggest the survivor also died.

The lone ranger thereafter wears the black mask and travels with Tonto across Texas and the American West to help those oppressed by lawlessness. In the first episode, after recovering, they are attacked from a hill; Tonto distracts the attacker while the Lone Ranger shoots him and tries to climb the cliff, but slips at the episode's end. In the second episode, a silver mine provides funds for his lifestyle and material for his signature bullets.

Also in that episode, they find a white horse injured by a bison; the Lone Ranger shoots the buffalo and nurses the horse. Tonto says the horse's coat is "Like a mountain with snow - silver white," and the Ranger names him Silver. At the end of most episodes, someone asks who the masked man was, and the authority figure replies it was the Lone Ranger, who then yells "Hi-Yo Silver, away!" as he and Tonto ride off.

Production

George W. Trendle held the title of producer but hired veteran MGM film producer Jack Chertok to handle the television series. Chertok produced the first 182 episodes. The first 78 episodes were produced and broadcast for 78 consecutive weeks without breaks or reruns, then all 78 were rerun before new episodes were made. Filming took place in Kanab, Utah and California, much of it on the former Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, California, including the opening sequence where the cry of "Hi-yo Silver" is heard and Silver rears up beside a rock known as Lone Ranger Rock.

When 52 more episodes were needed, a wage dispute with Clayton Moore is speculated, though Moore said he never knew why he was dismissed; John Hart was hired to play the Lone Ranger. These 52 episodes aired sequentially followed by 52 weeks of reruns. Hart was not accepted in the role, and his episodes were not seen again until the 1980s. At the end of the fifth year, Trendle sold the Lone Ranger rights to Jack Wrather on August 3, 1954.

Wrather rehired Clayton Moore, and another 52 episodes were produced, again broadcast as a full year of new episodes followed by a full year of reruns. The final season had 39 episodes, the new industry standard. Wrather invested his own money to film in color, though ABC telecast only in black and white, and he went outdoors for action footage; otherwise the series was mostly filmed on a studio sound stage. Jack Chertok was replaced by producer Sherman A. Harris.

Home media

A color box set of the first 19 episodes from season five was issued in 2003 by Rhino Retro Vision and Classic Media. Mill Creek Entertainment later bundled the show with other Westerns like Annie Oakley and The Cisco Kid in the 2009 set Gun Justice. Classic Media then released a 75th Anniversary Edition later that year, followed by a 30-disc collector's set in 2013 containing all 221 episodes, though many were syndicated edits missing two to three minutes.