Goodbye, Kemo Sabe: A tribute to Clayton Moore

Monday, Jan. 3, 2000 | 9:53 a.m.

The Lone Ranger! "Hi Yo Silver!" A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty "Hi Yo Silver!" The Lone Ranger! "Hi Yo Silver, away!" With his faithful Indian companion, Tonto, the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains led the fight for law and order in the early West. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. The Lone Ranger rides again!

-- voice-over opening of the "Lone Ranger" television show, spoken with the "William Tell Overture" playing in the background.

Who was that masked man, you ask?

Clayton Moore, of course, the actor who turned the Lone Ranger into an American icon of goodness.

A heart attack last Tuesday did what no desperado could do in 221 television episodes and two feature films -- it killed the Ranger, silencing forever a strong voice for justice.

He was 85, but his ideals were timeless.

If Moore is not laid to rest in his beloved mask with the "William Tell Overture" playing in the background, then I think some sense of justice may have died with the man whose image astride a rearing white stallion is forever etched into the minds of those of us who were children in the '50s.

Clayton Moore, a former trapeze artist who was a film star in the 1930s and '40s, became the Lone Ranger with the airing of the first episode of the popular television series on ABC on Sept 15, 1949.

For eight seasons, until June 6, 1957, the Ranger and his faithful Indian companion, Tonto, played by Jay Silverheels, rode the West, ferreting out evildoers without ever killing anyone.

With his silver bullets, the Ranger chose to shoot the guns out of the hands of the bad guys or to subdue them with his fists.

Silverheels, who died on March 5, 1980, was the only person to portray Tonto.

Because of a contract dispute the Lone Ranger role was played for two seasons, 1952-54, by John Hart.

But it was Moore who was the Ranger, merging the fictional character with his own off-screen persona.

"Once I got the Lone Ranger role, I didn't want any other," Moore said in a 1985 Los Angeles Times interview. "I like playing the good guy." He said that as a child, "I wanted to be either a cowboy or a policeman. As the Lone Ranger, I got to be both."

For years after the television show ended, he continued to make appearances as the Lone Ranger.

It took the courts to make the Lone Ranger take off his mask, another thing the desperados failed to do during the long run of one of America's first television series.

In 1979 producers planning a new big-screen version of "The Lone Ranger" sued to force Moore to quite wearing the trademark mask.

The movie, released in 1981, bombed and in 1984 the court lifted the restraining order against Moore wearing the mask.

During the intervening five years, he wore wraparound sunglasses while he vigorously fought for the right to wear the mask that to him did not hide anything but rather revealed something -- something about truth, character, perseverance and justice.

"I'll wear the white hat the rest of my life," Moore said in 1985. "The Lone Ranger is a great character, a great American. Playing him made me a better person."

Perhaps watching him made all of us better for the experience.

In 1987 Moore's name was added to the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

That name is as synonymous with the Lone Ranger as silver bullets and a white "fiery horse with the speed of light" named Silver.

Moore, the son of a Chicago real estate developer, was largely retired in recent years, living in Calabasas, Calif.

He died of a heart attack in the emergency room at West Hills Hospital.

In his 1986 autobiography, Moore quoted "The Lone Ranger Creed!" by Frank Striker.

The creed was what his life came to mean after donning the famed black mask. It said, in part:

"... all things change but truth, and ... truth alone ... lives on forever."