Kemo Sabe Unmasked
The most famous movie Ranger helps us recall how the iconic Texas Rangers shaped the Western film genre.
By: Henry Cabot Beck 11/01/2008
The history of the Texas Rangers is the history of Western movies.
When Broncho Billy Anderson told director Edwin S. Porter that he could ride like a Texas Ranger, he won the role of a bandit in Porter’s 12-minute, 1903 silent film The Great Train Robbery. The truth came out though when Anderson barely got on the horse, so his role in the film was reduced to playing an extra.
But that experience in one of the world’s first films convinced Anderson to make a career out of playing cowboys in the newfangled film business. As the first great Western star, he would go on to actually play a Ranger in the 1910 picture The Ranger’s Bride, followed the next year by The Border Ranger, reports Bill O’Neal in this year’s Reel Rangers (Eakin Press).
In the subsequent decades, as many as 10 Westerns per year featured Texas Rangers. Some actors, such as Tex Ritter and Charles Starrett, played Rangers year in and year out. Starrett played the role of a Ranger 15 times between 1936 and 1951.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the most famous of all Rangers, even if he was a Ranger in name only. He made his debut on radio in 1933, as a hero crafted for radio audiences of the Great Depression. Government had failed to protect the American people from what was the country’s worst financial experience. With America presently facing an economic crisis of unknown proportions, perhaps the Lone Ranger who cheered us 75 years ago will become our hero once again.
The Lone Ranger came on the scene as the sole survivor of an attack by the notorious Cavendish gang, an ambush which wiped out a number of dedicated Rangers, including his brother. His childhood friend Tonto, a Potawatomi originally and eventually seen as an Apache, rescued the wounded lawman and nursed him back to health, according to most versions of the story.
Most popular culture historians agree the Lone Ranger’s last name was Reid, because his brother’s last name was stated as such. What his first name was is up for grabs; the writers made a habit of fudging the details and from the beginning, radio and TV series avoided naming him. Yet a 1964 Gold Key Comics retelling of the origin of the Lone Ranger stated his given name as Dan Reid, while the 1981 feature film, The Legend of the Lone Ranger, called him John Reid. Then again, in the 2003 made-for-TV movie The Lone Ranger, his name is Luke Hartman, and he has a thing for Tonto’s sister Alope! Whoever the masked rider of the Plains really was, he was likely spinning in his grave when that travesty hit the small screens.
What is consistent in all the many incarnations—radio, novels, comics, serials, cartoons, movies and TV—is that the Lone Ranger wears a mask, rides a glorious white stallion named Silver and rarely ventures far from his faithful Indian companion, Tonto. He always fires silver bullets, which he also uses as a calling card, and lives by a strict code of ethics that allows him to shoot the guns out of people’s hands, but never to kill, which most sharpshooters will tell you is a pretty good trick—especially when firing from a galloping horse. And he could be seen, week after week, reared against a Western sky, the brassy “William Tell Overture” signaling the beginning of every new adventure.
The episodes usually ended when some hapless greenhorn would ask, “Who was that masked man?” But every local knew he was the Lone Ranger, and that he doggedly avoided any demonstrations of gratitude, always riding off in his snug powder-blue outfit with a hearty “Hi-Yo Silver!”
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