I like watching old TV shows. The old TV shows were mostly new when I first watched them, so they bring back memories of the more innocent times I lived in. Unfortunately, they also evoke feelings of sadness because they remind me of the America we’ve lost. While some of the old shows are hokey, they often tell strong, ageless stories that are interesting and entertaining. Unlike today, it was a time when we believed in good and evil, and we wanted good to win. Sadly, that’s gone. The waters have been muddied, and we’re no longer allowed to judge. There are no longer absolutes. When I grew up, a guy on the street was a bum, and you didn’t want to end up like him. Today, he’s a victim of society, and you’re supposed to blame yourself for the fact that he chose the path he took and now defecates on the streets while shooting heroin into his arm with taxpayer-funded needles. How dare you judge him. (Sorry, it drives me crazy to see what our country has become.) I’ll get back to the story)
Yesterday, while watching Amazon Prime, I came across the Lone Ranger TV series. I originally watched these as Saturday afternoon reruns since the original show aired before I was born, but I remembered really enjoying them when they were on.
So I grabbed a cup of coffee and a couple of Pepperidge Farm Double Chocolate Nantucket’s, plopped my backside on the couch, and watched season 1, episode 1 of The Lone Ranger. It was the origin story, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s a multi-part story, so there’s more to come, but what I saw was even better than what I remember watching when I was a child. While it wasn’t an adult show, it wasn’t really a kids’ show either. I think that anyone of any age could be entertained by it. I’ll probably watch the second episode this afternoon and look forward to watching the whole series over the next few months.
Watching the first episode brought back memories of what happened to Clayton Moore back in the 70’s.
Moore was the actor who played the Lone Ranger on the TV series, which ran from 1949 to 1957. The show had been off for around twenty years, and Moore, who was in his sixties, apparently wasn’t doing well financially. Unlike today, early TV shows did not pay residuals, and actors and actresses were often paid little for their work. To supplement his income, Moore would put on a black mask, a fake six-shooter, and make appearances at rodeos, home shows, and anywhere else he could find work. He had done this for a number of years, and I remember seeing pictures of him at some of the appearances. The pictures were kind of sad. He was a little old man in a costume, looking like a feeble version of the character he once played, but people loved it and got to see the hero they grew up with.
Along the way, the studio, Wrather Corporation, got wind of what was going on and, in 1979, obtained a court order prohibiting Moore from wearing the costume and appearing in public as the Lone Ranger. They claimed they were planning a Lone Ranger movie and feared that Moore in costume would tarnish the brand. To get around this, Moore substituted dark sunglasses for the black mask and, I imagine, the appearances were probably advertised as ‘Meet Clayton Moore, the man who played the Lone Ranger’ rather than just saying it was an appearance by the Lone Ranger. The lawsuit lasted 5 years, and Moore fought it all the way, refusing to give up. Simultaneously, the Wrather Corporation’s movie ‘The Legend of the Lone Ranger’ was released and was a box-office bomb, possibly in part because fans knew how Moore had been treated by them and refused to support it. Anyway, between the movie flopping and negative publicity surrounding Wrather Corporation, they finally decided to drop the lawsuit, and Moore went on to make appearances as the Lone Ranger until his death in 1999.
Good versus evil, and the good guy won, just like in the old TV shows. I like it that way.
