LIFE LESSONS | AGING
The Lone Ranger No One Knew Until a Photograph Revealed the Truth
The photographer was Mary Ellen Mark & the great unmasking occurred when actor Clayton Moore was 78-years-old
Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when actor Clayton Moore played the Lone Ranger on TV. Between 1949 and 1957, the famous masked man left more than a silver bullet at the end of each episode as he rode off into the sunset, shouting, “Hi-yo, Silver!”
To many of the young fans who helped turn the show into the highest-rated television program of the 1950s, he also left a desire to be the Lone Ranger. Few of those viewers knew or suspected that becoming the Lone Ranger was Clayton Moore’s desire too.
A turn into the light
As desires go, becoming the Lone Ranger is not such a bad thing. His is a comeback story par excellence.
The sole survivor of an ambush attack on a posse of six Texas Rangers, he is left for dead until a Native American named Tonto happens upon the tragic scene. Recognizing the survivor as John Reid, the man who saved his life when they were both children, Tonto nurses him back to health.
