Brings Legend Alive for Loyal Fans : Clayton Moore Still Rides as Lone Ranger

The familiar strains of “The William Tell Overture” resounded from a pipe organ as the spotlight focused on the tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a black mask as he entered the auditorium through the rear of the darkened theater.

Who was that masked man? There was really no need to ask.

It was Clayton Moore, of course, the actor whose name has been all but synonymous with the legendary Lone Ranger for more than 35 years. As Moore strode down the aisle, twirling his Colt .45s and shooting blanks into the air, the audience of several hundred fans broke into enthusiastic applause.

Trim and fit at 71, Moore still embodies the public’s image of the masked crusader for law and order, truth and justice. The blue eyes peering through the black mask are older, but they twinkle just as loyal fans of the Lone Ranger remember. The booming voice is unmistakable.

“A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty ‘Hi yo, Silver,’ ” Moore began as he recited the show’s traditional introduction to the delighted audience. “The Lone Ranger rides again. 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 western United States. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. Out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse Silver. The Lone Ranger rides again.”

‘I Still Get Chills’

“Every time I say that, I still get chills up and down my spine,” he said.

During the show, Moore talked about the Lone Ranger legend, Silver and Tonto. He also told the kids to eat their Cheerios, the cereal that sponsored the Lone Ranger TV show. And he lectured them on the dangers of playing with guns.

“The Lone Ranger never shot to kill, only to disarm and capture,” Moore said. “After he caught the bad guy, he never waited around for thanks, either.”

He patiently autographed pictures for almost two hours after his stage appearance, personalizing each one with the fan’s name.

“I’ve waited my whole life for this,” said a middle-aged woman, who was choking back tears as Moore signed an autograph for her.

During an interview between two shows recently in Portland, Ore., Moore said children “need heroes like the Lone Ranger. Heroes are very important. They teach kids about honesty, law and order and respect.”

Guards His Identity

At home in Calabasas, Moore closely guards his Lone Ranger identity. He grants only telephone interviews from his home and will talk little about his private life. Above all, he never allows himself to be photographed without his mask.

Before the performance at the Roseway Theatre in Portland, however, a more relaxed Moore granted an interview sans mask. Nibbling on a sandwich, he talked about his early life, his role as the Lone Ranger and his much-publicized court battle over the right to wear the mask. Often, he talked about himself and the Lone Ranger character interchangeably.

“Once I got the Lone Ranger role, I didn’t want any other,” Moore said. “I like playing the good guy. I’ll wear the white hat the rest of my life. The Lone Ranger is a great character, a great American. Playing him made me a better person.”

He added quietly, “I never want to take off this white hat again. When I take off to that big ranch in the sky, I still want to have it on my head.”

Moore has a youthful appearance despite his age, although he admits he has lost most of his hair and wears a hairpiece. Although Silver has been dead since 1973, Moore said he still likes riding horses and that he either jogs, swims or walks fives miles a day to stay in shape.

‘Quiet, Simple Life’

Moore and his wife of 43 years, former actress Sally Allen, live in a modest town-house condominium and associate mostly with old cowboy actors and others who worked in early Westerns. Their daughter, Gwen Moore, 27, is a fashion consultant. His wife and daughter never give interviews, preferring to remain out of the public eye, he said.

“I lead a quiet, simple life,” Moore said. “I don’t have a fancy ranch or anything like that. I don’t think of myself as a star. I never did.”

Occasionally, fans find their way to his home. Although intensely private, he talks to them because “without the fans, I would be nothing.”

Moore frequently is out of town playing the Lone Ranger role. He said Clayton Moore Productions, which he runs out of his home, receives countless invitations for public appearances but that he is selective about the ones he accepts.

Last weekend, he spent Friday night through Sunday afternoon in Portland.

This weekend, Moore is in Omaha. After that, his schedule includes appearances in Phoenix, Raleigh, Calif., Las Vegas and El Paso, among others. Moore said he rides in parades, performs at shopping mall openings, county fairs, western roundups, rodeos and corporation events, and gives after-dinner speeches. Closer to home, he will serve as grand marshal of El Monte’s annual Christmas parade on Dec. 7.

In Demand Elsewhere

He makes few Southern California appearances, Moore said, because the Lone Ranger character is more in demand in the South, Midwest and East. Earlier this year, he traveled to cities in North Carolina, Washington, Tennessee, Louisiana, New York, Massachusetts and Illinois.

Moore, who said he has made some wise investments over the years, would not reveal how much he is paid for appearances. He said he receives no royalties from the Lone Ranger TV series now being rerun in many cities over a cable television network.

“The reason I’m doing all these personal appearances is to thank the public for their support,” Moore said.

He said he especially is grateful to the fans who stood behind him during his five-year court battle to regain the right to wear the famed Lone Ranger mask.

In 1979, Wrather Corp., which owned the rights to the Lone Ranger character, obtained a court order forbidding Moore to wear the mask. The company wanted to make a new Lone Ranger movie starring a younger man, actor Klinton Spilsbury. Moore said he has a petition signed by thousands of fans--actually, Moore said a million--protesting the firm’s action. Fans wrote letters of outrage to newspapers. Several small city councils, including those of Carson and Vallejo, passed resolutions supporting him.

Letters of Support

“The names of Clayton Moore and the Lone Ranger have been synonymous for most of my life,” one letter published in the Los Angeles Times read. “To ask Clayton Moore to turn in his mask is like asking all the moms in America to quit baking apple pie.”

“Have those fools at Wrather Corp. never heard that one simply doesn’t spit into the wind, or pull the mask off the Lone Ranger?” another fan wrote.

“The Legend of the Lone Ranger,” the movie Wrather made in 1981, was a flop at the box office. Spilsbury’s double, dressed as the Lone Ranger, was booed as he rode in that most American of traditions, the 1981 Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena.

Moore, who during the court battle wore sunglasses that resembled a mask, regained the right to wear his treasured Lone Ranger mask last December when the court dropped the restraining order Wrather had obtained.

“It was a great Christmas present,” he said. “I don’t carry any animosity toward the company, though. They’re a large corporation in business to make money. I do think I could have made that movie. I would have liked to have been in one more Lone Ranger film.”

For the Portland shows, Moore wore the costume he made famous--black mask, white hat, powder blue shirt and pants, gun belt with silver bullets and twin holsters, red bandanna and cowboy boots.

Tribute to Silverheels

“I only wish Jay Silverheels--Tonto--could be here with us,” Moore told the fans at Roseway Theatre. “We lost him five years ago. I first shook hands with him in 1949 when we began making the Lone Ranger television series together.

“Tonto and I were the best of friends. We stayed friends after we stopped shooting pictures in 1956. He was a great man and a great American, just like the Lone Ranger.”

Moore was delivered to both the afternoon and evening performances in a chauffeur-driven limousine. The date, Sept. 14, coincidentally fell on his 71st birthday. Rosie and Luanna Herald, the show’s organizers and owners of Old Weird Herald’s, a nostalgia shop, decorated the lobby with an elaborate birthday cake and Lone Ranger memorabilia that have now become collectors items, such as rare comic books, movie posters, studio publicity photos and a plastic statue of the Lone Ranger on Silver, which originally sold for $3.98 and is now worth $150.

Moore’s Portland performances attracted nearly 1,000 fans. Some, such as Terry and Kay Klepy of Forks, Wash., and their teen-age daughters, Julie and Missy, drove several hundred miles to attend the event. The Klepys brought several vintage comic books for Moore to autograph. Terry Klepy, the collector in the family, said he has about 50 Lone Ranger comic books and all three models of the plastic statues of Clayton Moore and his horse.

Moore told the audience, among other things, that he trained Silver himself and did all his own horseback riding for the TV shows, that he is against the use of illegal drugs because taking them is un-American, that he thinks there is too much violence and slang in movies and TV today and that neither he nor the Lone Ranger drinks, smokes or swears.

Plenty of Heroes

“But who do the kids of today have to look up to as heroes?” someone asked.

“Heroes?” Moore said. “We have a lot today. Your dad, the police, doctors, people like that, they’re all heroes. The good guy in the white hat will never die.”

How does he feel about prayer in the schools?

“I’m all for prayer,” Moore said. “But I never discuss politics. Next question.”

A fan asked what the future holds for Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger.

“I’d like to do one more movie,” he said. “I’d like to hand my mask over to a younger man and ride off into the sunset yelling, ‘Hi yo, Silver.’ ” He added that he also wants to write a book about his years as the Lone Ranger.

He said his interest in cowboys dates back to his younger days in Chicago as the oldest son of a real estate developer.

“My heroes were Tom Mix, William S. Hart, George O’Brien, stars like that,” Moore said. “At that time, I wanted to be either a cowboy or a policeman. As the Lone Ranger, I got to be both.”

Fan of Radio Show

In 1933, when the Lone Ranger radio show went on the air, he said, he became an avid listener.

Before leaving Chicago, Moore performed in a trapeze circus act for several years. As a teen-ager, he practiced acrobatics, tumbling and swimming at the Illinois Athletic Club, where one of his instructors was Johnny Weissmuller, who later played Tarzan.

He became a John Robert Powers model after an injury ended his circus career. Then, he said, he headed west to Hollywood. He first starred in movie serials such as “The Perils of Nyoka” and “G-Men Never Forget.” His first masked role was in “The Ghost of Zorro.”

Moore interrupted his acting career to serve three years in the Army Air Force during World War II.

After his discharge, Moore played a few bad guys in black hats in films with stars such as Gene Autry, Gilbert Roland (the Cisco Kid), Roy Rogers and Charles Starrett (the Durango Kid). Then came his big break. In 1949, Moore won the coveted Lone Ranger role over about 75 other actors. When George Trendle, the show’s producer, offered him the role, Moore said he told him, “Mr. Trendle, I am the Lone Ranger.”

Location Sites

The first scene of the series was shot in Bronson Canyon in Hollywood--30 miles from his present home, Moore said. Much of the show was filmed at Corriganville and Iverson’s Ranch, two Western movie sets in the mountains above Chatsworth.

“There is a Lone Ranger rock at Iverson’s,” Moore said. “It’s the rock you see in the beginning of the show where Silver rears high into the air.”

Moore said the Lone Ranger show was a pioneer in the television industry because it was the first Western filmed for television. The other half-hour cowboy series broadcast at the time originally had been movies that were cut into segments, he said.

“We filmed 15 shows at a time, one every two days,” Moore recalled. “They didn’t have idiot cards like they do today. I had to work real hard to learn my lines.”

Moore said he starred in two feature-length Lone Ranger movies and 169 half-hour television shows during the show’s eight seasons. He did not appear in the series one year.

“In 1952,” he said, “I had a little contractual problem with the corporation that owned the Lone Ranger. I just wanted a little star on my dressing room door. Just a little one. We couldn’t come to an agreement. So, they got a gentleman by the name of John Hart to play the part. Well, John tried. He’s a wonderful gentleman and I’m not putting him down at all. But I just don’t think he took the character to heart as much as I did.”

One-Night Stands

After the television series ended and he took his act on the road, Moore said he at first did one-night stands.

“They were the hardest--driving our horses from town to town, night after night,” he recalled. “The first thing we’d do when we’d get to the next town, even if it was 7 a.m., was bed the horses down. The horses always came first.”

In those days, Silverheels, who also had his own Indian show, joined him in some of his performances, Moore said.

Through the years, Moore said, youngsters’ reactions to the Lone Ranger have remained pretty much the same.

He said they regard him as “a real hero. And they’ve always treated me with respect. In all my years of personal appearances before hundreds of thousands of kids, never once has one of them tried to grab my mask. They have complete respect for the mask, the costume and the silver bullets. All symbolize justice to them.”