The Lone Ranger is gone.

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Posted by ROB T. from 162.10.138.197 on December 29, 1999 at 04:09:44:

This isn't exactly Indy-related but I just read this on the web and I wanted to comment.
Clayton Moore, who played the Lone Ranger on TV, has died. I've been a fan of Clayton's since long before there even was an Indiana Jones and this news really depresses me.
I read his autobiography last year, "I Was That Masked Man," and I recommend it to anyone who wants to read about a Hollywood figure whose life wasn't marred by sexual abuse and drug addiction.
Clayton Moore lived his life as the embodiment of the Lone Ranger Creed. I never got to meet the man but by all accounts he was always gracious to his fans and met everyone with a smile and a kind word.

Before playing the masked rider of the plains, Clayton starred in many of the old serials; the ones that later inspired the creation of Indiana Jones. I remember watching at least one of them on TV in the early eighties, "The Crimson Ghost," and this was the first time I'd ever seen Clayton without his mask or sunglasses. Clayton played one of the bad guys in "Crimson Ghost" and it was a good serial.
He also costarred with Louis Hayward and Joan Bennett in one of my favorite swashbucklers, "The Son of Monte Cristo." If you like Robin Hood, Zorro-type films I highly recommend it.

In the late-seventies Clayton was in a court fight to keep wearing the Lone Ranger mask in public. He lost and had to switch to wearing sunglasses at public appearances. Public outcry against the studio for their shabby treatment of their masked hero was so great that people refused to go see the movie "Legend of the Lone Ranger" and the movie bombed at the box office.

The same thing would probably happen now if Paramount tried to make an Indy film without Harrison Ford and came out before hand dissing Ford in the press as too old to play Indy.

I had a Lone Ranger doll as a kid and I later bought another one at a collectors show (I think my mom still has it).

Anyway, I just wanted to say goodbye to Clayton Moore. You will be missed.


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