After the failed attempt at getting the interest to review the 1981 Lone Ranger movie that disappointed my inner child by boring me in the first half hour, I thought for tonight’s Showcase that bringing up the origin episode of the classic radio drama that introduced the masked man and his faithful companion would be a good idea. Over an hour of fruitless searches later I finally found out that the first episode wasn’t recorded. Back in the day they didn’t record radio shows. They were all done live because nobody knew people would want them archived years later. The earliest episode on record only exists because they wanted to use it in an episode of The Green Hornet. I guess Britt’s ancestor was a radio sensation in his time. Whatever the case I could bring you the radio show, and what episodes exist are on the Internet Archive and other places as they’re now public domain I guess.
However, I like origins, so why not the three episode origin of the Lone Ranger and his mission with Tonto from the version everybody thinks of, the 1949 series with Clayton Moore as the Ranger and Jay Silverheels as Tonto. It was collected into a movie but that’s not the one from the official Lone Ranger YouTube channel and I do prefer to use the official channels when they’re available to me.
So come back with us now to the days of the Old West and learn how a young Texas Ranger became the champion of law and order in those bygone days. Enjoy.
Maybe someday I will post something from the radio show but this is the version that kept the characters famous and what the good modern interpretations start from.
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