The Lone Ranger

The Lone Ranger is an American Western television series that aired from 1949 to 1957, the first of the great television Westerns and the show that established the genre as a network staple for the next two decades. Clayton Moore stars as the masked former Texas Ranger who rides the frontier righting wrongs with his horse Silver and his faithful companion Tonto, played by Jay Silverheels. The character originated on radio in 1933, created by George Trendle and Fran Striker, and the television adaptation brought the masked hero to living rooms across America. The series was filmed on a low budget at the Iverson Movie Ranch in California, but the production had a sincerity and a sense of moral clarity that made it a phenomenon. Each episode ended with the Ranger riding off while a bystander asked, "Who was that masked man?" The early episodes from 1949, produced before the show's national syndication deal, were never copyrighted and entered the public domain.