#The original lone ranger movie movie#
#The original lone ranger movie tv#

Being the Lone Ranger was now his full-time job. Hollywood grew tired of westerns, as it does every now and then.īy the time Wrather, along with producers Walter Coblenz and Martin Starger, began putting together a new Lone Ranger film in 1979, Clayton Moore had been retired from acting for nearly twenty years. But inevitably, the character fell out of fashion.

#The original lone ranger movie tv#

He took the Lone Ranger off TV and brought him to movies-1956’s The Lone Ranger, followed by 1958’s The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold. But Wrather hated dealing with the network it was no fun. Wrather immediately rehired Moore, and he even ponied up some of his own money to film the new season in color, using real-world locations. But ABC had recently replaced its star, Clayton Moore, with the actor John Hart, which had proved to be very unpopular. When Wrather snapped up the rights to The Lone Ranger in 1954, the story of the nobly rogue Texas lawman had been a TV hit for five seasons. You could say Wrather was a bit of an impulse shopper a 1984 UPI obituary about Wrather quotes him summarizing his entrepreneurial philosophy thusly: “I never really went into a business that I, personally, and my wife couldn’t have some fun out of.” He cranked out six movies in just eight years, snapped up a swath of local TV and radio stations, and even took over the “elevator music” company Muzak. After a stint in World War II, Wrather took his considerable coffers to Hollywood, where he married Nancy Drew star Bonita Granville and set to prospecting in the fields of show business, sinking his money into whatever struck his fancy. He could afford to do pretty much as he pleased he assumed control of his father’s oil company when he was still in his twenties. The Amarillo-born, Tyler-bred Wrather was an adventurous sort who worked summers as a roughneck and wildcatter while he attended the University of Texas at Austin. The film’s driving force, Jack Wrather, was accustomed to striking out on his own. And the story behind its failure is one of Texas-size hubris.

#The original lone ranger movie movie#

The Legend of the Lone Ranger is a movie so determined to reinvent the western hero that it all but ruins him. For a movie about character who famously never shot to kill, it’s strangely hyper-violent. All of them are as plainly evident now as they were when critics first roasted it forty years ago. The 1981 flop has plenty of other issues, which you can see for yourself streaming on Amazon or Pluto TV.

Everything you need to know about The Legend of the Lone Ranger is this: it takes an hour before he even puts on his mask.