THE LONE RANGER

The Lone Ranger is a fictional masked Texas Ranger who, with his Native American companion Tonto, fights injustice in the American Old West. The character has become an enduring icon of American culture.

He first appeared in 1933 in a radio show conceived either by WXYZ radio station owner George W. Trendle or Fran Striker, the show's writer. The show proved to be a huge hit, and spawned an equally popular television show that ran from 1949 to 1957, as well as comic books and movies. The title character was played on radio by George Seaton, Earle Graser, and most memorably Brace Beemer. 

The latest Lone Ranger movie featured Johnny Depp as the masked man's "faithful companion". Because of concerns regarding racism claims made against the movie, the Smithsonian magazine sent the director of the American Indian Museum and member of the Pawnee and Comanche tribes, Kevin Gover, to the movie. Here's what he thought: "I admit that I went to see 'The Lone Ranger' expecting to be disappointed and quite likely offended by the portrayal of Indians in the movie. … Johnny Depp’s Tonto isn’t offensive, just weird. Still, many of us were concerned that the movie would just be one more exercise in stereotyping Indians. Fortunately, “The Lone Ranger” does little harm in this regard, in my opinion. … The movie works self-consciously and a little too hard to overturn the old Hollywood stereotype of villainous Indians.”

But let's get back to radio. The first of 2,956 radio episodes of The Lone Ranger premiered on January 30, 1933 on WXYZ, a radio station serving Detroit, Michigan. Sources disagree on whether to credit station and show owner George W. Trendle or main writer Fran Striker with the concept. Elements of the Lone Ranger story had been used in an earlier series Fran Striker wrote for a station in Buffalo, New York.

In any case, the show was an immediate success. Though it was aimed at children, adults made up at least half the audience. It became so popular, it was picked up by the Mutual Broadcasting System radio network, and finally by NBC's "Blue Network", which in time became ABC.

The last new episode was broadcast September 3, 1954. Transcribed repeats of the 1952–53 episodes continued to be aired on ABC until June 24, 1955. Then selected repeats appeared on NBC's late-afternoon weekday schedule (5:30–5:55 pm Eastern time) from September 1955 to May 25, 1956.