What I watched: The tenth episode of the first season of The Lone Ranger, a kid-oriented Western created by George W. Trendle. This episode starred Clayton Moore as the titular hero and Jay Silverheels as Tonto, with guest appearances by Jerome Sheldon, Johnny Berkes, Stanley Andrews, and Michael Whalen. This episode was directed by George Archainbaud (I believe the first time we don’t have George B. Seitz in the director’s chair) and written by Gibson Fox and Ande Lamb. “The Renegades” aired on Thursday, November 17, 1949 at 7:30 PM on ABC, and is available to watch on YouTube.
What happened: The Ranger and Tonto arrive at a generic-looking Western watering hole in search of a “rendezvous,” However, the Ranger finds that the water’s been poisoned, and a man on the cliffs above starts shooting at them. After a short and largely static gunfight, our heroic duo give chase, but ultimately lose him. Jeez, what a bunch of jamokes.
They go back into town and meet with an old guy named Dave Engels (Andrews). Engels is arguing with another man, wearing the titular high-heeled boots, about the water supply. Apparently this man, St. Ives (Sheldon) is very rich, but sensitive about his height. Naturally, a cowboy by the name of Hank (Berkes) starts making fun of him, so St. Ives starts whipping him with a bullrope. It’s at this point that the Lone Ranger and Tonto creep in. Ives is so angry that he threatens to take away Engels’ supply of clean water over the disrespect, and Engels forced to fire the cut-up Hank.
Hank is apparently working for tonight’s bad guy, a rather unmemorable chap named Monk (Whalen.) Monk’s aim is to stir up trouble between Engels and St. Ives, and he was responsible for the gunman at the waterhole. But conveniently, Tonto overhears the conversation and rides back to relate it to the Ranger. Elsewhere, Engels rides to St. Ives’ ranch and is turned away. He begins to suspect the rich man of scheming to poison the watering holes and buy his cattle on the cheap. Fortunately, the Ranger shows up before any morally ambiguous conflict can arise.
Back in town, Engels make out that he’s ready to give up, and sell all of his cattle to the actual bad guy Monk. (You know he’s bad because he has a mustache.) Before the deal can go, Hank holds Monk up at gunpoint for money, promising that he’ll reveal the scheme otherwise. He’s paid off, and Engels comes in and signs over the property. However, his acquiescence is all part of a plan by the Lone Ranger, which might be a huge twist if you’ve never seen this show before.
When they head out into the bar, a clearly drunken Hank asks for more money. Engels tries to shoot him, but the Ranger intervenes first. He presents evidence of Monk’s plan: to poison the waterhole, play on St. Ives’ vanity to stop him from selling clean water to Engels, and force the latter to sign over his land. This will allow Monk to cash out on a new railroad that’s coming through town.
Anyway, Monk feels free to gloat about his plan as he’s already signed the contract, but when he looks again he discovers that Engels’ signature is gone. We later learned that the Ranger swapped out Monk’s inkwell with disappearing ink, that trickster. This leads to a brief scuffle, in which St. Ives lays out Monk. He promptly decides that he doesn’t need the high-heeled boots any more, leaving behind gender ambiguity for good.
What I thought: Sometimes, particularly when it comes to children’s television, pointing out subtext seems awful redundant. Do I need to say, for instance, that St. Ives’ vanity and lack of toughness is associated with femininity through the device of the high heels? That he is ultimately able to make up for this perception of effeminacy by enacting righteous violence on a man who would compromise his class position? That this is the product of a culture whose ridicule of women is present even in stories without any women, and which is instead enacted on men who fail to measure up to gender ideals?
Slightly more interesting in “High Heels” is the even-more-submerged question of class. St. Ives is a rich man and a landowner, while Engels (despite his commie-sounding name) is petite bourgeois at best. But the conflict, it is ultimately revealed, is not between rich and poor. Rather, the two classes — which should naturally exist in harmony — are being manipulated against each other by a third party scheming to his own benefit. This is, of course, the story America would tell itself frequently throughout the next few decades — the story of the outside agitator, of shadowy men who were blamed for all of the nation’s internal conflicts. The outside agitator is, of course, the only way that the US could continue both mythologizing its working class as virtuous, honest (if someone slow) men while maintaining a corporate oligarchy.
As I’ve noted, these themes are not that difficult for adults to discern. But The Lone Ranger wasn’t aimed at adults, it was aimed at children. This initially might seem odd, as there are no children in the show — not even a cutesy kid sidekick for the young viewer to identify with. This was actually not that unusual for postwar children’s culture, especially media that aimed at older kids than the audience of a Howdy Doody or Mister Mistletoe. The radio serials and comic books that were popular among prepubescent boys typically starred hyper-masculine adult men, from Superman to The Shadow. Boys watched these type of stories not to empathize with the protagonists, but to idolize them. It would still be a few years before the teenager emerged as a subject in popular culture, and years more until Stan Lee and Steve Ditko would conceive of making one the protagonist of a pulp story.
Even so, it’s hard to imagine kids getting a whole lot of enjoyment out of an episode like this. The story revolves around a shady business deal, and while the initial moments of the episode promise action, the climax of the episode consists of a man not signing a contract we thought he did. The thrills are not exactly visceral. Maybe the kids were really invested in 19th-century land values, I don’t know. Or maybe this was just the only thing on TV that wasn’t boring grown-ups singing.
Coming up next: Boring grown-ups singing.
The Eternal Couch Potato 