What I watched: The fifteenth 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 Anne O’Neal, Joel Friedkin and Lester Sharpe. This episode was directed by George B. Seitz and written by Tom Seller. “Old Joe’s Sister” aired on Thursday, December 22, 1949 at 7:30 PM on ABC, and is available on YouTube
What happened: The Ranger and Tonto head to Harrisburg, where “two of the most hardened criminals in the state” are awaiting trial for murder. This week’s villains, Biff (Sharpe) and Cactus, look like two middle-aged guys who might be hanging around at your local hardware store. They pull the old fake-stomachache trick to lure the guard in, and escape from jail. So it’s up to our heroic duo to track them down.
The two crooks end up at an isolated cabin, the home of a recluse known as Old Joe (Friedkin). Joe is rumoured to have a hidden stash of gold. He welcomes in Biff and Cactus, and seems very friendly for a hermit. This is apparently because his sister Abigail is coming down from St. Louis to live with him. He hasn’t seen her in thirty years. They decide to shoot him and have Biff impersonate Old Joe. This leaves Cactus out of the plan, so Biff shoots him too. Man, there’s no loyalty among Lone Ranger villains.
Abigail (O’Neal) shows up, dressed up as a fancy dowager and singing “Oh Susannah.” The Ranger and Tonto find her, and she has a rifle trained on them. They chuckle and explain that they’re only masked vigilantes, and go on the way. Our heroes head to the cabin and find Biff in his guise as Old Joe. Biff pretends that he thinks the Ranger is in league with the crooks. The duo is tricked, and heads out.
Abby arrives at home, and notes that her brother’s appearance doesn’t quite match her memory. She tricks him into revealing that he’s a fake by making him agree with phony claims from his letter, then tries to threaten him with the gun. Unfortunately, she is an old woman, so still gets over powered.
The Ranger comes back to save the day by having a goody fight with Biff, and ultimately knocks him out. Abigail is thrilled by the fistfight, evidently not concerned by the death of her brother. But everything’s okay! Old Joe apparently survived the gunshot wound, and the two family members are reunited. The Ranger and Tonto rush off, missing a nice home-cooked meal.
What I thought: Women have been pretty scarce on The Lone Ranger thus far, and the ones that have shown up have typically just been motivation for some lovelorn cowboy to get his life on the right track. So it’s very refreshing to see a female character who is no one’s object of desire but still gets to kick some ass and actually figure into the climax of the plot.
Abigail is a character who initially comes off as the type of naive high-society carpetbagger that pops up from time to time in the series, but eventually turns out to be fun and feisty, and briefly appears even smarter than the Ranger. I couldn’t find much information on O’Neal, but she did a great job livening up an otherwise pretty rote episode.
Indeed, much of this installment is old hat, with yet another pair of villains and yet another instance of impersonation that only our heroes can see through. Even the episode seems to admit to its unoriginality — the villains’ sore-stomach jailbreak is repeatedly described as an “old trick.” This kind of lampshading is the writer’s flush of embarrassment — if you’re forced to use a groan-inducing cliche, then at least have the decency to make fun of yourself. Even the show’s young audience had probably seen this trope once or twice.
But then again, maybe that’s the point. Maybe my expectations for novelty are deeply anachronistic. People turned to Westerns because they wanted something familiar, because they wanted to know everything that was going to happen. Even from a fairly early point, the genre was self-reflexive, telling stories about a nostalgic West that was always already vanishing. And hey, kids love repetition more than anyone.
One more thing: In my last entry, I joked about investigating the homosexual subtext between The Lone Ranger‘s heroic duo. However, I must regret to report that the Ranger and Tonto are definitely not gay. Indeed, it’s striking that the two have an absence of even affection — they perpetually act like co-workers that just met each other. There are no tender moments under the stars, no flights of panic when the other one gets shot. Outside of the familial home, it would appear that homosocial contact had to be rigorously chaste.
Coming up next: Christmas is finally here, and with it the first of many renditions of A Christmas Carol.
The Eternal Couch Potato 