What I watched: The eighth episode of the second season of The Lone Ranger, a kid-friendly Western created by George Trendle and starring Clayton Moore as the titular hero and Jay Silverheels as Tonto. “Thieves’ Money” was written by Curtis Kenyon, directed by John H. Morse, and featured guest stars John Doucette, Charles Watts and David McMahon. “Drink of Water” aired on Thursday, October 26, 1950 on ABC at 7:30 pm., and is available on YouTube.
What happened: A gang of crooks is examining some counterfeit money, marveling at the accuracy of the forgery by the ringleader Pierre Dumont (like the TV channel). However, they’re arrested by treasury agent Jim Collins (McMahon), who promises them they will be mistreated in prison. He was able to follow Dumont because of his fancy lad affectations, including wearing gasp cologne. But there’s one more crook, who shoots Cobb in the back. Dumont hatches a plan to impersonate Collins to keep the feds off their trail.
Men, what is stopping you from dressing like this?
The Ranger and Tonto finally ride into the story looking for a place to camp, where they find Collins’ body with Dumont’s papers on him. The Ranger has met with Dumont before, and notices that the body doesn’t match his memory. In town, Dumont’s impersonation has fooled the local sheriff, Andrews (Watts). The Ranger and Tonto arrive in the office, and act friendly with Dumont, handing over the papers and asking him to identify the body.
In the morgue, Collins gives a positive ID. The Ranger and Tonto search the area they found the body, finding a covered up trail. They follow the trail to the outlaws’ cabin, which stinks with cologne, and find briefcases of counterfeit money. The Ranger tells us that “counterfeit money can do just as much damage as the most vicious outlaw.” They resolve to set a trap for the crooks.
The bad guys have obtained a hotel room, and the goons hide in the closet while Dumont welcomes the Ranger and Tonto. The Ranger tells them that they found the hideout cabin and the counterfeit money. Dumont invites them to join in an ambush at the cabin. Of course, it’s actually an ambush against the heroes. The Ranger has already convinced the sheriff that Dumont is disguised as Collins, based on the whole cologne thing. He resolves to send a telegram to Washington to get a description of Collins, but this will take time, so the Ranger decides to go with a quicker and more violent method.
The heroes walk towards the ambush, but instead of heading in disarm Dumont. They tell him to put on his own Lone Ranger mask and head in (hey, there’s another mistaken identity.) Meanwhile, the Ranger sneaks in the back. Dumont yells his true identity at him, providing the proof that the authorities need (although the Sheriff is nowhere near, but whatever). We get some fisticuffs with the two goons, which ends with the two men tied up and taken into custody. The sheriff jovially informs them that they’ve been caught by the Lone Ranger, and it’s hi-ho Silver, away.
What I thought: This is another Lone Ranger episode that really relies on the charm of the villain of the week to distinguish it from the usual fare. Dumont is notable for his supposed intelligence and intellectual sophistication. The show has characters repeatedly comment on his wits, but ultimately he’s undone by his very illusion of being high class, as well as the Lone Ranger’s less ostentatious intelligence.
“Men, hand me my Axe Body Spray.”
The script for “Thieves’ Money” really doesn’t seem to trust the audience too much, making sure that every step in this duel of wits is explained in dialogue multiple times. It also takes the relatively easy shortcut of trying to make people care about the relatively banal crime of counterfeiting by having the perpetrator also do a murder.
Still, there are some good performances, featuring Lone Ranger all star (and Golden Potato winner) and John Doucette as Dumont as well as Charlie Watts imbuing all of the sheriff’s limited role with down-home bonhomie. Even Jim Collins makes a relatively big impression. So, even when the scripts are a little dumbed-down, the Lone Ranger’s troupe of regulars feel like they’re doing their best.
Coming up next: Kukla, Fran, and Ollie attempt a little Shakespeare.
What I watched: The tenth episode of The Gene Autry Show, a kid-friendly Western starring the titular singing cowboy and his sidekick Pat Buttram. “The Posse” was directed by George Archainbaud and written by Elizabeth Beecher, with guest stars Gail Davis, Wendy Waldron, Francis Ford and John Doucette. “The Devil’s Brand” originally aired at 7:30 PM on Sunday, September 24, 1950 on CBS, and is available on Shout Factory TV.
What happened: Pat is spending a week on “KP’, slowly peeling potatoes. When Gene gets on him about the, he gives him DoubleMint gum. Okay, that was just the ad spot, but I do like that they start with a little 30-second skit. In the actual episode, Gene leads a trio down the road, singing a nice laid-back song about “The Navajo Trail.” His singing is abruptly cut off by a sniper shooting the guy to his right. Gene gives chase, but he gets mixed up and catches Pat instead.
Shoot, Gene! Shoot!
Gene apparently doesn’t know who Pat is this week, and immediately takes him for the murderer. Pat protests that he was just out hunting rabbits. He has a note from his boss which apparently clears him of murder. Gene takes Pat back to the Rocking ‘R’ Ranch where he’s working as a foreman. The killed man, Jed (Ford), was the owner of the ranch, and has left it to his niece Deborah, a “city slicker” from Fort Worth.
The murder turns out to be part of a plan to buy up ranches from just such bereaved relatives, carried out by two extremely gravelly-voiced men, Claggett (Doucette) and Spud. Claggett’s plan is to have his sister Nina (Davis) take Deborah’s place and sign the farm over. Sounds perfectly legal. His men accost Deborah (Waldron) when she gets off her stagecoach, first posing as hands and the Rocking R and then just punching her. Nina changes into her clothes and gets back aboard the stagecoach.
There’s a flaw in the plan, though, as it’s the same stage coach driver both times, an old-timer named Clem. When they realize this, Claggett’s men kill Clem, but not before he gasps out “blue” to jeans. Gene is immediately suspicious of Claggett’s offer to buy the ranch, although he buys the fake Deborah. Later that night, Spud pops in through the window and cracks a mirror over Gene’s head. Nina pours a whole jug of water over his head trying to wake him up. When he comes to, Gene wonders what’s happening, and the meaning of Clem’s last words “blue.” Through a few leaps of logic, they come to realize the truth, that the Deborah they know is an imposter.
There’s a comedic interlude where Pat finds a rabbit in his saddlebags. Gene goes to the sheriff for help. The plan is for him to confront Claggett, with Pat and the sheriff’s posse a distance behind him, following a trail of flour that Gene leaves behind him. Gene reaches the hideout, and sees the real Deborah sneaking out. He shoots the gun out of Spud’s hand and then takes aim at the whole operation. He hits Claggett with the strangely common flying clothesline and monkey flip. Claggett shoots Deborah in the arm, but it turns out to be Nina. The posse arrives to finish things off. Pat finds a mate for his rabbit, and all is well in the end.
What I thought: The strength of The Gene Autry Show‘s “mini-movie” format is that it allows the series to tell different types of stories. For instance, “The Devil’s Brand” definitely has a more serious tone than many prior episodes, starting off with a cold-blooded murder and ending with a woman being accidentally shot. We also see a different version of the character relationships, with Gene meeting Pat for the first time and initially not trusting him, instead of the two being already friends.
I’m not sure how necessary theclothes swap was to the plan.
Of course, even without a continuing story there was still a general tone to The Gene Autry Show to connect all the episodes. You’re not going to see Gene Autry’s version of The Wild Bunch. So while “The Devil’s Brand” may be relatively more serious and action-oriented, there’s still some comic relief, and a song to open things up. The series, and Autry’s personal brand, created a general window of tone which individual episodes fit at various spots within.
Gene and Pat weren’t the only commonplace actors in the series. “The Devil’s Brand” features a very similar cast to the previous episode with Davis, Ford, and Doucette all returning in chief supporting roles. We’ve seen The Lone Ranger use repeat actors in different roles, but not in back-to-back episodes like this. Most likely it was easy to film multiple episodes with the same cast close together, but you think they’d at least disperse them in the episode order. Still, the repeat cast didn’t disrupt my immersion (probably because it had been two months since I watched the last episode), and I was glad to see John Doucette again, even if he didn’t make as big as an impression as I’ve come to expect. These actors wouldn’t become as much a part of the ensemble as Pat and Gene, with Davis appearing in 15 of the 91 episodes and the rest fewer, but it’s still nice to see familiar faces. (After all, that’s what TV is all about.)
We’re also beginning to see some of the same tropes and archetypes repeating. In particular, The Gene Autry Show loves its young ranch heiresses, whether they be tough country girls as in “Blackwater Valley Feud” or out-of-their-element city slickers as here. Maybe this is just a convenient way to get female characters involved in the typically masculine world of the Old West. It also can create someone for Gene to sing love songs to, although that’s not the direction “The Devil’s Brand” goes in.
When I talk about repetition in series like this or The Lone Ranger, it’s not to denigrate them. (Well, maybe a little.) It’s hard to create thirty-odd original stories a season, and using common elements can help to create a sense of theme. What interests me is how different series in the same genre use the different commonplace characters and tropes. I’ll have to keep an eye out for comely ranch heiresses as I continue.
Coming up next: KFO pays tribute to the Buckeye State.
What I watched: The ninth episode of The Gene Autry Show, a kid-friendly Western starring the titular singing cowboy and his sidekick Pat Buttram. “The Posse” was directed by George Archainbaud and written by J. Benton Cheney, with guest stars Wendy Waldron, Francis Ford (not Coppola), and the always-threatening John Doucette. “The Posse” originally aired at 7:30 PM on Sunday, September 17, 1950 on CBS, and is available on Tubi.
What happened: Three outlaws, the Bolton Boys, escape after holding up a bank. They are pursued on horseback by a quartet led by the local sheriff. One of the outlaws, Ace Bolton (Doucette), stops and explains that his horse has sprained its tendon. He sees a nearby farm and decides to let the other boys ride ahead while he steals a horse. The posse arrives at the farm, and are clearly suspicious of the owner Whopper (Ford), an old-timer who has been associated with the boys in the past. They’re impressed by his horse, who he says was a gift from Gene. But it turns out the horse has been swapped with Ace Bolton’s lame steer. The sheriff assumes that he sold the horse to Ace, and arrests him as an accessory.
Gene and Pat come to visit their friends in jail. Whopper is mostly worried because his daughter Mary is coming to town on the weekend. He’s sent her letters implying that he’s a big rancher, with pictures of Gene’s house attached. They agree to host him at their place and make him look like a big-shot. This includes dressing him up in a suit and very classy-looking cowboy hat. Mary (Waldron) arrives, and Whopper introduces Gene as his foreman. Pat bumbles a bit, including spilling Mary’s undergarments out into the street. But Pat gets the last laugh when Whopper lights the loaded cigarette he gave him earlier. The bang sets Mary’s horses off, giving Gene an opportunity to race them down.
Ed Harris, eat your heart out.
At the ranch, Gene performs “Purdy Mary” with violin accompaniment. He may be trying to smash. Mary is so charmed she decides she’ll be staying indefinitely, and wants to take part in the management of the ranch. She’s majored in Animal Husbandry and wants to apply the “scientific method” to the ranch. Whopper tries to discourage her, warning her about an epidemic of hoof-and-mouth disease. Gene decides to keep going with the deception, despite Pat’s worries that Mary will ruin the ranch.
The outlaws drag Whopper out to meet him. They say they want the money that’s in Gene Autry’s safe, and for him to distract Gene while they rob the place. Whopper is reluctant, but they threaten him. We immediately switch back to more bucolic fare, with Pat trying to outdo Gene’s cattle-roping while Mary watches on, clearly crushing on Gene. Gene comforts a worried Whopper, saying he’s welcome to stay as long as he likes. Presumably moved by his chillness, Whopper leaves on his horse to try to stop the bandits.
The Boltons arrive at the farm, guns drawn. Whopper stops them, saying that he’d rather Mary found out the truth than think that he’d double-crossed his friends. Ace gets off a pretty cool line, “How does it feel to be so noble”, and shoots him. Gene comes in, fists flying, and Whopper gets back up. They subdue the three bandits. Whopper has some blood on his brow, which might be the first time we’ve seen blood on any of these shows. He admits that he gave up the combination to the safe, but Gene again covers for him. The episode ends with the big lie still not revealed, so I guess they just go on deceiving this woman.
What I thought: Past episodes of The Gene Autry show have generally taken one of two approaches. Some, like “The Star Toter”, feature relatively gentle, emotionally-driven storylines in a domestic settings. Others, like “Doublecross Valley”, are more typical Western action narratives that one might find in The Lone Ranger or your average B oater. “The Posse”, which only really features a posse in its opening minutes, seems like an attempt to mix these two approaches into one. This episode hence has an action plot, the bandits’ continued exploits, and an emotional plot, Whopper’s attempts to bond with his daughter.
“Anyway, here’s Wonderwall.”
In theory this should work perfectly, but the tonal swings are awkward in practice. There’s a rather sudden drop in stakes between Whopper being falsely imprisoned and Whopper worrying that he’ll disappoint his daughter. The action plot functions more or less all right, but the emotional one seems like it needs time to breathe. There are obvious comedic set-ups, like Mary trying to improve the farm through the scientific method, that don’t go explored.
I was expecting the episode to end in a familiar sitcom resolution where Whopper’s deception is revealed, but Mary forgives him, saying that family is what’s important. We don’t get that, or any kind of real resolution to the plot. There’s potential here, but this story seems like it may have been better suited to an hour-long show, or perhaps one of those full Gene Autry movies I keep hearing about. It evidently took a while for TV shows to figure out how to balance B- and C-plots over the course of a half hour.
Still, perhaps watching these episodes for the plot is the wrong approach. Maybe The Gene Autry Show is more of a cinema of attractions, using the plot just as a structure to bring together physical performances like Pat’s slapstick, Gene’s horse-riding, and of course the song. Sure the time spent on Gene chasing down Mary’s run-away stage coach, or performing “Purdy Mary”, could have been used to flesh out the story and characters more, but the horse riding was good and the song got stuck in my head, so maybe The Gene Autry Show did its job after all.
A Word from Our Sponsors: The Tubi episodes include the ads for Double Mint Chewing Gum that aired alongside the original shows. This consists of a brief spot where Gene is on his horse and simply says “I like it”, followed by a longer sketch where Pat hurts his finger hanging (and taunting) a picture of his grandfather, and Gene tells him to chew some gum while waiting for the pain to subside. He then enumerates the virtues of gum while looking vaguely dispirited. There’s also a shorter spot at the end of the episode. It was interesting to see the ad spots they put in these filmed shows, which were more distinct from the main episode than on variety shows but featured the same earnest in-character endorsements. And hey, Doublemint Gum is a product you can still buy today.
Coming up next: TV gets a big injection of starpower with The Colgate Comedy Hour.
What I watched: Four episodes of The Lone Ranger, a kid-friendly Western created by George Trendle and starring Clayton Moore as the titular hero and Jay Silverheels as Tonto. These episodes are grouped together to avoid too much repetition. They aired weekly on Thursday nights in July 1950 on ABC at 7:30 pm.
My previous source of episodes was taken down from YouTube, but some kind soul has uploaded them to various torrent website, so they are accessible if you don’t mind sailing the high seas. Versions of the episodes with some alterations to avoid copyright detection have also been uploaded to YouTube.
“Outlaw of the Plains” (July 6, 1950, dir. George B. Seitz, writ. David Lang., guest Jack Lee)
The Lone Ranger and Tonto are wandering around, digging up rocks when they run into a couple of old-ish guys, one of them wounded. They’ve apparently just been robbed by another man in the mask, making them naturally suspicious of the Ranger. Eventually they smooth things over and the heroic duo set out to track down the outlaws. Some expository dialogue shows that the robbers are the goons of an evil sheriff named Shattuck (Lee), who is upset that they didn’t wait for the cover of night.
Tonto talks to Shattuck, who is extremely laid back and suspicious of the term “kemosabe.” He is immediately my favourite Lone Ranger character. The old ranchers of the town are upset about having their cattle stolen recently, but Shattuck dissuades them from forming a posse, advising them to wait until morning. However, his actual plan is to head out that night with the Ranger and Tonto, leaving the dead weight behind.
Honest Abe is always looking down.
They head out to Stone Mountain, where Shattuck says the cattle have been disappearing to. (Are… are they in Georgia?) He then rides ahead and readies his goons to ambush the Ranger and Tonto. But the heroes get the upper hand with some well-timed punches. Tonto rides back for help, and of course gets Shattuck again.
Tonto brings back the bad sheriff, where they find the Ranger tied up with the remaining two men looking over him. This causes Shattuck to reveal his evil nature, but it’s a set-up — the Ranger actually has the other two men captured. What’s more, the old cattlemen are waiting to overhear the conversation. So the whole cast is basically hiding under a floorboard somewhere. Shattuck tries to escape, giving the Ranger an excuse to punch him out.
I’m not going to talk about this episode much in the summary below, so I’ll just say here that it is okay, maybe a bit above the average Lone Ranger episode. Shattuck is a fun villain as long as he retains his cover of being a kind of laid-back, nonplussed sheriff. The idea of an evil masked man going around, getting confused with the Ranger, is also interesting, although dropped almost immediately.
In the opening scene, we see a white man killing a Native American by bludgeoning him in the back of the head (you know, for kids.) Tonto and the Ranger quickly find the body and start investigating. A convenient conversation between a military sergeant named Pala (Bradford) and a local roughneck named Boles (Kennedy) let us know the bad guys’ scheme quicker than usual: the duo are burying guns in Native territory, with the intent of provoking a war with the local tribe so they can acquire the land.
On the reservation, Chief White Eagle (Moody) is having his portrait painted by a young white lady, Toni Carver (Frazee). The other tribe members are suspicious, having “primitive superstitions” about being captured in pictures. The local General Stacey (Watkin) comes by to be chummy with White Eagle and berate the painter for not protecting herself from these savages. The Ranger and Tonto find and dig up the rifles. They decide to set it up so that White Eagle can find the guns and get credit, but remove the powder so they can’t be used.
There’s an element of racial caricature to Carver’s artwork.
The bad guys sneak poison into the chief’s afternoon meal, and shortly afterwards he starts clutching at his heart. Tonto arrives on the scene and quickly figures out what happened just as he dies. Boles holds Tonto for investigation (at least he doesn’t get knocked out this time), but he sends off his horse to send a message for the Ranger. He also tells the tribesman that capturing the chief’s image killed him, and they seize Carver.
The bad guys set out to kill Tonto, making it seem like he was trying to escape. But before they can do so, the Ranger arrive, and they duke it out. The Ranger squares off with Pala and Tonto with his deputy, so that everything is in order. After clobbering them, they return to the reservation where they consult the new chief, the dumb-seeming Red Moon (Stevens), and his now armed men. But the rifles were sabotaged earlier, which the Ranger says is because they were possessed by an evil spirit. We conclude with Red Moon sitting in a jail cell with the white villains, and the Ranger and Tonto heading out into the sunset. What happens to the Natives? Eh, I’m sure they’re fine.
“Trouble for Tonto” (July 20, 1950, writ. Fran Striker, dir. John H. Morse, guests Robert Arthur, Lyle Talbot, Gene Roth, Byron Foulger)
We open with a young white man being held hostage by an Indian. Whitey begs for a drink of water, then immediately grabs the canteen and smashes it over the Native guy’s head. That’s how it goes. They scuffle, and the white guy ends up shooting and killing the Indian, with the Ranger and Tonto watching. The kid, Terry (Arthur), tells the story of being forcibly inducted into the Fargo Gang by Thad (Foulger), an employee of his banker father, and his Indian goon Black Eagle.
The family home conjures up suburban normalcy, to the point of anachronism.
The Ranger decides to use this as an opportunity to get enough evidence to put an end to Fargo. (Must be one of those Hawley haters.) He swaps out Black Eagle for Tonto, allowing Terry and Tonto to gather evidence. The Ranger drops in on Terry’s father Wyne (Talbot) and tells him about the plan. They start putting together a posse to set an ambush.
Fargo (Roth) and Thad show up at Dad’s house to demand a ransom, with Thad still playing innocent. Fargo looks like he’s about to open up a used car dealership. Back at his base, Fargo realizes that Tonto is an impostor because Black Eagle’s good luck charm doesn’t fit him, and slaps him around some. Tonto maintains his stoicism. After Terry blurts out his name, Fargo realizes that Tonto is “nothing special except he’s the sidekick of a man I’ve been wanting to stop for a long time.” I think you know what my gloss on that is going to be.
Fargo comes back to the house to flush out the Lone Ranger, trying to take him in at gunpoint. He even pulls off his mask, although we don’t see it. He gets Wyne to agree to let him rob the bank, which will definitely work. But it turns out that the man they’ve taken in is actually Terry’s older brother Glenn, and the real Lone Ranger comes in with a makeshift mask to clobber everyone. The bad guys are all arrested off-screen, including Thad.
“Sheriff of Gunstock” (July 27, 1950, writ. Joe Richardson, dir. John H. Morse, guest. Walter Sande, John Doucette, Mira McKinney & Tom Irish)
What happened: We see a man being tied up while his house is set on fire. The Ranger senses, seemingly telepathically, that there’s trouble in Gunstock. The name might have been the first clue. We’re introduced to a middle-aged barkeep Mrs. Miggs (McKinney) who’s forced to pay protection money to stay in business, smooth-voiced local crook Hanford (Doucette, charming as always) who is running the racket, the sheriff Jim Bennett (Sande) trying to nail him despite a lack of evidence, and the sheriff’s son Jack (Irish), who is studying to be a judge but really wants to be a tough guy. It’s all a bit of a plot rush.
The Ranger and Tonto arrive, and they’re apparently familiar with the sheriff and the town from an incident several years ago. (The show hasn’t been on that long, but sometimes it feels like that to me.) Jim denies that there’s any trouble and says that Jack is back at law school, but the Ranger sees through him. This is cause for the Ranger to indulge his love of dress-up and break out the old-timer disguise again, taking up as a boarder and floor-sweeper at the inn.
The master of disguise, at it again.
The bad guys catch the Ranger eavesdropping and rough him up, but Mrs. Mead’s salon, but she comes to his defense. He’s found out about the racket, and confronts Jim, accusing him of working for Hanford. After a brief stand-off, it turns out that Hanford is holding Jack hostage. They notice a few extra letters in the ransom letter, written by Jack, and we have a puzzle afoot.
The Ranger gets Mrs. Mead to look through her address book and finds the initials of Rod Turner. Tonto goes off to give a message to Hanford, supposedly from Rod to see him right away. Hanford is suspicious and takes Tonto with him at gunpoint. The Ranger flushes them out with one of their own explosive cans and a tripwire, then beats up all five guys in the gang. (They must have had some extra cast budget for this episode.) The Ranger bids farewell to all of the guest stars and rides off into the sunset.
What I thought: Every time The Lone Ranger has a plot dealing with Native Americans I take a deep breath. In “White Man’s Magic”, the series takes pains to try to draw a middle course between portraying Natives as the savage villains of early Westerns and portraying them as real human beings. Here we have the two sides of the Indigenous stereotype split into different characters: White Eagle and Tonto are the noble savages, full of passive dignity, while Red Moon and the rest of the tribe are the superstitious and aggressive barbarians who are easily manipulated by the white villain. The Ranger even engages in his own manipulation in the end, preying on the tribe’s primitive beliefs.
Neither role really has much agency. We are never invited to consider how the story unfolds from Tonto’s perspective. In multiple episodes now, we’ve seen Natives as the pawns of white villains. This was intentional by Trendle, in an attempt to move away from casting them as bad guys and reduce race hatred, and to an extent this is respectable. But there’s an obvious limit to how far the show is willing to go with this, and I fear that we’re going to keep butting up against this wall over and over again.
The dichotomy between good and bad Indians is also present in “Trouble for Tonto”, where the heroic sidekick and the nonspeaking goon Black Eagle are effectively interchangeable. Fargo, the villain, is meant to be prejudiced as part of his villainy, repeatedly referring to Tonto as “redskin” (although it would take another 70 years for a certain football team to admit that this term is derogatory.) But the episode’s narrative also suggests a low opinion of Indigenous people. When appealing to Black Eagle for water, Terry asks “Come on, you’re human, aren’t you?” From the lack of concern for his death a few minutes later, it would seem that The Lone Ranger‘s answer is that he really isn’t.
The other theme which seems to run through these two episodes is the reliability of the law as a means of justice. We have a crooked sheriff in “Outlaw of the Plains”, which is proving to be a surprisingly common trope in a series committed to the rule of law. Perhaps as compensation, there’s a very procedural bent to the script: the Ranger makes sure to get court-appropriate evidence, with everything witnessed and reinforced in triplicate, rather than his usual punch-first approach. When justice is threatened, the only recourse is to double down on legalism.
“Sheriff of Gunstock” also features a sheriff who fails to prosecute evil — in this case, not because of his own corruption, but because of his worry for his son. He is almost immediately let off the hook for this, falling under the good side of the Ranger’s strict moral divide, but his failure is still one that must be remedied. (It’s also of note that we once again have Tonto pretending to be a bad guy.) We again see the doubling-down on legalism — the sheriff’s son is even studying for law school, an aspiration which everyone in the cast seems to stress is noble.
This also resonates differently in light of the continued protests against police violence inflicted upon people of colour. The violence of the state is plainly present in this episode: the villainous sheriff plans to shoot Tonto and say that he was trying to escape jail, echoing the common excuse that a shooting victim was resisting arrest. But this is skipped over quickly, so that we can get back to the more important storyline about land ownership and white heroism.
“Trouble for Tonto” also stresses the innocence of a white child who shoot and kills an Indian. Terry experiences immediate regret, but the killing is quickly forgotten, a device used to set up the impostor plotline. I am reminded, involuntarily, of Kyle Rittenhouse or all the other white people whose innocence is presumed by an otherwise punitive society because the people they killed were less human than them. The scene, with a scuffle over a gun that accidentally goes off, is straight out of an official story.
Anyway, these episodes are fine. For the most part, the script forgoes the typical mystery structure: we know immediately who the bad guys are and what they’re up to. Instead, we have almost a heist structure: we have some idea of the Ranger’s plan, something goes wrong, but in the end he pulls it off. But these days it gets harder and harder for me to watch conventional crime-and-punishment stories. Thankfully there are only seventy more years of them to go in this project!
Coming up next: Gene Autry introduces us to a different sort of cowboy.
What I watched: The thirtieth 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 Francis Ford, John Doucette, Leonard Strong and Elaine Riley. This is Doucette’s second appearance on the show, and Strong’s third. This episode was directed by George Archainbaud and written by David P. Sheppard and Felix Holt. “Gold Fever” aired on Thursday, April 13, 1950 at 7:30 PM on ABC, and is available to watch on YouTube.
What happened: A square-jawed sheriff gets news that the notorious Ox Martin gang is going to hold up a stage coach full of cash. Martin gives his gang a pep-talk letting them know how valued they all are. The hold-up goes as planned, and Ox (Doucette) takes the stage driver’s sack of mail as well as the cash. He tells the gang to split up, and also gives his share of the loot to them here — he’s only interested in the mail. Presumably there’s an issue of the New Yorker in there he hasn’t gotten to yet.
There’s a nice little cinematic zoom-in on the gang that feels unusual for this show.
Ox has a letter from an old prospector who abruptly quit working, which he suspects is because of discovering a gold mine. He lets only his closest associate, a guy named Pinky (Strong), in on the plan. Some time later, the Ranger and Tonto finally enter the episode, arriving at the scene of the stage robbery. The Ranger immediately figures out what Martin has done. The Ranger says that “He’s endangered the integrity of the United States Postal Service”, which is presumably a greater crime than armed robbery. Anyway, he finds an open envelope from prospector Sam Dingle, and heads off to meet him.
Elsewhere, grumpy old Dingle (Ford) is bantering with his daughter Peggy (Riley), who’s a schoolteacher. The Ranger comes in, and immediately points a gun at him. One of these days someone should just shoot. But Dingle recognizes the silver bullet and puts the gun away. He identifies a photo of Ox as a greedy but lazy prospector who worked under him a few years ago. The Ranger asks Dingle to draw up a new claim, so that he can ride to Desert City and deliver it. He says he’s doing it for everyone who trusts in the postal service.
Ox arrives at the office first, with the claim altered so that it’s made out in Pinky’s name. The Ranger gets there shortly afterwards, but he gets accused of being a claim-jumper and gets another gun pointed at him. The Ranger grabs the gun and traps the workers in a closet. Somehow this convinces them that he’s innocent, and they start rounding up a posse to go after Pinky and Ox.
Dingle’s daughter Peggy runs into Ox on her way back from school. He claims that he’s from the claims office, and she leads him right to the goldmine. When he gets there, it turns out that the mine tunnel collapsed. Ox gets violent, shooting Tonto and slapping Dingle across the face. His plan is to tie all three up and blow them up along with the obstruction.
Fortunately, the Lone Ranger is here, with his signature chase music. He runs down Pinky and punches him out. He then punches out Ox before he can blow up Tonto. He explains that through his intricate knowledge of the postal service, he can verify that Dingle’s claim precedes Ox’s. The Ranger rides off, the sanctity of government mail restored.
What I thought: This episode features some of the most humorously corny scenes yet, where the Ranger and everyone around him monologue seriously about the integrity of the US Postal Service. Stealing money is one thing, but the mail? That’s a federal crime, pal. I don’t know the origin of this — maybe there was a rash of juvenile mail theft that they wanted to correct, or maybe it was just a way of establishing the show’s strong moral values to the feds. Either way, these scenes are easily something that could be spliced into a montage to show the dippy sanctimoniousness of 1950s television.
The prospector’s sassy daughter doesn’t really serve a function in the plot, but I like her anyway.
Aside from the mail element, this is another rendition of the formulaic Lone Ranger plot about villains looking for gold. Even the titles run together — there’s no way I’ll be able to remember which one was “Greed for Gold” and which one was “Gold Fever” in a week. It does feature another strong performance from the charismatic John Doucette, which makes Ox Baker threatening but also a little sympathetic. If nothing else, he’s more loyal to his friends than most bad guys on this show.
The repetition of this subject, as I’ve argued before, is not just a case of lazy writing but a reflection of the series’s pro-capitalist worldview. Prospecting was a capricious profession, but here the discovery of gold is always treated as the result of hard work, which lazy bandits want to steal through claim-jumping. It’s a practically Randian moral dichotomy.
When the Lone Ranger radio show was created in the 1930s, the capitalist class was trying to figure out how to react to the popularity of socialist ideology and Roosevelt’s New Deal. One way of promoting pro-corporate ideas was through children’s entertainment, which was often presumed to be non-ideological. The most blatant instance of this was Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie comic strip, which featured various government plots against the innocent philanthropist Daddy Warbucks.
As owner of a network of Midwestern radio stations, Trendle was likewise a petit-bourgeois capitalist, but he was more subtle in his work. The Lone Ranger features no speeches towards the audience about capitalism and communism — instead, everything is rendered symbolically through the mythological figures of the Old West. Mind you, by the time 1950 came around the Cold War was already beginning to brew and full-throated defenses of capitalism were more safe for the airwaves.
Nevertheless, Trendle and the writers who work for him would continue cloaking capitalist messages behind wholesome and universal values. The radio show promoted Lone Ranger “Safety Clubs”, in which kids learned about traffic safety. This episode’s focus on the importance of staying out of others’ mail may have been a similar device. If it appeared that The Lone Ranger was teaching unambiguously positive messages to children, the theory went, no one would question what else it was teaching.
Coming up next: Finally, the time has come to talk about professional wrestling.
What I watched: The fourteenth 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 John Doucette, Nan Leslie and Edwin Rand. This episode was directed by George B. Seitz and written by Tom Seller. “The Masked Rider” aired on Thursday, December 15, 1949 at 7:30 PM on ABC, and is available on YouTube
What happened: The Ranger and Tonto answer a plea for help from Jim Hawkes (Rand), the sheriff of a nearby town. When they see a man with an evil moustache training his rifle on Jim, they shoot him, somehow knocking him out with a shoulder wound. This man is a part of Dirk Nelson’s gang, apparently a famous ne’er-do-well. He’s about to get married to Nancy Barton (Leslie), who swore up until yesterday that she would never wed him, but recently changed her tune. The Ranger says that people don’t change their minds overnight, unless they’re forced to. Well, nobody ever called him a great observer of psychology.
They visit Barton’s father, and the Ranger gets immediately suspicious when he pours them a drink. It turns out that our hero is straight-edge. A very small amount of badgering reveals that Barton was the inside man on one of Dirk’s bank jobs, and Nancy is marrying him to keep the secret quiet. The Ranger develops a plan to infiltrate Dirk’s gang. Since the name of the Lone Ranger is so associated with justice, he adopts a new criminal persona: the Masked Rider. He doesn’t even change the mask.
The Ranger just ran these off at Kinko’s.
A few posters later, Dirk is convinced that the Masked Rider is outsmarting him and getting to every score before them. So when the masked man tells them he wants to join, they’re thrilled — or at least the not-particularly-bright minions are. They go to the hideout, which is a scared Mexican woman’s ranch. We finally meet Dirk (Doucette), who seems to be doing a before-his-time Marlon Brando imitation.
After jawing with Nancy for a little bit, Dirk meets the Ranger, and is dismayed when the masked man out-draws him. (With guns, not pencils.)) He does a pretty bad job acting like a hardened criminal, but then so do the hardened criminals on this show. Dirk makes the Ranger demonstrate his proficiency by shooting coffee cups at a distance. (This is also the hiring process at Starbuck’s.)
Secretly, Dirk has figured out the Ranger’s secret after noticing that he shot the cups with silver bullets. But Nancy lets the heroic duo in on the fact that he’s laying a trap for them. The Ranger tells her to go back and continue playing the role of the reluctant wife. We also learn that she really wants to marry Sheriff Hawk, despite him looking about twenty years older than her. Tonto goes and tells the sheriff to round up a posse to intercept Dirk’s gang.
The posse ambushes the gang. Tonto tries to take out Dirk himself, but gets put down with an old-fashioned karate chop to the neck. Dirk and the Ranger wrestle in the dirt for a while until the Ranger cold-cocks him. With everything resolved, and the episode running out of time, Nancy is reunited with her true love and our heroes once again take off into the distance.
What I thought: An episode or two ago, I guessed that this show would do a story where someone impersonates the Lone Ranger. We still haven’t gotten that, but in this episode we see the Ranger impersonating himself after a fashion, creating a new identity as the Masked Rider. This plays off the mutability of the Ranger’s identity, the fact that he is a character defined only by a plain black mask and a dedication to justice. The character would be played by three actors over the course of the series, and more in film. Even his fictional “real identity” has been irrelevant outside of the first three episodes.
Perhaps this is the reason why masked characters, from Batman to Tiger Mask, have been such a pop-culture staple. It could be anyone beneath the mask, doing anything. Had the Ranger been a popular property for longer, it’s easy to imagine a gritty 90s version that behaves a lot like the Masked Rider. (Hell, maybe it exists somewhere out there in the nebulous realm of licensed comics.) On a storytelling level, the masked identity allows the character to represent a concept greater than an individual’s desires and characteristics. On an economic level, it also makes actors and other creative talent easily replaceable.
It might initially seem odd that this episode features the Ranger engaging in the kind of trickery typically resolved for villains. Even if he doesn’t actually do anything wrong, false identities and phony crimes make up a surprisingly large portion of Lone Ranger villain activities. But perhaps this is the closest thing to a thematic statement that the series actually has: deception is the way of the world, and what matters is not honesty but making sure that your deceptions do good. If the Ranger’s identity was unable to change, then he would never be able to get the bad guys here. Then again, maybe the mask is a truer identity than a bare face would be — after all, it’s one of the Ranger gimmicks that ultimately gives his identity away.
You know it’s a tough battle because he loses his hat in the process.
“The Masked Rider” is kind of fun, partly because of the Ranger’s half-hearted attempt to be a bad guy, and partly because Dirk is actually a fairly threatening villain. Doucette gives the character both an air of menace and a kind of refined eccentricity that keeps him interesting. The fact that he sees through the ruse makes the plot more interesting, turning it into a kind of cat-and-mouse game instead of the Ranger just knocking over a villain with some stuff about invisible ink. It’s not fine art, or even good TV really, but it’s at least something I think would entertain me if I was ten.
Coming up next: Another episode of Ed Wynn, sadly without Buster Keaton.
The Eternal Couch Potato 