Legend of the Lone Ranger
The title The Legend of the Lone Ranger has been used for at least two motion picture treatments of the story of The Lone Ranger, a Western character created by George W. Trendle. This article is concerned about the 1981 version of the story.
For several years there had been stories that a major studio would be making a big-budget, full length feature film based on the story of the Lone Ranger. There was apparently an assumption that many older Baby Boomers would be interested in seeing a big-screen treatment of their small-screen hero of the 1950s, a trend which was really at the time just getting started. After several false starts and rumors, such a film was actually made. Word filtered out that in this "new" version, some of the stereotypical elements which had been in past versions, such as Tonto's pidgin English, would be removed and the story, always rather stilted in the past (the primary audience for earlier versions had always been children), would be updated to be more "realistic". The film got off to a bad start in the area of public relations when one of the first things that its producers became noted for doing was attempting to constrain Clayton Moore, star of the old television series, from appearing anywhere as the Ranger, or in public wearing a mask. Moore's response was to adopt the wearing of wraparound sunglasses resembling his former mask. The public reaction to this was overwhelmingly negative, as it seemed an attempt to remove a source of income from an elderly man who had played a beloved character and seemed to have little else going for him.
After this misstep, the film was released to massive publicity in 1981 and soon sank like a stone. Box office receipts were far short of the amount needed to recoup the costs of the film, and critical reviews were almost unanimous in their condemnation. In attmepting to update aspects of the story yet leave it basically intact, the producers succeeding in pleasing almost no one. Despite the presence of renowned actors in cameo roles, including Christopher Lloyd and Jason Robards as villian Butch Cavendish and President Ulysses S. Grant respectively, the film vanished from theaters rapidly. The actor playing the Ranger (Klinton Splisbury) has never appeared in another film, while the actor portaying Tonto, Michael Horse), has done somewhat better, appearing in many minor films and as a regular for two years on the Canadian television series North of 60.
