Clayton Moore

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He Believed in The Ethics Of The Lone Ranger In His Personal Life!

More important than The Lone Ranger being Clayton Moore was the fact that Clayton Moore became "The Lone Ranger".

This Lone Ranger Fan Club is dedicated to Clayton Moore
and in preserving the image of The Lone Ranger as he
and his horse portrayed the chatacter.

Click Here to join the International Lone Ranger Fan Club

Early Years:
Born Jack Carlton Moore in Chicago, Illinois, Moore became a circus acrobat by age 8 and appeared at the Century of Progress exposition in Chicago in 1934 with a trapeze act. As a young man, Moore worked successfully as a John Robert Powers model. Moving to Hollywood in the late 1930s, he worked as a stunt man and bit player between modeling jobs.

According to his autobiography, around 1940 Hollywood producer Edward Small persuaded him to adopt the stage name "Clayton" Moore. He was an occasional player in B westerns and Republic Studio cliffhangers.

Moore served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II and made training films (Target--Invisible, etc.) with the First Motion Picture Unit.

As The Lone Ranger:
Moore's career advanced in 1949, when George Trendle spotted him in Ghost of Zorro. As creator/producer of the "The Lone Ranger" radio show (with writer Fran Striker), Trendle was about to launch the television version. Moore landed the role.

Moore trained his voice to sound like the radio version of The Lone Ranger, which had then been on the air since 1933, and succeeded in lowering his already distinctive baritone even further.

With the first notes of Rossini's "William Tell Overture" and announcer Fred Foy's "Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear ... ," Moore and co-star Jay Silverheels, in the role of Tonto, made television history as the stars of the first Western written specifically for that medium. The Lone Ranger soon became the highest-rated program to that point on the fledgling ABC network and its first true hit, earning an Emmy nomination in 1950. Moore starred in 169 episodes of the television show and 2 movie features of The Lone Ranger.

Lawsuit over public appearances:
In 1979, the owner of the Ranger character, Jack Wrather, obtained a court order prohibiting Moore from making future appearances as The Lone Ranger. Wrather anticipated making a new film version of the story, and did not want the value of the character being undercut by Moore's appearances. Also, Wrather did not want to encourage the belief that the 65-year-old Moore would be playing the role in the new picture.

This move proved to be a public relations disaster. Moore responded by changing his costume slightly and replacing the mask with similar-looking wraparound sunglasses, and by counter-suing Wrather.

He eventually won the suit, and was able to resume his appearances in costume, which he continued to do until shortly before his death. For a time he worked in publicity tie-ins with the Texas Rangers baseball team. (Wrather's planned motion picture remake, The Legend of the Lone Ranger, was released in 1981 and was a critical and commercial failure.) This Lone Ranger and Silver was crappy looking and was in no way dressed as the prior Lone Ranger and Silver therefore was not accepted by the fans.

Moore often was quoted as saying he had "fallen in love with the Lone Ranger character" and strove in his personal life to take The Lone Ranger Creed to heart. This, coupled with his public fight to retain the right to wear the mask, linked him inextricably with the character.

In this regard, he was much like another cowboy star, William Boyd, who portrayed the Hopalong Cassidy character. Moore was so identified with the masked man that he is the only person on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, as of 2006, to have his character's name along with his on the star, which reads, "Clayton Moore — The Lone Ranger."

He was inducted into the Stuntman's Hall of Fame in 1982 and in 1990 was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Death:
Clayton Moore died on December 28, 1999, in a West Hills, California, hospital after suffering a heart attack at his home in nearby Calabasas. He was survived by his fourth wife, Clarita Moore, and an adopted daughter, Dawn Angela Moore. Moore was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, Plot: Everlasting Peace, Lot 5492

Spouse:

Clarita (18 January 1992 - 28 December 1999) (his death)
Connie (August 1986 - 1989) (divorced)
Sally Allen (24 April 1943 - 22 February 1986) (her death) 1 child
Mary Moore (19 August 1940 - April 1942) (divorced)

Picture is Clayton with his wife Sally at their "Lazy Trails" Home in Tarzana, California.

A Tribute - from a boy that was in an Orphanage.
Clayton Moore in his personal life and as The Lone Ranger meant a lot to many of the kids that grew up with him. These kids are now adults that are parents and even grandparents. Here is the best tribute that anyone could possibly get from this little boy, like many little boys that admired this great man, who is now an adult. Turn up your volume and see Roger Dean Kiser's tribute here

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