The Lone Ranger

One of the most popular dramas of the “Golden Age of Radio,” The Lone Ranger (1933–54) detailed the adventures of a masked vigilante and his Native American companion, Tonto, in the post–Civil War West. Armed with silver six-guns that never claimed a life, the Lone Ranger helped expand and reinforce the American masculine ideal of physicality tempered by responsibility.

First broadcast on WXYZ in Detroit, The Lone Ranger quickly developed into a cultural and commercial phenomenon. Despite, or perhaps because of, the program's unrepentant borrowing from pulp and folkloric sources, the Ranger's comfortingly familiar masculinity elicited a devoted listener response. Audiences not only tuned in three times a week to hear the masked man's signature cry of “Hi-Yo Silver,” but they also devoured Lone Ranger comic books, newspaper comic strips, novels, movie serials, and, later, both live-action and cartoon television series. Strong, stoic, and unquestionably patriotic, the masked rider of the plains was part Zorro, part Robin Hood, and wholly American. In rescuing homesteaders from greedy businessmen and burgeoning settlements from outlaw gangs, the Ranger consistently demonstrated that the Wild West could be tamed and the American Dream preserved—though only by a masculinity firmly rooted in the American tradition of protecting the underdog.

Much of the Ranger's appeal lay in his mutability. Whereas other radio heroes were scripted in almost lurid detail, the Ranger's masked face and mysterious origins encouraged listeners to personalize him according to individual taste and desire. Hence, though the Ranger was meant to be an educated white easterner, he was alternately imagined by audiences as Asian, Hispanic, working class, gay, and so forth. Given the challenges to American masculinity posed by woman suffrage, World War I, and the Great Depression, the Ranger's mutability offered men a fluid, and thus potentially more powerful, identity.

The masked man's relationship with Tonto, however, was less dynamic. Although the kemo sabes (faithful friends) adventured together in almost all of the 2,956 radio episodes, Tonto was never listed in the program's title. Indeed, he was less a partner than a constant reminder that men of color could never have a starring role. Whereas the Ranger rode Silver, a magnificent white horse, Tonto had only a small but sturdy pinto, or paint pony; in contrast to the masked man's flawless diction, “Old Smoky-Face” spoke in broken English; and when the manly Ranger dealt in six-gun justice, Tonto—in a role many Americans identified with women—succored the sick [Page 276]with “Indian medicines.” Not a partnership of equals, their relationship reiterated, rather than challenged, the racism that had long underpinned mainstream American masculinity.

In an era marked by economic depression, the rise of mass popular culture, World War II, and radio's epidemic expansion, The Lone Ranger supplied a vision of masculinity that was at once fluid, traditional, and ultimately reassuring. This combination of invention and convention forged a powerful myth that even today defines American notions of heroism. One need only look to masked film and comic book icons such as Batman (with his feminized sidekick Robin) and Spiderman to see the Ranger's continuing influence.

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