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| John Hart in a publicity still |
As difficult as it is to fathom after three decades, the truth of why Clayton Moore was replaced by John Hart for the third season of the television program, and then returned to the role beginning with the fourth season, has been told with such inaccuracy over the years (especially on the Internet and social media) that it warrants retelling the facts as they appear in the archival and historical files.
By February 1951, Trendle and General Mills agreed to continue television production with a third season. Having filmed 78 episodes consecutively, making up the first two seasons of the series, Jack Chertok assured producer George W. Trendle that an additional 52 episodes could be produced but the cost of production, like the cost of any business, required an increase in budget. Trendle disapproved of the increase in budget. In August of 1951, the Apex Film Corporation (owned by Chertok) created a breakdown of the first 78 television productions, to verify that Chertok’s company truly lost $29,681.60 in the deal. The average cost per episode was $11,547.20. General Mills was contracted to pay $10,000 per episode for the first 52 episodes, and $13,500 per episode for the additional 26. Chertok agreed to swallow the financial loss knowing that when the programs went into reruns later, when General Mills decided to no longer sponsor the program, he would recoup some of the loss in the form of rerun residuals and thus make a profit in the long run.
Jay Silverheels, meanwhile, did not want to wait around for a call to be on hand to play the role of Tonto when he could be making motion-pictures, so Trendle wrote out a check and a two-page agreement stipulating pay of $150 a week from January 1, 1951 to March 31, 1952, with a $2,500 signing bonus. This would expire once filming began for the television program, whereupon his contract for a weekly salary during production replaced this contract. (By 1954, Silverheels was making $650 per week, and $325 in between filming of seasons.) No such contract was provided to Clayton Moore, whose agent insisted to Trendle that offers to do movies were more lucrative.
Sure enough, Clayton Moore signed to play a role in Columbia’s Hawk of Wild River, a Durango Kid western, in which Charles Starrett is sent to Wild River to recover stolen gold and finds the town terrorized by The Hawk (played by Moore) and his outlaw gang. Moore kept busy playing supporting roles at Columbia and Republic, including the Allan "Rocky" Lane western, Captive of Billy the Kid, and the title role in Buffalo Bill in Tomahawk Territory for United Artists. On Halloween 1951, Clayton Moore sent George Wallace to St. Joseph's Hospital with a broken nose following a screen brawl with Moore (courtesy of a Lone Ranger punch to the face) while filming Radar Men from the Moon at Republic.
In late August 1951, Trendle flew to California to lineup a deal with a different production company for the new season of The Lone Ranger, as well as a pilot for both Sergeant Preston of the Yukon and The Green Hornet. He attended meetings with a number of television producers, including the Samuel Goldwyn organization, an executive under Herbert Yates at Republic, and someone at RKO Studios only to discover that while all parties were interested in a Lone Ranger movie shot in color, the studios merely wanted to perform the task of distributor, and provide the sound stages for filming, while receiving a distribution contract involving a percentage of the gross receipts. None wanted to invest in television, let alone a third season to what was already an established success on the small screen. (Yates never believed there would be a financial return with television like the movies, offering to invest in a cliffhanger serial. Trendle rejected the offer.) Disappointed, believing everyone’s math was all wrong, and coming to the realization that many studios were simply acting as a distributor for independent productions, Trendle went back to Jack Chertok and agreed on the increase in budget to produce a third season.
There is nothing evident to suggest animosity between George W. Trendle and Clayton Moore. Trendle was indeed critical of Moore’s portrayal, always in the form of letters to Jack Chertok, instructing the filmster to pass suggestions on to the actor.
Trendle sought a visual interpretation of the radio program, once expressing pleasure that Moore had gotten his voice down to a level mimicking Brace Beemer’s. Trendle suggested Moore keep his elbows down when riding Silver. “One of the rules of good horsemanship is to keep the elbows down when riding. I notice that a lot of the cow punchers seem to keep their elbows almost horizontal and you have a tendency to do that more or less in your riding. It shows lack of balance… Not only that, but with your elbows down you are closer to that gun on the lower hip, which the real fast gunfighters bore in mind when riding.”
Trendle’s repeated criticism of Moore would climax in April 1950, when he told Jack Chertok that he listened to the television show with the film turned off and the sound on. “I agree that the fellow is getting so far away from Beemer it isn’t funny, and that is a thing I am afraid we will have to discuss. The man is a fair Lone Ranger but nothing to brag about, and if he does not try to cultivate the Beemer voice more closely, I am afraid we are going to be in the position of looking around again.” Chertok debated: “It is still the old, old problem that we have to face, regardless of what man is playing the Ranger – including Beemer himself, that he cannot talk as slowly on the screen as he does on the radio. But I repeat, we will do our best.”
Throughout the fall of 1951, industry trade papers reported a new actor was being sought for The Lone Ranger, but no explanation was given. Both officially and unofficially, Clayton Moore was never fired, even though he once used the phrase in his autobiography. Moore was simply unavailable to play the role for the third season.
“No one connected with The Lone Ranger ever told me why I had been fired – and I never asked. That may seem strange, but I wasn’t the sort of person to go in and make a scene about something like that,” Moore later recalled in his autobiography. “Such things happened in show business all the time. You got a part or lost a part, sometimes just on the whim of a producer or because the show was taking a new turn.” Moore never made any salary demands, and the only indication to suggest the casting change was Trendle’s insistence that someone better could be found – someone more in line with the iconic image Trendle envisioned.
Enter stage left John Hart. Tall and athletic, Hart began his screen career in 1937 playing small bit parts, and like most actors worked his way up the Hollywood ladder. An avid surfer who also served combat duty during the Second World War, he returned to Hollywood after the war and scored the title role of the Jack Armstrong cliffhanger serial for Columbia Pictures in 1947. Hart got the role because George W. Trendle confessed that Hart’s voice was closer to Brace Beemer’s than Moore.
“I don’t know how many guys they looked at to do The Lone Ranger, but they picked me,” Hart later recalled to author Tom Weaver. “They ran all those Red Ryders where I had good heavy-duty parts and did a lot of horse-backing. I was a good-looking, young, husky guy who could do all this stuff, and also do lines. I was a pretty good actor. When I first started out, I got a lot of bad advice about playing the part. I tried the bad advice for about one or two shows and then I said, ‘The hell with that. I’ll do it my own way.’ They wanted me to be like a stiff Army major, and it was all wrong. So I just forgot that and slipped into the part, and everybody loved it.”
Compared to Clayton Moore, Hart was stiff and monotone with his delivery. Moore’s body language and way of speaking was natural, more fluid. Hart slouched in the saddle. Unlike the first two seasons, many of the teleplays were original stories instead of adaptations of the radio scripts. This resulted in less comradeship between The Lone Ranger and Tonto, with Tonto relegated down to sidekick status and a spotlight on John Hart as a charismatic hero. For many viewers, this cut much of the on-screen chemistry that was predominant on the first two seasons.
Like Clayton Moore before him, as soon as filming completed for the television season, John Hart quickly found work for motion-pictures and serials, including a brief role in Columbia’s Steel of the Royal Mounted, which would be re-titled before theatrical release as Gunfighters of the Northwest. Clayton Moore and Jock Mahoney were playing the leads in that same serial.
In chatting with Jack Chertok by letter, George W. Trendle expressed disappointment with John Hart in the role, having viewed the entire season’s worth of episodes, and agreed Clayton Moore would be better suited if he was available to return to the role. Clayton Moore, according to Trendle, resembled radio’s Brace Beemer closests in both mannerisms and voice. By then Moore had a new agent, Earl McQuarrie, who was also representing Jay Silverheels. Just as Moore was never told why he was not brought back for an additional season, Hart was never told why he was being replaced after 52 episodes. Trendle was reluctant to admit to Moore personally that he was better suited than Hart, but instead reaffirmed what he expected from of the actor both in front and in back of the camera. Moore had no misgivings and returned to the program.
