Clayton Moore Lived The Lone Ranger Creed

LOS ANGELES - Clayton Moore, the masked man who played the Lone Ranger on television and raced horseback to the "William Tell Overture" and the cry of "Hi-Yo, Silver!" died of a heart attack yesterday. He was 85.

Mr. Moore died after being taken to the emergency room at West Hills Hospital, 20 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.

A pioneer of the early TV Western, Mr. Moore starred in "The Lone Ranger" from 1949 to 1952 and from 1954 to 1957, crusading against villains on his horse Silver, with his Indian sidekick Tonto.

Though he appeared in about 70 feature films, Mr. Moore lived and breathed the Lone Ranger role, making public appearances as the masked man into the 1980s and preaching a creed of justice the character espoused. He even fought a five-year court battle after he lost the right to wear the Lone Ranger mask.

"Once I got the Lone Ranger role, I didn't want any other," Mr. Moore said in a 1985 Los Angeles Times interview. "I like playing the good guy."

As a child, he wanted to be either a cowboy or a policeman, he said. "As the Lone Ranger, I got to be both."

The program delighted children of the 1950s, who brought "Lone Ranger" lunch boxes to school and wore the black mask in endless games of cowboys and Indians.

"We've lost a part of America in the passing of Clayton Moore," said Johnny Grant, honorary mayor of Hollywood, who helped unveil Mr. Moore's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1987.

"The Lone Ranger" was originally a radio program and the basis of a few low-budget films in the 1930s. It was one of the first shows filmed especially for television, debuting in 1949.

Another actor, John Hart, played the title role from 1952 to 1954, while Mr. Moore was gone from the series because of a contract dispute.

The Ranger, with his companion Tonto, rode through the West bringing law and order in every half-hour episode. Mr. Moore liked to say that the character embodied the creed that "everyone has within himself the power to make this a better world."

The masked Ranger disguised himself because he was the lone survivor of a group of Texas Rangers who were ambushed by a gang of bad guys; Tonto had nursed him back to health. Tonto was played by Jay Silverheels, who died in 1979.

The show was ABC's biggest hit for a time in the early '50s, when the fledgling network was overshadowed by CBS and NBC. Fans loved the show's trademarks: the opening theme from "The William Tell Overture"; Silver, described by the show's announcer as "a fiery horse with the speed of light"; Tonto's name for the Ranger, "kemo sabe"; the silver bullets; the Ranger's habits of never shooting to kill and never removing his mask, unless the plot had him donning some other disguise.

It was finally the courts that forced Mr. Moore to remove the mask, when producers planning a new, big-screen version of "The Lone Ranger" got a court order against Mr. Moore's use of the character in 1979.

The move brought Mr. Moore, who was reduced to doing personal appearances in a pair of wraparound sunglasses, an avalanche of sympathetic publicity and fan support. The film "The Legend of the Lone Ranger," starring Klinton Spilsbury as the Ranger, came out in 1981 and promptly flopped. In 1984, a court lifted the restraining order.

Mr. Moore liked to cite the character's upright morality as a role model and lectured to children against guns, drugs, alcohol, smoking and foul language.

"Children need heroes like the Lone Ranger," Mr. Moore told The Associated Press in 1986. "This is important because these kids are young America. They are going to be running this country some day."

Mr. Moore was born Sept. 14, 1914 - some sources give an earlier year - in Chicago, son of a real estate developer.

He worked in a circus trapeze act and as a model before heading to Hollywood in 1938, first appearing in movie serials such as "Dick Tracy Returns."

He was largely retired in recent years, living at his home in Calabasas, near Los Angeles. Mr. Moore is survived by his wife, Clarita, and his daughter, Dawn Moore Gerrity. He had been married previously to actress Sally Allen, who died in 1986.

"My father was an incredibly humble man who was honored to have portrayed this amazing character," Mr. Moore's daughter said in a statement. "He held his fans' love and loyalty very close to his heart."

Dusty Rogers, 52, son of Dale Evans and the late Roy Rogers, said Mr. Moore used to bounce him on his knee when he was a boy. He noted that Rex Allen, a singing cowboy of "B" movie Westerns, also died this month.

"We're losing them one by one," Rogers said. "It is really the end of an era now."

In the 1986 AP interview, Mr. Moore said: "The Lone Ranger is a great character, a great American. Playing him made me a better person. I never want to take off this white hat.