New Year's Eve at The Jade Sphinx

Toby Roan, the man behind the 50 Westerns From the 50s blog, graciously invited me to write a guest column on the Lone Ranger. 

At the same time, I was thinking about a special Year End column for The Jade Sphinx, and the more I thought about both, the more they morphed together.  So, please check Toby’s blog for a special post by Your Correspondent.  You can find it here:  https://fiftieswesterns.wordpress.com/2016/12/31/a-few-hundred-words-about-my-friend-the-lone-ranger-by-guest-blogger-james-abbott/.

Happy New Year to all my readers, and expect more of the same in 2017.

Who Is Your Santa, Part II: Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

For many of us, our first movie experience of Santa Claus is in the holiday classic, Miracle on 34^th Street (1947).  This film has been heralded as a classic for a variety of reasons – its sweet and humane nature, its wonderful performances, and its simple message of faith.  It was written and directed by George Seaton (1911-1979), who also wrote for the Marx Brothers and provided the voice of the radio’s Lone Ranger, and was based on a story by Valentine Davies (1905-1961). 

For those who came in late – Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) comes to New York to see if there are any vestiges of the Christmas Spirit to be found in then-contemporary America.  She gets a job “playing” Santa at Macy’s – where he sends customers to other stores if it is in their best interest.

He also becomes involved with Macy’s employee Doris Walker (Maureen O’Hara), a divorcee raising her daughter Susan (Natalie Wood).  Walker is a hard-headed realist; not only doesn’t she believe in Santa Claus, but thinks Susan should not clutter her head with irrelevant intangibles. 

Santa playing himself at Macy’s turns out to be a tremendous coup for the store, and Kris takes a spare room in the apartment of Fred Gailey (John Payne), Walker’s beau.  Before long, people come to doubt Kringle’s sanity, and he is put on trail in Manhattan court.  Gailey comes to his defense, and this leads to a great deal of wrangling over the questions of reality, of sanity and the nature of the Christmas Spirit by the Judge, (Gene Lockhart), the District Attorney (Jerome Cowan) and the Judge’s political advisor (William Frawley).

By any critical yardstick, Miracle on 34^th Street is a magnificent picture.  Gwenn won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and the film captured Oscars for Best Writing/Original Story for Valentine Davies and Best Writing/Screenplay for George Seaton.  Though nominated for best picture, it lost to Gentleman’s Agreement – yet another instance of the good folks at the Academy getting it wrong.

There are many reasons the film works so well on so many levels.  First off, the performances are spot on.  Not just Gwenn (1877-1959), O’Hara (born 1920) and Wood (1938-1981), but the other supporting cast, as well.  Payne (1912-1989) plays the honest lawyer hero as an American Everyman, a type that was recognizable in countless films of the era, but now gone thanks to the corrosive effects of multiculturalism.  His easy charm, sense of decency and commitment to ‘the little guy’ were all tropes of what it meant to be an American Everyman, and it’s a delight to watch him. 

However, for your correspondent, the best performances were from supporting players Lockhart (1891-1957), Cowan (1897-1972) and Frawley (1887-1966).  Lockhart, as a decent judge in an uncomfortable position, is a joy to watch – in fact, he elicits our deepest sympathy.  Cowan, as the hard-bitten DA, is a delight.  This fine actor was in countless movies of the era (for example, as Humphrey Bogart’s partner in The Maltese Falcon), and his breezy playing and city-slicker veneer are superb.  However, acting honors must go to Frawley, as the Judge’s advisor.  An old New York type not seen anymore, Frawley is an operator and wise guy.  Here, for example, is Frawley and Lockhart before a possible ruling on Santa’s sanity:

Frawley: All right, you go back and tell them that the New York State Supreme Court rules there’s no Santa Claus.  It’s all over the papers. The kids read it and they don’t hang up their stockings.  Now what happens to all the toys that are supposed to be in those stockings?  Nobody buys them.  The toy manufacturers are going to like that; so they have to lay off a lot of their employees, union employees.  Now you got the CIO and the AF of L against you and they’re going to adore you for it and they’re going to say it with votes.  Oh, and the department stores are going to love you too and the Christmas card makers and the candy companies. Ho ho. Henry, you’re going to be an awful popular fella.  And what about the Salvation Army?  Why, they got a Santa Claus on every corner, and they’re taking a fortune.  But you go ahead Henry, you do it your way.  You go on back in there and tell them that you rule there is no Santy Claus. Go on. But if you do, remember this: you can count on getting just two votes, your own and that district attorney’s out there.

Lockhart: The District Attorney’s a Republican.

And that, more than anything, I think, is why this film works so wonderfully well.  It’s not just a warm-hearted fantasy, it’s a hard-bitten screwball comedy.  Screwball, in the 1930s and 1940s, was a delicate mixture of the sentimental and the cynical.  One could not overwhelm the other, but both must be present in the brew.  In fact, it’s important to remember that no Christmas miracle rides in to save the day.  Rather, harried New York postal workers (at one time, it seems that they actually did something), send their Santa letters in the dead letter office to Kringle at the courthouse simply to get rid of them, and a grateful Judge finds that sufficient to acquit Kringle while still saving face.  Or, if you would … a cynical miracle.

Even better, Seaton’s screenplay is written in that delicious – and vanished – American idiom of the time.  That patois had a distinct, rat-a-tat-tat rhythm, and anyone listening can catch the cadence in classic screwball comedies.  American English, like American movies and music and radio and fiction of the time, had a distinct voice – breezy, confident, smart-alecky and down-to-earth.  We lost that rhythmic poetry in the 1960s, when we seemed to lose so much of our national identity along with everything else, but it is one of our great contributions to language.  (My favorite line?  This: But maybe he's only a little crazy... like painters or composers... or some of those men in Washington…)

As Alfred, the janitor at Macy’s laments, Yeah, there's a lot of bad 'isms' floatin' around this world, but one of the worst is commercialism.  Make a buck, make a buck. Even in Brooklyn it's the same - don't care what Christmas stands for, just make a buck, make a buck.  What Miracle on 34^th Street says is that even in this jaded, cynical and commercial world in which we find ourselves, intangible mysteries surround us.  And if a bunch of hard-boiled Gothamites believe… so should you.

Tomorrow: The Santa Claus of William Joyce!

HE WAS THAT MASKED MAN: PART III

A Legend Learns His Lines

The following is the third and final part of our three-part interview with television Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore (1914-1999), who played part on television from 1949 to 1957;  I originally conducted this interview more than 15 years ago, when Moore released his autobiography, I Was That Masked Man (1996).  Since its initial magazine publication, the interview has been buried in my files.  Enjoy.

James Abbott

Jay Silverheels was always so impressive in the part of Tonto….

Tonto seemed commanding and intelligent because Jay was that way himself.  Jay was a full-blooded Mohawk Indian, and they are a very impressive people.

As our friendship grew, Jay made me a blood brother in the Six Nations tribe.  The ceremony was up in Syracuse, New York in the mid 1950s.  It was a very solemn ceremony and it's something I'll never forget. 

I miss Jay Silverheels a lot.  We had a bond of friendship from the moment we formally met in George W. Trendle's office till the day he died.

Did you do any special preparation for playing the Lone Ranger?

They wanted me to lower my voice as much as I possibly could.  Brace Beemer was the radio Lone Ranger, and his voice had a terrific quality.  I did a great deal of vocal training to bring it down... if you listen to me in my earlier pictures and then hear me as the Lone Ranger you'll hear that my voice is very different. 

Could you tell us about your one year hiatus from the show?

I was replaced by John Hart, a great actor and an awfully nice fellow.  

While John did The Lone Ranger for a year, I played some villains at Republic and also played Buffalo Bill in Buffalo Bill in Tomahawk Territory.  I  never knew why they replaced me for a year, and never knew why they asked me back.

I enjoyed playing good guys and bad guys, of course I prefer the good guys.  Especially the good guy in the white hat... When I came back to the Ranger, I sure was glad to return.

Once you returned, was the Ranger different in any way to you?

Yes.  There's a clear difference between just playing a part and inhabiting a role.  The Lone Ranger offered me more than just a part to play, it was an ideal that I could live up to.  And while kids around the country were working hard to have the same ideals and virtues as the Lone Ranger, I was working just as hard to have them myself.  It helped give me a code of ethics.

I knew his characterization, a champion of justice, of law and order, of fair play.  I thought about him just the same way I had as a young man, and I had found the part that I wanted to play.

When the show finally drew to a close years later, I went around the country making personal appearances and toured all over the United States to keep the Lone Ranger right up on top.  I even went to England around 1958, and the youngsters over there were just as impressed by what the Ranger stands for as were American kids.

There has been a lot of interest again in the Ranger and the ideals he represents.  Do you think we need the Lone Ranger now more than ever before?

Absolutely.  I have a lot of faith in the character of the Lone Ranger and what he stands for.  I've backed out of things, like beer commercials, because I wanted to keep his integrity.  There is still many things he can teach us.  If kids are shaped by outside forces, I was determined that my influence, however small, would be positive, always.

Could you tell us a little about your star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?

That was an exciting day, and a great honor.  My star reads "Clayton Moore, The Lone Ranger."  I'm the only person on the Walk of Fame who is coupled with the name of his character.  In 1987 a radio announcer named Rick Dees had learned that I didn't have a star and mounted a campaign to get me one.  He sent a petition to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and it worked. 

You also had one or two brushes with real-life crime?

My father's office was across the street from Al Capone's headquarters!  More interesting is something that happened in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in 1986 when I was making a personal appearance.  I had just finished my performance and left without getting out of costume.  My wife and I were driving home when I saw an overturned motorcycle.  My wife was a registered nurse and we stopped to see if we could help.  She went to the injured man and told him to open his eyes and tell us what he saw.  He opened his eyes, looked at me, and said:  "The Lone Ranger?"  We laughed a little with relief.  I kept things moving to protect the boy by directing traffic.

You seem to be as heroic as the Lone Ranger!

(Laughs.)  No, but my fellow man means a great deal to me.

What are your plans for the future and how is your book, I Was That Masked Man, doing?

My plans for my future are to continue to live the Lone Ranger creed for the rest of my life.  And thanks for asking, the book is doing well!

You had mentioned the Lone Ranger's creed before.  Could you tell us about it?

I'll do better than that, I'll tell it to you.  This creed was written by the Ranger's creators, Fran Striker and George W. Trendle.  It goes like this:  "I believe that to have a friend, a man must be one.  That all men are created equal, and that everyone has within himself the power to make this a better world.  That God put the firewood there but that every man must gather and light it himself.  In being prepared physically, mentally and morally to fight when necessary for that which is right.  That a man should make the most of what equipment he has.  That this government -- of the people, by the people and for the people -- shall live always.  That men should live by the rule of what is best of the greatest number.  That sooner or later -- somewhere, somehow -- we must settle with the world and make payment for what we have taken.  That all things change but truth, and that truth alone, lives on forever.  In my Creator, my country, and my fellow man."

That's the Lone Ranger's creed, and that's how I try to live.

HE WAS THAT MASKED MAN: PART II

Clayton Moore And The Great Horse Silver!

The following is the second part of our three-part interview with television Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore (1914-1999), who played part on television from 1949 to 1957;  I originally conducted this interview more than 15 years ago, when Moore released his autobiography, I Was That Masked Man (1996).  Since its initial magazine publication, the interview has been buried in my files.  Here is the second of three parts.

James Abbott

In fact you starred in one the of finest serials ever made, Perils of Nyoka.

Perils of Nyoka, with Kay Aldrige, directed by William Whitney.  That was a learning experience, I can tell you.  Nyoka helped me in my career a great deal; what with some of the stunt work I did on the picture and the good part, I got a lot of notice on the lot.  And the kids liked it.  People still come up to me today and mention that one... although they're now only kids at heart!

Did you do a lot of your own stunts for Nyoka?

I did most of them.  I did have an excellent stunt double, though, a man by the name of David Sharpe.  He was a well-known stunt double at the time, and we got to be the best of friends.  David was one of the people that I was closest to in Hollywood.  There wasn't anything he couldn't do!

 I also met stuntman Tom Steele on Nyoka.  Tom taught me a lot about horses, crouper mounts, running-start mounts, everything.  I used all of this when I became the Lone Ranger.

Would you say that many of your closest friends were the stunt people?

Actors and some of the stunt men.  I worked with dozens and dozens of actors and just as many stunt men.  I got real friendly with the stunt people because I thought they got to have a lot of the fun on these pictures, too.  I liked to do as much as I could myself, but when there was something I couldn't have done or shouldn't have done, the stunt people were always there.  They helped make us look good, and I was always grateful to them.  We all enjoyed our work together and had a great time back in the early days of the serial business.

Now you cut quite an impressive figure in the serials, particularly in Zorro...

Yes, I did The Ghost of Zorro.  I'll tell you something about that picture, I almost had a bad accident while making it.  In one chapter a door was set to explode.  They had a safe charge of dynamite planted, but they let it sit too long and it got stronger, which dynamite does.  When the charge went off the door got awfully close to my head, another inch and my head would've gone with it.  I also accidentally knocked-out my pal Tom Steele during a staged fight.  He was out for about 20 seconds.

Funny thing, I didn't know they had dubbed my voice when I was disguised as Zorro until I saw it a few years ago on video.  I don't know why, I did a lot of character parts and got to change my voice a lot when I played the Ranger in his disguises.  But that's not my voice as Zorro.

That was the picture that George W. Trendle and Fran Striker, the producer and writer of the The Lone Ranger radio show, saw that helped them consider me for the part of the Lone Ranger.

Tell us of that initial meeting with Trendle and Striker?

An agent named Antrim Short suggested me to Mr. Trendle and Mr. Striker when they were casting around for the part.  When they set up a meeting with me, I was nervous.  I hadn't prepared a monologue and I didn't know what they would expect of me.  We had a long conversation, we didn't even talk about the Ranger much.  But Mr. Trendle and Mr. Striker would look at one-another every now and then.  When the meeting was over, Mr. Trendle asked me if I would like the part of the Lone Ranger.  I looked him right in the eye and said, "Mr. Trendle, I am the Lone Ranger."  In the next instant, he said I had the job.

The Lone Ranger radio program had started in 1933.  Had you been a fan of the show?

It originated from WXYZ in Detroit!  I listened to the Lone Ranger radio show with my father, Thursday evenings at 7:30, I believe.  You know, that's going back quite a bit; I'm pushing 83, you know.

Did you have any idea how the Ranger would change your life?  Or was it just another part?

No, it was just another job after Republic Studios.  I didn't realize that it would develop into a phenomenon like the radio show.  Television was a very new medium... and it was pretty much an experiment for us.  We didn't know if it would last. I ended up making a 169 television episodes of The Lone Ranger, and two feature-length motion pictures!

Do you have particular memories of George W. Trendle?

Excellent producer and a real nice man to talk with.  He wanted things done his way, though.  He had approved all the scripts before we shot them, and he had a man on the set making sure that we said everything word-for-word, as written.  Now, when you had a writer like Fran Striker, the other man who created the Ranger along with Trendle, that wasn't all that hard.  But that doesn't mean it was always easy!  You couldn't play around with a line or try and make it work better for you.

Striker was terrific.  When he wrote the Ranger stories, it was like he was creating a classic American myth.  When the Ranger was on the scene, the ground shook.  And he was careful to keep the Ranger true to his code of ethics.  I think the reason the Lone Ranger is still remembered today is because of the conviction that George Trendle and Fran Striker held onto when they created him.

Could you tell us a little about the early days of the show?

We shot three episodes a week, one every two days.  We'd shoot eight to ten episodes at a time and then lay off for a week, a week and a half to let Fran and the other writers have the opportunity to create more shows.  It was a lot of work, believe me, but Jay and I enjoyed it.  As a matter of fact, I'd like to take a moment to talk about Jay Silverheels.

Please!

Jay was a wonderful friend.  He was born on the Six Nations Reservation up in Brantford, Canada.  When he was a little guy he came to the United States of America and made this country his home.  Jay was a great athlete and a fine actor who was very proud of the Indian people. 

We had actually appeared in a scene together in a film before The Lone Ranger.  You can see us both in a Gene Autry picture called The Cowboy and the Indians.  If you look close you can see me in the background while Jay plays his scene with Gene Autry.  It was only after we had done The Lone Ranger for a few years did we realize we had worked together before!

HE WAS THAT MASKED MAN: PART I

Clayton Moore -- AKA The Lone Ranger -- And His Fan Base

Welcome back to The Jade Sphinx – we took a short hiatus at the end of the summer and have returned for what is, I hope, the start of an interesting Fall Season.

First up, a special treat for Jade Sphinx readers – an interview with Clayton Moore (1914-1999), who played The Lone Ranger on television from 1949 to 1957;  I originally conducted this interview more than 15 years ago, when Moore released his autobiography, I Was That Masked Man (1996).  Since its initial magazine publication, the interview has been buried in my files.  Here is the first of three parts.

James Abbott

Actor Clayton Moore was forever changed by a part he played.

When offered the part of the Lone Ranger in 1949, television's first western program, to Moore it was just another heroic role, much like the heroes he had played in the classic Republic serials.

But it changed him.

After a brief hiatus from the part, he returned to it with a renewed appreciation.  He had remembered listening to The Lone Ranger with his father in his native Chicago, and as he began to explore who the Lone Ranger was and what he represented, he realized that the Lone Ranger was more than a character for an actor to play.  To Moore, the Ranger came to embody a way of living and thinking, of realizing the heroism inherent in every man.  And as he grew more and more into the role, the Lone Ranger became a larger part of his life.

Clayton Moore has succeeded in a life well-lived.  The line between this modest actor and the cowboy hero is a thin one:  Clayton Moore is the Lone Ranger.

 Moore has compiled his many adventures in his new autobiography, I Was That Masked Man, which he wrote with Frank Thompson.  Still energetic, unfailingly courteous and stalwart as ever, Mr. Moore has been making appearances at book signings throughout California.  Fans young and old meet him with hushed awe, only to be relaxed by Moore's easy-going charm. 

We honored to have caught up with him at a recent book signing. 

I understand that during your boyhood you wanted to be either a cowboy or a policeman?

Yes.  When I was a kid I was just in awe of men like Tom Mix and William S. Hart.  When my friends and I would go to the movies, it was Westerns that we wanted to see.  There was just something about it, riding the range and living in the West, that excited me.  After the movies we kids would play cowboys and Indians and I always wanted to play the hero.

I thought being a policeman would be the closest I would come to being a Western lawman... so I'm glad I grew up to become the Lone Ranger, because I really got to be both a cowboy and a policeman!

Tell us a little bit about your boyhood?

I had a real nice childhood with my family and my brothers.  My father was quite a hunter, liked duck hunting and geese hunting and pheasant hunting, so we were well brought up in all the stages of duck hunting and all the fun things like that when we were kids.  We lived in Chicago, but we went away every summer and that's where I got my love of the outdoors.

Were you a very athletic child?

Yes, yes.  I had a good athletic training in the old Illinois Athletic Club in Chicago.  One day I was doing some acrobatic work and Johnny Behr saw me.  He asked me if I wanted to try the trapeze and I found I had a real knack for it.  He thought we had the making of an act and we started working on that.

Was being an acrobat your first brush with show business?

Yes, that's correct.  We asked some friends to join us and we were called the Flying Behrs.  We played a lot in the Chicago area, and we even performed in the 1934 World's Fair.

When did you realize that acrobatics might not have been for you?

We started doing stunts an the trampoline as well.  I landed wrong during a workout and bounced off the side of the trampoline, hurting my knee.  Then I starting to think that acting might be safer.

What did you do next?

I did some modeling work with the Robert John Powers Agency in New York.  My older brother Sprague had been modeling for local newspapers and catalogues.  I modeled for a time in Chicago and then went to New York to get acting experience.  It was a fine way to make a living, but not what I wanted.  I didn't think I was doing what I wanted in New York so opted for California to fulfill my life's dream, to be a movie cowboy.  That's what I wanted to be!

I headed for Los Angeles in 1937 and soon got into some pictures.

Once you got to Hollywood you worked with people like Rowland V. Lee?

Rowland V. Lee directed the Son of Monte Cristo.  He was a very nice man to work with and an excellent director.  He stood up for his actors and helped them get a handle on their roles.  It was a very relaxed set and that was a fun picture to work on. 

You also worked with Bela Lugosi?

He and I worked together in Black Dragons.  I tell you, I had a good education at Monogram and Republic Studios working with people like that.  Lugosi seemed a little shy, he would stay in his dressing room most of the time.  I don't think he was stand-offish, just shy.  When the camera was on, though, he was letter perfect.  He had a way with dialogue that was special.  I never worked with anyone like him.

 All those serials and programmers were real work, they put you through the ropes and made an actor out of you.  I'm happy to say that some people considered me to be the King of the Serials, so I like to think that I made good!

More Clayton Moore Tomorrow!

The Lone Ranger’s Code of the West

We had so much fun writing about the new Lone Ranger film last week that I thought I would call to your attention a little-known gem of a book, The Lone Ranger’s Cold of the West by Jim Lichtman.  It is still available on Alibris and Abebooks, and comes recommended.

Billed as An action-packed adventure in values and ethics with the legendary champion of justice, Lichtman actually creates a guide to living-a-good-life as if imagined by the Lone Ranger.

The major conceit of the book is that Lichtman, an ethics specialist who created a training series to enhance individual responsibility, communication, and team performance, meets the Lone Ranger and Tonto while considering what it means to live as a good person.  Each chapter narrates a story from the Ranger’s fabled past, and each has a moral lesson that results in what Lichtman calls The Lone Ranger’s Code of the West.

To his credit, throughout the book Lichtman finds the Ranger and Tonto to be a bit of a drag – their relentless do-goodism and interferences on behalf of justice are sometimes overreaching or sanctimonious.  But despite the verbal sparring between the author and the Ranger and Tonto, Lichman comes to realize that the Lone Ranger was striving to live larger than all of us, to be both an ideal and an inspiration.  And though no one could really live up to the impossibly high bar of moral behavior the Ranger erects, it is certainly something to work towards.

In short, the Code says that the Lone Ranger is Honest, Fair, Caring, Respectful, Loyal, Tolerant, does his Duty and is Morally Courageous.  But, even more interesting, Lichtman plays the game of What Would the Lone Ranger Do – a tool for character-based decision making.  (And much more interesting than WWJD…)

What Would the Lone Ranger do rests on three principals:

First, the Lone Ranger considers the interests and well-being of all likely to be affected by his decisions.

Second, he makes decisions characterized by the core ethical values of honesty, fairness, caring, respect, loyalty, tolerance, duty and the moral courage to do what needs to be done. 

And finally, if it is clearly necessary to choose one ethical value over another, the Lone Ranger will do the thing that he sincerely believes to be the best for society in the long run.

Lichtman also hosted an extremely long-lasting seminar, “Values, Ethics and the Lone Ranger,” which further fleshed out what he considered the Ranger’s teachings.

Lichtman playing Plato to the Lone Ranger’s Socrates is a very amusing conceit, and he manages to bring the whole thing off with considerable style.  The Lone Ranger’s Code of the West can be found at many used book-sellers for as little as $5, and is well worth the investment.

And some day, you might find yourself asking, “what would the Lone Ranger do?”

Don’t Believe What You Hear: The Lone Ranger is Quite Terrific

So, it’s time to admit something of my age and say that I grew up during the great Nostalgia Craze of the 1970s.  The Marx Brothers were heroes on college campuses around the country, W.C. Fields was cultural touchstone, interest in vintage films and television seemed inexhaustible, and people reconnected with the glories of the Golden Age of Radio.

And not just adults!  No, in the 1970s just as many teenagers could identify Bela Lugosi or Myrna Loy as could hum lyrics from The Rolling Stones or The Bay City Rollers.  This sense that Pop Americana was a smorgasbord from which we could pick the most tasty morsels is all but dead – many of my students would rather be skinned alive than watch a black-and-white film, and the current zeitgeist demands that anything “old” (that is, prior to about 1980) is somehow “camp.”

The one anomaly to this current dismissal of Pop Culture Past is the fetishizing of superheroes – figures that actually pre-date the grandfathers of most contemporary film-goers.  So it is completely understandable that Disney would bankroll a big-budget retelling of one of the grandest myths of the Great American Century, The Lone Ranger.

The Lone Ranger was created by writer Fran Striker (1903-1962), first appearing in 1933 on radio station WXYZ, owned by George W. Trendle (1884-1972).  Trendle later claimed credit for creating the Ranger, which is not surprising considering how successful the program became.  The show was an enormous hit – it was geared towards kids, but more than half of the audience was made up of adults.  The radio show would last until 1954, and moved to television show from 1949 to 1957.  The Lone Ranger was also the subject of two movie serials, three motion pictures, and one execrable TV movie.  He was also fodder for writers and marketing-empire-builders, with eight novels by Striker, countless comic books and Big-Little-Books, and toys and games beyond number. 

These fueled the daydreams of countless boys.  I came across the Ranger myself when I was 10 or so and the local radio station, WRVR.FM, started a series of weekly radio rebroadcast five nights a week: Gangbusters, Fibber McGee and Molly, The Shadow, The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet.  I loved them all – and was hooked on the Ranger for life.

Though the mythos has often been tweaked over the past 80 years, the basic origin of the Lone Ranger remains the same.  He was one of a band of Texas Rangers who were ambushed in Bryant’s Gap by the notorious Butch Cavendish gang.  All the other rangers died in the attack; their bodies found by an American Indian named Tonto.

Tonto buried all of the rangers, and also made a fake grave for the surviving ranger, so that Butch and other bad men of the West would not seek him out and finish the job.  As Tonto said, “you only ranger left; you Lone Ranger.”

This is – essentially – the story that the new Lone Ranger film sets out to tell.  As my readers probably know by now, the film has been a colossal bomb for Disney, rivaling last year’s disaster that was John Carter (based on the John Carter of Mars novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs).

However, we here at The Jade Sphinx (let me break this gently) absolutely loved John Carter.  It was a thrilling evocation of all that was great about American pulp fiction.  Surely the Disney’s Long Ranger could not be all bad?

In short, it’s not.  It is something of a glorious mess; there is so much going on, and it is a rich and interesting film, asking more questions and demanding more imagination than the average summer junk film.  If anything, it’s a film crammed with too many ideas rather than just bland CGI action effects. It is faithful to the overall ideals of the Lone Ranger mythos, but also effectively transgressive. Though it will not be to everyone’s taste, I recommend it highly, despite its many failings.

Where to begin?  The film opens in 1933 at a carnival, where a child obsessed with the radio Lone Ranger finds the now-ancient Tonto (Johnny Depp, in the most interesting performance of his career) in the sideshow.  Tonto, in his dotage, initially thinks the boy is the Ranger himself, but, once he is set right, tells the boy the story of how he and the Lone Ranger came to be.

However, the story, in the telling, is full of holes and frankly incredible incidents of Native American mysticism.  Is the old Indian lying…?  Or is this how he remembers it?  Or does he simply imagine it all?  The film never fully answers these questions, and the viewer is invited to decide for himself.

In this telling, Cavendish (a vile-looking William Fitchner) is not only an outlaw, he’s in the pay of an unscrupulous railroad executive.  These Big Business interests are supported by the US military, and the whole fetid stew of corporatism, the military and organized crime connive to blame the Indians for various depredations as an excuse for moving them from their land to make way for the railroad.  (As one of the chief tells the Ranger before his group is decimated by a Gatling gun, “we are ghosts already.”)

Before John Reid (Armie Hammer) becomes the Lone Ranger, he is a young district attorney, ready to bring the rule of law to the West.  His brother (a convincing James Badge Dale) is a Texas Ranger on the trail of Cavendish, and the brothers are together during a horrific ambush, leaving all the rangers dead, except for our hero.  In an especially gruesome touch, Cavendish is part cannibal, eating a piece of his victims.  He munches on the heart of the Lone Ranger’s brother before making his escape.

Much of the humor of the film is found in how the Ranger and Tonto learn to work as a team – yes, it is a buddy movie, as well, with all that entails.  Hammer’s Ranger is the ultimate square – like Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, he’s a by-the-book law-and-order type, who believes that law and justice are the same things.  He is uncomfortable outside of his frame of reference, and he is all too often incompetent at heroics.  In fact, Tonto thinks that the Ranger’s brother would’ve been much more effective as an avenger, and claims that kemo sabe means “the wrong brother.”  Hammer and Depp work wonderfully well together, but the comedy is too forced, and the jokey banter between the two of them hurts the overall tone of the film.

In fact, tone seems to be the main problem of The Lone Ranger.  By turns The Lone Ranger is a serious revenge picture, buddy comedy, meditation on the corrupt complicity of the military and Big Business, an action spectacle and a damnation of this nation’s treatment of its indigenous peoples.  There are needless plot points (there are two sequences with Helena Bonham Carter as a wooden-legged madam with a gun in her heel that can excised without notice, saving perhaps 20 minutes of running time), and sometimes the sense of overkill boarders on the grotesque.  But there cannot be bounty without excess, and our unreliable narrator somehow makes these disparate parts work as a whole.

The screenplay, by Justin Haythe, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio is an intentional funhouse mirror of our cinematic Western tradition.  The movie has echoes of everything from One Upon a Time in the West to The Searchers to Little Big Man to They Died With Their Boots On to The Iron Horse – taking images, ideas and concepts from all of these films and throwing them back at us in a purposely distorted vision.

It is only in the film’s final act, as the Lone Ranger and Tonto hijack a train under the control of railroad magnate Latham Cole (the excellent Tom Wilkinson) to the stirring strains of The William Tell Overture that we have standard Lone Ranger heroics, as the duo ride horses atop the train, dangle from couplings and perform stunts that would do Buster Keaton proud.

Just as science fiction is always about the present and never really about the future, the Western film is always about the modern world and not our mythic past. Each generation gets the Western it deserves, and The Lone Ranger does not paint a pretty picture of America in 2013.  The Ranger comes to learn that the rule of law does not hold for Big Business or the military, and that the lives of the poor or disenfranchised are considered exploitable and expendable by the establishment.  Tonto presses the mask upon the Ranger throughout the film, but it’s only when the Ranger realizes that there is plenty of law but very little justice that he decides to embrace it.  “If this is the law,” he says, “then I guess I’ll be an outlaw.”

The Lone Ranger is a film, I think, that the viewer takes con amore or not at all.  I was hooked in the opening moments – director Gore Verbinski creates images in the carnival (and throughout the film) of remarkable beauty and richness.  Sadly, when I saw the film at New York City’s Ziegfeld Theater, we were two of perhaps 12 patrons for the evening show.  The film is flop of monumental proportions and, if you will, I have a thought on that as well.

It’s not that The Lone Ranger is a bad film – perhaps not a coherent action picture, but it’s an elusive and subtle pastiche that is satisfying on many, many levels.  The real problem, in terms of box office, is simply that people don’t want it.  The West is not part of our increasingly urban zeitgeist, and, to it’s credit, The Lone Ranger even tries to address past political injustices by making Tonto the most important and complex character.  True to his code (and unlike the current Superman), the Ranger never deliberately takes a life, strives for a high standard and believes in the rule of law.  Perhaps, there is just no place for the Lone Ranger in contemporary America.

One last parting note – readers interested in Western films from the 1950s (and there were two Long Ranger films that decade) could do no better than visiting Toby Roan’s indispensable blog 50 Westerns From the 50s.  You can find it here: http://fiftieswesterns.wordpress.com/.  It’s a treasure trove of information for the Western film buff.

Born on a Mountaintop by Bob Thompson

My more indulgent Jade Sphinx readers will forgive me if we head West once again as we close out the week.  (And to the wag who sent a comment saying that we should perhaps change the name of this blog to The Jade Cactus by Cherokee Bob, please know that we will take it under advisement.)

No figure – including that glorious tall-tale-spinner Buffalo Bill Cody – is more riddled with confusion, controversy and misinformation than that hero of the Alamo, David (Davy) Crockett (1876-1836).  Despite a strong predilection for all facets our Western Myth, I must confess that Crockett and other early frontiersmen have never really been of particular interest to me.  I am too young to have been consumed by the great Crockett fad started by Walt Disney in 1955, when America’s youth actually wore coonskin caps and went about singing The Ballad of Davy Crockett.  (“Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee/Greenest state in the land of the free/Raised in the woods so knew every tree/Kilt him a bear when we was only three/DAVY, DAVY Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier!” and so on for some 20 verses.)  This fad was as pervasive and as powerful as the furor that surrounded Elvis Presley and the Beatles – if less pernicious than either – and those who were true believers seem never to have lost the faith.  Believe it or not, I once worked for the head of a global public relations firm who was still so besotted by the Crockett craze of his boyhood that he still wore a coonskin cap.  Now that is devotion.

However, Davy Crockett has now come magically alive to me in Bob Thompson’s delightful Born on a Mountaintop: On The Road With Davy Crockett and the Ghosts of the Wild Frontier, and I finally see why the Crockett myth is so compelling.

For those looking for a straightforward biography, Thompson’s book will come as a disappointment.  Instead, he goes after something much more interesting and personal.  Much in the manner of Footsteps biographer Richard Holmes, Thompson writes a book literally pursuing his subject.  He traces the historical Davy by following him through Tennessee, westward, and then to Washington, where he served two terms in Congress.  We go with Davy on a book tour through Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, and then retrace those fateful steps to Texas and the Alamo.

Though chasing ghosts, Thompson is extremely aware of the difficulties inherent in this method.  He writes:  “The past is a foreign country,” as the novelist L.P. Hartley wrote, but I think that Hartley understated the problem.  The past is a foreign country that’s impossible to visit.  You can’t just skip across the border, hire yourself a translator, and ask old John Crockett where he was on the afternoon of October 7, 1780 --- let alone get up close and persona with his celebrity son.

The historical Crockett he finds is a man of contradictions.  Born dirt poor, he received little education.  He fought the Creeks and took part in several important skirmishes in the Indian war.  After several unsuccessful attempts are raising his standard of living, he married (after his first wife died) a woman of modest means, but still of relative means.  He became a local politician and ended up going to Congress – first as a supporter of Andrew Jackson, and then as his bitter enemy.

The paradoxes are many.  Here was an Indian fighter who went to Congress and bitterly fought Jackson on an illegal Indian land grab.  He was really “the poor man’s friend,” but he hobnobbed (or tried to) with Eastern Brahmans.  He concocted the most outrageous tall tales about himself, but took umbrage (mostly) when others did so.  Losing his seat in Congress – thanks mostly to Jackson (a man who makes George W. Bush look like Mother Theresa) – he heads West again and becomes embroiled in the battle for Texas liberty.

How and why?  Well, Davy’s time in Texas is just little more than the last three months of his life, but Thompson devotes more than a hundred pages to it.  Like all men, Davy was complicated and self-contradictory.  He really did believe the fight in Texas was “the good fight,” but he also saw it as a way to revive his flaccid political career, and maybe get some land out of the deal. 

Thompson starts the book by explaining that his two young daughters became interested in Crockett after hearing Burl Ives sing the Ballad, and how he spent years becoming fascinated himself.  He also spends a great many pages on the Crockett craze of the 1950s, and examines where fact and fiction overlap.  (Not very often is the verdict.) 

Thompson was a longtime features writer for The Washington Post, and his Born on a Mountaintop is an eccentric, elliptical, solipsistic and often discursive book.  However, it is also a fascinating read and an interesting meditation on Americana, past and present.  It comes highly recommended.

Tomorrow we return with another legend: The Lone Ranger! 

It’s a Turd! It’s a Pain! It’s the Man of Steel!

It sure isn’t Superman…

It was with a mix of elation and trepidation that I realized two iconic Pop Culture figures from the previous American Century would be resurrected this summer: Superman and The Lone Ranger.  Though such figures do not normally fall under the purview of The Jade Sphinx, both have had such a long-lasting and profound impact on the way we view ourselves and our culture that attention must be paid.

But the America of 1933 (the birth of the Lone Ranger) and of 1938 (the debut of Superman) are very different places from that of 2013.  Could both figures survive the transition into what we laughingly refer to as modernity without losing some vital essence, the very things that made these figures what they were?

Well, in the case of Superman, the answer, sadly, is no.  We do not often go to big budget junk pictures, and it is rare that we find them satisfactory.  However, Man of Steel, directed by Zack Snyder, must hit a new low for a genre with a decidedly low bar.  Never have I seen a blockbuster film so cynical in its conception, so ham-fisted in its execution or so bleak in its worldview.  What should have been an exhilarating romp that left one with a sense of wonder instead is a grim and dour computer game, devoid of life, sentiment, wit, intelligence or fun.

This creates an interesting aesthetic conundrum.  For those who know the core of the Superman mythos (and surely he is as mythic to modern America as Theseus was to the Ancients), the story runs thus: on the planet Krypton, scientist-statesman Jor-El realizes that the planet will soon explode.  He unsuccessfully tries to convince the powers that be that doom is imminent, so he builds a rocket to send their infant son, Kal-El, to the distant planet earth.  The ship leaves just before the planet explodes and lands in the cornfields or rural America (usually Kansas, in most tellings).  He is raised by the rustic Kent family, given the name Clark and taught American virtues and a sense of honor and of duty while growing to manhood.  He moves to the big city (literally a Metropolis) and becomes a great protector and savior, a symbol of courage, honesty and purity by which all humanity can aspire.

The aesthetic conundrum at the core of The Man of Steel is simply this: how can Snyder and his producer/writer (Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer, respectively) take this same material and fashion out of it a film so grim, so lacking in warmth, so devoid of hope and so ugly to look at?  Every artist brings something of themselves to whatever theme they approach, but surely some themes are, at their core, immutable?  Surely the fundamental message of great myths – be it hope or despair, transcendence or degradation – would shine through?

Apparently not.  Every choice made by Snyder and company was calculated to leech Superman and his mythos from any sense of grandeur, any sense of fun, any sense of transcendence.

First, let’s look at Krypton.  In both the comics and the films, the planet is often presented as a kind of paradise.  The comics showed us a primary-colored super-science wonderland worthy of Flash Gordon.  And the latter Superman films with Christopher Reeve opted for a futuristic Greco-Roman splendor, with a sparse purity often associated with Greek drama.

In Man of Steel, Krypton is as ugly as the nightmares of H. R. Giger.  Its inhabitants wear gray latex drag while moving through what looks like a massive digestive track.  Snyder and company have Jor-El die when he is stabbed in the gut by the film’s villain, General Zod – saving the explosion for Superman’s mother.

We then see the grown Kal-El finding himself while bumming through the US.  Reporter Lois Lane has a run-in with him, and soon investigates the story of the mysterious man with strange powers.  But soon General Zod and his cadre of Krypton survivors come to earth, looking for Kal-El because it seems that Jor-El downloaded all of Krypton’s genetic information into his infant son.  With this information, Zod hopes to recreate Krypton on earth… leaving no place for humanity.

Where to begin?  First off, Snyder shoots the film with a near complete de-saturation of color.  Imagine a black and white film poorly daubed with a waxy crayon and you get the effect.  Worse still, the thudding, repetitive and unpleasant score by Hans Zimmer is more reminiscent of the antics at a stoner’s rock concert than a glorious science-fiction romp. 

As for the special effects – they are not that special.  When Superman and Zod battle at the climax (seemingly forever), it is blurred motion and fast-cutting, more computer flummery than cinema.

The performances are nearly invisible.  Henry Cavill may be the handsomest man to don the blue-and-red suit, but he lacks the charisma of Brandon Routh or Christopher Reeve.  (Or George Reeves!)  His Superman is a cypher.  No one else manages to make any impression at all except for Kevin Costner as Pa Kent – and a film is in trouble when the most energetic player is … Kevin Costner.

But the fundamental problem with the seething mess that is Man of Steel is one of tone and artistic vision.  It seems that Snyder and Nolan wanted to do an “adult” take on Superman, but to them “adult” can only mean gloomy, negative and nihilistic.  I weep for the intellectual and emotional maturity of both men if that is indeed their yardstick of adulthood, because it is both horribly restrictive and blinkered.  Transcendent joy is as much an “adult” aesthetic as the cheapest form of tragedy, but try telling that someone with the emotional sense of a 15 year-old.

The filmmakers nail their own coffins finally with their vision of Superman, himself.  For more than 70 years, Superman was the “good guy;” the man we looked up to, the person we all aspired to be.  This vengeful, glum and, finally, not terribly bright man may be many things, but he will never be … Superman.

Tomorrow, a special Fourth of July message.

Remembering The Man of Bronze

One of the most influential fictional characters of the 20^th Century is someone you’ve probably never heard of: Dr. Clark “Doc” Savage, Jr., the Man of Bronze.  He made his debut in pulp magazines 80 years ago in March, 1933 (around the same time that King Kong made his first appearance).  Doc Savage Magazine was published by Street & Smith, and Doc was created by publisher Henry W. Ralston and editor John L. Nanovic, but most of the 181 novels were written by wordsmith Lester Dent (1904-1959).

Doc Savage was a surgeon, explorer, scientist, researcher, criminologist and all-around physical marvel.  He did two hours of intense exercise every day, giving him a fabulous physique.  His body had been tanned a deep bronze during his world travels, and newspapers have dubbed him The Man of Bronze.

Along with his medical degree, he holds several scientific degrees and has published extensively in everything from physics to anthropology.  He lives on the 86^th floor of the Empire State Building, which includes his living quarters along with his various laboratories.  Doc leaves this fabulous art deco paradise by personal elevator, which moves so fast that he is usually the only one who can remain standing during its descent.

Doc stores his cars, submarine, plane, autogiro and dirigible in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan emblazoned with the legend The Hidalgo Trading Company.  This is something of a joke on Doc’s part (a rarity, as he seldom jokes) – Hidalgo is the Central American nation in which a lost tribe of Mayans mind his private gold mine.

When Doc is not traveling the world, battling mad scientists, super-villains and various fascists, he travels to the Arctic Circle to his Fortress of Solitude, where he can catch his breath and devote time to his scientific studies.  It is also the spot where Doc, an inveterate tinkerer and inventor, creates most of his gadgets.  Doc the Gadgeteer is legendary, creating hypnotic gas, “mercy” bullets that only stun, lightweight bullet-proof vests, the first answering machine, radar…. The list goes on and on. 

How did Clark become the Man of Bronze?  Doc is, in the final analysis, something of a scientific experiment himself.  His father created a strenuous training program for his only son; Doc was reared by a group of scientists who not only developed Clark’s body, but his mind, as well.  Though this sounds like it may have been something of a grind, young Doc was also taken around the world to learn the many languages he speaks, as well as various “mystic” arts of the East.  His boyhood travels alone would have been enough to make Indiana Jones footsore.

Doc has a coterie of friends who go adventuring with him, nicknamed The Fabulous Five.  The Five are the top men in their fields, and include Theodore Marley “Ham” Brooks, famous lawyer and fashion plate; Andrew Blodgett “Monk” Mayfair, brilliant chemist who looks vaguely simian; John “Renny” Renwick, celebrated engineer who has a penchant for knocking down doors with his oversized fists; William Harper “Johnny” Littlejohn, archeologist and anthropologist with a taste for big words; and Thomas J. “Long Tom” Roberts, the world’s leading electrical engineer.  Doc met these five men during the Great War – all are Doc’s senior by at least a decade or more, but Doc calls these men “brothers” and they are fiercely devoted to one-another.

The earliest stories would include all five of Doc’s friends, but later tales would include only two or three, most frequently Monk and Ham, who have a good natured rivalry and inflict endless harassment upon one-another. 

Oddly enough, Doc’s pulp magazine success was not transferable.  There was a best-forgotten radio series and a truly execrable movie version in 1975.  And most Doc Savage comic books fall flat – an oddity considering the visual potential of the corpus.

So … what is so special about the Doc Savage novels?  Well… in terms of influence, Doc’s achievement is colossal.  He was the template for the much better-known Superman, and, indeed, much of the mythology of Superman was stolen from Doc.  Both are named Clark.  Doc is the Man of Bronze; Superman the Man of Steel.  Superman has a Fortress of Solitude up north, and a group of supporting characters beside whom he can look more super.  Most tellingly, advertising art for Doc Savage Magazine often simply read … SUPERMAN.  Doc, however great his accomplishments, is fully human; Superman’s Kryptonian past separates him from us.  Doc is what we all could be, if only.

Doc the Gadgeteer has also influenced everyone from James Bond to The Man From U.N.C.L.E., as well as the adventuring family seen on Jonny Quest and even the dysfunctional adventurers found on The Venture Brothers.  Another key quality of the Doc Savage novels are their exotic locales – the novels usually open in a sun-kissed New York, a sort of art deco neverland – and before long Doc and his crew are in a dirigible or private plane headed for some barely charted spot on the map.  This taste for period exotica was an influence on heroes as diverse as TinTin and Indiana Jones.

All right, I hear you crying, enough!  So, Doc was hot stuff and a huge influence on junk adventure fiction.  But why do you like him?

Well, the simple and unvarnished truth is that I love Doc.  I love him and Ham and Monk and all the rest of them.  There is a portrait of Doc hanging in my studio where I paint, and not a day goes by when I do not think of him at least once.  This does not blind me to the flaws in the series.  Writing at breakneck speed, Dent was not a prose stylist.  He was not, nor could he ever be, Sinclair Lewis.  Hell, he couldn’t even be Edgar Rice Burroughs.  But… Dent delivered what was needed.

I read the Doc Savage novels in my middle teens – the perfect age for the series.  (Since I still love Doc, that teenager is still alive in me somewhere.)  The tremendous sense of Doc’s personal accomplishments along with the variety and scope of his travels and adventures provided a landscape for my own imagination.  Maybe, I thought, one day I would see the world.  Learn a language.  Write a book. Develop deep and lasting friendships.  And maybe … something big, something exciting, something of great importance, would happen to me, too.

The other charm of the Doc Savage corpus is found in the quieter moments of the series.  They are richly infused with comedy (mostly when Ham and Monk bicker), but there are always grace notes that underscore Doc’s quiet benevolence and humanity.  Like the Lone Ranger, Doc would not kill his enemies.  Doc kept a quiet poker face, but it never hid the kindness and warmth that could be found within.

 

After 1949, the world forgot Doc.  But then, something remarkable happened in the 1960s.  Bantam Books started republishing the novels, and several new generations came to know and love Doc Savage.

The best Doc novels are those from the 1930s.  The world was a large place before World War II, and the exotic settings and outlandish plots are delicious.  Doc Savage novels are easily found on ebay, and writer Will Murray has written several new adventures over the past few years, many based on notes that Dent left behind.  For anyone who is young at heart, Doc Savage is highly recommended.

Not bad for an 80 year old.