BRACE BEEMER, THE LONE RANGER, 1941-1954 & EARLE GRASER, THE LONE RANGER, 1933-1941.
WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN?
"From now on my identity shall be forever buried with those brave Texas Rangers who died at my side. I’ll be…The Lone Ranger!"
The story of Network Radio’s greatest hero began on October 10, 1925, when wealthy advertising man George Harrison Phelps put WGHP/Detroit on the air. Two years later his 500 watt namesake at 1110 kilocycles became one of the original 16 affiliates of the fledgling Columbia Broadcasting System.
But the exciting new hobby that Phelps envisioned turned out to be a time consuming and expensive burden. For greater coverage he moved the transmitter to nearby Mount Clemens, Michigan, changed the frequency to 940 k.c. and pushed the power up to 750 watts in 1927. A short while later it was moving time again - this time to the Detroit suburb of Fraser at 1180 k.c. (1)
Phelps wanted out. He turned WGHP over to the owner of a string of gas stations from Toledo and future chain broadcaster, George Storer, for $40,000 in October, 1928. Not one to turn down a quick profit, George Storer sold the station to yet another George for $250,000 just 18 months later.
George Washington Trendle was a 36 year old lawyer when he joined Detroit’s Kunsky Theater Group in 1920. He was instrumental in the company’s expansion and success - among other things, guiding it into a consortium that founded a Hollywood studio, First National Pictures, which was later bought by Warner Brothers. John Kunsky and his young lawyer sold Detroit’s leading chain of theaters to Paramount Publix Theaters for over $4.0 Million just before the Great Depression struck in 1929.
Flush with cash, partners Kunsky and Trendle - along with their former stage production manager, Howard Pierce - bought WGHP from Storer on April 25, 1930. The trio let Detroit know that showmen had arrived on July 1st when they moved the transmitter back to Detroit, changed its frequency to 1240 k.c. and renamed the station with much fanfare, W X Y Z - The Last Word In Radio! George Trendle took the position of President of Kunsky-Trendle Broadcasting and General Manager of WXYZ. Howard Pierce took the jobs of Corporate Secretary and Director of WXYZ Broadcasting. John Kunsky took it easy - at 55 he was enjoying early retirement. (2)
Another key player was added to the team when 30 year old Nashville native Horace Allen Campbell impressed Trendle with his shrewd southern charm and business sense. The successful young advertising salesman for Hearst’s Detroit News joined WXYZ, quickly brought new business into the station and put him on the fast track to become its General Sales Manager and a close confidant of the boss..
H. Allen Campbell also had a knack for discovering talent. He found future network star Russ Morgan and sold a weekly half-hour of the singing bandleader’s Music In The Morgan Manner for over a year. Then, on a 1931 sales trip, he heard a deep cultured voice identified only as The Wandering Vagabond reading poetry on an Indianapolis station. After seeking out the tall and handsome 28 year old with the voice that would eventually become known to millions, Campbell offered Brace Beemer his ticket to fame - a one month trial contract at WXYZ.
In 1933, Campbell came up with the idea of the Michigan Radio Network to compete with the coverage of 50,000 watt WJR. He was able to offer advertisers a package of WXYZ with stations in Grand Rapids, Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, Jackson, Flint and Bay City. It was a unique idea that resulted in thousands of dollars in found billings. But not all of the ideas that Campbell endorsed were winners…
Longtime WXYZ personality Dick Osgood points out in his lengthy and greatly detailed history of the Detroit station, Wyxie Wonderland, neither Campbell nor Trendle took sole credit - or blame - for dropping the station’s affiliation with CBS. When the network plug was pulled on December 31, 1930, they both expressed confidence that the move would give them more programming freedom and more time to sell. Neither seemed bothered by the need to fill all those hours left vacant by their eviction of Bing Crosby, The Shadow, Kate Smith, Myrt & Marge, Ben Bernie and the rest of the early CBS network lineup. (3)
WXYZ suddenly became the hectic hub for budding radio talent. Singers, actors, musicians and lecturers were constantly on the run in the halls of the station which trade magazine Broadcasting later reported had budgeted $300,000 for programs in the conversion to independent status. The showmanship of Trendle and the salesmanship of Campbell began to win back listeners and advertisers and things were looking up by 1932. Centerpiece of WXYZ’s programming was a nightly half-hour thriller with the umbrella title, Hunters of Men, produced by James Jewell, the station’s 28 year old Director of Dramas.
Then, during a staff meeting in mid-December, 1932, Trendle proposed a new series - a Western. His reasoning stemmed from his days of running theaters for John Kunsky and learning that Westerns were always sure box-office and popular with entire families. A brainstorming session followed in which Trendle laid down the ground rules that the program needed a hero figure - a role model for kids - the embodiment of strength, decency, kindness, clean living and good grammar.
Ideas began to fly around the group - that he be an independent operator…a roaming marshal or Texas Ranger…maybe an ex-lawman…a champion of the defenseless…an expert marksman who never shoots to kill…a mysterious man of means…possibly masked like Zorro. Hearing all this, station manager-announcer Harold True remembered a similar hero from WTAM/Cleveland and suggested a title, The Lone Ranger.
When the topic was temporarily exhausted all eyes turned to Jim Jewell for the next step. He was already ahead of them.
Among the melodramas Jewell produced in his Hunters of Men series were Thrills of The Secret Service, Dr. Fang and Warner Lester, Manhunter, all sold to WXYZ for four dollars an episode by Fran Striker, 28, a free lance writer from Buffalo who syndicated his scripts to stations around the country. Striker later recalled receiving a letter from Jim Jewell on December 28, 1932, requesting three or four sample stories based on notes he took at the staff meeting.
Striker had scripts for an unsold series titled Covered Wagon Days on the shelf. He did a fast rewrite to half a dozen and mailed them to Jewell. The lighthearted, laughing hero crafted by Striker could have been a model for The Cisco Kid - but not the no-nonsense idol that George Trendle had in mind. Nevertheless, the boss said the writer was on the right track and wanted Striker to develop his new hero’s distinctions of broad knowledge, unshakable temperament and absolute honesty - and pursue the “silver” theme with the horse’s name, his silver shoes and the silver bullets that the Ranger fired.
With Trendle’s concepts and Striker’s scripts as his guides Jewell began looking for an actor to take the lead in the new series. Twenty-one year old George Stenius had come off a road tour with the play Elizabeth The Queen when he auditioned for Jim Jewell at WXYZ on January 11,1933, and landed the title role of The Lone Ranger.
Harold True, already credited with giving The Lone Ranger his name in the staff meeting a month earlier, solved another lingering problem when he created the hero’s famous shout to his horse. Osgood reports that after “giddy-up,“ “tally-ho”, “heigh-ho” and other lines were tried and discarded, True introduced the program’s first test broadcast over WXYZ on January 20, 1933 and improvised with gusto, “The Jewell Players present a fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty, Hi-Yo, Silver! The Lone Ranger!”
The Lone Ranger’s theme song, eventually familiar to millions of listeners, was March of The Swiss Soldiers, finale to Rossini’s William Tell Overture. The needle drop was with the program from the beginning - recorded public domain music requiring no talent fess and no royalties. With the Rossini theme and bridges supplied by Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Borodin, and Mendelssohn the producers saved millions of dollars over the years of the show’s run.
After several more dry runs the show was deemed ready by Trendle, Pierce, Campbell, Jewell, Striker, True, Campbell and everyone else involved in its production. The Lone Ranger debuted on WXYZ and its new Michigan Radio Network on Tuesday, January 31, 1933. (4)
At first The Lone Ranger was really alone with no one to talk to - and to advance the plot’s narrative - except Silver and supporting members in each story’s cast. To solve this problem Striker created the Ranger’s “faithful Indian companion Tonto” - his constant sidekick with a name borrowed from Tonto Basin, a tiny community in western Arizona and the title of a 1921 Zane Grey novel. Tonto was introduced in the program’s twelfth episode - a back-story in which young Texas Ranger John Reid, wounded in an ambush and left for dead, was discovered and nursed back to health by his boyhood kemosabe now an adult, Tonto. (5)
Unlike the role of The Lone Ranger which changed hands several times, Tonto became steady work for veteran British stage actor John Todd, who was 56 when he introduced the character on the broadcast of February 25, 1933. Todd remained in the role until the program went out of production in 1954 when he was 77. (6)
The show was considered on a par or better than most network offerings, but Campbell found it to be a tougher sell to advertisers than anticipated. One prospect, the Illinois Meat Company, makers of Broadcast brand canned hash, considered sponsoring The Lone Ranger, but only as a quarter hour continuing story. Campbell convinced Trendle to agree, so for two weeks in early 1933, it became a 15 minute weekday afternoon series until the meat company turned it down and the show returned to half hour form three evenings a week
Meanwhile, back in the studio…George Stenius was turning in satisfactory performances as The Lone Ranger but confessed to Jim Jewell that his heart wasn’t in the Old West, it was in Hollywood. He wanted to write for the movies, then direct and perhaps produce films. Jewell had seen some of the comedy material that Stenius had submitted to MGM and wasn’t surprised when the studio offered him a staff writer’s job at $75 a week. (7)
Stenius left The Lone Ranger after the May 9th broadcast and was replaced on May 11th by Lee Trent aka Jack Deeds who struggled with the role, giving Jewell second thoughts about the actor’s talents. When Trent/Deeds showed up drunk before the May 13th show, Jewell fired him on the spot and jumped into the role for one performance.
Tuesday, May 16th was important to the history of The Lone Ranger for two reasons.
First, after a weekend of auditions and rehearsals, 24 year old Earle Graser took over the lead role. The Canadian born Wayne University graduate had played small supporting parts in Jewell’s past productions. He possessed a strong masculine voice and was considered reliable. Graser’s only drawbacks were his looks - mustachioed with a slight build under six feet. But this was radio and looks didn’t matter, especially for an actor who would never be identified as The Lone Ranger.
Secondly, Trendle and Campbell had a trick up their sleeves to prove The Lone Ranger’s popularity which was sprung on the same day‘s broadcast. At the end of the show’s story the Lone Ranger was introduced to announce that the first 1,000 boys and girls who sent him a request would receive a Lone Ranger Gun absolutely free. Within two days the supply of tin pop-guns was wiped out and by the end of the week over 24,500 letters and postcards had been received. Graser appeared at close of the May 23rd broadcast to call an end to the giveaway but assure listeners that all requests received to that point would be filled.
Stacks of those responses were used as props in WXYZ sales presentations and one of them struck gold at the Gordon Baking Company. Campbell reasoned that The Lone Ranger and Silver would be a natural tie-in with the bakery’s Silvercup Bread. He promised that the program along with the store displays, window cards and other merchandising tools that WXYZ and its Michigan Radio Network stations could provide would have all the kids in the state asking their mothers to buy The Lone Ranger’s favorite bread, Silvercup. Gordon bought Campbell’s pitch and beginning on Monday, November 29, 1933 - almost ten months after its debut - The Lone Ranger finally had a sponsor.
True to Campbell’s promises, Silvercup Bread began flying off grocers’ shelves. Gordon Baking was fast becoming The Lone Ranger’s biggest fan and wanted the show for its Chicago and New York City divisions. Bakeries in other cities soon learned about Silvercup’s huge success with The Lone Ranger and began calling Campbell to inquire about its availability. This ultimately led to feeding the show from Detroit by line to Chicago and transcribing it for distribution to WGN/Chicago, WOR/New York, stations in Atlanta and Kansas City, then Boston where Campbell signed the regional Yankee Network.
George Trendle sensed the potential goldmine that The Lone Ranger represented and he wanted to protect what he considered to be his property. On May 22, 1934, he convinced Fran Striker to sign over all past, present and future rights to The Lone Ranger or any other creative project, (which would eventually include The Green Hornet, Challenge of The Yukon and Ned Jordan, Secret Agent), to the Kunsky-Trendle Broadcasting Company. In return, Striker was given the security of a regular paycheck, reported to be a substantial $100 per week.
Six months later Trendle and his partners formed The Lone Ranger, Inc., separate from WXYZ, to syndicate the program and handle the growing interest in the character by publishers, toy companies, clothing manufacturers and movie studios. Both Fran Striker and Jim Jewell were excluded from the new corporation. (8)
Allen Campbell never laid any claim to helping originate The Lone Ranger, but he is recognized as the spark plug who fired up the Mutual Broadcasting System. During the summer of 1934 Campbell rounded up WGN and WOR along with WLW/Cincinnati to consider reviving the shared programming concept of 1929’s failed Quality Broadcasting Group. They agreed to add affiliates in Pittsburgh, Washington and St. Louis and limit the new cooperative network to seven outlets. The Lone Ranger became Mutual’s first program on October 2, 1934.
Campbell was offered the presidency of the new Mutual network but he declined. Instead, he was named General Manager of WXYZ and ten percent owner of Kunsky-Trendle Broadcasting in the summer of 1935. He promptly dropped the station’s affiliation with Mutual to join NBC’s Blue Network on September 29, 1935.
Although WXYZ was no longer a Mutual affiliate, it continued to feed The Lone Ranger to the network and would continue to do so for another seven years. Meanwhile, Gordon Bakeries introduced The Lone Ranger Safety Club and gave out 475,500 club memberships through the mail and participating retailers in six weeks during the fall of 1935. With its support of traffic safety, healthy living and good citizenship, The Lone Ranger Safety Club would eventually enroll 4.4 Million youngsters and become an effective merchandising tool for the program’s growing roster of local and regional sponsors - mostly food companies - that would reach 42 in number. All of them had access the marketing materials available from Lone Ranger, Inc., designed to help them become more effective radio advertisers.
As he began The Lone Ranger phenomenon with a staff meeting in 1932, George Trendle summoned Striker, Jewell and Campbell to his office in late 1935 and proposed another new series. He had been a boyhood fan of the pulp fiction Adventures of Jimmie Dale, author Frank Packard’s tales of a young millionaire who became a crime fighter by night, The Gray Seal. The group agreed that the concept had promise for radio and Striker suggested that similarities be created between their new hero and The Lone Ranger, making him a modern day descendent of John Reid - with most of the same personality traits that Trendle insisted upon in his great uncle, including good grammar.
It was then decided to make young Britt Reid a crusading newspaper publisher by day. Instead of a “faithful Indian companion, Tonto,” the new hero was given a “faithful Japanese valet, Kato“, the great horse Silver was replaced by the sleek, super-charged Black Beauty automobile and his gun fired sleeping gas instead of silver bullets. (9) Campbell contributed the name Green Hornet and the new series was born on January 31, 1936, the third anniversary of The Lone Ranger. (10)
Everything was good and getting better at WXYZ in 1936. Little attention was given to the departure of Brace Beemer who decided to enter the advertising business in Detroit. Greater interest was given Allen Campbell's negotiations with Interstate Bakeries to sponsor The Lone Ranger on the Don Lee West Coast Network of Mutual stations. It's been told that the hangup was the baker's insistence to rename the great horse Silver after the bread to be sold on the program. Campbell refused to even suggest that the hero shout, "Hi-yo, Gingham, Away!"
Campbell held firm, the client signed and The Lone Ranger became a coast-to-coast program on January 18, 1937. The show was now performed three times every Monday, Wednesday and Friday: 7:30 p.m ET to the East Coast and some Midwest cities, 8:30 for most of the Central Time Zone and 10:30 for the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones. It was hard but steady work the cast and crew. Its unidentified star, Earl Grasier was making $125 a week.
Split sponsorships around the country prevented The Lone Ranger from appearing in the ratings but there was hardly a kid or parent in the country who wasn’t aware of The Masked Rider of The Plains. Republic Pictures released the first of its two Lone Ranger serials in February, 1938. The 15 chapter cliff-hanger starring Lee Powell was named Best Serial of The Year by the Motion Picture Exhibitors and returned $60,000 plus rights to its original music to The Lone Ranger, Inc. Its sequel, The Lone Ranger Rides Again with Robert Livingston in the title role, was released in 1939. Both serials credited Fran Striker as the head writer although experienced screenwriters were responsible for them..
Two broadcasts from this period are posted below - January 19, 1938 and October 28, 1940. Listeners will notice a familiar voice announcing the 1940 episode - Brace Beemer. Also, most of the programs posted are from the syndicated issue and contain 90 seconds of theme music pad at the beginning and end of each show for local commercials.
Broadcasting magazine reported in April, 1939, that The Lone Ranger was heard on 127 stations in the US, Canada and Australia.- 65 on direct line and 62 by transcription. Fran Striker was responsible for all of the show’s scripts plus the initial stories for the Lone Ranger comic strip that appeared in 120 newspapers and the manuscripts for Whitman’s Lone Ranger Big Little Books for children and novels for adults from Grossett & Dunlap. Dubbed by many, “The Human Writing Machine,” Striker was also in charge of all scripts for The Green Hornet, Challenge of The Yukon and Ned Jordan, Secret Agent. (11) His salary by this time had increased to $10,000 a year.
Trendle and Campbell were jolted awake in the early morning hours of April 8, 1941, with shocking news: Earle Graser was dead. He had fallen asleep behind the wheel of his car on a suburban Farmington road and rear ended a parked trailer. He died at the scene - in front of the local Methodist church where he sang in the choir. The voice of The Lone Ranger was 32, survived by his widow and an infant daughter. His final broadcast from April 7, 1941, is posted below.
Earle Graser’s obituary in the New York Times began, “Death lifted The Lone Ranger’s mask at daybreak today.” Its editorial the next day titled, The Immortal Ranger, and was read that evening on a WXYZ memorial broadcast:
“Earl H. Graser was killed in an automobile wreck Tuesday morning, but the rumor that The Lone Ranger is dead is unfounded. It was the man who died…he didn’t take The Lone Ranger with him. The Lone Ranger doesn’t die…his trusty steed waits to carry him on his errands across the face of the wondrous west where the air is crystal and virtue never lacks for its reward. Listen! There is the beating of the hoofs as, in the nick of time, he swings into action. Ride, Tonto! Ride, Lone Ranger! Hi-Yo, Silver!”
An emergency meeting was held in Trendle’s office to select a new actor for the part. Chuck Livingston, who had replaced Jim Jewell as Director of WXYZ Dramas, recommended Brace Beemer, 38, who had been announcing The Lone Ranger since his return to the station from the advertising business in 1939. A skilled horseman who looked like The Lone Ranger sounded, the strapping 6’3” Beemer, in mask and costume, had appeared in personal appearances astride a beautiful white show horse that reared and whinnied when he shouted, “Hi-yo, Silver!” (12)
Striker only had a one day to devise a transition from Graser to Beemer. The two men sounded alike but after eight years and over 1,200 broadcasts, listeners knew Graser’s voice too well for an abrupt change. Striker’s solution was to write the Ranger out of the show for a week - the innocent victim of range war crossfire - and let him slowly regain his strength and voice through two or three episodes while Tonto carried the action. The sequence is posted below in the programs from April 9 and April 16. Beemer’s first broadcast in the lead role on April 18th, is also posted.
Less attention was given at the time to WXYZ’s hiring of a new announcer from WJLB/Detroit. Fred Foy was a 20 year old handsome blonde whose voice was close enough to Beemer’s that he became the star’s understudy and stand-in at rehearsals when Beemer was away on one of his many personal appearance assignments. (13) Foy returned to WXYZ after four years in the Army and became the quintessential announcer-narrator of The Lone Ranger in mid-1948. Fred Foy at his dramatic best is heard in the June 30, 1948, telling of The Lone Ranger’s Origins.
During the chaotic week of Graser’s death Allen Campbell had been in Minneapolis putting the finishing touches on a contract with General Mills to assume coast-to-coast sponsorship of The Lone Ranger for Kix cereal. What would become a 15 year association began on May 5,1941. One day short of a year later, May 4, 1942, the program was moved from Mutual to Blue where it would remain at 7:30 p.m. ET until it left the air in 1956.
One of Campbell’s selling tools with General Mills and its Knox-Reeves advertising agency was a 1941 survey which indicated that a surprising 63% of Lone Ranger listeners were adults. Nevertheless, the new sponsor was going after the kids and established The Lone Ranger Victory Corps to replace The Lone Ranger Safety Club in March, 1942, to promote patriotism and sell war stamps.
Appeal to youngsters was also the purpose for the introduction of a third running character to The Lone Ranger on December 14, 1942, Dan Reid, Jr., the hero's 14 year old nephew played by Ernie Winstanley and later by Dick Beals and Jim Lipton. The young man's story to that time is told in flashback by his dying foster mother, Grandma Frisby, on the heartwarming Christmas Day program, posted below, when the Reid's learn of their relationship and Ranger promises to care for Dan as his own son.
General Mills also put The Lone Ranger into the premium business in a big way. Tom Tumbusch‘s Illustrated Radio Premium Catalog lists a number of novelties that were written into the show to save the day over the next decade then offered to listeners for box top and small change. These tempting items included a National Defenders Ring, a Glo-In-The-Dark Safety Belt, a Secret Compartment Ring, a Weather Ring, a Flashlight Gun with Secret Compartment Handle, a Flashlight Ring, a Six Shooter Ring, a Lone Ranger Pedometer, a Silver Bullet with Compass, a Movie Film Ring, a Secret Compartment Deputy Badge, a Filmstrip Saddle Ring and a Hike-O-Meter.
A record for premiums was set by 1947’s Lone Ranger Atomic Bomb Ring with “super powers”. The bomb shaped trinket contained a harmless material that glowed in the dark. Available for a Kix box top and 15 cents the premium offer drew a whopping 1.6 Million responses. That’s $240,000 in dimes, nickels and pennies, but more importantly to General Mills, a lot of Kix cereal sold.
Nevertheless, the king of premiums and promotions was born in early 1948 when General Mills’ Cheerios cereal took over sponsorship of the program and introduced The Lone Ranger's Frontier Town. The “town” began with a map covering nearly 16 square feet of floor space and sold in four quadrants - Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest - each requiring a dime and a Cheerios box top. The full color map indicated where buildings and landmarks were located - 71 cardboard structures and models printed and dye-cut on the backs of nine specially printed Cheerios boxes that could easily be popped out and assembled without scissors or glue. .
To keep the offer fresh, Lone Ranger plots were centered around Frontier Town for a extended period of the spring and early summer - when the map was often used in stories to help locate people or places vital to the plot. The broadcasts of April 14th and May 5th, posted below, illustrate that connection.
The four map offers attracted a total of 3.0 Million responses and the run of nine Cheerios boxes with Frontier Town models sold out But that was only the first half of the promotion…
To celebrate The Lone Ranger’s 15th anniversary, the city of Cheyenne, Wyoming, officially changed its name to Lone Ranger Frontier Town for one day on Wednesday, June 30, 1948. The town turned out for a celebration that included a parade with Grand Marshal Brace Beemer. Newspapers all across the country carried stories and pictures of the event. It was easily termed the kind of promotion that money couldn't buy - but did - and it climaxed the best year of ratings that the program would ever experience.
Because of its multiple sponsors around the country The Lone Ranger went unrated for its first seven seasons on Mutual. When General Mills and American Baking became its only sponsors in the 1941-42 season the program met C.E. Hooper’s survey qualifications and registered a 6.9 rating, equivalent to approximately 2,02 Million homes and 5.05 Million listeners. It was good enough to put the program in eighth place of the season’s Multiple Run Programs but a disappointing 96th place among all programs. (15)
The program’s move to Blue the following season pushed its ratings into the sevens - barely. But its numbers did improve gradually from a 7.0 in 1942-43 to 7.2 the next season, 7.3 the next and 7.7 in 1945-46. Finally, The Lone Ranger scored a breakthrough in 1946-47 with an 8.6 rating representing 2.9 Million homes and 7.3 Million listeners.
The industry was stunned on April 24, 1946, when King-Trendle Broadcasting sold WXYZ, its construction permit for a television station and WOOD/Grand Rapids to ABC for $3.65 Million. Trendle explained that he was 62 years old and felt it time to, “get his affairs in order”. In a separate deal Allen Campbell bought John King’s share of The Lone Ranger, Inc., for $100,000 and Trendle-Campbell Enterprises was formed. The pair kept ownership of The Lone Ranger, The Green Hornet and Challenge of The Yukon so it remained business as usual for all three shows operating out of the WXYZ studios - and business was better than ever.
In 1947-48, after 15 years in the same Monday-Wednesday-Friday timeslot, The Lone Ranger nearly doubled its previous season’s rating to 16.4 - 5.9 million homes and 14.7 million listeners. - making its first of two appearances in the annual Top 50 at Number 35. The Masked Rider of the Plains out-distanced his nearest timeslot competition on CBS by a wide margin and finished among the Top Ten of all prime time programs on each of the three nights it was broadcast. What’s more, it became the Number One Multiple Run program for the first of three consecutive seasons.
The program was, indeed at the top of its game and sounded like it - no small thanks to Brace Beemer, John Todd and their reliable repertory company of some 50 supporting players including gruff-voiced Paul Hughes, motherly Clarabelle Hornblower, “old timer” Frank Russell, innocent Elaine Alpert, villainous Jay Michael, versatile Rollon Parker and many others.who all worked anonymously to create a great show accompanied by a sound effects crew that was ranked best in the industry.
The program slipped some after its tremendous surge in 1947-48 but remained in double digits until 1950 and by that time Trendle and Campbell had extended the show into television with a weekly half hour sponsored by General Mills on ABC. Television was taking audience from Network Radio by the millions but The Lone Ranger franchise remained strong. One program from this period, November 9, 1949, is posted below. (Listeners will note the credits at the end of the broadcast.)
When Network Radio’s Golden Age neared its end in January, 1953, The Lone Ranger celebrated its 20th anniversary. The radio show with Beemer and Todd was heard three times weekly from 249 stations with an estimated 14.7 million cumulative listeners per week. The television adaptation starring Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels aired on 90 stations with an estimated five million viewers.
In addition, The Lone Ranger comic strip was syndicated in 118 newspapers including 30 in foreign countries, two million comic books were sold every month, 15 novels were in circulation. In addition, Trendle & Campbell had 60 merchandising agreements with toy and clothing manufacturers. To top it off, the show had amassed a bundle of public service awards over the years.
The Lone Ranger outlived the Golden Age by a year. Its 2,956th and last live radio broadcast took place on September 3, 1954. It went into transcribed repeats on ABC until June, 1955, and a final round of repeats on NBC’s weekday schedule until May, 1956.
Ironically, Fran Striker, like Earle Graser 21 years before, was killed in a 1962 auto accident. Wire service obituaries at the time credited Striker as the creator of The Lone Ranger. Two years later a short letter appeared in The Detroit Free Press:
To The Editor: Do you suppose we can put an end to the oft repeated fable that Fran Striker “created” The Lone Ranger? The story had been tested on WXYZ a number of times before Striker was hired as script writer but, for the record, The Lone Ranger was my brain-child. (signed) G.W. Trendle
Yes, Trendle conceived The Lone Ranger but the ideas and talents of Fran Striker, Jim Jewell, Harold True, Earl Graser, Brace Beemer and dozens of other dedicated professionals gave life to the hero of millions and made millions for George Trendle.
Trendle died in 1970 but as the New York Times editorialized back in 1941, The Lone Ranger doesn't die....
(1) WXYZ moved its transmitter on the west side of Detroit and increased its power to 5,000 watts in February, 1941. It shifted to 1270 k.c. per terms of the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement in March, 1941. (See The March of Change on this site.)
(2) John Kunsky changed his name legally to John King in 1936 and the corporate name became King-Trendle Broadcasting Co.
(3) WXYZ-AM is now WXYT and is owned by CBS.
(4) Historians disagree as to the exact date, Monday, January 30th or Tuesday, January 31st. Program logs indiicate the latter because The Lone Ranger was originally a Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday production. It remained so until November 25, 1933. It became a Monday-Wednesday-Friday feature on November 29, 1933, when Gordon Bakeries’ Silvercup Bread became it’s sponsor.
(5) Tonto, from the Spanish meaning “foolish,” was once a term for the Western Apache. Kemosabe, supposedly meaning “trusted friend,” was actually taken from Camp Kee-Mo-Sah-Bee for boys on Mullett Lake near Cheboygan, Michigan, owned by Jim Jewell‘s father-in-law.
(6) George Trendle ordered John Todd fired in 1951 when the elderly actor began to nod off during the show and
miss his cues. The station found a college bred actor of Sioux descent to take the role, but he refused to say Tonto‘s familiar, “Ugh” or “Get ‘em up, Scout!” Listeners began asking what happened to “their” Tonto. Todd was promptly rehired for the remainder of the show’s run and other cast members took responsibility to keep him awake.
(7) George Stenius changed his last name to Seaton and went from writing gags for the Marx Brothers to winning Academy Awards for his screenplays Miracle On 34th Street and Country Girl. George Seaton then co-produced The Bridges At Toko-Ri and directed Airport, both Oscar winners, and was President of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences from 1955 to 1958.
(8) Jim Jewell left WXYZ for Chicago in 1938 and became the longtime producer-director of the classic kids’ serial Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy.
(9) Kato’s nationality was quietly changed to Filipino at the beginning of World War II.
(10) The Green Hornet began its 15 year multi-network run on Mutual in April, 1938.
(11) Ned Jordan, Secret Agent was introduced in 1938 and had a regional Mutual run until 1942. Challenge of The Yukon remained a local show on WXYZ for eight years until Quaker Oats bought it in 1947 for two years on Mutual and five more on ABC.
(12) No one ever seemed to notice that the horse Beemer rode was a female. Jim Jewell found the mare named White Gold on a local farm, bought it for $250 and changed its name to Silver. Tight rules governed Lone Ranger appearances. No personal questions were allowed of Beemer who could not sign autographs with his real name, appear in costume without his mask, drink or smoke in costume, appear under his own name or without the approval of The Lone Ranger, Inc.
(13) Fred Foy was called upon to play The Lone Ranger only once - on March 29,1954, when Brace Beemer had laryngitis.
(14) American Bakeries, Inc., retained sponsorship of The Lone Ranger in the southeastern United States for its Merita Bread.
(15) Source: Network Radio Ratings, 1932-1953.
Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
"From now on my identity shall be forever buried with those brave Texas Rangers who died at my side. I’ll be…The Lone Ranger!"
The story of Network Radio’s greatest hero began on October 10, 1925, when wealthy advertising man George Harrison Phelps put WGHP/Detroit on the air. Two years later his 500 watt namesake at 1110 kilocycles became one of the original 16 affiliates of the fledgling Columbia Broadcasting System.
But the exciting new hobby that Phelps envisioned turned out to be a time consuming and expensive burden. For greater coverage he moved the transmitter to nearby Mount Clemens, Michigan, changed the frequency to 940 k.c. and pushed the power up to 750 watts in 1927. A short while later it was moving time again - this time to the Detroit suburb of Fraser at 1180 k.c. (1)
Phelps wanted out. He turned WGHP over to the owner of a string of gas stations from Toledo and future chain broadcaster, George Storer, for $40,000 in October, 1928. Not one to turn down a quick profit, George Storer sold the station to yet another George for $250,000 just 18 months later.
George Washington Trendle was a 36 year old lawyer when he joined Detroit’s Kunsky Theater Group in 1920. He was instrumental in the company’s expansion and success - among other things, guiding it into a consortium that founded a Hollywood studio, First National Pictures, which was later bought by Warner Brothers. John Kunsky and his young lawyer sold Detroit’s leading chain of theaters to Paramount Publix Theaters for over $4.0 Million just before the Great Depression struck in 1929.
Flush with cash, partners Kunsky and Trendle - along with their former stage production manager, Howard Pierce - bought WGHP from Storer on April 25, 1930. The trio let Detroit know that showmen had arrived on July 1st when they moved the transmitter back to Detroit, changed its frequency to 1240 k.c. and renamed the station with much fanfare, W X Y Z - The Last Word In Radio! George Trendle took the position of President of Kunsky-Trendle Broadcasting and General Manager of WXYZ. Howard Pierce took the jobs of Corporate Secretary and Director of WXYZ Broadcasting. John Kunsky took it easy - at 55 he was enjoying early retirement. (2)
Another key player was added to the team when 30 year old Nashville native Horace Allen Campbell impressed Trendle with his shrewd southern charm and business sense. The successful young advertising salesman for Hearst’s Detroit News joined WXYZ, quickly brought new business into the station and put him on the fast track to become its General Sales Manager and a close confidant of the boss..
H. Allen Campbell also had a knack for discovering talent. He found future network star Russ Morgan and sold a weekly half-hour of the singing bandleader’s Music In The Morgan Manner for over a year. Then, on a 1931 sales trip, he heard a deep cultured voice identified only as The Wandering Vagabond reading poetry on an Indianapolis station. After seeking out the tall and handsome 28 year old with the voice that would eventually become known to millions, Campbell offered Brace Beemer his ticket to fame - a one month trial contract at WXYZ.
In 1933, Campbell came up with the idea of the Michigan Radio Network to compete with the coverage of 50,000 watt WJR. He was able to offer advertisers a package of WXYZ with stations in Grand Rapids, Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, Jackson, Flint and Bay City. It was a unique idea that resulted in thousands of dollars in found billings. But not all of the ideas that Campbell endorsed were winners…
Longtime WXYZ personality Dick Osgood points out in his lengthy and greatly detailed history of the Detroit station, Wyxie Wonderland, neither Campbell nor Trendle took sole credit - or blame - for dropping the station’s affiliation with CBS. When the network plug was pulled on December 31, 1930, they both expressed confidence that the move would give them more programming freedom and more time to sell. Neither seemed bothered by the need to fill all those hours left vacant by their eviction of Bing Crosby, The Shadow, Kate Smith, Myrt & Marge, Ben Bernie and the rest of the early CBS network lineup. (3)
WXYZ suddenly became the hectic hub for budding radio talent. Singers, actors, musicians and lecturers were constantly on the run in the halls of the station which trade magazine Broadcasting later reported had budgeted $300,000 for programs in the conversion to independent status. The showmanship of Trendle and the salesmanship of Campbell began to win back listeners and advertisers and things were looking up by 1932. Centerpiece of WXYZ’s programming was a nightly half-hour thriller with the umbrella title, Hunters of Men, produced by James Jewell, the station’s 28 year old Director of Dramas.
Then, during a staff meeting in mid-December, 1932, Trendle proposed a new series - a Western. His reasoning stemmed from his days of running theaters for John Kunsky and learning that Westerns were always sure box-office and popular with entire families. A brainstorming session followed in which Trendle laid down the ground rules that the program needed a hero figure - a role model for kids - the embodiment of strength, decency, kindness, clean living and good grammar.
Ideas began to fly around the group - that he be an independent operator…a roaming marshal or Texas Ranger…maybe an ex-lawman…a champion of the defenseless…an expert marksman who never shoots to kill…a mysterious man of means…possibly masked like Zorro. Hearing all this, station manager-announcer Harold True remembered a similar hero from WTAM/Cleveland and suggested a title, The Lone Ranger.
When the topic was temporarily exhausted all eyes turned to Jim Jewell for the next step. He was already ahead of them.
Among the melodramas Jewell produced in his Hunters of Men series were Thrills of The Secret Service, Dr. Fang and Warner Lester, Manhunter, all sold to WXYZ for four dollars an episode by Fran Striker, 28, a free lance writer from Buffalo who syndicated his scripts to stations around the country. Striker later recalled receiving a letter from Jim Jewell on December 28, 1932, requesting three or four sample stories based on notes he took at the staff meeting.
Striker had scripts for an unsold series titled Covered Wagon Days on the shelf. He did a fast rewrite to half a dozen and mailed them to Jewell. The lighthearted, laughing hero crafted by Striker could have been a model for The Cisco Kid - but not the no-nonsense idol that George Trendle had in mind. Nevertheless, the boss said the writer was on the right track and wanted Striker to develop his new hero’s distinctions of broad knowledge, unshakable temperament and absolute honesty - and pursue the “silver” theme with the horse’s name, his silver shoes and the silver bullets that the Ranger fired.
With Trendle’s concepts and Striker’s scripts as his guides Jewell began looking for an actor to take the lead in the new series. Twenty-one year old George Stenius had come off a road tour with the play Elizabeth The Queen when he auditioned for Jim Jewell at WXYZ on January 11,1933, and landed the title role of The Lone Ranger.
Harold True, already credited with giving The Lone Ranger his name in the staff meeting a month earlier, solved another lingering problem when he created the hero’s famous shout to his horse. Osgood reports that after “giddy-up,“ “tally-ho”, “heigh-ho” and other lines were tried and discarded, True introduced the program’s first test broadcast over WXYZ on January 20, 1933 and improvised with gusto, “The Jewell Players present a fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty, Hi-Yo, Silver! The Lone Ranger!”
The Lone Ranger’s theme song, eventually familiar to millions of listeners, was March of The Swiss Soldiers, finale to Rossini’s William Tell Overture. The needle drop was with the program from the beginning - recorded public domain music requiring no talent fess and no royalties. With the Rossini theme and bridges supplied by Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Borodin, and Mendelssohn the producers saved millions of dollars over the years of the show’s run.
After several more dry runs the show was deemed ready by Trendle, Pierce, Campbell, Jewell, Striker, True, Campbell and everyone else involved in its production. The Lone Ranger debuted on WXYZ and its new Michigan Radio Network on Tuesday, January 31, 1933. (4)
At first The Lone Ranger was really alone with no one to talk to - and to advance the plot’s narrative - except Silver and supporting members in each story’s cast. To solve this problem Striker created the Ranger’s “faithful Indian companion Tonto” - his constant sidekick with a name borrowed from Tonto Basin, a tiny community in western Arizona and the title of a 1921 Zane Grey novel. Tonto was introduced in the program’s twelfth episode - a back-story in which young Texas Ranger John Reid, wounded in an ambush and left for dead, was discovered and nursed back to health by his boyhood kemosabe now an adult, Tonto. (5)
Unlike the role of The Lone Ranger which changed hands several times, Tonto became steady work for veteran British stage actor John Todd, who was 56 when he introduced the character on the broadcast of February 25, 1933. Todd remained in the role until the program went out of production in 1954 when he was 77. (6)
The show was considered on a par or better than most network offerings, but Campbell found it to be a tougher sell to advertisers than anticipated. One prospect, the Illinois Meat Company, makers of Broadcast brand canned hash, considered sponsoring The Lone Ranger, but only as a quarter hour continuing story. Campbell convinced Trendle to agree, so for two weeks in early 1933, it became a 15 minute weekday afternoon series until the meat company turned it down and the show returned to half hour form three evenings a week
Meanwhile, back in the studio…George Stenius was turning in satisfactory performances as The Lone Ranger but confessed to Jim Jewell that his heart wasn’t in the Old West, it was in Hollywood. He wanted to write for the movies, then direct and perhaps produce films. Jewell had seen some of the comedy material that Stenius had submitted to MGM and wasn’t surprised when the studio offered him a staff writer’s job at $75 a week. (7)
Stenius left The Lone Ranger after the May 9th broadcast and was replaced on May 11th by Lee Trent aka Jack Deeds who struggled with the role, giving Jewell second thoughts about the actor’s talents. When Trent/Deeds showed up drunk before the May 13th show, Jewell fired him on the spot and jumped into the role for one performance.
Tuesday, May 16th was important to the history of The Lone Ranger for two reasons.
First, after a weekend of auditions and rehearsals, 24 year old Earle Graser took over the lead role. The Canadian born Wayne University graduate had played small supporting parts in Jewell’s past productions. He possessed a strong masculine voice and was considered reliable. Graser’s only drawbacks were his looks - mustachioed with a slight build under six feet. But this was radio and looks didn’t matter, especially for an actor who would never be identified as The Lone Ranger.
Secondly, Trendle and Campbell had a trick up their sleeves to prove The Lone Ranger’s popularity which was sprung on the same day‘s broadcast. At the end of the show’s story the Lone Ranger was introduced to announce that the first 1,000 boys and girls who sent him a request would receive a Lone Ranger Gun absolutely free. Within two days the supply of tin pop-guns was wiped out and by the end of the week over 24,500 letters and postcards had been received. Graser appeared at close of the May 23rd broadcast to call an end to the giveaway but assure listeners that all requests received to that point would be filled.
Stacks of those responses were used as props in WXYZ sales presentations and one of them struck gold at the Gordon Baking Company. Campbell reasoned that The Lone Ranger and Silver would be a natural tie-in with the bakery’s Silvercup Bread. He promised that the program along with the store displays, window cards and other merchandising tools that WXYZ and its Michigan Radio Network stations could provide would have all the kids in the state asking their mothers to buy The Lone Ranger’s favorite bread, Silvercup. Gordon bought Campbell’s pitch and beginning on Monday, November 29, 1933 - almost ten months after its debut - The Lone Ranger finally had a sponsor.
True to Campbell’s promises, Silvercup Bread began flying off grocers’ shelves. Gordon Baking was fast becoming The Lone Ranger’s biggest fan and wanted the show for its Chicago and New York City divisions. Bakeries in other cities soon learned about Silvercup’s huge success with The Lone Ranger and began calling Campbell to inquire about its availability. This ultimately led to feeding the show from Detroit by line to Chicago and transcribing it for distribution to WGN/Chicago, WOR/New York, stations in Atlanta and Kansas City, then Boston where Campbell signed the regional Yankee Network.
George Trendle sensed the potential goldmine that The Lone Ranger represented and he wanted to protect what he considered to be his property. On May 22, 1934, he convinced Fran Striker to sign over all past, present and future rights to The Lone Ranger or any other creative project, (which would eventually include The Green Hornet, Challenge of The Yukon and Ned Jordan, Secret Agent), to the Kunsky-Trendle Broadcasting Company. In return, Striker was given the security of a regular paycheck, reported to be a substantial $100 per week.
Six months later Trendle and his partners formed The Lone Ranger, Inc., separate from WXYZ, to syndicate the program and handle the growing interest in the character by publishers, toy companies, clothing manufacturers and movie studios. Both Fran Striker and Jim Jewell were excluded from the new corporation. (8)
Allen Campbell never laid any claim to helping originate The Lone Ranger, but he is recognized as the spark plug who fired up the Mutual Broadcasting System. During the summer of 1934 Campbell rounded up WGN and WOR along with WLW/Cincinnati to consider reviving the shared programming concept of 1929’s failed Quality Broadcasting Group. They agreed to add affiliates in Pittsburgh, Washington and St. Louis and limit the new cooperative network to seven outlets. The Lone Ranger became Mutual’s first program on October 2, 1934.
Campbell was offered the presidency of the new Mutual network but he declined. Instead, he was named General Manager of WXYZ and ten percent owner of Kunsky-Trendle Broadcasting in the summer of 1935. He promptly dropped the station’s affiliation with Mutual to join NBC’s Blue Network on September 29, 1935.
Although WXYZ was no longer a Mutual affiliate, it continued to feed The Lone Ranger to the network and would continue to do so for another seven years. Meanwhile, Gordon Bakeries introduced The Lone Ranger Safety Club and gave out 475,500 club memberships through the mail and participating retailers in six weeks during the fall of 1935. With its support of traffic safety, healthy living and good citizenship, The Lone Ranger Safety Club would eventually enroll 4.4 Million youngsters and become an effective merchandising tool for the program’s growing roster of local and regional sponsors - mostly food companies - that would reach 42 in number. All of them had access the marketing materials available from Lone Ranger, Inc., designed to help them become more effective radio advertisers.
As he began The Lone Ranger phenomenon with a staff meeting in 1932, George Trendle summoned Striker, Jewell and Campbell to his office in late 1935 and proposed another new series. He had been a boyhood fan of the pulp fiction Adventures of Jimmie Dale, author Frank Packard’s tales of a young millionaire who became a crime fighter by night, The Gray Seal. The group agreed that the concept had promise for radio and Striker suggested that similarities be created between their new hero and The Lone Ranger, making him a modern day descendent of John Reid - with most of the same personality traits that Trendle insisted upon in his great uncle, including good grammar.
It was then decided to make young Britt Reid a crusading newspaper publisher by day. Instead of a “faithful Indian companion, Tonto,” the new hero was given a “faithful Japanese valet, Kato“, the great horse Silver was replaced by the sleek, super-charged Black Beauty automobile and his gun fired sleeping gas instead of silver bullets. (9) Campbell contributed the name Green Hornet and the new series was born on January 31, 1936, the third anniversary of The Lone Ranger. (10)
Everything was good and getting better at WXYZ in 1936. Little attention was given to the departure of Brace Beemer who decided to enter the advertising business in Detroit. Greater interest was given Allen Campbell's negotiations with Interstate Bakeries to sponsor The Lone Ranger on the Don Lee West Coast Network of Mutual stations. It's been told that the hangup was the baker's insistence to rename the great horse Silver after the bread to be sold on the program. Campbell refused to even suggest that the hero shout, "Hi-yo, Gingham, Away!"
Campbell held firm, the client signed and The Lone Ranger became a coast-to-coast program on January 18, 1937. The show was now performed three times every Monday, Wednesday and Friday: 7:30 p.m ET to the East Coast and some Midwest cities, 8:30 for most of the Central Time Zone and 10:30 for the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones. It was hard but steady work the cast and crew. Its unidentified star, Earl Grasier was making $125 a week.
Split sponsorships around the country prevented The Lone Ranger from appearing in the ratings but there was hardly a kid or parent in the country who wasn’t aware of The Masked Rider of The Plains. Republic Pictures released the first of its two Lone Ranger serials in February, 1938. The 15 chapter cliff-hanger starring Lee Powell was named Best Serial of The Year by the Motion Picture Exhibitors and returned $60,000 plus rights to its original music to The Lone Ranger, Inc. Its sequel, The Lone Ranger Rides Again with Robert Livingston in the title role, was released in 1939. Both serials credited Fran Striker as the head writer although experienced screenwriters were responsible for them..
Two broadcasts from this period are posted below - January 19, 1938 and October 28, 1940. Listeners will notice a familiar voice announcing the 1940 episode - Brace Beemer. Also, most of the programs posted are from the syndicated issue and contain 90 seconds of theme music pad at the beginning and end of each show for local commercials.
Broadcasting magazine reported in April, 1939, that The Lone Ranger was heard on 127 stations in the US, Canada and Australia.- 65 on direct line and 62 by transcription. Fran Striker was responsible for all of the show’s scripts plus the initial stories for the Lone Ranger comic strip that appeared in 120 newspapers and the manuscripts for Whitman’s Lone Ranger Big Little Books for children and novels for adults from Grossett & Dunlap. Dubbed by many, “The Human Writing Machine,” Striker was also in charge of all scripts for The Green Hornet, Challenge of The Yukon and Ned Jordan, Secret Agent. (11) His salary by this time had increased to $10,000 a year.
Trendle and Campbell were jolted awake in the early morning hours of April 8, 1941, with shocking news: Earle Graser was dead. He had fallen asleep behind the wheel of his car on a suburban Farmington road and rear ended a parked trailer. He died at the scene - in front of the local Methodist church where he sang in the choir. The voice of The Lone Ranger was 32, survived by his widow and an infant daughter. His final broadcast from April 7, 1941, is posted below.
Earle Graser’s obituary in the New York Times began, “Death lifted The Lone Ranger’s mask at daybreak today.” Its editorial the next day titled, The Immortal Ranger, and was read that evening on a WXYZ memorial broadcast:
“Earl H. Graser was killed in an automobile wreck Tuesday morning, but the rumor that The Lone Ranger is dead is unfounded. It was the man who died…he didn’t take The Lone Ranger with him. The Lone Ranger doesn’t die…his trusty steed waits to carry him on his errands across the face of the wondrous west where the air is crystal and virtue never lacks for its reward. Listen! There is the beating of the hoofs as, in the nick of time, he swings into action. Ride, Tonto! Ride, Lone Ranger! Hi-Yo, Silver!”
An emergency meeting was held in Trendle’s office to select a new actor for the part. Chuck Livingston, who had replaced Jim Jewell as Director of WXYZ Dramas, recommended Brace Beemer, 38, who had been announcing The Lone Ranger since his return to the station from the advertising business in 1939. A skilled horseman who looked like The Lone Ranger sounded, the strapping 6’3” Beemer, in mask and costume, had appeared in personal appearances astride a beautiful white show horse that reared and whinnied when he shouted, “Hi-yo, Silver!” (12)
Striker only had a one day to devise a transition from Graser to Beemer. The two men sounded alike but after eight years and over 1,200 broadcasts, listeners knew Graser’s voice too well for an abrupt change. Striker’s solution was to write the Ranger out of the show for a week - the innocent victim of range war crossfire - and let him slowly regain his strength and voice through two or three episodes while Tonto carried the action. The sequence is posted below in the programs from April 9 and April 16. Beemer’s first broadcast in the lead role on April 18th, is also posted.
Less attention was given at the time to WXYZ’s hiring of a new announcer from WJLB/Detroit. Fred Foy was a 20 year old handsome blonde whose voice was close enough to Beemer’s that he became the star’s understudy and stand-in at rehearsals when Beemer was away on one of his many personal appearance assignments. (13) Foy returned to WXYZ after four years in the Army and became the quintessential announcer-narrator of The Lone Ranger in mid-1948. Fred Foy at his dramatic best is heard in the June 30, 1948, telling of The Lone Ranger’s Origins.
During the chaotic week of Graser’s death Allen Campbell had been in Minneapolis putting the finishing touches on a contract with General Mills to assume coast-to-coast sponsorship of The Lone Ranger for Kix cereal. What would become a 15 year association began on May 5,1941. One day short of a year later, May 4, 1942, the program was moved from Mutual to Blue where it would remain at 7:30 p.m. ET until it left the air in 1956.
One of Campbell’s selling tools with General Mills and its Knox-Reeves advertising agency was a 1941 survey which indicated that a surprising 63% of Lone Ranger listeners were adults. Nevertheless, the new sponsor was going after the kids and established The Lone Ranger Victory Corps to replace The Lone Ranger Safety Club in March, 1942, to promote patriotism and sell war stamps.
Appeal to youngsters was also the purpose for the introduction of a third running character to The Lone Ranger on December 14, 1942, Dan Reid, Jr., the hero's 14 year old nephew played by Ernie Winstanley and later by Dick Beals and Jim Lipton. The young man's story to that time is told in flashback by his dying foster mother, Grandma Frisby, on the heartwarming Christmas Day program, posted below, when the Reid's learn of their relationship and Ranger promises to care for Dan as his own son.
General Mills also put The Lone Ranger into the premium business in a big way. Tom Tumbusch‘s Illustrated Radio Premium Catalog lists a number of novelties that were written into the show to save the day over the next decade then offered to listeners for box top and small change. These tempting items included a National Defenders Ring, a Glo-In-The-Dark Safety Belt, a Secret Compartment Ring, a Weather Ring, a Flashlight Gun with Secret Compartment Handle, a Flashlight Ring, a Six Shooter Ring, a Lone Ranger Pedometer, a Silver Bullet with Compass, a Movie Film Ring, a Secret Compartment Deputy Badge, a Filmstrip Saddle Ring and a Hike-O-Meter.
A record for premiums was set by 1947’s Lone Ranger Atomic Bomb Ring with “super powers”. The bomb shaped trinket contained a harmless material that glowed in the dark. Available for a Kix box top and 15 cents the premium offer drew a whopping 1.6 Million responses. That’s $240,000 in dimes, nickels and pennies, but more importantly to General Mills, a lot of Kix cereal sold.
Nevertheless, the king of premiums and promotions was born in early 1948 when General Mills’ Cheerios cereal took over sponsorship of the program and introduced The Lone Ranger's Frontier Town. The “town” began with a map covering nearly 16 square feet of floor space and sold in four quadrants - Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest - each requiring a dime and a Cheerios box top. The full color map indicated where buildings and landmarks were located - 71 cardboard structures and models printed and dye-cut on the backs of nine specially printed Cheerios boxes that could easily be popped out and assembled without scissors or glue. .
To keep the offer fresh, Lone Ranger plots were centered around Frontier Town for a extended period of the spring and early summer - when the map was often used in stories to help locate people or places vital to the plot. The broadcasts of April 14th and May 5th, posted below, illustrate that connection.
The four map offers attracted a total of 3.0 Million responses and the run of nine Cheerios boxes with Frontier Town models sold out But that was only the first half of the promotion…
To celebrate The Lone Ranger’s 15th anniversary, the city of Cheyenne, Wyoming, officially changed its name to Lone Ranger Frontier Town for one day on Wednesday, June 30, 1948. The town turned out for a celebration that included a parade with Grand Marshal Brace Beemer. Newspapers all across the country carried stories and pictures of the event. It was easily termed the kind of promotion that money couldn't buy - but did - and it climaxed the best year of ratings that the program would ever experience.
Because of its multiple sponsors around the country The Lone Ranger went unrated for its first seven seasons on Mutual. When General Mills and American Baking became its only sponsors in the 1941-42 season the program met C.E. Hooper’s survey qualifications and registered a 6.9 rating, equivalent to approximately 2,02 Million homes and 5.05 Million listeners. It was good enough to put the program in eighth place of the season’s Multiple Run Programs but a disappointing 96th place among all programs. (15)
The program’s move to Blue the following season pushed its ratings into the sevens - barely. But its numbers did improve gradually from a 7.0 in 1942-43 to 7.2 the next season, 7.3 the next and 7.7 in 1945-46. Finally, The Lone Ranger scored a breakthrough in 1946-47 with an 8.6 rating representing 2.9 Million homes and 7.3 Million listeners.
The industry was stunned on April 24, 1946, when King-Trendle Broadcasting sold WXYZ, its construction permit for a television station and WOOD/Grand Rapids to ABC for $3.65 Million. Trendle explained that he was 62 years old and felt it time to, “get his affairs in order”. In a separate deal Allen Campbell bought John King’s share of The Lone Ranger, Inc., for $100,000 and Trendle-Campbell Enterprises was formed. The pair kept ownership of The Lone Ranger, The Green Hornet and Challenge of The Yukon so it remained business as usual for all three shows operating out of the WXYZ studios - and business was better than ever.
In 1947-48, after 15 years in the same Monday-Wednesday-Friday timeslot, The Lone Ranger nearly doubled its previous season’s rating to 16.4 - 5.9 million homes and 14.7 million listeners. - making its first of two appearances in the annual Top 50 at Number 35. The Masked Rider of the Plains out-distanced his nearest timeslot competition on CBS by a wide margin and finished among the Top Ten of all prime time programs on each of the three nights it was broadcast. What’s more, it became the Number One Multiple Run program for the first of three consecutive seasons.
The program was, indeed at the top of its game and sounded like it - no small thanks to Brace Beemer, John Todd and their reliable repertory company of some 50 supporting players including gruff-voiced Paul Hughes, motherly Clarabelle Hornblower, “old timer” Frank Russell, innocent Elaine Alpert, villainous Jay Michael, versatile Rollon Parker and many others.who all worked anonymously to create a great show accompanied by a sound effects crew that was ranked best in the industry.
The program slipped some after its tremendous surge in 1947-48 but remained in double digits until 1950 and by that time Trendle and Campbell had extended the show into television with a weekly half hour sponsored by General Mills on ABC. Television was taking audience from Network Radio by the millions but The Lone Ranger franchise remained strong. One program from this period, November 9, 1949, is posted below. (Listeners will note the credits at the end of the broadcast.)
When Network Radio’s Golden Age neared its end in January, 1953, The Lone Ranger celebrated its 20th anniversary. The radio show with Beemer and Todd was heard three times weekly from 249 stations with an estimated 14.7 million cumulative listeners per week. The television adaptation starring Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels aired on 90 stations with an estimated five million viewers.
In addition, The Lone Ranger comic strip was syndicated in 118 newspapers including 30 in foreign countries, two million comic books were sold every month, 15 novels were in circulation. In addition, Trendle & Campbell had 60 merchandising agreements with toy and clothing manufacturers. To top it off, the show had amassed a bundle of public service awards over the years.
The Lone Ranger outlived the Golden Age by a year. Its 2,956th and last live radio broadcast took place on September 3, 1954. It went into transcribed repeats on ABC until June, 1955, and a final round of repeats on NBC’s weekday schedule until May, 1956.
Ironically, Fran Striker, like Earle Graser 21 years before, was killed in a 1962 auto accident. Wire service obituaries at the time credited Striker as the creator of The Lone Ranger. Two years later a short letter appeared in The Detroit Free Press:
To The Editor: Do you suppose we can put an end to the oft repeated fable that Fran Striker “created” The Lone Ranger? The story had been tested on WXYZ a number of times before Striker was hired as script writer but, for the record, The Lone Ranger was my brain-child. (signed) G.W. Trendle
Yes, Trendle conceived The Lone Ranger but the ideas and talents of Fran Striker, Jim Jewell, Harold True, Earl Graser, Brace Beemer and dozens of other dedicated professionals gave life to the hero of millions and made millions for George Trendle.
Trendle died in 1970 but as the New York Times editorialized back in 1941, The Lone Ranger doesn't die....
(1) WXYZ moved its transmitter on the west side of Detroit and increased its power to 5,000 watts in February, 1941. It shifted to 1270 k.c. per terms of the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement in March, 1941. (See The March of Change on this site.)
(2) John Kunsky changed his name legally to John King in 1936 and the corporate name became King-Trendle Broadcasting Co.
(3) WXYZ-AM is now WXYT and is owned by CBS.
(4) Historians disagree as to the exact date, Monday, January 30th or Tuesday, January 31st. Program logs indiicate the latter because The Lone Ranger was originally a Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday production. It remained so until November 25, 1933. It became a Monday-Wednesday-Friday feature on November 29, 1933, when Gordon Bakeries’ Silvercup Bread became it’s sponsor.
(5) Tonto, from the Spanish meaning “foolish,” was once a term for the Western Apache. Kemosabe, supposedly meaning “trusted friend,” was actually taken from Camp Kee-Mo-Sah-Bee for boys on Mullett Lake near Cheboygan, Michigan, owned by Jim Jewell‘s father-in-law.
(6) George Trendle ordered John Todd fired in 1951 when the elderly actor began to nod off during the show and
miss his cues. The station found a college bred actor of Sioux descent to take the role, but he refused to say Tonto‘s familiar, “Ugh” or “Get ‘em up, Scout!” Listeners began asking what happened to “their” Tonto. Todd was promptly rehired for the remainder of the show’s run and other cast members took responsibility to keep him awake.
(7) George Stenius changed his last name to Seaton and went from writing gags for the Marx Brothers to winning Academy Awards for his screenplays Miracle On 34th Street and Country Girl. George Seaton then co-produced The Bridges At Toko-Ri and directed Airport, both Oscar winners, and was President of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences from 1955 to 1958.
(8) Jim Jewell left WXYZ for Chicago in 1938 and became the longtime producer-director of the classic kids’ serial Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy.
(9) Kato’s nationality was quietly changed to Filipino at the beginning of World War II.
(10) The Green Hornet began its 15 year multi-network run on Mutual in April, 1938.
(11) Ned Jordan, Secret Agent was introduced in 1938 and had a regional Mutual run until 1942. Challenge of The Yukon remained a local show on WXYZ for eight years until Quaker Oats bought it in 1947 for two years on Mutual and five more on ABC.
(12) No one ever seemed to notice that the horse Beemer rode was a female. Jim Jewell found the mare named White Gold on a local farm, bought it for $250 and changed its name to Silver. Tight rules governed Lone Ranger appearances. No personal questions were allowed of Beemer who could not sign autographs with his real name, appear in costume without his mask, drink or smoke in costume, appear under his own name or without the approval of The Lone Ranger, Inc.
(13) Fred Foy was called upon to play The Lone Ranger only once - on March 29,1954, when Brace Beemer had laryngitis.
(14) American Bakeries, Inc., retained sponsorship of The Lone Ranger in the southeastern United States for its Merita Bread.
(15) Source: Network Radio Ratings, 1932-1953.
Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
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