Clayton Moore (1908? – December 28, 1999) was an American actor.

Moore was a circus acrobat as a boy, who later spent time as a male model. Moving to Hollywood in the late 1930s, he had a career as a stunt man and bit player. His big break came in 1949, when he was cast in a low-budget Zorro picture. A new version of another masked Western character, The Lone Ranger, was being planned for the then-new medium of television, and Moore was soon cast for the role.

Moore then faced the challenge of training his voice to sound like the radio version of The Lone Ranger, which had then been on the air for many years. He succeeded, and the program soon became the highest-rated program to that point on the fledgling ABC network and its first true "hit".

After two successful seasons, Moore was removed from the role in a pay dispute and made a few other feature films. The public was not very acceptive of his replacement, actor John Hart, and the owners of the program relented and rehired Moore, who stayed with the program until it ended first-run production in 1957.

Cast in other roles in some other Westerns and a feature-length Lone Ranger picture, and a few low-budget science fiction pictures, Moore soon began to make his primary living in personal appearances as The Lone Ranger, increasingly a nostalgic figure. He was introduced to a new generation of fans, the children of his former ones. He always expressed the highest regard for actor Jay Silverheels, who had portrayed the Ranger's sidekick Tonto on the program.

In 1975 the owners of the Ranger character obtained an order enjoining Moore from future appearances as The Lone Ranger. They anticipated making an new film version of the story, and did not want the value of the character being undercut by Moore's appearances, nor anyone to think that the by-now somewhat elderly Moore would be playing the role in the new picture. This move proved to be a public relations disaster of the first order. Moore responded by changing his costume slightly and replacing the mask with similar-looking wraparound sunglasses, and continued his appearances. Some have attributed the incredible failure of the picture, finally released in 1981 as Legend of the Lone Ranger, to this move; in reality it was only one of the picture's many problems. In any event, shortly after this the character's owners seem to realize that Moore's efforts were a large part of what had given the character value and kept it valuable, and they allowed Moore to resume his appearances as the Ranger, which he continued to do until shortly before his death.

Moore was so identified, both in his own mind and in the public mind, with the Ranger that he is the only person on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, as of 2004, to have his character's name along with his on the star, which reads, "Clayton Moore - The Lone Ranger". He was inducted into the Stuntman's Hall of Fame in 1982 and given a Western Heritage Award by the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1990. Moore's official date of birth according to his publicist was in June, 1914, but it is common practice for actors to shave years off of their age in order to continue to be considered for leading roles which they might otherwise be considered too old for, and many believe that the year sometimes given, 1908, is probably more accurate. Ironically, given the nature of the Ranger character, Moore is probably the only person or one of very few considered to have been a famous television actor whose face is largely unknown to the public.

External link

Moore's IMDb entry [1] http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0138194/