Radio: Death of the Ranger

One dawning last week a tired, chubby suburbanite was driving home through the outskirts of Detroit. In front of the Methodist Church at Farmington his eyelids dropped, the front wheels fluttered, the car curved, careened, crashed into the back of a parked truck. So died a rootin’, tootin’, shootin’, hell-for-leather buckaroo —radio’s Lone Ranger. As founder of the five-year-old Lone Ranger Safety Club, he had broadcast many a strong appeal for careful driving.

All over the U.S. that night hundreds of thousands of children to whom the Ranger had sent toy lariats, six-shooters, ten-gallon hats and bristling wild west mustaches, whom he had commissioned Rangers and pledged to good conduct and fair play, mourned the most adored character ever to be created on the U.S. air. Many an older listener mourned too. The New York Times sounded the following editorial requiem: The Lone Ranger, under that name, came into being in this generation for a radio public, but under various names he has been alive for many centuries. He was Ulysses, William Tell and Robin Hood; he was Richard the Lionhearted, the Black Prince and Du Guesclin; he was Kit Carson, Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett; he was honest, truthful and brave—and so he remains.

In real life, the Ranger was Earle Graser, who liked to garden and play badminton and who didn’t learn to ride a horse until a couple of years ago. He was 32 years old, a graduate of Wayne (Mich.) University who studied law two years, then took up acting in tent shows throughout Michigan. He got a job with Detroit’s station WXYZ, which was losing money in those days.

Late in 1932 WXYZ’s President George Washington Trendle got the idea that what he and radio needed was a William S. Hart of the air. Scripter Francis Striker, who had been grinding out a series called Warner Lester, Manhunter, concocted a story about a mysterious and gallant cowboy who fought against injustice of all sorts on the late 19th-Century western frontier. Earle Graser, one of half a dozen actors to be tried out, had just the right voice for the part—strong, romantic and confidence-winning.

Mr. Trendle never had to worry about money again. Last year the Ranger netted him a half-million dollars. The program, carried over some 80 MBS stations, and 75 independent stations spotted all over the U.S., accumulated 20,000,000 listeners, innumerable bread, candy and pop sponsors. It also goes on transcribed recordings in Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Canada.

The Ranger galloped into the films, comic strips and novelty business. Mr. Striker got $10,000 a year, Mr. Graser $7,500.

To select Actor Graser’s successor was no difficult business. On hand in WXYZ studios was Brace Beemer, who played the Ranger in the program’s early days, was transformed into a narrator when Earle Graser took over. He will be the new Ranger.

Well fitted for his part is Brace Beemer. Thirty-eight, Beemer stands 6 ft. 3, weighs 200 lb., is an excellent horseman, a superb shot, a handy man with a 35-ft. bull whip. His voice is so much like Graser’s that his substitute version of the Ranger’s famed cry to his horse: “Hi-Yo, Silver, away!” will scarcely be noticed by the nation’s moppets. All along, he has represented the Ranger in his few public appearances. In 1933 when Beemer as the Lone Ranger made a personal appearance at Detroit’s Belle Isle on the occasion of an annual public-school field day, over 100,000 showed up to see him. When small fry got out of hand in an attempt to get close to him, Beemer the Ranger held them off by rising majestically in his stirrups, shouting “Back, Rangers! Back to your posts!”