Clayton Moore – September 14, 1914

You don’t tug on Superman’s cape
You don’t spit into the wind
You don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger
And you don’t mess around with Jim – Jim Croce

Jack Carlton Moore was born in Chicago ,Illinois. His mother was Theresa Violet (Fisher) and his father was Charles Sprague Moore.

On the 1920 census for Ward 3 of Chicago, Illinois, Jack Moore lived with his family at 4758 Forestville Avenue. His father, who the census lists as “Sprague Moore”, worked in real estate. His mother Theresa was present along with brothers Sprague Jr. and Howard, and a Swedish servant, Mary Crown.

It was a neighborhood of salesmen, chemists, managers, and agents. Around 20% of the residents were immigrants, with the largest number being from Germany. Five of the fifty were lodgers.

Later life

Moore was a circus acrobat by age 8 and appeared in a trapeze act at the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago. He worked as a model and moved to Hollywood (where he took the stage name Clayton) as a stuntman and bit player. He was inducted into the Stuntman’s Hall of Fame in 1982.

He landed the role of The Lone Ranger and he and Jay Silverheels (Tonto) became the stars of the first western written specifically for television, the ABC network’s first hit. He played the role in 169 of the 221 episodes. He was replaced, reportedly due to a contract dispute, by John Hart in season three, but returned for the last two seasons. He and Silverheels made two Lone Ranger motion pictures, after which Moore spent 40 years portraying the character doing personal appearances, as a guest on television, and doing commercials.

In 1979, he had to give up the mask in favor of Foster Grant wrap-around sunglasses when the owner of the Lone Ranger rights, who was in the process of making a Lone Ranger film, obtained a court order prohibiting Moore from appearing as The Lone Ranger. Moore made the best of it, appearing in a Foster Grant ad campaign called “Who’s that behind those Foster Grants?” The public sided heavily with Moore in this dispute. The film was a flop and the court order was dropped in 1984.

He’s the only person to have his name on his character’s name on his Hollywood Walk of Fame Star. It reads “Clayton Moore — The Lone Ranger”. He appeared on Lassie as The Lone Ranger. He died of a heart attack on December 28, 1999.

Other happenings on September 14, 1914:

• First Battle of the Masurian Lakes – The Russian First Army of the Neman River withdrew from East Prussia with over 100,000 casualties plus 45,000 prisoners, allowing the victorious German Eighth Army near complete control of the territory.
• The German cruiser SMS Cap Trafalgar was sunk by the British cruiser RMS Carmania at Trindade and Martin Vaz, off the coast of Brazil, with a loss of up to 50 crew and another 279 captured.
• The Royal Australian Navy’s first submarine HMAS AE1 was lost off the Duke of York Islands with all 35 men while patrolling New Britain in the Pacific Ocean after less than seven months in service, the first Allied submarine loss of the war.
• The Tatiana Committee, named after Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia, was established to support war refugees.
• The Kauai High School was established in Lihue, Hawaii.
• Born: Manlio Di Rosa, Italian fencer, two-time gold and silver medalist at the 1936, 1948, 1952, and 1956 Summer Olympics, in Livorno, Italy (d. 1989).
• M. J. Thirumalachar, Indian microbiologist, known for the development of antifungal antibiotics, recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, in Mysore, India (d. 1999).
• Died: Allen Allensworth, American army officer, the first African-American to achieve the rank of lieutenant colonel, and founder of Allensworth, California (b. 1842).
• Nicolás Zamora, Filipino religious leader, and founder of the Evangelical Methodist Church in the Philippine Islands (b. 1875).

Tomorrow – A blonde jet-setter

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Sources

• Wikipedia.org
• Ancestry.com
• Onthisday.com
• Picryl.com
• Youtube.com