the white savior and his junior partner: the lone ranger and tonto on cold war television...

The White Savior and his Junior Partner:The Lone Ranger and Tonto on Cold WarTelevision (1949–1957)

MICHAEL RAY FITZGERALD

THE LONE RANGER WAS HARDLY A NOVEL CHARACTER WHEN HE

was developed in 1932 by Detroit radio-station owner GeorgeTrendle. Trendle had been a cinema owner/manager for many

years before purchasing WXYZ-AM, and he knew what kind of char-acters boys liked (Bickel; also see Osgood). The series came to televi-sion in 1949, during the early stages of the Cold War. The Rangeralso appeared in various media, such as a series of paperback novelsfrom 1936 to 1956 as well as two feature films released throughRepublic Pictures in 1938 and ’39. He also appeared in a weeklycomic strip syndicated through King Features from 1938 to 1971,and in 145 comic books published by Dell Comics from 1948 to1962.

This study examines two primary issues contained in The LoneRanger: what the Ranger represents as “white savior”’ and what hisethnic sidekick Tonto represents as his assistant or “apprentice whiteman” (Zackel). Being “white” here has deeper implications than justskin color: the Ranger’s Anglo-Saxon-Protestant values say a lotabout the culture as well as the program’s ideological aims. Tonto’spresence raises the question of whether, and if so, how, a minorityfigure or nonwhite can fit into this project. What is more, it is neces-sary to wade through layers upon layers of ideology in order to ascer-tain specifically what that project might be.

The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 46, No. 1, 2013© 2013, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

79

Background of the Program

The Lone Ranger was one of the earliest network-television programsrecorded on film.1 Trendle hired former MGM producer Jack Chertokto produce the TV series, with George B. Seitz Jr., as director. Theformat of the program, which aired on ABC until 1957, was, in anindustrial sense, a continuation of the B-movie western that had beentraditional fare in US cinemas.2

The Lone Ranger’s introduction offers a fairly intricate, fast-pacedbit of camera work. The rousing horns of Rossini’s “William TellOverture” blare as a medium tracking shot, taken from a vehicle run-ning alongside the Ranger, pulls back to a full shot of him and hiswhite horse at full gallop (Figures 1 and 2). The frame allows a bit ofthe landscape to be seen in the background: it is pristine, comprisingblue sky, rolling hills, and lots of trees. There are no buildings, tele-phone poles, wires, or modern edifices. In fact, there are no signs ofcivilization at all.3 This lack of human habitation is crucial and willbe discussed later.

FIGURE 1. Clayton Moore in opening sequence of The Lone Ranger, 1949.

80 Michael Ray Fitzgerald

The western hero must, as a partly Indianized Euro-American, beconnected with the wilderness (Wright 58). This is often accom-plished by associating him with mountains. The Ranger’s headappears to be connected to the mountains, implying strength and sta-bility. He wears a pistol in a metal-tipped holster on his right hip,which illustrates his connection to technology. He at home in bothworlds. The Ranger appears to be chasing someone. This is confirmedas he pulls the gun from its holster and fires at an unseen targetahead of him, presumably escaping villains. The pistol, as well as hiswhite horse, gleams against the dark trees in the background. Sud-denly the rider abandons the chase and takes a diversion up a hill toget “the lay of the land.”

At the top of the hill, he guides his huge, white horse into astanding maneuver, rearing back on its hind legs in a show ofstrength (Figures 3 and 4).4 Issues related to archetypal images ofhorse and man are too complex to go into here, but suffice to say thatthe horse and control of it are symbolic of the rider’s mastery overnature (T. Parker 590–99). A low-angle shot provides a spectacularview of both horse and rider, creating a heroic image of the character,

FIGURE 2. The Ranger shooting at escaping villains.

The White Savior and his Junior Partner 81

framed against the sky, with which he has a special relationship. Therock formation in the upper-left area of the screen, the most powerfulregion, has symbolic significance—the rock, like the mountains,implies strength, stability, steadfastness; together, the Ranger andthe horse fuse with this symbol of nature and eternity. At the sametime he is also associated with the sky, from whence he came.

Messianic Tropes

At issue here is the construction of the “white savior” and how he isdepicted as divine. That religious tropes appear throughout the pro-gram is not surprising considering that its executive producer,George Washington Trendle, once aspired to become a minister(Bickel 15). Rev. Rob Archey describes both the radio and televisionseries as bible lessons sans scripture (Southern). Trendle himselfannounced in a promotional flier that the Ranger was “the embodi-ment of a granted prayer” (D. Parker 212). In a larger historicalcontext, the US in 1949 was fighting an ongoing ideological battle

FIGURE 3. The Ranger approaches “Ranger Rock” in opening sequence.


with the “godless communists” of the Soviet Union: US leaderssought to differentiate the nation from the USSR by celebratingAmerica’s deep religiosity.

This series contains several specific tropes that identify the Rangeras godlike. For one, he experiences a symbolic death and rebirth, acommon theme among dying-and-regenerating gods. For another,there is never a speck of dirt on him, and he never needs a shave, evenafter he has been unconscious for days. His custom trapeze-artist out-fit is always immaculate, even after he has dragged himself throughdirt and rubble.5 The Ranger’s hat too is immaculately white. Thewestern hero is always inexplicably clean (Pumphrey 51–53). Thisobsession with cleanliness and grooming has a Puritan resonance:“dirt is Other” (“Puritanism”). Moreover, cleanliness is associatedwith respectability (Hoy 4–5). The white horse is a well-knownsymbol that suggests its rider is godlike. For example, in the NewTestament Book of Revelation, Christ is described as descending fromthe heavens on a white horse. Lancelot of Arthurian legend also rodea white horse. There is a knight on a white horse in Edward Spenser’ssixteenth-century poem, “Sonnet XIV,” based on the Book of Revela-

FIGURE 4. Moore demonstrates horsemanship skills (same sequence).


tion in the New Testament (Spenser in Atwan and Wieder 448).Allen Kerkeslager writes that the white horse as a symbol of divinityis derived from the myth of the sun god Apollo (116–21; also seeJackson 13–14). “The Man on the White Horse” is also an importanttrope in the Mormon Church: founder Joseph Smith alluded to arider who arrives when civil upheaval is at a peak and the “Constitu-tion is hanging by a thread,” rescuing the nation at the last minute(Cobabe). A narrator underscores this suggestion of divinity, intoning(Figures 5 and 6):

This is a story of one of the most mysterious characters to appearin the early days of the West. He was a fabulous individual—aman whose presence brought fear to the lawless and hope to thosewho wanted to make this frontier land their home. (Enter the Ran-ger: The Best of The Lone Ranger)

As he sits atop his steed, a medium shot shows the Ranger scan-ning the horizon from left to right. His head is framed against a

FIGURE 5. The Ranger scans the horizon in a watchful, godlike pose. Herehe is visually associated with the clouds.


bright, blue sky, with clouds serving as a sort of halo. The sky, serv-ing as a frame for his portrait, suggests that he came from the heav-ens. Richard Dyer observes, “Men [framed] against the horizon are aclich�e of aspirational propaganda” (152). Besides being all-seeing, hisgaze seems proprietary, as if he were a king surveying his domain.Martin Pumphrey writes, “Looking is established as a form of [mas-culine] control” (58).

The Land and Its Reification

The land and how it is portrayed is a crucial issue in The Lone Ranger,as it is in most westerns. After all, the land is the prize: who controlsit and how it is to be used is generally the primary issue. Like anywestern, this series features lots of panoramic, wide shots that empha-size the landscape. Since wide vistas are not considered particularlyeffective on the small screen in creating an impressive spectacle or anawe-inspiring gaze, one might reasonably assume they are included

FIGURE 6. The Ranger faces the camera so viewers can admire his steelydetermination.


for some other reason. These genre conventions come from film andare used to quickly identify these programs as westerns: man on horse+ long shot of the land = western. This trope was probably popular-ized by seminal director John Ford (Peary and Lefcourt 56): Fordalways made sure to accentuate the grandeur of the landscape in hiswesterns, often shooting in picturesque Monument Valley (Carmi-chael 7, 212). The beauty of the landscape is part of the attraction inthe myth of the winning of the West: in the canonical western, con-trol of the land is what whites and Indians fight over. The land hereis like a beautiful woman, inviting the male gaze. Each side wants topossess it.

How The Lone Ranger deals visually (and narratively) with issuesrelated to the land is telling. In Episode One (Enter the Ranger: TheBest of the Lone Ranger 1997/1949), a typical long shot shows pioneersin covered wagons chopping wood and struggling to improviseshelters. These scenes are viewed through a parchment map labeled“Southwest Territory of the US” with a hole burned in the center,through which the camera records the action (Figures 7 and 8). This

FIGURE 7. Settlers in covered wagons entering terra nullius, viewed througha hole in burning parchment.


could be intended to provide a sort of evidentiary visual veracity. Sig-nificantly, there are no Indians, only Conestoga wagons cascadingdown hillsides from the East. This gives an historically inaccurateimpression, to say the least: before the arrival of Euro-Americans,Texas had been one of the most densely populated American Indianregions on the continent (Churchill, Struggle 332). In 1821, whenAnglo-American settlers began moving into the area, it was by nomeans empty; however by the 1880s, the period in which The LoneRanger is set, the native population had been reduced to nearly zero(Churchill, Indians 37). However, this important contextual informa-tion is entirely elided. Ariel Dorfman writes,

Those who were born here have disappeared…. In this version ofhistory the Indians are not the former possessors of the soil…. Therights to that land are established first by historically destroyingits initial possessors and later suppressing that act of destruction.(67)

The land is simply shown as vacant and inviting, and this view,juxtaposed with the announcer’s declamation, serves to foster a crucial

FIGURE 8. Settlers working to “improve” the land.


element of justificational ideology: the land was uninhabited andtherefore available for the taking.6 Thus a generation of childrenlearned from this series that the land was simply waiting to be occu-pied by Euro-Americans. This (mis)portrayal of the land as vacant isa variation of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century concept of terranullius (“empty land”). This legal sophistry justified the taking of theland by Euro-Americans because, ostensibly, no one was making gooduse of it (Deloria 10).7 At first glance, the western genre’s “predilec-tion for grandiose views of scenic panoramas and expansive vistas”appears to suggest a sort of rustic egalitarianism, equated in the pop-ular mind with the yeoman farmer (Wexman in Bernardi 142). The“valorization” of the land, however, implies much more than a natu-ral adoration found in landscapes in European art a la Brueghel.What we are seeing in westerns is a specific type of reification inwhich the land takes on a mystical, godlike character. This traditionhad been established in the US by painters such as Thomas Cole inthe 1830s. Landscape paintings took on distinct ideological functions.“Artists began to equate the country’s unspoiled wilderness with thenew nation’s seemingly limitless potential” (“Landscape Painting”).These landscape artists mystified—and myth-ified—the land, equat-ing it with the Promised Land of the Old Testament (Bjeljac 195).Virginia Wright Wexman writes,

The implication of such visions of vast territories embraced in asingle possessive gaze is far from egalitarian; they rather suggestthe more hierarchical, dominating dimension of American imperi-alist aspirations. (in Bernardi 129)

Wexman suggests that this longing gaze at the land is comparable tothe “male gaze” Laura Mulvey described in 1975 (6–18): it looksupon at the land in a proprietary manner as a successful, bourgeoismale might gaze upon a painting of a female nude—the viewer fanta-sizes about owning and controlling the body but settles for owning arepresentation.

The winning-of-the-West myth is the story of wresting of the landfrom its inhabitants. Churchill states, “Land is the absolutely essentialissue defining viable conceptions of Native America …. Contests forcontrol of territory underlie the virtually uninterrupted and ongoingpattern of genocide suffered by American Indians” (Fantasies 131).


When the Pilgrims (i.e., Puritan separatists) arrived in 1620, theyviewed the land as their own special gift from God. The Pilgrimsbelieved they were God’s chosen people and that He had given themthis land (Horsman 3, 82–83; Cherry 26). His chosen people wouldbe granted “dominion” over the earth and all its inhabitants and wereencouraged to “subdue it” (Book of Genesis, Chap. 1, Verse 28; NewAmerican Standard Bible). As far as they were concerned, this was theirhome, their promised land, to which they were, in a spiritual sense,returning.

This clash over the land and how it should be treated reaches intothe cosmology of both races. Anglo-Americans wanted to bend natureto make it fit them. Christopher Lasch remarks that the dream ofsubjugating nature has a narcissistic element: “it seeks to restore theprimal illusion of omnipotence” (244). American Indians, however,held the opposite view: they felt it was their place to fit themselvesto nature rather than the other way around (Deloria 180–89). Inkeeping with John Locke’s concept of terra nullius, however, itappeared to Anglo-Americans as if the aboriginals were letting theland—and its valuable resources—go to waste. The natives, believingthat the land like the air was a commons, saw little problem in shar-ing it with the Pilgrims—not realizing that they themselves were tobe excluded and that they would ultimately have to fight to keepfrom being forcibly removed.

However, when The Lone Ranger’s narrator states that Anglo set-tlers “had to fight,” the fight is not with Indians but with evil whitemen brandishing six-shooters, terrorizing white settlers. There arefew if any clashes with Indians in this series. Due to Cold War politi-cal complexities and the US’s reaction to relentless criticism in Sovietand French newspapers, overt conflict between white settlers andAmerican Indians could no longer be seen without creating diplo-matic difficulties between the US and emerging postcolonial nations.Marauding Indian villains of the pre-war canonical western, such asFord’s 1939 film Stagecoach, were replaced by marauding white vil-lains (Scotch 58–62). In The Lone Ranger, this faux history is con-densed into a series of long shots of horsemen in black hats making agetaway from some criminal escapade. When the narrator says, “anorganization was formed to combat the evil forces,” we see a gang ofmarauding white bandits rather than marauding Indians. The villainson The Lone Ranger are always white men, even though a Texas Rang-


ers historical site unequivocally states the organization was founded tofight Indians (Cox).8 The Rangers here are in search of the notoriousCavendish Gang, led by Butch Cavendish, who had been robbing andterrorizing settlers. Capt. Dan Reid’s unnamed younger brother (thefuture Lone Ranger), is among these six men, but he is not singledout nor is his face is shown; at this point he is no one special as far asthe viewer is concerned. The situation is a set-up, a trap. The sixRangers are led into an ambush by a “half-breed scout” (in the wordsof the narrator), a stranger named Collins. The viewer is alerted tothe fact that Collins has native ancestry by his fancy buckskin jacketand the large, protruding feather in the band of his black hat (Fig-ure 9). The half-breed cannot be trusted by anyone, neither theRangers nor the Cavendish gang, as ringleader Cavendish himselflater points out.

A close-up shot reveals Collin’s facial hair and unkempt appear-ance—a scraggly beard growth—indicating he is of questionablecharacter (Figure 10). In contrast to the slovenly Collins, the TexasRangers are fastidiously clean. Collins has led them into a trap. Even-

FIGURE 9. Capt. Dan Reid (on left) consults with half-breed scout Collins.


tually, Cavendish shoots Collins, explaining that if Collins hadbetrayed the Rangers, he’d do the same to the gang members. In thenext sequence the Ranger, left for dead, pulls himself, face-down,with one arm dragging behind him, though the dirt and rubble in anattempt to reach water. This should have ripped his outfit to shreds,but like Superman’s costume, it remains intact, indestructible. Col-lins also revives and crawls up to a ledge on a mountain face.

Enter Tonto

Next we see a long shot of another lone figure carrying a sidearm,emerging through a pass in the canyon on a small, spotted horse.This is the Ranger’s ethnic sidekick, Tonto. In the original radio ser-ies, Tonto did not appear in early episodes, until the program’s writ-ers decided a sidekick would allow the Ranger someone to explainthings to (Siegel). On the television series, however, Tonto was an

FIGURE 10. Reaction shot, close-up, scrutinizes Collins’s face; note beardgrowth.


integral character from the start. He became the quintessential stoicIndian, which in some ways was a positive step and in other wayslocked Indians into a sort of hapless, slow-witted stereotype. Indianauthor Sherman Alexie said, Tonto “was the first really mainstream,pop-culture Indian figure, the monosyllabic stoic-Indian type” (inBataille 9). “I hated Tonto then, and I hate him now,” Alexie laterwrote in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece (1998).

Tonto’s initial appearance contrasts with the Ranger’s in that he isfirst shown in a long shot, making him appear tiny; moreover, he ishemmed in on all sides by huge cliffs that make him seem even morepuny, merely part of the landscape (Figure 11). The spotted horsesurely has some significance: in western movies the “painted pony”(“pinto” in Spanish) is a common trope of Indianness (“History of theBreed”). However, if the Ranger’s white horse echoes his whiteness,then Tonto’s mixed-colored horse in this instance indicates thisrider’s hybridity or partially white nature. Tonto wears a buckskinjacket like Collins’, also signifying his Indianness. Unlike half-breedCollins, however, this rider is super-clean and clean-shaven, so in

FIGURE 11. Tonto approaches the Rangers’ bodies; note his “paint” horse.


Puritan terms he is trustworthy. His hair, although long, is carefullyparted, slicked back (tucked under in the rear in a sort of bun) andneatly fastened in place with a thin, black headband, another signifierof Indianness. His hair is long, suggesting femininity, yet it is alsovery tidy, signifying goodness. A soft focus is used in this close-up(Figure 12), a technique normally reserved for women to give theman ethereal “glow” (Jones 71; Turner 92). His clothes, though madeof buckskin, are fastidiously neat and tidy. The rider comes across thenear-lifeless body of the Ranger by the side of a spring. Looking forsome identification, he pulls out a chain from the Ranger’s shirt, as ifit were an army dog-tag. An extreme close-up shows that the chainholds a ring with a figure of a Phoenix-like bird on its face. A close-up of Tonto’s startled face shows he recognizes it: “You Kimo Sabe!”Tonto exclaims.9

Suddenly there is a jump cut to a flashback, about twenty yearsprevious: a medium-shot of the young Ranger holding a youngIndian’s nearly lifeless body. There are burning tipis and smoke inthe background. Tonto narrates: decades ago, the adolescent whowould become the Lone Ranger had run across an unconscious Indian

FIGURE 12. Close-up of Tonto peering down at the Ranger; focus is “soft.”


boy in the aftermath of his tribe’s being massacred by renegade Indi-ans, whom we never see. Tonto thus appears to be the last of histribe, a trope emanating from James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of theMohicans. The Lone Ranger and Tonto become brothers of a sort, theRanger being the older, wiser brother. This is emblematic of theircontinued relationship. In a montage of two-shots, the young Reid,who becomes the Ranger, nurses the Indian boy back to health. Reidgives the Indian boy a horse. Another two-shot shows him handingTonto the reins, then a close-up shows Tonto slipping a ring onReid’s right hand in a gesture reminiscent of a wedding ceremony.Tonto explains he could not accept the horse as a gift without givinga gift in return. At this stage the two characters become like husbandand wife; this is reinforced in a later scene in which Tonto washes theRanger’s hat (Enter the Ranger).

Flashing forward, back to the canyon where the Ranger wasambushed, the Ranger and Tonto’s dialogue is seen in two-shots—but the Ranger’s head is turned away from the camera, his faceobscured. The Ranger now recalls the Indian’s name—Tonto, which,coincidentally or not, is Spanish for “fool” or “dolt.” “Now me takecare of you,” Tonto replies in his pidgin English. A montage of two-shots shows Tonto nursing the Ranger back to health, feeding himand washing him with a damp cloth. Realizing his life is still in dan-ger from the ambushers, the Ranger decides to elude them by fakinghis own death, but, as Tonto points out, he needs a disguise. “Fromnow on, I’ll wear a mask.” Using a knife, Tonto cuts a perfect maskout of leather taken from the Ranger’s dead brother’s vest. At thispoint, neither the Ranger nor Tonto have any family, friends or socialties: they are free to fight crime full-time. It is a convention in wes-tern stories that the hero be a mysterious stranger with no job, nofamily, no friends (Wright 129).

Tonto hands the Ranger his hat, now gleaming, explaining, “Mewash in stream; dry in sun—make whiter.” This gesture is like achristening. The Ranger ceremoniously dons the hat; he is now readyto fight crime everywhere. Thus, despite his constant valorization ofthe law, Reid concludes he can better enforce the law by not beingconstrained by it: he fakes his death in order to become a masked vig-ilante. That all this is illegal is elided. Nonetheless, the program’slaw-and-order rhetoric flows continuously. In another dialogictwo-shot, the Ranger again cites the sanctity of the law. Tonto


responds, “Me want law here too—for all.” Such a statement pre-sumes that American Indians did not have laws and that the onlylegitimate law is Anglo-American jurisprudence.10 The massacre ofthe women and children of Tonto’s tribe by renegade Indians (inflashback) illustrates the unspoken assumption that only Anglo-American law can bring peace in a Hobbesian world. Tonto’s is aHobbesian world where Native Americans require protection fromone another. Sociologist Ghassan Hage notes, “Left to themselves,‘ethnic’ cultures are imagined as unable to coexist. It is only thewhite effort to inject ‘peaceful coexistence’ that allows them to do so”(161).

Tonto becomes an apprentice white man and a junior partner inthe enterprise of Manifest Destiny. After agreeing to join the Rangerin his divine quest for justice, Tonto takes on some of the trappingsof divinity. He is now framed against the sky in a godlike pose, justas the Ranger was in the introduction (Figure 13). The camera con-tinues its upward tilt toward the clear, blue sky, to remind theviewer where the Lone Ranger came from: the heavens.

FIGURE 13. Tonto, framed against the sky, peers down at the Ranger.


Macro-Level Readings

It is advantageous to interpret The Lone Ranger television programand its cultural significance on multiple levels. To do so requires situ-ating the series in its contemporaneous political, cultural and histori-cal context. At face value, this extremely nationalistic programcelebrates the building of Anglo-American civilization, constructedthrough acts of law enforcement. Law enforcement is presented as thevery foundation of US civilization—despite the fact that the Rangerhimself is engaged in numerous illegal activities. The Ranger is avigilante, motivated by retribution, a popular attraction for US tele-vision viewers and moviegoers (Cornell 73–75). However, he is notlooking for the murderers of his brother and his compadres but deci-des to fight evildoers wherever he may find them. Despite constantlyciting the sanctity of the law, the Ranger decides he can perform thistask better by not being constrained by it; by faking his own death,he becomes a shadow, answerable to no law. Since this reading makeslittle sense, it would be reasonable to assume that the program hassome deeper ideological meaning.

A second reading might view the program as a quasi-historicalcrime series offering a commentary on law enforcement as it was con-ducted in the 1880s compared to how it was conducted in 1949. Theimplication is that if old-fashioned “western justice” dispensed by self-appointed vigilantes was good enough for our forebears, it ought begood enough for us now. Since the Ranger himself violates the law inorder to enforce it, the underlying message might be that police forcesin the US should ignore the law whenever there is an extraordinarythreat to a peace-loving populace. Crime dramas often suggest that thedemocratic system simply does not work; therefore, it is up to righ-teous individuals to step in—even if they have to break the law them-selves—to honor it. This has been a durable theme in US literature,film and television (Lawrence and Jewett). Indeed, political economistMichael Parenti asserts that this has been the message of most crimeshows on US television, adding that films and television programshave historically propagated images and ideologies supportive ofauthoritarianism, violence, and vigilantism:

[M]edia dramas teach us that […] the ills of society are caused byindividual malefactors and not by the economic system, and that


the police should be given a freer hand in combating the criminal ele-ment, using generous applications of violence without [paying]too much attention to [citizens’] constitutional rights. (Parenti 2–3; emphasis added)

A third reading might present the Ranger as an allegorical stand-infor the president of the US or perhaps an idealization of what a presi-dent should be and how he should act—in other words, a fantasy sub-stitute. This is inherently a political statement and an endorsement ofauthoritarianism. The Lone Ranger as a presidential figure offers a“hard-line” alternative to—or example for—incumbent Harry S Tru-man. Although Truman played the role of hard-headed zealot—forexample, he claimed he had “never lost a minute of sleep” over hisdecision to drop atomic weapons on civilian targets in Japan (“TheWorld of Harry Truman” 4)—he was not nearly aggressive enough forthe hard-line militarists of the Cold War. In 1949, the year The LoneRanger made its television debut, Republicans—and even some Demo-crats—blamed Truman for “losing” China to a Communist revolution.By the 1952 presidential election it appeared Truman might “lose”Korea too. The president had been constrained by the UN charter,which was ratified by the US Senate in 1945, making it the law of theland. The Korean War was, by law, to be fought under the auspices ofthe UN, not by the US. The commander of the UN forces was Gen.Douglas MacArthur, whose plan involved the use of as many as thirtyatomic bombs in Korea and China (O’Ballance 377). British andFrench officials strenuously objected to what they saw as MacArthur’sreckless ideas. On the other hand, US hard-liners charged that Tru-man’s decision to rule out the use of nuclear weapons was spinelessand soft and that he had caved in to the UN. Many felt the US shouldact unilaterally, ignoring the objections of its allies. In this reading,the Ranger symbolizes a leader very much like MacArthur. The pro-gram’s villains might have represented renegade leaders such as JosefStalin, Mao Zedong, Marshal Tito, Mohammad Mossadegh, GamalNasser, and Ho Chi Minh.11 It is illuminating to look at the series inlight of developments in the Cold War as well as the anti-communistwitch-hunts, which were just beginning in 1949. By Episode 3 (“TheLone Ranger’s Triumph”), gang members have infiltrated local gov-ernment in the fictional town of Colby. Cavendish’s footsoldiers haveinstalled themselves in the second and third most important positions


in local law-enforcement, as sheriff’s deputies, without the sheriff’sknowing their true motives. The sheriff—an allegorical allusion toTruman, perhaps—is well-intentioned yet slow and fails to see what isgoing on right under his nose. Only the Ranger understands the trueextent of these threats and how to deal with them. This scenario mightbe an allusion to “communist infiltration” of the executive branch ofthe federal government—possibly a reference to Alger Hiss, a statedepartment official who had been accused of being a Soviet spy in1948 and was tried for perjury in 1949, the same year the Rangermade his television debut.

A fourth reading could posit the Ranger as the personification of theUS itself. Trendle’s biographer, Mary Bickel, suggested exactly this (Bic-kel 120). In this reading, the villains might symbolize “rogue” nations,and the dead Texas Rangers could be a metaphor for failed internationallaw—the UN perhaps—suggesting that the Lone Ranger, that is, theUS, must act unilaterally, imposing a Pax Americana.12

Ultimately, however, the Lone Ranger figure should be examined asa metonym for benevolent white supremacy. This “white man’s bur-den,” bringing the Anglo-Saxon “gift for governing” to the barbariansof the world, has been a recurring theme in literature (Horsman 1981,247). In this fantasy, helpless Indians eagerly welcome the white man’ssuperior law and order (Churchill, Fantasies 167–224). Tonto and hispeople, decimated by “renegade” Indians, desperately need to be res-cued by a white savior. Tonto enthusiastically welcomes the impositionof Anglo-American hegemony: “Me want law here too—for all.” He iseager to fight on the side of the noble white savior because he believesin Anglo-American law and order and is painfully aware of the inher-ent inefficacy of American Indian oral tradition. Tonto abandons hisown way of life and his own people to join the Ranger in his quest toestablish Pax Americana, becoming an “apprentice white man,” anenforcer of the dominant group’s norms, a Regulator. Tonto and theRanger align in order to fight a mutual enemy, with Tonto as juniorpartner. Tonto invites Anglo-Americans, personified by the Ranger, tointervene. This scene asks Cold War viewers to believe that Indiansasked Euro-Americans—as Tonto does—to come into their territoriesand impose their laws. This was a common concept during the Trumanadministration: the US had a duty to intervene in regions beingthreatened by communism—or, in other words, closed to westerncommerce.13 The Ranger’s talk of establishing “law and order” implied


creating a stable, reliable environment for conducting commerce. InThe Lone Ranger, both renegade Indians and marauding whites repre-sent a threat to stability and economic growth. Stanley Corkin suggeststhat the underlying project in many if not most postwar (if not all)westerns is the taming of unruly territories in preparation for theexpansion of commerce, in other words, making the West—and theworld—safe for capitalism (20–24).14

If the politics of The Lone Ranger is any indication, it is apparentthat the series’ creator, George Trendle, a staunch Republican, none-theless agreed with Truman on the issue of interventionism and theexpansion of the US’s “sphere of influence.” This would have been instark contrast to the isolationist wing of the party, led by Robert Taft.The Ranger is clearly an interventionist. However, if the Lone Ranger isa substitute for the president, then Trendle must have believed the USshould act unilaterally (as the Ranger himself does) whereas Truman wasconstrained by the UN treaty. The Lone Ranger also demonstrates thatthe cooperation of “colored” (i.e., nonwhite) citizens is crucial in thefight against “godless communism,” personified by white evildoers.

Tonto, like Cochise in Broken Arrow, is pragmatic, having seen first-hand the weakness in his people’s lack of defensive technology. Thiscould have been a comment on the debate over military “preparedness”(or lack thereof) that was later used by US leaders to sell the Cold Warto Congress and the public. Not only is Tonto feminized, so are hispeople: decimated by a stronger tribe, they are helpless, like a damselin distress. Can it be coincidence that a young, virile white man mate-rializes to fulfill the rescue mission? It usually takes a good white manto defend nonwhites from bad white men. Being a savior is almostalways a masculine proposition. According to Brenda M. Boyle, to bein need of rescuing is to be feminine (152–53). Countries too are oftenseen as masculine or feminine (152). Much like Tonto, both Korea andSouth Vietnam were feminized in the popular (i.e., mediated) view, inneed of being rescued (Burgoyne 58).

Trendle, Freemansonry, and White Supremacy

One reason Trendle admired the Texas Rangers may have been thatthe outfit was founded and staffed by freemasons (Marples 1). Trendlehimself belonged to Scottish Rite, the highest levels of Freemasonry


(Trendle to Wallace).15 During the period The Lone Ranger was aired(1949–1957), Scottish Rite promoted the most extreme sort of racistviews. The point here is that Trendle likely was steeped in suchviews. An excerpt from Scottish Rite’s official publication, releasedduring The Lone Ranger’s first season, declared:

The hand of Providence has chosen the Nordic people to bring andunfold the new order of the world …. Providence has chosen theNordic people because they have prepared themselves and havechosen God. (Smith 551 qtd. in Collins and Collins 73)

Belief in Nordic racial superiority did not originate in Germany:remarkably similar beliefs had been in circulation in England and inthe US (i.e., Anglo-Saxonism) before Germany emerged as a nation(Tuveson 126–28, 137–44, 150–56). According to Reginald Hors-man, Anglo-Saxons have long believed they have a “gift for govern-ing,” which they have a duty to bring to the rest of the world,whether or not it is welcome (Horsman 247).

Where, then, does the American Indian fit into this worldview? InThe Lone Ranger, Tonto serves as the Indians’ representative; he wel-comes the white savior on their behalf. In turn he is accepted intothe Anglo-Saxon-Nordic project if—and only if—he is willing toassist in this project of Anglo-American conquest of the territory.Tonto becomes a junior partner in the project of Euro-Americandomination, doing dirty work for the white man. It might also beilluminating to ask, where do African Americans fit into this vision?The simple answer is: they do not. Not only are blacks not includedhere—even as third-class citizens—they simply do not exist.

Tonto Tropes in Popular Culture

Tonto serves as a symbolic ambassador for American Indians. Tontohas defected, gone over to the other side. Thus “the one who [in real-ity] is plundered becomes [in this fantasy] a guardian of the laws thatgave rise to that plunder” (Dorfman 80). Ralph and Natasha Friaremployed a more vehement term: “Tonto’s a fink” (189). Dakotascholar Vine Deloria Jr. also uses the term “fink” to describe Tontoand others like him (202):


Tonto was everything the white man always wanted the Indian tobe. He was a little slower, a little dumber, had much less vocabu-lary, and rode a darker horse …. Like the Negro butler and theOriental gardener, Tonto represented a silent, subservient subspe-cies of Anglo-Saxon [sic] whose duty was to do the bidding of theall-wise white hero. (200)

Tonto is unable to think for himself, nearly always dependent oninstructions from the white savior. Indeed, Tonto was so obsequious—almost a manservant or valet—that this became a source of humorfor actors Jay Silverheels (Tonto) and Clayton Moore (the Ranger):Tonto’s standard reply to the Ranger’s commands, “Me do!” becamea private joke between the two actors (Moore 145).16 As the confor-mity and nationalism of the 1950s gave way to the dissent and rebel-lion of the 1960s, Tonto’s relationship with the Ranger would beunmercifully mocked in pop culture. There have been several famousjokes satirizing Tonto’s servility, implying that it was unlikely, disin-genuous, ironic, that the joke was really on the paternalistic whiteman. In 1958 Mad magazine presented a two-page panel by cartoon-ist Joe Orlando:

RANGER: Indians! Indians all around us! Well, Tonto, ol’ KimoSabe, it looks like we’re finished.

TONTO: [drily] What you mean, “we”? (42)

Later versions of the joke substituted, “What you mean, ‘we,’white man?” This joke was immortalized in song by Oscar Brown Jr.(Atlantic Records). The Lone Ranger became a target for comedians,especially Lenny Bruce, who even made jokes about Tonto’s beingsodomized by the Ranger (Linder).17 Bill Cosby also satirized theabsurdity of Tonto’s subservience, noting that the last time Tontowent into town, he was brutally attacked by settlers (Tonto’s beatingand near-lynching occurred in the 1956 film version of The Lone Ran-ger, and in The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold [1958], Tontogets into a scuffle with a local sheriff, who shoots him). Cosby’s comicroutine illustrates what he feels would have been a more rational—and likely—response:


RANGER: Tonto, you go to town.

TONTO: You go to hell, Kimo Sabe!

RANGER: I want you to get the information.

TONTO: Information say Tonto not go to town. That whatinformation say. (Cosby)

In 1969, Silverheels satirized his own role, on NBC’s Tonight withJohnny Carson. Carson plays a career counselor helping Tonto findanother job after the cancelation of The Lone Ranger. In pidgin Eng-lish, Tonto confides that he and the Lone Ranger had had a fallingout after “thirty lousy years” because “him find out what Kimo Sabereally means” (Tonight; also see “Jay Silverheels aka Tonto”). Evendecades after The Lone Ranger left ABC, entertainers were still satiriz-ing the servile relationship between Tonto and the Ranger. A 1986song by Lyle Lovett titled “If I Had a Boat” included the followingverse:

The mystery masked man was smartHe got himself a TontoCause Tonto did the dirty work for freeBut Tonto he was smarterAnd one day said, “Kimo sabe, kiss my ass”I bought a boat, I’m going out to sea

These jokes play on the tension created by the suspicion—or out-right expectation—that the native enforcer will one day come to hissenses, realize he is being exploited, and turn on his alien master,much like the sepoys of India did in 1857.

Conclusion

Despite its unexamined and apparently unremarkable racist overtones,The Lone Ranger was seen as progressive in its day. It was never acanonical western in which Euro-Americans are seen waging all-outexterminationist warfare against American Indians (and vice-versa) asin, for example, Ford’s Stagecoach. As early as the 1933 radio series,Indians in The Lone Ranger were portrayed as friendly and their rela-tions with whites genial (Rothel 56, 191). The Lone Ranger television


version was “politically correct” for its time, and this might accountfor a measure of its success. Nonetheless—aside from the obvious factthat African Americans were excluded—it is inherently racist in thatnatives are seen as unable to survive without assistance from Euro-American protectors. This is a recurrent theme that reappeared, forexample, in Delmer Daves’s 1950 film Broken Arrow (as well as in thetelevision version, which appeared on ABC from 1956 to 1958), inDavid Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and in Kevin Costner’s filmDances with Wolves (1990). This same theme resurfaced in 2009 inJames Cameron’s Avatar. A comment from Vine Deloria Jr., writtenforty years before Avatar, sounds as if it could have been writtenabout Avatar’s Na’vi people, who are actually thinly veiled represen-tations of American Indians:

So rigid was the stereotype of the childlike Indian that all effortsby [them] to come together were passed off as the prattling ofchildren who could not possibly do anything without instructionsfrom their white friends. (202)

As Hage has noted, colonizer discourse depicts natives are not asfully realized people but rather as objects to be managed—orremoved (93).

Notes

1. The first series filmed specifically for network TV was Your Show Time on NBC, aired 21

Jan. 1949. The Lone Ranger debuted on ABC eight months later, on 15 Sept.

2. It was relatively easy to convert movie production to television production, especially when

it came to westerns, because Hollywood’s B-movie mills were already set up for this sort of

product, already had sets and costumes on hand, and had already worked out elaborate and

efficient manufacturing procedures.

3. It was shot at Iverson Ranch near Chatsworth, Calif.

4. Series star Clayton Moore was an accomplished horseman, and this was one of the reasons

the producers selected him for the role (Moore 113). Moore had recently starred in Repub-

lic Pictures’ feature film Ghost of Zorro (1949). Moore confirmed that the Ranger was partly

modeled on Zorro (113).

5. Moore himself had been a trapeze artist in his youth (Moore 31–34). His Ranger costume

was designed by Nudka “Nudie” Cohen of Las Vegas, who created weatern-themed outfits

for the likes of Gene Autrey, Roy Rogers, Robert Redford, Elvis Presley, Porter Wagoner,

Buck Owens, Gram Parsons, and Elton John (Nudie and Cabrall 110).

6. However, there are later episodes in which American Indians and their presence–as well astheir right to occupy certain “reserved” lands–are freely acknowledged: Episode 6, “War

Horse” (air date 20 Oct. 1949); Episode 8, “Renegades” (3 Nov. 1949); Episode 34, “Rifles


and Renegades” (4 May 1950); and Episode 44, “White Man’s Magic” (13 July 1950). As

in Delmer Dave’s film Broken Arrow (1950), the Ranger is respectful of Indians and their

(limited) rights, working diligently to preserve peace between the races.

7. Anglo-Americans perhaps had no way of knowing whether the land had been claimed other

than if it had been cultivated or fenced.

8. The organization was founded in the 1820s to combat “intrusions” from Comanches, Ton-

kawas and Karankawas. A differentiation was made between “hostiles” and “friendlies”; the

Rangers recruited friendly Indians to help fight these more threatening opponents (Cox).

9. “Kimo Sabe” is supposedly Potawatamie for “trusty scout” (Moore 121). Potwatamies lived

nowhere near this region. Camp Kee-Mo-Sa-Bee was the name of a campground owned by

the father-in-law of one of the radio show’s writers, James Jewell (Rothel 40).

10. Most American Indian groups had codes of conduct but not written laws. However, the

Cherokees had adopted a written legal code by 1808. The Cherokees also had their own

law-enforcement system, including marshals, sheriffs, and constabularies (Blackburn 53).

11. Several scholars have also read gun-slinging sheriffs and self-appointed vigilantes as fantasy

substitutes for the president: Lawrence and Jewett specifically addressed this with regard to

The Lone Ranger (Lawrence and Jewett). Film scholar John Lenihan applies a similar reading

to Ford’s 1950 film Rio Grande, which—coincidentally or not—was released five months

after MacArthur was appointed UN commander (29–31); Stanley Corkin employs a similar

reading of High Noon, released three months prior to the 1952 presidential election, which

Truman lost to Dwight D. Eisenhower (20–24).12. Perhaps there is some truth in this suggestion: there have been areas throughout history

riven with chronic partisan and ethnic violence, which only the imposition of imperial rule

has managed to quell. For example, the Balkans were relatively peaceful while the Ottoman

Turks held a monopoly on violence there. Some minorities, such as Tamils in Sri Lanka,

Jews in Tunisia, Chinese in Indonesia, preferred living under British, French, and Dutch

colonial rule (Sowell 124–25).13. In this sense, autarky would have been as threatening as communism.

14. John Ford himself vaguely alluded to this aspect of the western in his 1962 film The Man

Who Shot Liberty Valance.15. Other members included Douglas MacArthur, Harry Truman and John Wayne (“Scottish

Rite”).16. Silverheels (real name Howard J. Smith), an actual Mohawk, deserves credit for bringing as

much dignity as possible to this hackneyed role.

17. In 1968 John Magnuson made a short animated film, Thank You Masked Man, from one of

Bruce’s comedy routines.

Works Cited

Alexie, Sherman. “I Hated Tonto (Still Do).” Los Angeles Times. 28Jun. 1998. Web.

Avatar. Dir. James Cameron. Dune Entertainment/Twentieth Cen-tury-Fox Film Corp., 2009. Film.

Best of the Lone Ranger: First Three Episodes. Episode 1: “Enter the LoneRanger.” 15 Sep. 1949. Apex Films/UAV Corp., 1997. VHS.

Bickel, Mary E. George W. Trendle: Creator and Producer of the LoneRanger, the Green Hornet, Sgt. Preston of the Yukon, the Amer-


ican Agent, and Other Successes. New York: Exposition Press,1971. Print.

Bjeljac, David. American Art: A Cultural History. New York: HarryN. Abrams, 2001. Print.

Blackburn, Bob L. “From Blood Revenge to the Lighthorsemen: Evo-lution of Law-Enforcement Institutions among the Five CivilizedTribes in 1861.” American Indian Law Review 8.1 (1980): 49–63.

Boyle, Brenda M. “Rescuing Masculinity.” Journal of American Culture34.2 Jun. (2011): 149–60. Print.

Broken Arrow. Dir. Delmer Daves. Twentieth Century-Fox Pictures,1950. DVD.

Brown, Oscar, Jr. “The Lone Ranger.” Fresh Atlantic Records, 1974.LP.

Burgoyne, Robert. Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at US History. Min-neapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997. Print.

Carmichael, Deborah A. The Landscape of Hollywood Westerns: Eco-criti-cism in an American Film Genre. Salt Lake City: U of Utah P,2006. Print.

Churchill, Ward. Fantasies of the Master Race: Literature, Cinema, andthe Colonization of American Indians. 1992. San Francisco: CityLights Books, 1998. Print.

——. Indians Are Us? Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1994.Print.

——. Struggle for the Land: Native North American Resistance to Geno-cide, Ecocide, and Colonization. San Francisco: City Lights Books,2002. Print.

Cooper, James Fenimore. Last of the Mohicans. 1826. New York: Pen-guin Books, 1986. Print.

Corkin, Stanley. Cowboys as Cold Warriors. Philadelphia: Temple UP,2004. Print.

Cornell, Drucilla. Clint Eastwood and Issues of American Masculinity.New York: Fordham UP, 2009. Print.

Cosby, Bill. “The Lone Ranger.” I Started Out as a Child Warner Bros.Records, 1964. LP.

Cox, Mike. “A Brief History of the Texas Rangers.” Texas Rangers.n.d. Web.

Dances with Wolves. Dir. Kevin Costner. Tig Productions/MajesticFilms International/Orion Pictures, 1990. DVD.

Deloria,Vine, Jr. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. Nor-man: U of Oklahoma P, 1969. Print.

Dorfman, Ariel. The Emperor’s Old Clothes: What the Lone Ranger, Ba-bar, and Other Heroes Do to Our Minds. 1983. Durham: Duke UP,2010. Print.


Dyer, Richard. White. London: Routledge, 1997. Print.Friar, Ralph, and Natasha Friar. The Only Good Indian: The Hollywood

Gospel. New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1972. Print.Hage, Ghassan. White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multi-

cultural Society. Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press, 1998. Print.“History of the Breed.” American Paint Horse Association. n.d. Web.Horsman, Reginald. Race and Manifest Destiny. Cambridge, MA: Har-

vard UP, 1981. Print.Hoy, Suellen. Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit of Cleanliness.

Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. Print.Jackson, Wayne. Select Studies in the Book of Revelation. Stockton, CA:

Courier Publications, 1995. Print.“Jay Silverheels aka Tonto.” YouTube. n.d. Web.Jones, Jeff. How to Photograph and Edit Women. Raleigh, NC: Lulu.-

com, 2006. Print.Kerkeslager, Allen. “Apollo, Greco-Roman Prophecy, and the Rider

on the White Horse in Revelation 6:2.” Journal of Biblical Litera-ture 112.1 Spring (1993): 116–21. Print.

“Landscape Painting.” National Gallery of Art. 2011. Web.Lasch, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age

of Diminishing Expectations. New York: W.W. Norton & Co,1979. Print.

Lawrence of Arabia. Dir. David Lean. Horizon Pictures/Columbia Pic-tures, 1962a. DVD.

Linder, Doug. “Lenny Bruce.” 2003. Web.Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold. Dir. Lesley Selander. United

Artists, 1958. Lone Ranger Pictures/VCI Entertainment, 2002.DVD.

Lone Ranger. Dir. Stuart Heisler Warner Bros., 1956. Lone RangerPictures/VCI Entertainment, 2002. DVD.

Lovett, Lyle. “If I Had a Boat.” Pontiac. Curb Records, 1986. LP.Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Dir. John Ford. John Ford Produc-

tions/Paramount Pictures, 1962. DVD.Marples, James. “The Lone Ranger, Freemasonry, and Texas-Ranger

Ethics.” Alvin Benemerito’s Freemasonry Site n.d. Web.Moore, Clayton, with Frank Thomas. I Was that Masked Man. New

York: Taylor Trade, 1998. Print.Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16.3

Autumn (1975): 6–18. Print.New American Standard Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Corp,

2011. Print.


Nudie, Jamie Lee, and Mary Lynn Cabrall. Nudie: The Rodeo Tailor.New York: Gibbs Smith, 2004. Print.

Orlando, Joe. “TV Scenes We’d Like to See.” Mad 38. Mar. 1958:42. Print.

Osgood, Dick. Wyxie Wonderland: An Unauthorized 50-Year Diary ofWXYZ Detroit. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green UP, 1981.Print.

Parenti, Michael. Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment.1992. New York: St. Martins Press, 1986. Print.

Parker, David Wilson. “A Descriptive Analysis of the Lone Ranger asa Form of Popular Art.” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, North-western University, 1956. Print.

Parker, Tyler. “Magic and Myth of the Movies.” 1947. Film Theoryand Criticism. Eds. Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen. Oxford:Oxford UP, 1974. 583–89. Print.

Pumphrey, Martin. “Why Do Cowboys Wear Hats in the Bath?:Style Politics for the Older Man.” Critical Quarterly 31. (Oct.1989) 78–100. The Movie Book of the Western. Eds. Douglas Pyeand Ian Cameron. London: Cassel, 1996. 50–62. Print.

“Puritanism—The Philosophy of the English Revolution.” Depart-ment of English, Umea University, Umea, Sweden, n.d. Web.

Rothel, David. Who Was That Masked Man? New York: A.S. Barnes,1976. Print.

Scotch, Norman A. “The Vanishing Villains of Television.” Phylon21.1 Fall-Winter (1960): 58–62. Print.

Scottish Rite, Valley of San Diego. “Famous Masons.” May 2009.Web.

Siegel, Robert. “The Lone Ranger: Justice from Outside the Law.”National Public Radio 17 Jan. 2008. Web.

Smith, C. William. “God’s Plan in America.” The New Age Magazine58.9, Sep. (1950): 551. Print.

Southern, Joe. “The Lone Ranger a True Believer.” The Silver Bulletn.d. Web.

Sowell, Thomas. Race and Culture: A World View. New York: BasicBooks, 1994. Print.

Spenser, Edmund. “Sonnet XIV.” Chapters into Verse: A Selection ofPoetry in English Inspired by the Bible from Genesis through Revelation.Ed. Robert Atwan and Laurance Wieder. Oxford: Oxford UP,2000. 448. Print.

Stagecoach. Dir. John Ford. Walter Wanger Productions/UnitedArtists, 1939. DVD.

Thank You, Mask Man. Dir. John Magnuson. Columbus Productions,1968. YouTube. n.d. Web.


Tonight: Four Decades of “The Tonight Show” Starring Johnny Carson.Respond 2 Entertainment, 2010. DVD.

Trendle, George W. Letter to Ines Wallace. 12 Dec. 1956. GeorgeTrendle papers, Burton Collection. Detroit Public Library. TS.

Turner, Graeme. Film as Social Practice. London: Routledge, 2000.Print.

Tuveson, Ernest Lee. Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s MillennialRole. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1968. Print.

Wexman, Virginia W. “The Family on the Land: Race and Nation-hood in Silent Westerns.” The Birth of Whiteness: Race and theEmergence of US Cinema. Ed. Daniel Bernardi. New Brunswick,NJ: Rutgers UP, 1996. 129–69. Print.

“World of Harry Truman.” Time. 8 Jan. 1973. Web.Wright, Will. Six Guns and Society 1975. Berkeley: U of California P,

1977. Print.Zackel, Frederick. “Robinson Crusoe and the Ethnic Sidekick.” Bright

Lights Film Journal 58. Nov. 2007. Web.

Michael Ray Fitzgerald has a Ph.D. in film and television history at Uni-versity of Reading (UK) and a M.A. in mass communication at Universityof Florida. His book on American Indian stereotypes on US television willbe published by Scarecrow Press in Spring 2014. He teaches communica-tions at Jacksonville University in Florida and at the College of CoastalGeorgia in Kingsland, Georgia.


the white savior and his junior partner: the lone ranger and tonto on cold war television...

Documents