The Lone Stranger: 'Who is that masked man?'

As a kid from the Dirty Thirties, listening to his Dad's old Stromberg-Carlson mantel radio and those exciting serials of The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet - both invented by the same team - I have to say this latest effort bears little or no resemblance to those childhood heroes we all knew and loved.

This horse, shown above thanks to USA Today, may yet prove to be the best part of this silly saga. And once again let me say "You don't get a second chance to make a first impression!"

Yesterday, my friend Tom over in New York and I were chatting about old movies and the advent of color, notably Technicolor, to such epics as 'Gone With The Wind' and 'The Wizard of Oz', both from 1939, and I told Tom how our gang used to go to the Saturday matinees of our favorite 'duster' heroes, in living B&W, and amuse ourselves chanting out the count of shots fired by our heroes as they battled the bad guys, firing maybe 14 or 15 shots from a six-gun before stopping to reload.

The Manager often turfed us out the side door fire exit for being a disturbance, but we always left one or two behind, to unlatch that fire door so we could sneak back in for the rest of the show. The bank manager's twin sons, a pair of spoiled brats if there ever were any, had matched sets of pearl-handled cap guns that were replicas of the pair of six-shooters worn by The Lone Ranger and they too got thrown out, for firing back at the bad guys while we were counting
the shots. We didn't need TV back then - we made our own shows!