The Lone Ranger Rides, Fran Striker
This isn’t the first novel about the masked man written by Fran Striker. In fact, it came out in 1941, five years after the first book, by Gaylord Dubois (The Lone Ranger), and after Striker himself had published four additional novels about the Ranger. Those first five were all aimed at a younger audience and published by thrifty Grosset and Dunlap, as were thirteen later Grosset titles by Striker. All are adaptations from radio scripts written by Striker. The Lone Ranger Rides came out from the more upscale publisher G.P. Putnam’s Sons and probably was intended to introduce a series for an adult readership.
Now, about the lead character: Fran Striker had begun as a Buffalo, NY, newspaper writer and playwright. During the Depression, he moved into writing for radio and soon became a story machine, producing hundreds of scripts for dozens of radio shows each year. Typically, the man wrote 60,000 words a week, including the radio scripts, a daily cartoon strip, biographies, nvoels, and newspaper work. One of his earlier continuing series was Covered Wagon Days, a Western.
Eventually Striker wound up working exclusively for George Trendle, co-owner of WXYZ in Detroit and of a nascent Midwestern radio network. Paid $7.50 per script, or $37.50 a week for a half-hour series, Striker juggled five or six series at a time. The fourth or fifth he created for Trendle recycled the Covered Wagon Days plots but centered on the Lone Ranger. It made an immediate hit, and in 1934 Trendle pressured Striker to sell him full rights in the show and the character for a magnificent $10.00. By 1939 The Lone Ranger alone brought Trendle a million dollars a year in profits, while Striker continued to work on straight salary, no royalties, not even for his newer show The Green Hornet, featuring the great nephew of the Ranger.
This is more interesting than the novel. As with comic-book superheroes today, the Ranger was rebooted over and over again, and the novel is at least the third re-telling of the character’s origin. Some elements remain the same in each iteration: Six Texas Rangers ambushed, five killed, one barely surviving and rescued by indeterminate-tribe Native American Tonto (“You Lone Ranger now”), and a villain named Cavendish is behind it all. Details are all over the map. The book’s plot is messy, with not just one Cavendish but a whole passel of ‘em. The Ranger is repeatedly wounded, shot in the thigh and foot, ribs broken, and so on, but Tonto has miracle good medicine, and after a night of rest he’s right as rain. There’s a maiden in distress, about ten bad guys who aren’t always bad but only going along with the gag, just pretending to be bad for, uh, reasons. The Ranger is always jumping into the saddle and riding off to somewhere or other, usually on a hunch, and his hunches are always right. Plot threads dangle at the end, but the damsel’s OK.
The reason the novel didn’t have adult-level sequels, I expect, is that writing at the pace he did, Striker created very pulpy prose. Tonto’s a stereotype, speaking in that awful mock-Indian dialect (“You thinkum he guilty?”). Coincidences appear on every other page. A guy named Wallie in one place is Willie in another. And it all ends in an improbable shoot-out, of course. Differences between this version and earlier ones are everywhere (no Butch Cavendish here, no Kemosabe nickname, the Ranger gets no name at all*, there is no slaughtered brother to avenge. Alternates to all these feature in the radio show). I think these just might have been Striker’s way of reclaiming some ownership of the concept and earning a bit of money without Trendle taking the lion’s share.
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*Trivia question: what is the Lone Ranger’s real name?
A: Allen King. Bill Andrews. Luke Hartman. No-First-Name Reid. John Reid. Each of these is mentioned as the Ranger’s true identity in various media.
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