I graduated from Senn High School in 1980. Located on Chicago’s North Side, Senn is a fairly typical inner-city public high school, except for the fact that a lot of famous and semi-famous people graduated from there. Today let’s look at one who will really hiyo your silver: Clayton Moore, TV’s Lone Ranger, class of 1932.
Jack Clayton Moore was born in Chicago in 1914. He was an athletic child and appeared in a trapeze act at the 1933 Chicago World’s fair. After graduating high school, Clayton Moore moved to Hollywood, where he worked as a model and stuntman. He then enlisted in the Air Force and spent World War II making training films.
After appearing in a number of B movies and serials, Moore got his big break when he was cast as The Lone Ranger when the show moved from radio to TV. The TV version was a big hit and the role would define his career; Moore would make his living by making personal appearances as The Lone Ranger for decades to come. But the masked man had one last battle against evil to wage.
Per Wikipedia: “In 1979, Jack Wrather, who owned the Lone Ranger character, obtained a court order prohibiting Moore from making future appearances as The Lone Ranger. Wrather was in the process of making a new film version of the story and believed that Moore’s public appearances in character would undercut the value of the character and the film, and also advance any rumors that the 65-year-old Moore would be playing the title role in the new picture (which he did not).”
Moore countersued, and in an act of desperation, slapped on a pair of Foster Grant sunglasses to replace his famous mask for his personal appearances. The press got ahold of the story and had a field day casting Wrather as the bad guy. All’s well that ends well: the resulting publicity got Moore an endorsement deal with Foster Grant; the movie, entitled The Legend of The Lone Ranger, was a big flop, and Wrather eventually dropped the lawsuit.
Clayton Moore passed away in 1999, at the age of 85.