The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1952)

The quality of this transfer is better than that of others I've seen recently, though Lone Ranger fans would still like to get their hands on an apparently missing color re-creation (filmed several years later and broadcast only twice) of this 1949 black-and-white compilation of the first three episodes of the series, which explain how Texas Ranger Reid (there's some dispute in L. R. lore about his first name) became the Lone Ranger, reunited with his boyhood acquaintance Tonto, and acquired Silver. With careful use of the pause function on your DVD player, you can see Clayton Moore without his mask before the rangers were ambushed by the Butch Cavendish gang, though the director of the episode took some care to keep Moore in the background and, for the most part, turned away from the camera.

The episodes are duplicateS of those episodes on THE LONE RANGER, THE LEGEND BEGINS and/or THE LONE RANGER, VOL 1

I bought this on tape,then DVD. I was huge Lone Ranger fan as a child. Yes it is great to watch the Lone Ranger again. I plan to buy an all color episode edition. My daughter watch the tapes with me when she was in high school. What lured her to watch was it had a horse in it. However after watching this and another collection of episodes(also, some Roy Rogers), she said, "How come you had all the good stuff to watch when you were a kid." She was not much impressed with after school or Saturday morning tv.

This is the beginning of the Lone Ranger and his legend. Start here then buy some of the other collections. They are still fun to watch. Just remind special effects are not very much part of old tv stories which had very limited budgets.

Still not the movie I have been looking for which is in TOTAL COLOR. This tells the same basic story but I wanted the "Theatrical Version" of the Legend of the Lone Ranger (Original)

This three-episode television classic was filmed in 1949 and introduced Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels as the Lone Ranger and Tonto. This seminal film details the masked man's origins as a Texas Ranger who was ambushed with five fellow rangers by outlaw Butch Cavendish, the Ranger's recovery with Tonto's help, why he conceals his identity with a mask, how he finds Silver, and their round-up and arrest of the Cavendish gang. Moore and Silverheels were perfect as the two leads in this series and portrayed the characters as no one else could have. They were supported by some of the old-school, venerable character actors of the day such as Glenn Strange, George Lewis, Tris Coffin, George Chesboro, and Walter Sande. The crisp black and white photography stands up well with time and the Lone Ranger "mood music" is a superb, nostalgic accompaniment to the action as the Ranger and Tonto fight for law and order in the early west. Each of the three episodes is wonderfully narrated by way of introduction, and the narration is also used to introduce key plot situations.