Most everyone knows that The Lone Ranger, "masked rider of the plains," was in fact a former Texas Ranger named Reid, who vowed to fight for justice after his older brother was killed. The 1938 Republic serial version of
The Lone Ranger
muddies the "true identity" waters by offering us five heroes, any one of whom might be the Ranger. The five leading men are picked off one by one by outlaw leader Stanley Andrews, until only the genuine Ranger is left. There's nothing like process of elimination to solve a mystery; this process takes 15 full episodes. The Lone Ranger candidates are played by Lee Powell, Lane Chandler, Herman Brix (aka Bruce Bennett), Hal Taliaferro (aka Wally Wales) and George Letz (aka George Montgomery). Tonto, the masked man's faithful Indian companion, is played by Chief Thundercloud. Unavailable for many years due to copyright tangles,
finally resurfaced in the 1970s in a duped, foreign-language version; some episodes carried Spanish subtitles, while others were dubbed in Spanish with English captions.