Who is Tonto, and to an extent, The Lone Ranger?

[EweSheep]

I used to watch it every Sunday back in the 70;s with the reruns. And the Cisco Kid as well. Those two shows showed back to back.

 

[Randy]

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Hey me too.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

I remember being disappointed to discover that the Lone Ranger theme music was actually the William Tell Overture

 

[chickenwhisperer]

My father grew up listening to and watching the Lone Ranger, and I used to watch the old reruns all the time.

I even had the action figures set of Lone Ranger/Silver, and Tonto/Scout, I wonder how much that woulda been worth today, if I had not played outside in the dirt with them . . .

I think that most people over the age of say 30 know the theme song, and I even still sing it in my head at times . . .
Who hasnt ridden their bike, as a kid, at full speed and not hummed that music to them selves . . .

Ill tell ya tho . . . I watch those shows now and I just think "man TV was cheesy back then", and " we ve come a long way in TV" . . .
But still classics, and will always remind me of being young!


Im also a big fan of the old Davey Crockett and Danial Boone shows . . . cheeeeeeze!
Fess parker is a Mans' man!!!

- Lone Ranger

- Davey Crockett

Danny Boone

Back in the 50s and 60s, they used really tan white actors to play native americans, and really played into EVERY stereotype ever thought of about them!

 

[michickenwrangler]

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They used to use Italians, very rarely would directors use American Indian actors.

DH got me hooked on the Rifleman (lloovvee Chuck Connors without his shirt) and I always liked Sam Buckhart--the Harvard educated Chirikawa Apache US Marshal. I read somewhere that he was given his own show but I don't think it ran very long.

 

[JetBlack]

It's an old, somewhat racist, TV show.

Quien lo Sabes (Spanish for "he who knows all") AKA Kemosabe, and his sidekick Tonto (Spanish for "stupid") travel the countryside, righting wrongs and saving damsels.

 

[debilorrah]

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My first thought was she probably wants to hear first hand experience and not a bathroom wall of the worlds opinions.

 

[FourPawz]

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Here is a different point of view on the show:

http://weirdscifi.ratiosemper.com/loneranger/faq.html

Is Kemosabe a real word? What does it really mean?

Kemosabe (or any of the other various spellings) is a real word. And no, it doesn't mean "horse's butt." It is actually from the language of the Potowatomie Indians. One of the shows' producers, Jim Jewell, had a father-in-law who ran a boy's camp named "Camp Kee-mo-sah-bee."

Kemosabe means "faithful friend" or "trusty scout."

Isn't it true that Tonto means "fool" in Spanish?

This is true, but it was not that meaning that was intended by the producers of the show.

There are two versions of the story.

Fran Striker told the Saturday Evening Post that he invented Tonto's name and that it was picked by merely alterring the consanants in the name Gobo. (This was a caveman character Striker had created in another radio program.)

Jim Jewell says that Striker was remembering wrong. Tonto, he said, is another Potowatomie word. There were a few Indians who would come to the camp to tell stories to the children. One of the Indians apparently had a penchant for drinking after the children had gone to sleep. Sometimes he would get rowdy and the other Indians would call him "tonto." This meant "wild one." Jewell remembered the word, liked it, and gave the name to the Lone Ranger's Indian companion.

The truth is lost in the fog of time...

 

[JetBlack]

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My first thought was she probably wants to hear first hand experience and not a bathroom wall of the worlds opinions.

And here, she gets the best of both worlds

This is one of my favorite sites for questions just like this: http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=Who+is+the+Lone+Ranger?

 

[WoodChic]

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Well, when many of us were kids, we were lucky to have access to 2, maybe 3 different channels of TV. Saturday mornings were dedicated to kid-oriented shows. So, the shows that appealed to youngsters tended to leave a big impression on us Baby Boomer/Jones generation folks. Westerns were extremely popular and The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Bonanza and Gunsmoke were must-see shows for a lot of families.

I am def not very old, but I absolutely love those shows. We don't get TV, so when we go to visit our grandparents, they are like: "Wow, you guys are really glued to the tv". But it's TV land! Lol. We watch bonanza and gunsmoke all day long.