With a rousing cry of “Hi Yo Silver!” set to the strains of the William Tell Overture, Mike Hankin takes to the cowboy trails of yesteryear with The Lone Ranger and his faithful sidekick Tonto...

Nowadays our TV screens are dominated by scores of police procedural dramas, but in the late 1950s and early 1960s both kids and adults alike were hooked on sanitised American imaginings of the Old Wild West.

Taking up a fair share of primetime TV was the hugely popular Wagon Train (1957-1965) with Ward Bond, Robert Horton and John McIntire and a host of guest stars, Rawhide (1959-1965) with Eric Fleming and Clint Eastward and the longest running series of them all, Gunsmoke (1955-1975) with James Arness, Milburn Stone and Amanda Blake.

My most indelible memory of the latter series, was the part-lame character of Chester, played by Dennis Weaver, constantly hobbling after Marshall Matt Dillon shouting, “Mr. Dillon, Mr Dillon.” Away from this mostly adult fair, was the middling ground westerns, enjoyed by both parents and kids and consisting of series such as Bonanza (19591973), with Lorne Green, Dan Blocker, Michael Landon and Pernell Roberts and Sugarfoot (1957-1961) with Will Hutchins.

However, we kids had a plethora of cowboy heroes to idolise, kicking off with the short but phenomenally successful Disney TV series of Davy Crockett (1954-55) with Fess Parker and Buddy Ebsen (and yes, I had a Davy Crockett suit, complete with fake raccoon hat as a kid).

The TV series was never shown in England, so my introduction to the character came through the two feature films cobbledtogether from the series and released as Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier (1955) and Davy Crockett and the River Pirates (1956).

Chief among the rivals for our affections, that seemed to be shown on a continuous loop, was the singing cowboy Roy Rogers, The Range Rider (1951-1953) with Jock Mahoney, The Cisco Kid (1950-1956) with Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carrillo, Hopalong Cassidy (1949-1952) with William Boyd and then arguably the most famous of all, The Lone Ranger (1949-1957) with Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels. No wonder the boys’ toy of choice back in the day was a cap firing gun and holster and, if you were lucky, a cowboy hat.

Earle W. Graser played The Lone Ranger on the radio. Did he really need to wear that mask?

Brace Beemer as The Lone Ranger, standing at microphone with a woman at radio station WNAX

These TV offerings were supplemented by the often-ancient cowboy films shown at the Saturday Morning Cinema shows for kids. It is hard to imagine these days the excitement kids got back then from finding free gifts such of the Lone Ranger’s silver bullets (plastic, of course) in your cereal packet, or maybe a mask to cut out on the back of the promotional box. With so many cowboy heroes to choose from, what was so special about The Lone Ranger? I suppose it has something to do with the back story that gave him a reason for doing what he did, although revenge in most western stories tended to be a little more savage. Also, how many sidekicks were real full-blown North American Indians, or Native Americans as they should rightly be known?