THE LONE RANGER RIDES AGAIN Lost Republic Serial Chapter 1

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• published: 14 Aug 2011
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Considered a lost film since its release in 1939 and apparent destruction by fire on the Republic Pictures studio backlot shortly afterward, THE LONE RANGER RIDES AGAIN now, as restored by The Serial Squadron. All that exists of the original film is a print missing most of its opening titles, all of its closing titles, and with one- two- and three-tier Spanish subtitles in every shot with dialogue. The restoration you see has eliminated all the subtitles and reconstructed all the openings and closings in English for every chapter, and cliffhanger endings which were often also nonexistent in the original print. So in this case "restored" does not mean the film has been gone over for dust specks, it means a great deal of material which did not previously exist has been re-created and replaced, and shots with subtitles have all been rendered clear of them. Some artifacts in the image and letterboxing are present in scenes where the original Spanish subtitles have been removed. The audio has also been restored for the DVD version, which has much sharper picture quality than this YouTube version. For more information visit www.serialsquadron.com. Some additional historical background on why this film was lost for years: The answer is, in a nutshell, the original owner of the rights to the Lone Ranger character and the studio that made the serial agreed to destroy all traces of it along with any legal provisions related to it. Republic Pictures collected all prints of this serial -- or what they thought was all of them -- and had them burned on the back lot according to the instructions of George Trendle who had licensed them use of the Lone Ranger character onscreen for a finite length of time. Trendle wished to use ideas and music from the serials in the radio shows and was allowed to do so and did not like the business of the Lone Ranger having exposed his identity at the end of the first serial, and had decided he wanted to see if he could get Universal to produce further serials instead of Republic. Another Lone Ranger serial was announced by Universal, then, but never produced. This was long before the days of home video and it was considered a conflict of interest to have more than one theatre or studio to be able to exhibit a Lone Ranger film at the same time. For the same reason, Republic could not license the character Superman while the Fleischer studios were producing the cartoons. So, anyway, Republic's license to exhibit these Lone Ranger films ended along with any possibility to make future Lone Ranger serials and all traces of both their agreement with Trendle and the Lone Ranger serials themselves were supposed to have been eradicated, with no one ever to be able to see either Lone Ranger serial again. The work was given no preservation, protection nor care by its original creators and only one subtitled print has been known to survive. But so much for trying to rewrite history!