The Curious Case of Klinton Spilsbury

Disney is in the process of resurrecting the Lone Ranger which starts filming this fall with Armie Hammer as the man behind the mask and Johnny Depp as his faithful companion Tonto.  This lead me to recently watch some old Clayton Moore Lone Ranger episodes and re-watch 1981's The Legend of the Lone Ranger movie starring Klinton Spilsbury.  Who?  That is exactly what I thought.

The Legend of the Lone Ranger came on the heels of Richard Donner's Superman so I am sure the thought was to get a franchise established. Donner was very careful in casting and went with the unknown Christopher Reeve at the time and Donner hit the jackpot.  The Lone Ranger producers went the same route and selected a tall and handsome man to sport the mask of this classic western icon but the end results were not good.

The unknown Klinton Spilsbury has this one credit to his acting resume.  Research does not come up with much.  Was Spilsbury an actor?  A model?  A guy that walked by the producer one day and got lucky?  It really is unknown.  Any way Spilsbury was in the movie with a supporting cast of Jason Robards and Christopher Lloyd and the movie was a box office disaster.  The pic had an 18 million dollar budget and after its run was done it cleared only 12 million.  I can claim I saw this in the theater and loved every minute of it.

Further examination shows something interesting, that was not even Spilsbury's voice in the movie.  All of Spilsbury's lines were dubbed over by actor James Keach.  There is no reason for exactly why this was done only rumors.  A story surfaced some time later that Spilsbury's wife was sick and dying during production and he tried to get off but he was the movie and could not leave.  A technical problem with the audio caused much of the cast to have to come and do voice looping but Spilsbury was a no show.  This lead the producers to hire James Keach to come do Splisbury's lines and some might believe ruin the newcomer's career.  It seemed to have worked.  Spilsbury has never been seen again on the big or little screen so he really did ride off into the sunset.  Oh well, better have to done one than none at all.