John Hart

John Hart was an American motion picture and television actor, born in Los Angeles, California. In his early career, he appeared mostly in Westerns. Although he played mostly minor roles in some fairly well-known films, he was probably best-known for replacing Clayton Moore in 1952 for one season of the television show The Lone Ranger when Moore demanded a higher salary.

Based on the assumption that the masked character, rather than the actor was the true star of The Lone Ranger, the program producers fired Moore and replaced him with Hart, who was of a similar build and had a comparable background in westerns. However, the public never truly accepted Hart as "The Ranger," and by 1954 the owners acquiesced to Moore's demands and returned him to the role. According to Clayton Moore's autobiography, I Was That Masked Man, Moore never knew why he was replaced with John Hart. He also stated that he had not sought a pay increase to portray "The Lone Ranger".

Though terminated, Hart continued to act in films for over two more decades on a fairly regular basis. He appeared in films of several genres, almost always in supporting roles.

In 1955, he starred in The Adventures of Captain Africa, which was originally intended to be a new movie about famous comic book hero The Phantom. However, licencing issues made Columbia re-film the entire serial and re-christen the hero "Captain Africa".