Mary Ellen Mark—Art Drop #16

The art of seeing behind the mask. A few words about the Lone Ranger, President Biden, and the difficulty of letting go.

Mary Ellen Mark: Clayton Moore, the Former Lone Ranger (detail) Los Angeles,1992

Mary Ellen Mark took thousands of photographs during her long and influential career in photojournalism, but in today’s Art Drop, I’d like to look at one in particular. Namely, her 1992 portrait of Clayton Moore, who portrayed the Lone Ranger on TV between 1949 and 1957.

At the time of this portrait, Clayton Moore was 78 years old. Mary Ellen Mark was on assignment for Premiere magazine for a story about famous old cowboys. She didn’t expect him to be in costume when she arrived. Although Moore’s Los Angeles house was modern, she noted on her website that he was still living the part of the Lone Ranger.

“He was difficult and paranoid,” she said. “No matter what I did to put him at ease or how many times I said I was a big fan, he refused to remove the mask.”¹

How sad, I thought, the first time I saw this photograph.

This poor guy was attached to an illusion. I remembered what Carl Jung said about the stages of life.

The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning…Whoever carries over into the afternoon the law of the morning…must pay for it with damage to his soul.

It’s important, Jung said, to let everything burn that’s supposed to burn during each stage in order to move on to the next. Those who can’t do that wind up in their middle and late years still talking about their victories in high school.

Joseph Campbell echoed Jung when he looked back on reunions with former students from his 38 years teaching at Sarah Lawrence. He suspected that women who had not changed their hairstyles since their undergraduate years had probably not grown very much during the interim.

Mary Ellen Mark’s portrait of Clayton Moore

made me feel sorry for him. How had he become so attached to a fictional character—something that wasn’t even real? Eventually, I learned that Moore fell in love with the Lone Ranger and became inseparable from him. He made numerous public appearances as the Lone Ranger throughout his life.

The producer of a 1981 version of the Lone Ranger story even filed a lawsuit to prevent Moore from appearing in public as the masked cowboy—because he feared those appearances would undercut the film.

But Moore countersued, traded his mask for a pair of sunglasses, and participated in a highly visible ad campaign for SunSensor lenses. Sadly, the 1981 film lost money, the lawsuit was eventually dropped, and Clayton Moore’s star on the Hollywood Hall of Fame identifies him as The Lone Ranger.

It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday

I was reminded of that moving Boyz II Men song just a few days ago when President Biden announced that he would not seek a second term in office. He would step down as this year’s Democratic candidate for president and pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Some of his supporters felt he was forced out by a mutiny within his own party. They believed he could pull out of the nose dive as he’d done so many times in the past. But Joe Biden is 81 years old now. Despite the old saying— If you’ve seen one 80-year-old, you’ve seen one 80-year-old—the polls were against him. Nearly a year before this year’s devastating debate against Donald Trump, a whopping 77 percent of Americans said he was too old to serve another four years.

As I mentioned in a previous post, self-assessment becomes difficult as we age. Inside, we are just as we ever were. But outside, things are different. Hair, bone, skin, muscles, organs—one by one, they remind us that eventually we have to let go.

And it’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterdays. It was difficult for Joseph Biden, just as it was difficult for Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali, two great fighters who went back in the ring during their declining years, tarnishing stellar records in the process.

Fortunately, President Biden will be spared that. But what about the rest of us? Will we be able to look in the mirror when the time comes—remove the mask that conceals us from ourselves—and let go?

---

Clayton Moore was able to hold on to the Lone Ranger until his death

But one wonders what he may have lost in the process. Mary Ellen Mark’s portrait of the man is a mini-biography. It’s a glimpse into his whole life. He’s wearing a mask and a costume, but she sees exactly who he is. This was one of her strengths as an artist.

Although known for her ability to connect with marginalized subjects (as Diane Arbus did), Mary Ellen Mark also possessed that rare quality Henry James described in The Art of Fiction—the ability to capture the unseen from the seen, to be one of those upon whom nothing is lost.

Mary Ellen Mark was also known for establishing strong relationships with her subjects, spending weeks or even months living among them. Prostitutes in India, the institutionalized mentally ill at Oregon State Hospital, runaway children on the streets of Seattle. But even when she wasn’t able to do that, she never stopped looking for the truth behind the mask—the unseen revealed in the seen.

As she herself put it, “There is nothing more extraordinary than reality. Take a look at some of her extraordinary photographs and listen to her discuss her work in the short clip from Leica cameras.

©2024 Andrew Jazprose Hill

Thanks for checking out today’s Jazprose Art Drop. Please hit the Like, Share, and/or comment buttons to help others find my work.

1. At the end of the session, Moore challenged Mary Ellen Mark’s claim that she was such a big fan by asking her to name his horse. Trigger, she said. Which probably means she wasn’t invited back. The Lone Ranger’s horse was Silver. As in Hi-yo, Silver!