‘Lone Ranger’ Announcer Fred Foy Dies

http://www.npr.org/2010/12/22/132267715/lone-ranger-announcer-fred-foy-dies

Fred Foy, an announcer best known for his booming, passionate lead-ins to The Lone Rangerradio and television series, died Wednesday of natural causes at his Woburn, Mass., home, his daughter said. He was 89.

Nancy Foy said her father worked as an actor before landing the job as the announcer and narrator on The Lone Ranger radio show in 1948.

The show’s live lead-in introduced its masked cowboy hero and his trusted horse with the line: “A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty ‘Hi-Yo Silver!’ … The Lone Ranger!”

Foy’s dramatic introduction and narration, performed in a powerful baritone, were so good it “made many people forget there were others before him,” said radio historian Jim Harmon, who called him “perhaps the greatest announcer-narrator in the history of radio drama.