Francis Hamilton "Fran" Striker was an American writer for radio and comics, best known for creating the characters the Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet, and Sgt.
16 Facts About Fran Striker
2.
Fran Striker dropped out of college, first serving a brief stint in New York City with an amateur theatrical company.
3.
Fran Striker soon drifted to freelancing, creating and writing his own series and selling them to stations across the United States.
4.
Fran Striker began a long association with station owner George W Trendle and radio station WXYZ in Detroit, which was trying to make a name for itself as a producer of radio drama, creating and writing the early series Thrills of the Secret Service, Dr Fang, and Warner Lester, Manhunter.
5.
Late in 1932, Fran Striker began working on The Lone Ranger; his earliest scripts were largely reworked from his earlier series Covered Wagon Days.
6.
However, by 1934 Fran Striker was pressured by Trendle to sign over his rights to the Lone Ranger for $10.
7.
Fran Striker was under great financial pressure, supporting not only his wife and two small children but about a dozen other family members who had lost everything during The Great Depression.
8.
In exchange for selling the rights, Fran Striker accepted a writing contract that would provide for his family and offer job security throughout the Depression.
9.
Trendle would later claim in interviews that he, not Fran Striker, was the creator of The Lone Ranger.
10.
Fran Striker scripted various Lone Ranger novels, two movie serials, and The Lone Ranger comic strip.
11.
Fran Striker contributed scripts to Challenge of the Yukon.
12.
Fran Striker provided the stories for many TV episodes by reworking old scripts from the radio series.
13.
Fran Striker was 59 when he died in a 1962 car accident in Elma, while moving with his wife and children.
14.
Fran Striker's final work was a historical novel, One More River, published posthumously.
15.
Fran Striker's papers are in the archives of the University at Buffalo.
16.
Fran Striker was posthumously inducted into the Buffalo Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 1998.