John Hart’s wife didn’t know she landed an All-American

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Actor John Hart, who played the title role in the 1947 movie serial ‘Jack Armstrong: All-American Boy’ and replaced Clayton Moore as the star of TV’s ‘The Lone Ranger’ for 52 episodes in the 1950s, also starred in ‘Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans,’ a 1957 syndicated TV series shot in Canada. That’s where the 39-year-old Hart met 20-year-old Canadian actress Beryl Braithwaite, who had been hired for a three-day acting job on an episode of the series. They were married 10 days later. The marriage lasted 52 years, until Hart’s death Sept. 20 at age 91.

‘The interesting thing is, I first set eyes on John when I was 9 years old and going to the Saturday afternoon serials and watching Jack Armstrong, the All-American boy, and I just all of a sudden knew I had hormones: I was so in love with this gorgeous man,’ she recalled.

She didn’t know until they had been married for three years that Hart had portrayed Armstrong.

‘And,’ she added with a laugh, ‘I knew I could handle Hawkeye and the Lone Ranger, but being married to Jack Armstrong was almost more than I could handle.’

-- Dennis McLellan