Most TV fans of a certain age know the answer to this question: “Who played the Lone Ranger?”

Those who say Clayton Moore are correct, at least partially.

There was another actor who played the Masked Man on “The Lone Ranger” TV series, temporarily replacing Moore in the title role for 52 episodes beginning in 1952.

John Hart, 91, the handsome and athletic actor who also starred in the 1940s movie serial “Jack Armstrong: The All-American Boy” and the 1950s TV series “Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans,” died Sunday at his home in Rosarito Beach in Baja California, said his wife, Beryl.

“He had dementia in his last years,” she said Tuesday, “but he was very happy living by the ocean. He used to surf this whole coast in the late ’30s and after the war.”

A Los Angeles native who launched his Hollywood career with a few bit parts in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1938 film “The Buccaneer,” Hart played small roles in a string of films before being drafted into the Army in 1941.

Relaunching his career after the war, he played the title role in the 1947 Columbia serial “Jack Armstrong: The All-American Boy,” which was based on the popular radio show.

Hart already had appeared in a couple episodes of “The Lone Ranger” as a guest actor when Moore left the series, reportedly over a pay dispute.

“I don’t know how many other actors they looked at, but I got the part,” Hart said in an interview for the book “The Story of the Lone Ranger” by James Van Hise. “They didn’t pay me much, either. It was unbelievable. But being an out-of-work actor, to have a steady job for a while is great.”

Hart said they shot each half-hour episode in two days.

When he began playing the role, he said in a 2001 interview with Tom Weaver for Starlog magazine, “I got a lot of bad advice about playing the part. I tried the bad advice for about one or two shows, and then I said, ‘The hell with that; I’ll do it my own way.’ They wanted me to be like a stiff Army major, and it was all wrong. So I just forgot that and slipped into the part, and everybody loved it.”

For many “Lone Ranger” fans, Moore owned the iconic role, and Hart was placed in an unenviable position when he took it over.

“Tough job, but somebody’s got to do it,” said Boyd Magers, editor and publisher of Western Clippings, a Western-film publication. “He walked right into it, and he played the Lone Ranger to the hilt. For those 52 episodes, he became the man behind the mask.”