 Making his first appearance uncredited in "Under Two Flags" (1936), Powell gained fame for playing the suspect who turned out to be "The Lone Ranger" and one of "The Fighting Devil Dogs" in 1938 serials.He was the first actor to portray the Lone Ranger on film.In addition to making films for Republic Pictures, Powell also appeared in Universal Pictures "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe" serial, made one Western for the soon-to-be-defunct Grand National Pictures and made the six Western programmer films of the "Frontier Marshals" series, in which each of the three leads (the others being Bill "Cowboy Rambler" Boyd and Art Davis) played a lawman bearing his own name, for Producers Releasing Corporation.