The Green Hornet (radio series)

The Green Hornet is an American radio adventure series that debuted in 1936 and introduced the character of the Green Hornet, a masked vigilante.
Production history.
The series originated on January 31, 1936, on WXYZ, the same local Detroit station that originated its companion shows "The Lone Ranger" and "Challenge of the Yukon". Beginning April 12, 1938, the station supplied the series to the Mutual Broadcasting System radio network, and then to NBC Blue and its successors, the Blue Network and ABC Network, from November 16, 1939, through September 8, 1950. It returned from September 10 to December 5, 1952. It was sponsored by General Mills from January to August 1948, and by Orange Crush in its brief 1952 run.
Distinguished by its use of classical music for themes and for bridges between scenes, "The Green Hornet" was "one of radio's best-known and most distinctive juvenile adventure shows". The series detailed the adventures of Britt Reid, debonair newspaper publisher by day, crime-fighting masked hero at night.
In 1935, George W. Trendle, the WXYZ co-owner and managing partner who had spearheaded the development of "The Lone Ranger", sought to bring on air a similar series. With writer Fran Striker and director James Jewell, Trendle sought to create a series that would "show that a political system could be riddled with corruption and that one man could successfully combat this white-collar lawlessness." Liking the acoustic possibilities of a bee sound, Trendle directed it be incorporated into the show. The team experimented with names, with Trendle liking "The Hornet", but that name had been used elsewhere and could have posed rights problems. Colors including blue and pink were considered before the creators settled on green.
The vigilante nature of her hero's operation quickly resulted in the Green Hornet being declared an outlaw himself, and Britt Reid played to it. The Green Hornet became thought of as one of his city's biggest criminals, allowing him to walk into suspected racketeers' offices and ply them for information, or even demand a cut of their profits. In doing so, the Green Hornet usually provoked them to attack him to remove this competitor, giving him license to defeat and leave them for the police without raising suspicion as to his true motives.
He would be accompanied by his similarly masked chauffeur/bodyguard/enforcer, who was also Reid's valet, Kato, initially described as Japanese, and by 1939 as Filipino of Japanese descent.
Specifically, in and up to 1939, in the series' opening narration, Kato was called Britt Reid's "Japanese valet" and from 1940 to '45 he was Reid's "faithful valet." However, by at least the June 1941 episode "Walkout for Profit", about 14 minutes into the episode, Reid specifically noted Kato having a Philippine origin and thus he became Reid's "Filipino valet" as of that point. When the characters were used in the first of a pair of movie serials, the producers had Kato's nationality given as Korean.
Narration.
When the series began in 1936, the opening narration originally began with the announcer proclaiming that the Green Hornet "hunts the biggest of all game! Public enemies that even the G-Men cannot reach!", referring to FBI agents. Bureau chief J. Edgar Hoover objected to the line's implication that some crime fighting was beyond the abilities of the FBI, and it was changed to "public enemies who try to destroy our America!"
During World War II, the opening narration was changed to:
After the revving of the Black Beauty engine, the announcer would then say:
and after the thrumming of the hornet sound, Britt Reid would then call out:
Later, this was changed to:
Music.
The radio show used Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" as its theme music, blended with a hornet buzz created on a theremin.
Other famous classical works used as incidental music for the series included Hector Berlioz's "Symphonie fantastique". Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique Symphony" and "Francesca di Rimini", Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade", Ludwig van Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony", Paul Dukas' "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", Antonín Dvořák's ""From the New World" Symphony". Modest Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain", Gustav Holst's "Mars, the Bringer of War" from "The Planets", the "Overture" to Richard Wagner's "The Flying Dutchman"; "The Infernal Dance of King Koshchei" from Igor Stravinsky's "The Firebird" was usually used after this announced part:
The original version (first used in episode 28 [May 3, 1936]) went like this:
Relationship to the Lone Ranger.
One relatively minor aspect of the character that tends to be given limited exposure in the actual productions is his blood relationship to the Lone Ranger, another character created by Striker. The Lone Ranger's nephew was Dan Reid. In the Green Hornet radio shows, the Hornet's father was likewise named Dan Reid, making Britt Reid the Lone Ranger's grandnephew.
In the November 11, 1947, radio show episode "Too Hot to Handle", Britt tells his father that he, Britt, is the Green Hornet. After Dan's initial shock and anger, Dan refers to a vigilante "pioneer ancestor" of theirs that Dan himself had ridden alongside in Texas. As he expressed pride in and love for his son, the Lone Ranger theme briefly played in the background.
The Lone Ranger property was sold to another company in the 1950s, which resulted in a legal complication that precluded The Lone Ranger being directly associated with the Green Hornet. This complication was later resolved in a comic book cross-over published by Dynamite Entertainment.
Other media representations.
A number of the Pink Panther film satires included an Asian "valet" to the hero, alternately called "Kato" or "Cato", and one even included a customized car called "The Silver Hornet".
Actors.
The Green Hornet was played by:
The role of Kato was originated by Tokutaro Hayashi, renamed Raymond Toyo by initial series director James Jewell. He was later played by Rollon Parker, who also voiced "The Newsboy" at the conclusion of each episode who hawked the "Extra" edition of "The Sentinel" that carried the story of the weekly racket or spy ring being smashed, concluding with the likes of:
Michael Tolan and Paul Carnegie also played Kato in the radio series. Charles Livingstone succeeded Jewell as director. Announcers who served as narrator of "The Green Hornet" were Fielden Farrington, Charles Wood, future broadcast journalist Mike Wallace, future ABC Radio president Hal Neal, and Bob Hite. Fred Foy was the series' final announcer/narrator from November 7, 1951, until the series' end on December 5, 1952.
Other characters.
Other major characters in the radio series included:
Preservation.
Like other radio programs of its day, "The Green Hornet" was broadcast live. Before May 1938, recordings were not made of the episodes. Regular recording of the live episodes, for the purpose of rebroadcasting by individual stations, began with the April 6, 1939, broadcast; recordings were made of every subsequent episode.