January 31, 1936: "The Green Hornet" Debuts

Gordon Jones in the 1940 serial

January 31, 1936: The Green Hornet debuts on Detroit radio station WXYZ, created by station owner George W. Trendle and writer Fran Striker.

The Green Hornet was Britt Reid, the wealthy publisher of a newspaper, The Daily Sentinel, who saw a crime wave in his city, and decided that what was needed was "a modern-day Robin Hood," so he took on the masked persona and pretended to be a competing gangster, muscling in on bad guys' territory, and setting them up to be captured by the cops.

He was assisted by Kato, an Asian mechanical genius, who designed and built the character's knockout-gas gun, and turned Britt's car into the souped-up "Black Beauty." Originally, Kato was said to be Japanese. But by the time of the 1st film serial in 1940, the Japanese were committing war crimes against China, so the character was rewritten as Korean. Although a capable fighter, his only use of martial arts, in either of the film serials, was the occasional judo chop.

On radio, the Hornet was played by Al Hodge from 1936 to 1945. He would later star as the early science fiction TV hero Captain Video. Bob Hall took over the role in 1945, and Jack McCarthy was the last in the role, from 1947 to 1952. Kato was played by Raymond Toyo, and later by Rollon Parker. For the entire run, it was directed by James Jewell, and his sister, Leonore Jewell Allman, played Lenore Case, Britt's secretary, who occasionally had to be rescued by the Green Hornet, and finally discovered his secret identity in 1948.

In 1947, Britt revealed his identity to the Daily Sentinel's actual owner, his father, Dan Reid Jr. The father had his own revelation, that Britt was not the first fighter for justice in the family: Dan is the son of Dan Reid, a Texas Ranger who was martyred, and whose brother fought criminals in the Wild West as the Lone Ranger. The Reid family fortune came from the silver mine that also supplied the Ranger's bullets.

The radio show could legally do this, because Trendle and Striker had created the Lone Ranger 3 years earlier, and his show was still running with WXYZ as its flagship station. Every subsequent version of the Hornet has added a generation, but he's still descended from the Lone Ranger's martyred brother.

Two film serials were produced: The Green Hornet in 1940, with Gordon Jones in the title role; and The Green Hornet Strikes Again! in 1941, with Warren Hull starring. Both were directed by Ford Beebe. In both versions, Kato was played by Keye Luke, who had already become famous playing Lee Chan, the "number one son" in the Charlie Chan films.

Anne Nagel played Lenore Case, who supported the Hornet; and Wade Boteler played Mike Axford, the paper's leading reporter, who opposed the Hornet, seeing only the criminal side of him, not the "Robin Hood" side. Neither knew his true identity.

In 1966, William Dozier, creator and producer of the Batman TV series, wanted to try another superhero show. For his version of The Green Hornet, he cast former Surfside Six star Van Williams as Reid, who was a man of his time: A swinging playboy who, in addition to his newspaper, also ran a TV station, known as Daily Sentinel TV (or DSTV).

Hong Kong-based actor and martial arts expert Bruce Lee was cast as Kato -- allegedly, because he was the only Asian-American actor that Dozier could find who could properly pronounce the name "Britt Reid." The character was every bit the genius as before, adding to the hero's arsenal a "Hornet Sting": A device that looked like a walking stick, and used sound waves as a weapon.

Van Williams (left) and Bruce Lee.
Kato never got a "superhero name."

To match Lee, his ethnicity was changed to Chinese, and one episode, "The Praying Mantis," included the Hornet and Kato taking on the unnamed city's Chinese gangs, or "tongs," as a friend of Kato's was the son of a tong leader who was trying to take his group legitimate, and their rivals didn't want them to "go straight."

Aside from Kato, 2 characters knew Britt's secret identity from the beginning. Wende Wagner played Lenore Case, or "Casey." And while Batman had the city's police commissioner as his establishment ally, Dozier didn't want the Hornet's ally to have the exact same job, so Walter Brooke was cast as the District Attorney, Frank Scanlon.

Lloyd Gough played Mike Axford, the Daily Sentinel’s crime reporter and an old friend of Britt's father, the Sentinel's previous publisher. Lloyd Gough played down Axford's previously-established stereotypical Irish accent and well-meaning bumbling, but kept the clueless hatred of the Hornet, and the pride of an aging crimebuster who occasionally got in over his head while pursuing a story, and had to be reluctantly (on his part) rescued by the Hornet.

A key difference this time is that Britt's father, seen only in a portrait in his office, is dead. The episode "The Frog Is a Deadly Weapon" mentions that he had been framed for murder, though it is left ambiguous as to whether he was convicted and died in prison, or acquitted and then the stress of the experience killed him. What is clear is that he was set up by a gangster the elder Reid was pursuing, Glenn Connors, played by Victor Jory. Finally given the chance to do so, the Hornet defeated him in the episode.

Unlike with Batman, Dozier did not narrate the show, but he did narrate its opening:

Another challenge for the Green Hornet, his aide Kato, and their rolling arsenal, the Black Beauty. On police records a wanted criminal, the Green Hornet is really Britt Reid, owner-publisher of the Daily Sentinel, his dual identity is known only to his secretary, and to the district attorney. And now, to protect the rights and lives of decent citizens, rides The Green Hornet!

Just as The Lone Ranger kept Giacomo Rossini's William Tell Overture as its theme song when making the transition from radio to TV, The Green Hornet had a familiar classical piece as a theme: Flight of the Bumblebee, composed in 1900 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, played by the great jazz trumpeter Al Hirt, while Lionel Newman conducted the orchestra in an arrangement by Billy May, who was responsible for the arrangements in some of Frank Sinatra's best work.

Van Williams said he wouldn't have done the series if it was going to be as campy as Batman. At first, it wasn't. But the ratings were never good. A crossover with Batman, "A Piece of the Action" and "Batman's Satisfaction," aired, establishing that Bruce Wayne and Britt Reid were rivals.

A fight between Batman and the Green Hornet, and between Robin and Kato, ended in a draw as the police came in. Lee insisted: He was willing to lose a fight to Batman, since it was his show; but his pride was such that he refused to lose a fight to Robin, a character then seen widely as a joke. (This was long before Dick Grayson became Nightwing in the comics, and became regarded as a character who, while keeping his sense of humor and sunny attitude, could be taken much more seriously.)

The crossover didn't help the ratings, and the show was canceled after 1 season. Lee wrote Dozier a letter thanking him for "my start in show business."

The Green Hornet appeared in a few comic books, including one showing the nephew of the '66 Britt Reid and the niece of the '66 Kato fighting crime together, with Diana Reid, daughter of Britt and Casey (and thus the 1st cousin of this younger Britt), filling in for the deceased Scanlon as D.A.

In 2010, Seth Rogen made a Green Hornet film, playing the starring role as a ridiculous playboy who, unlike previous editions of the character, was a wasted disappointment to his father, but nevertheless enlists the help of Kato, played by Jay Chou, to avenge him after his murder by a Russian gangster, played by Christoph Waltz with his usual bad-guy scenery-chewing. Cameron Diaz played Lenore Case. Michel Gondry directed. The film flopped: It infuriated the character's existing fans, and didn't any too many new ones. As of January 31, 2022, a new film is planned.

Wade Boteler died in 1943, Fran Striker in 1962, Gordon Jones in 1963, Anne Nagel in 1966, Rollon Parker in 1968, George Trendle in 1972, Bruce Lee in 1973, Warren Hull in 1974, James Jewell in 1975, Ford Beebe in 1978, Al Hodge in 1979, Lloyd Gough in 1984, Walter Brooke in 1986, Bob Hall and Leonore Allman in 1989, Keye Luke and William Dozier in 1991, Jack McCarthy in 1996, Wende Wagner in 1997, Al Hirt in 1999, Raymond Toyo in 2000, and Van Williams in 2016.

(UPDATE: On June 23, 2022, it was announced that Leigh Whannell, the Australian filmmaker who co-created the Saw franchise, would direct the reboot. On April 7, 2023, it was reported that Chris Pine would play the Hornet, but this was not confirmed. As of September 9, 2024, the 58th anniversary of the premiere of the Van Williams TV series, the reboot remains in limbo, with no one having been cast, and no script known to have been written.)

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January 31, 1936 was a Friday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And there were no games scheduled in the NHL. So there were no scores on this historic day.