The Green Hornet was an American radio program that
ran on WXYZ (Detroit), the Mutual Network and the NBC Blue (later
ABC) Network from January 31, 1936 to December 5, 1952. Created
by WXYZ's George W. Trendle and Fran Striker, who also created The
Lone Ranger, the juvenile adventure series initially starred Al
Hodge in the title role, followed by Donovan Faust (1943), Robert
Hall (1944-51) and Jack McCarthy (1951-52). The radio show used
Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" as its theme song, blended
with a hornet buzz created on a theremin.
The series detailed the adventures of Britt Reid,
debonair newspaper publisher by day, crime-fighting masked hero
at night, along with his sidekick, Kato, a Filipino of Japanese
descent. A widespread urban legend has been the claim that the show's
writers switched from one nationality to the other immediately after
the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, but the first disappeared well
before direct U. S. involvement in the war, and the latter was not
initially given until much later, with nothing more specific than
"Oriental" being said in the interim. (When the characters were
used in the first of a pair of movie serials, the politically perceptive
producers of 1939 had Kato's nationality given as Korean.)
Britt Reid is a blood relative of The Lone Ranger. The character
of Dan Reid, who appeared on the Lone Ranger program as the Masked
Man's nephew, was also featured on the Green Hornet as Britt Reid's
father, making the Green Hornet the grand-nephew of the Lone Ranger.
Jim Jewell directed the series until 1938. Jewell's sister, Lee
Allman (Lenore Jewell Allman) wanted to play a part in a radio series
at WXYZ so Jim had her written into The Green Hornet. She was the
only actress to play Lenore Case, Britt Reid's secretary, during
the entire run of the series. "Casey" was aware of her boss's double
life, but only in the later years of the run. Similarly, another
well known confidante, Police Commissioner Higgins, did not come
into existence until near the end of the series.
This collection of Green Hornet Greats includes 91
different shows and appearances for a total of 40 hours of listening
enjoyment.
This product is a DVD collection of Old Time Radio mp3s. It is
designed to be played on your computer DVD drive with standard mp3
software - like Windows media player or its equivalent on Macintosh
computers. The mp3 files on the DVDs can be copied onto CDs for
play in your car stereo, home entertainment center, etc so you can
take your favorite shows with you anywhere you go.
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