September 9, 1966: "The Green Hornet" Premieres On TV

Lee, and Williams aiming the Hornet Sting,

behind the Black Beauty

September 9, 1966, 60 years ago: Riding the success of his version of Batman, ABC premieres producer William Dozier's update of the Green Hornet. While Dozier narrated every episode of Batman, he only narrates the opening montage of The Green Hornet, with Al Hirt on trumpet leading Billy May's orchestra in playing the character's established theme song, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's 1900 composition "Flight of the Bumblebee."

Van Williams, one of the stars of the earlier private detective series Surfside 6, plays Britt Reid, publisher of the Daily Sentinel newspaper in an unidentified city -- updated for this version as also owning a TV station -- who embarks as a masked hero pretending to be a masked criminal, in order to sabotage rackets from within.

Bruce Lee, not yet widely known, plays Reid's valet Kato, thus making the character Chinese, where he had previously been Japanese and, later, due to rising tensions with Japan, Filipino on radio, and Korean in the 1940s film serials.

While Kato's mechanical genius and driving expertise had been established on the radio in 1936, and emphasized in the 1940 and '41 film serials, he had rarely been shown fighting before, and was either unknown or mainly an accessory as far as the Hornet's opponents were concerned. Lee's skills made him, and all versions of Kato who have followed, a martial arts wizard, and a familiar and indispensable partner for the hero-playing-villain.

In the radio show and the film serials, Kato had souped-up Britt's car, the Black Beauty. For the TV series, it was a 1966 Chrysler Imperial, and Kato loaded it to the point where it was a more powerful car, in terms of speed and weaponry, than Adam West's Batmobile.

As with the radio and the movies, Kato invented the Hornet's signature weapon, a gun that produced knockout gas. For the TV series, he also invented the Hornet Sting, a retractable weapon the fired sonic waves that could start fires, pick locks, and, at full power, blow down steel doors. I saw a YouTube comment that called it "The Cadillac of Weapons."

Only 2 others know the Hornet's dual identity. Britt's secretary, Lenore Case, an unknowing sympathizer in the film serials, who had found out and later married him on the radio show, here knows the secret from the beginning. Britt maintains a playboy image, and she is rather jealous, but he does give indications that he loves her, too. She is played on TV by Wende Wagner.

Also knowing is District Attorney Frank Scanlon, played by Walter Brooke (the "plastics" advisor in The Graduate), who tips Britt off to suspected rackets and helps where he can. On the radio, it had been the police commissioner who took this role, but since Batman already had Commissioner Jim Gordon, Dozier decided to change this.

The other constant character is 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 pride of an aging crimebuster and the clueless hatred of the Hornet.

The first episode is titled "The Silent Gun," and shows the Hornet and Kato already established, as the series never shows an origin story, only once alluding to Britt having taken to fighting crime due to his father having been framed for murder. (The large painting of the elder Reid in Britt's office suggests that his name was cleared, but whether this happened before he died is left hanging.)

Despite taking a serious approach – Williams said he wouldn't have done the series if it was campy like Batman -- poor ratings led ABC to try a crossover episode with Batman, suggesting that Britt Reid and Bruce Wayne were rivals since childhood (but definitely establishing that Britt lives somewhere other than Gotham City). That couldn't save the show. Nor could the sloppy "Alias the Scarf," in which the Hornet took on a villain coming out of retirement. Nor could the desperately campy 2-part season finale, "Invasion from Outer Space," which became the series finale, airing on March 17, 1967.

Lee stunningly died at age 33 in 1973. Gough died in 1984, Brooke in 1986, Dozier in 1991, Wagner in 1997, Hirt in 1999, May in 2004, Williams in 2016.