MORRISON MONDAYS Meets 1966 WEEK!
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Welcome to 1966 WEEK — a 60th anniversary celebration of an extraordinary, landmark year in popular culture. For seven days, we’re bringing you a whole host of features on everything from Star Trek, to Batman, to the Beatles, to the Monkees, and much, much more. (Just check out Walt Grogan’s latest fab banner, above!) Click here for more of the far out fun! — Dan
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By BILL MORRISON
The Green Hornet was created by George W. Trendle and Fran Striker for radio station WXYZ, a mere 13.2 miles from my childhood home in Lincoln Park, Michigan. The radio station, which also gave birth to the Lone Ranger, was located in the Maccabees building in midtown Detroit. This is a fact I was unaware of until adulthood, but had I known it when the Green Hornet TV series premiered on ABC television 60 years ago this coming Wednesday, my little 7-year old head might easily have exploded.
I was an instant fan of the Batman show that had its debut eight months earlier on January 12, 1966, and by fall I was eagerly anticipating the arrival of another pair of masked heroes who drove around in a tricked-out black car, fighting crime. I tuned in for the premiere episode on September 9, 1966, and was not disappointed! The show turned out to be more adult in tone than I’d expected, and the heroes didn’t wear capes and tights, just normal clothes (except for the masks, of course.)
Their car looked more like a regular sedan, with no hornet motifs, and I wondered why it wasn’t green instead of black. The villains didn’t wear garish costumes or makeup, just subdued suits and hats. And they didn’t cackle maniacally, or have weirdly-decorated hidden lairs either. But somehow, none of that mattered. It had a really exciting theme song that lodged itself in my brain, great gadgety weapons, exciting plots, and terrific fight scenes. And the narrator sounded like the same guy who set up each episode of Batman, so there seemed to be a link between the shows. Little did I know that both series were produced and narrated by William Dozier!
After a cold open, each episode went into the opening credits montage with Dozier’s narration, “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!”
Wow, what kid could resist that? And over the narration blared the theme song, a jazzed-up version of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s classical piece, “Flight of the Bumblebee,” wonderfully reimagined and arranged by composer Billy May, with a faster than light trumpet solo by Al Hirt.
And there was something really cool about the Hornet wearing just a sleek green trench coat and fedora, with only a green mask under the brim of his hat to conceal his true identity and to let us know that he wasn’t merely a private detective. There are dozens of adjectives that could be used to describe TV’s Batman and Robin. Campy, fun, thrilling, satirical, colorful, and sexy are a few that come to mind. But Van Williams as the Green Hornet, and Bruce Lee as Kato… well, they were just cool! Batman was still my Numero Uno, but I instantly loved the Green Hornet too. I may have even appreciated the differences and the fact that the Green Hornet show wasn’t just a copy of Batman. It was in the same family, but it had its own personality, and that helped to make it great.
The show only lasted a single season, and because of that the 26 episodes weren’t rerun on TV as often as longer-running shows. They showed up occasionally on cable stations like FX, or as holiday marathons on the Syfy Channel, and for legal reasons, the series has never been released on home video, so access to them remains sparse. Consequently, the Green Hornet show wasn’t something I thought about very much as an adult. That is, until I got a wedding invitation around 20 years ago. A friend of mine who worked in comics and animation was getting married, and he and his bride decided to have a costume wedding.
The invitation was emphatic that all guests must come in costume, and given my pal’s occupation and circle of friends, I knew that most of the attendees would come dressed as characters from pop culture, most likely comics and cartoon characters. So, I started thinking about what my ceremonial cosplay might be, and quickly determined that I wanted to dress as a super hero of some sort. But somehow, I felt that wearing tights and a cape to a wedding would feel weird and inappropriate. If I wasn’t wearing a suit and tie, it just wouldn’t feel proper.
So that eliminated several beloved characters and left me jotting down a list of heroes who fight crime in suits. It was a short list that included the Spirit, the Golden-Age Sandman, and you guessed it… the Green Hornet. I didn’t think I could find a vintage gas mask, so Sandman was out. The real contest was between the Spirit and the Hornet. The Spirit would have been fun, but when I imagined myself looking all cool like Van Williams in that long green, unbelted trench coat, my decision was made! The kid in me couldn’t resist the idea of creating a cool Green Hornet costume just like the one I saw all those years ago on TV.
The first thing I did was go on online to see if I could find a replica of the mask and gas gun from the show for sale. I didn’t think I could make those myself, at least not to my own standards of authenticity. Luckily, I found an enterprising bootlegger on eBay who made and sold pretty authentic-looking Green Hornet props, and with the mask and gun, I had the beginnings of my costume.
I went into my closet and discovered a skinny dark green tie that had belonged to my dad in the ’60s, and also pulled out a white dress shirt, black pants, and black shoes. Those were easy. In a drawer, I found a pair of green leather gloves that were a little snug, but looked fantastic. I have no idea who they’d belonged to or why I had them, so I consider them a gift from the cosplay gods.
The only components left were the hat and coat. I knew I’d have to go to a tailor to get the coat made, so I figured the best course was to try to find a stingy brim ’60s-style green fedora, and then match the coat color to the hat. There was a great hat store in Pasadena, California, not terribly far from where I lived at the time, so I paid a visit and found that they stocked just about every style of fedora imaginable. I found one that was green, and it was a pretty close match to the hat in some color publicity photos I had from the show.
My next stop was a tailor shop on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. I went in with the hat and one of the color photos that showed the full coat, including the black velvet collar, and asked the tailor if he could reproduce it in my size just from looking at the photo. He said it would be no problem and proceeded to take my measurements. Then, he brought out a book of fabric swatches and we went through it with the green hat close at hand, page by page, looking for a fabric that was a close match.
Some swatches were too yellow, some too blue, others were too light or too dark. The tailor turned another page, and there I saw a swatch that was a near-perfect color match! I pointed emphatically and said, “That’s it! That’s the one!” Hallelujah! The tailor made a note and told me to come back in a week or so to pick up the coat.
I had a great sense of relief. Everything hinged on having the perfect coat, and I could now check that off my list. My wife, Kayre, being a vintage band singer, had already put together a killer costume of her own, and was going to the wedding as Betty from Dave Stevens’ Rocketeer comics.
On the day that I was scheduled to pick up the coat I went in to the tailor’s shop with an enormous sense of anticipation, and the tailor didn’t let me down. He unveiled my new garment, and it was incredible. He had paid attention to every detail, and to my eyes it could have been an actual costume plucked from a rack at 20th Century Fox Television studios. I tried it on, and it fit perfectly and felt fantastic. Everything was terrific, except for one thing. I had made a fatal error when I placed the order by forgetting to ask what the cost would be.
The tailor handed me the bill and I audibly gasped. I may even have choked a little. The total cost for materials and labor was a thousand dollars! Now I had never had a garment made for me, so I didn’t really know what a custom-tailored coat should cost, but a thousand dollars was a lot of money, especially in the mid-2000s. This was way more than I expected to pay.
But of course, it was completely my fault that I didn’t get an estimate up front, before any work was done. After catching my breath, I asked the tailor why the garment was so expensive, and he simply responded, “Well, the fabric you chose is cashmere.”
Cashmere?! That’s the fabric you always hear about in movies when rich people are bragging about their expensive clothes! It’s like the clothing equivalent to filet mignon! How could I be so stupid? I was so focused on getting the fabric color right, and so delighted to have found the perfect shade of green, I completely forgot to ask about the cost. It never occurred to me that some fabrics would cost vastly more than others!
When I arrived home with my thousand-dollar costume piece, Kayre naturally wanted to see it. I reluctantly took it out of the garment bag and upon seeing the quality, she said, “Wow, it’s beautiful! How much did it cost?” I fessed up and told her it took a full grand out of our bank account, then closed my eyes and waited for the explosion.
But Kayre was great. Stern, but great, and very cool. She calmly told me that from this day forward, whenever the temperature dipped below 40 degrees and we had to attend a dressy event, weddings, funerals, religious services of any kind, theater outings, etc., I would be wearing that coat. Then she added, “And when you die, you’re going to be buried in it.”
Over the years, I have managed to get a lot of use out of it. It does look great, just as a dress coat, and every so often someone recognizes it as the Green Hornet’s overcoat.
I’ve also worn the entire costume on a few occasions like Halloween and Purim, and a few years ago I talked Kayre into making herself a Kato costume so we could go as a duo to a party.
There are some low-quality Green Hornet episodes on YouTube, and I plan to celebrate the anniversary of the show’s debut this Wednesday by watching a few. I may even crank up the air conditioning and put on the coat.
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MORE
— Three Decades Ago, TEX AVERY’s Fantastic Characters Finally Got Their Due in Comics. Click here.
— BATMAN AND ROBIN ON THE ROOFTOP: There’s No Such Thing as Too Many Homages. Click here.
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Eisner winner BILL MORRISON has been working in comics and publishing since 1993 when he co-founded Bongo Entertainment with Matt Groening, Cindy Vance and Steve Vance. At Bongo, and later as Executive Editor of Mad Magazine, he parodied the comics images he loved as a kid every chance he got. Not much has changed.
Bill is on Instagram (@atomicbattery) and Facebook (Bill Morrison/Atomic Battery Studios), and regularly takes commissions and sells published art through 4C Comics.
