Back in the 60s when Batman was at the height of its popularity, the ABC network looked around for a similar superhero show to cash in on Batman‘s success. They hit upon an old radio programme, The Green Hornet, about newspaper proprietor Britt Reid who pretends to be the eponymous masked criminal so that he can stop actual criminals.
The producers soon cast Van Williams as Reid, but that was actually the least important bit of casting on the show. One notable aspect of the story format was that Reid was assisted in his fight against crime by his Asian man-servant, Kato. The producers looked far and wide before eventually landing upon a little known Hong Kong movie star for the coveted role.
That star was Bruce Lee.
As a result of that casting, The Green Hornet became possibly the only show in history where nobody really gave a toss about the lead character. The only character anyone was interested in was Kato, thanks to Bruce Lee’s incredible martial arts prowess. In Hong Kong, The Green Hornet was actually called The Kato Show.
Unfortunately, it was a short-lived show, lasting only a season. The fact that rather than camp and cheesy, the producers opted for straight-laced probably didn’t help, but having a dull lead character really didn’t help either.
Nevertheless, The Green Hornet‘s legacy lives on. Chinese martial artist Jet Li (best known here from Lethal Weapon 4) did more or less an entire film in the Kato costume, and Kill Bill Volume 1‘s massed fight scene sees “the Crazy 88” all wearing Kato masks. And in 2011, Seth Rogen (Knocked Up) and Asian martial arts star Jay Chou will be starring in a movie version of The Green Hornet.
Here then, for your delectation is the weird old title sequence of The Green Hornet, a clip of the show’s most famous fight scene, followed by an absolute treat – Bruce Lee’s original screentest for the show, which shows you simply how impressive a man he was.
