Green Hornet triggers radio memories

If you’re of my generation, you’ll know what a crystal radio receiver is. As a youngster in the 1940’s I received one in kit form as a birthday present. What made the crystal radio unique was that the rudimentary device didn’t need a battery pack because its only power came from radio waves transmitted into the atmosphere from a radio station tower. The radio waves in turn were picked up through an antenna wired to the crystal set. The small receivers got their name from their most important component known as a crystal detector which was made from pieces of a crystalline mineral called galena. In order to hear a radio station broadcast, you listened through a set of earphones wired to a thin metal “cat’s whisker” which had to be delicately touching the crystal.

Photo: Crystal Radio Receiver

I kept my assembled crystal set under my bed so I could listen to radio programs far into the night without my parents knowing. In order to make my little radio operate I had a long shielded copper wire running from my second floor bedroom window, across the shingled roof to a wire-wound clothesline that ran from our laundry room porch out to a Douglas tree in the backyard. Since the crystal radio set also needed to be grounded, a second wire dropped down from my window and attached to a steel water pipe.

I have wonderful memories of the programs I heard on my crystal set. Bringing those memories to the fore was a new movie I saw on Friday at Nanaimo’s Galaxy Theatre called The Green Hornet. The film was based on The Green Hornet radio series, one of the programs I would faithfully listen to on my crystal set in the 1940’s. The radio program was the brainchild of Fran Striker who also created The Lone Ranger series, another program I loved.  

Watching The Green Hornet on a big theatre screen with all its technological wonders of 3-D and Surround Digital Sound was, to put it mildly, an exercise in pure sensory overload. Listening to The Green Hornet as a youngster on a rudimentary crystal set I had to visualize everything in my imagination. On the theatre screen, one’s mind just needed to be passively parked in neutral with a bag of popcorn at hand, your imaginative responsibility having been downloaded to the movie-maker’s magical arsenal.

Exploding visually on screen was the Hornet’s super-powered automobile the Black Beauty invented by his sidekick Kato. Most crime fighting characters and cowboy superheroes had partners. The Lone Ranger had Tonto, Batman - Robin, Tom Mix - Pancho, Roy Rogers - Gabby Hayes, Hopalong Cassidy - Andy Clyde to name a few. Like the Lone Ranger and Batman, the Green Hornet wore a mask to conceal his true identity. He also had a weapon of choice – a gas gun to subdue fugitives. The gun didn’t do permanent harm to the criminals, just making them helpless till they could be arrested. Sort of like the controversial taser guns that some police officers indiscriminately employ these days.

An interesting legend exists concerning the character of the Green Hornet’s sidekick Kato. The story goes that Kato was said to be of Japanese ancestry until the attack on Pearl Harbour and then the radio scriptwriters suddenly changed his heritage to Filipino. Like the Lone Ranger series The Green Hornet had a stirring classical theme song and memorable opening narration. The show would open with Flight of the Bumblebee by Rinsky-Korsakov. Then the announcer would begin in a deep stern timbre with: “The Green Hornet, he hunts the biggest of all game! Public enemies who try to destroy our America! With his faithful valet Kato, Britt Reid, daring young publisher matches wits with the underworld, risking his life so that criminals and racketeers, within the law, may feel its weight by the sting of the Green Hornet”.

The last original Green Hornet radio show aired in 1953. Very little of the original material made it into the new movie. However if you’re up to some electrifying car chases and unfettered violence, then this movie is a must see.

Also opening at the Galaxy Theatre in Nanaimo this weekend is a film I told you about in a previous blog. The King’s Speech starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham is a film not to be missed. The movie is the story of King

George VI of Britain, his unwanted ascension to the throne and the speech therapist who helped the shy and stutter-plagued monarch deal with the stress of the public speaking engagements that came with being King. Having seen almost every film released in 2010 I’ll wager the movie has several Academy Awards in store, perhaps even Best Picture if the American Hollywood-based members of the Academy can bring themselves to vote a British film top prize.

Other films I’ve viewed recently were The Fighter (excellent), Season of the Witch with Nicolas Cage (best skipped), Black Swan (weird but pretty good), Country Strong (boring for my musical tastes - however the folks in cowboy hats sitting behind me loved it), True Grit (outstanding), Little Fockers (not as funny as the original), Tron (viewed in 3D the special effects were fabulous), The Tourist (bogged down with a very weak script), Made in Dagenham (an excellent British film about a car plant strike led by female workers) and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (also viewed in 3D. Based on the classic children fantasy novels by C.S. Lewis. Loaded with special effects of flying dragons, slithering sea serpents and one-footed dwarves. Very well done).

Next week I’m on the Lower Mainland with my wife Pat as she adjudicates piano examinations for the Royal Conservatory of Toronto. If there’s internet in the hotel, another blog is likely.