When I watched TGH a few years ago, it struck me as a show that wanted to have been made at least a few years earlier in the black & white era.
Trek guest actors in maybe surprising roles
- Thread starter Maurice
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The Gray Hornet?
Knowing what I know about William Dozier and his opinions about comics versus pulps, for all that Batman is faithful to the '60s era comics, Dozier did make sure there were elements that purists find distasteful. The garish colors were not intended to reflect the comic origins, and both Batman and Robin's costumes had design elements that made them look stupid. And I mean stupid, not silly.
Dozier hated comic books. He equally adored the pulps. He only agreed to make Batman if he could make The Green Hornet as well, and decided to essentially make the same show with both characters, but one with a satirical, silly bent while the other was serious. This was meant to reflect Dozier's opinion of each, with Batman being silly to represent Dozier's contempt, and The Green Hornet being more serious to grant it more respect. Dozier was not pleased that Batman received accolades, winning the Best Comedy series Emmy two years running, while The Green Hornet was cancelled after one season.
What was stupid-looking about Adam West's costume? I thought he looked amazing!
I find that hard to swallow. When you set out to make a comedy, you have to be pleased when it's a ratings smash and receives national attention. Otherwise, what are you doing in the business?
Not sure I agree. It struck me as a show that was trying to be very cutting-edge with the Hornet's technology. I remember thinking that the movie reboot a few years back missed the point by recreating the TV show's Black Beauty so exactly, because the show's BB wasn't a vintage car but a brand-new model, tricked out with futuristic gear.
Yes, of course, but that's the irony -- that despite Dozier's intentions, he made a show that was remarkably faithful in many ways to the comics. I mean, today, we're spoiled by comics adaptations that strive to be authentic, but I grew up in a day when most TV adaptations of comics bore very little resemblance to the source material. The Incredible Hulk changed Dr. Banner's first name and specialty and used none of the comics' supporting cast or villains. Spider-Man didn't use the Uncle Ben origin, the most essential part of his backstory, and featured no comics characters other than Peter and Jameson, who was turned into a more avuncular Perry White-like figure (Aunt May was only in the pilot movie). The Captain America pilot movies were about the son of the original (uncostumed) Cap and had him riding around the country on a motorcycle trying to find America. Wonder Woman was rather faithful to the '40s comics in its first season, but then became a Bionic Woman knockoff in its final two.
So for a show to be as direct and authentic an adaptation of the comics as Batman was, even with mocking intent, was exceptional. Batman was practically unique in using villains from the comics rather than creating its own (although 2/3 of its villains were original). The '50s Adventures of Superman had never done so, the Marvel adaptations never did, and Wonder Woman had only done it in two very early episodes.
Not only that, but several of the show's early storylines were direct adaptations of comics issues, sometimes quite faithful ones (though with no credit or compensation to the original authors). That was also virtually unprecedented until modern times; the only other instance I can think of is the Wonder Woman pilot movie (the Lynda Carter one, not the Cathy Lee Crosby one), which was based closely on WW's first two comics.
Again, even if that's so, it doesn't change the fact that both shows reflect the tone of their source material. The Batman comics of the '40s-'60s were not serious, despite the false narrative that modern fans like to buy into. I've read quite a few of them; they're easy to find in reprint collections. A typical Batman comic from 1944 or '45 was practically indistinguishable from an Adam West episode plot, complete with colorful themed crimes and contrived, implausible plots and elaborate deathtraps and an endless assortment of Bat-gadgets, except with Batman and Robin joking and punning with each other a whole lot more than they did on TV. That's just the way comics in general were written back then. And they often got much sillier still, with stories about time travel and interdimensional monsters and machines that brought newspaper comic strip characters to life.
But the Green Hornet was not a comic book character (with a few exceptions), and his radio series and movie serials had been played as straight crime/adventure dramas -- intended for children, but with a more serious tone, focused on the fight against racketeering and political corruption rather than colorful supervillains. (If you think about it, Frank Miller's reboot of Batman in Year One basically turned Batman into the Green Hornet -- a lone vigilante fighting the mob in a hopelessly corrupt city, pursued as an outlaw by the police, but allied with a single honest cop in a position of authority.)
So it just doesn't work to attribute the differenced between Batman and The Green Hornet solely to Dozier's opinions of the two. The two series were quite different to begin with, in medium as well as tone. Dozier would have seen them differently because they were already different in themselves.
Cutting-edge tech can be relative to the period, though. The show might have even fit in better a few years later when naturalism was more in style on TV and in movies. The bottom line is that the 1966-67 season, when IN COLOR! took over the TV dial, and shows were going out of their way to feature more colorful costumes and sets, was perhaps the worst year a show that wanted to be noirish could have ran.
As some of you may know, McCloud was originally part of a one-hour NBC wheel series called Four in One. That series lasted one season, 1970-71, but the next year McCloud moved over to the NBC Mystery Movie for six more seasons (Night Gallery, another part of Four in One, went off as its own series).
Later on, McCloud was sold as a syndication package of TV movies. To fit the longer format, the six Four in One episodes were stitched together into three 90-minute pieces. These are kind of a mess to watch, with two mysteries being solved at once, but they were what was released as the first of two seasons on DVD in the early 2000s.
Anyway, there's now a US DVD release of the full series, including the original Four in One episodes. Those actually look pretty rough, washed-out and scratchy, but at least are complete. Diana Muldaur, of course, was a series regular, as were Ken Lynch and Teri Garr later on.
Here's Maggie Thrett in McCloud, "Horse Stealing on Fifth Avenue," 1970.
Later on, McCloud was sold as a syndication package of TV movies. To fit the longer format, the six Four in One episodes were stitched together into three 90-minute pieces. These are kind of a mess to watch, with two mysteries being solved at once, but they were what was released as the first of two seasons on DVD in the early 2000s.
Anyway, there's now a US DVD release of the full series, including the original Four in One episodes. Those actually look pretty rough, washed-out and scratchy, but at least are complete. Diana Muldaur, of course, was a series regular, as were Ken Lynch and Teri Garr later on.
Here's Maggie Thrett in McCloud, "Horse Stealing on Fifth Avenue," 1970.
"There you go!"
Well, yes, that is exactly what the phrase means -- that it's the most advanced technology existing or believed to be on the verge of existing at the period in question. The 1966 show gave the Hornet a 1966-model automobile tricked out with futuristic equipment. So I don't think it was trying to be retro.
Well, it is called The Green Hornet, after all. Would be kind of a waste not to let us see the green.
Oh, that's excellent news. I read an article not that long ago (linked to here, maybe?) talking about how hard it was to find those original episodes. So I'm glad they're now available.
What it was trying to be isn't the same as what I mean by what it wanted to be. I think they were trying to compensate for the dated aspects of the character with the futuristic tech.
No more so than on the radio.
What was dated about the character? There were still newspaper publishers in 1966. There was still organized crime. Many men still wore fedoras. Many people still had valets and manservants.
And I would submit that the Green Hornet was always portrayed as a modern character on radio and in film. He was known for his trademark non-lethal gas gun, presumably a sophisticated invention. And the series's focus on the fight against racketeering was very much a current-day issue at the time of the radio show and serial. I just reviewed some old comments about the GH serial in the old TCM genre movies thread, and Greg Cox characterized its storylines as having a "torn from the headlines" feel. So the original series wasn't retro, and thus there was no reason for the remake to be.
Where did I say retro? I've repeatedly said that a few years later would have been a better fit just as well as a few years earlier. My main point is that the Green Hornet would have been better served in a more noirish/naturalistic TV environment than the single most garishly colorful season in network TV history.
You said "dated." Aren't those synonyms?
Here's the first episode:
I don't think it's garish at all. The sets' and costumes' color palette is pretty muted; the only garish items are the weirdly shaped, bright red guest chairs in Britt's home office. The Hornet's costume is quite a dark green, and Kato and the car are all in black. And the nighttime scenes are surprisingly dark, very noirish.
No. Each term comes with its own connotations.
Did I say that the show was garish? I said that the TV season was.
The color scheme is very green...not yellow, gold, avocado, chartreuse, etc.
You said the show would've been better off if it hadn't aired in that season. That suggests that you're positing a causal relationship between the season and the show's content. If you didn't think the show reflected its season, then what were you even complaining about?
In any case, my point was that the show's existence proves that it's an oversimplification to claim the entire season was "garish." Yes, a number of notable shows in that season embraced a vivid color palette to show off color TV, but TGH shows that not all of them did. If it existed, then other relatively muted shows probably did too.
I wasn't complaining, I was making an observation. It did not seem to me like a good time for that show to have been made. It might have worked better in another era of TV, forward or backward. It got canceled after one season, so clearly it wasn't something that TV audiences of that moment responded well to. I have nothing more to say about this because I have no interest in falling any further into the rabbit hole of endless, unresolvable point-by-point argument.
I watch The Dick Van Dyke Show on Sunday nights, and they just showed "There's No Sale Like Wholesale." Peter Brocco (Organian #2, Errand of Mercy) plays a coat factory employee who thinks Rob is gay. I spotted him instantly, but it took me a while to place him as a Star Trek guy.
I really liked Route 66. Corbett can't hold a candle to Maharis (but he is the first Vietnam vet on TV...in 1963!)
The fifth season premiere of 'The Twilight Zone', 'In Praise of Pip', with Jack Klugman and Billy Mumy, has Billy Mumy's character fighting over in South Vietnam. It was originally supposed to Laos, but Standards and Practices didn't want someone fighting in a overseas war, so Vietnam was suggested, because the United States didn't have troops, or very few advisors there at the time.
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