BEFORE LYNDA CARTER: WHO’S AFRAID OF DIANA PRINCE?

Following the splashy premiere of 20th Century Fox TV’s Batman on ABC-TV, many Hollywood producers began hunting for comic book vehicles which might be converted to weekly programs. However, a degree of uncertainty was apparent at the top echelon of studios also, with some biding their time on comic books for series, and a few flatly closing the door on them, in the belief that Batman would not develop a trend. 

 

At Fox, which with Bill Dozier’s Greenway Productions initiated the most talked about show of the time, production chief William Self commissioned Dozier to commence negotiations for other comics properties such as Wonder Woman and Dick Tracy. ABC-TV quickly optioned Wonder Woman for a potential series for and a television pilot was made. To keep the budget down, however, a full 25-minute episode was not filmed. Instead, only a five-minute preview of what the series would look like was produced… with Ellie Wood Walker in the lead.

 

Walker grew up in Kentucky, attended Maysville High School, played clarinet in the MHS band and was crowned prom queen her senior year in 1953. Ironically, this would not be the last time we would see her in a tiara. After graduating, Walker left Maysville to attend Northwestern University in Chicago. She went on to leap tall dreams in a single bound and landed a career in show business as one of the June Taylor dancers.

 

In 1962, she married actor, Robert Walker, Jr., who is perhaps best remembered for his role as Charles Evans in the original Star Trek series episode, “Charlie X.”

 

Along with her work as a dancer, Walker acted in summer stock productions and would eventually land roles in films such as the cult classics, Targets and Easy Rider.

 

Meanwhile, beneath stately Wayne Manor, Batman producer William Dozier decided it was time to bring another comic book hero to the small screen. This looks like a job for… Ellie Wood Walker! And history was in the making. Even though the pilot was never televised, she won the coveted role of the world’s first Wonder Woman for the screen!

 

“At the time, I thought it was an audition, but we ended up filming immediately,” Walker recalled. “My step-father-in-law, David Selznick, promoted me, having seen me in an off-Broadway show. He was a fan and friend of William Dozier, the producer of Wonder Woman.” On a casting trivia note: the scene in which Wonder Woman admires herself in the mirror is not a mirror. A double was used for that shot: Linda Harrison, also dressed as Wonder Woman, who would soon go on to play the iconic role of Nova in Planet of the Apes (1968).

 

Filming of the five-minute TV pilot took place at Greenway Studios in 1967. Unlike the sophisticated camp of the successful Batman series, the tone of the Wonder Woman pilot was downright goofy. Despite the brief film, a 14-page story was written by Mad magazine writers Stan Hart and Larry Siegel, to ensure the proposed series would be different from other television programs. Stanley Ralph Ross then wrote a 45-page teleplay, “Who’s Afraid of Diana Prince?” Had executives at ABC-TV given a green light, this teleplay would have become a two-part adventure to serve as the premiere episodes of the weekly series.

 

A second attempt to bring Wonder Woman to television was through an animation studio, Filmation, where executives considered making an animated series based on Wonder Woman. They licensed the rights in 1968 but, sadly, the only thing to come of it was an appearance by Wonder Woman – voiced by Jane Webb – in a 1972 episode of the animated series, The Brady Kids. 

 

Proving the third time was the charm, an animated version of Wonder Woman finally made it in a regular television series as a founding member of Super Friends, in 1973, produced by Hanna-Barbera. Shannon Farnon voiced the female superhero not just in this incarnation, but all other animated renditions from this point until 1983. Farnon got her television break (uncredited) in an episode of Burke’s Law in 1965, followed by roles as a stewardess, a nurse, an island girl, and a neighbor girl on such programs as My Favorite Martian, I Dream of Jeannie, and Bonanza.  

 

A second live-action pilot, simply called Wonder Woman, was filmed in late 1973 and televised as a made-for-TV movie in March of 1974. Actress and tennis pro Cathy Lee Crosby played the title role. The movie served as a proposed pilot but executives at ABC-TV would not agree to a weekly series. The movie does contain a pop-cultural oddity in that it’s based partly on the brief five-year period of the comic book when Diana Prince temporarily lost her super powers, as well as her classic costume, and she was re-imagined as a non-super-powered, mod-dressing Emma Peel-esque adventurer. This pilot is also partly a precursor of the direction that the later TV series would eventually take during seasons two and three: Diana Prince being revamped into a James Bond-like ace operative of a top-secret spy organization.

 

A year and a half after the Cathy Lee Crosby movie aired on television, ABC-TV televised another made-for-TV movie, aptly titled The New Original Wonder Woman. While the title might appear an oxymoron, the movie lived up to the title with a new rendition… based on the original concept. After a dogfight with a Nazi plane, U.S. Air Force Steve Trevor crash lands on an uncharted island in the Bermuda Triangle. Paradise Island is inhabited only by women, and their existence has been kept a secret for thousands of years. Learning of the Nazi threat to humanity, the Amazon princess, Diana, is chosen to accompany Trevor back to the United States to battle the Third Reich. Garbed in a skimpy red, white & blue costume and armed with a magic lasso that forces anyone within its grasp to tell the truth, Diana uses her powers as Wonder Woman to battle the forces of evil. Lynda Carter played the role and this time the pilot movie sold and the resulting series would ultimately bring Wonder Woman to the small screen for three consecutive seasons.

 

A Summary of HAVE GUN - WILL TRAVEL

Considered one of the best television westerns ever made, Have Gun–Will Travel stands the test of time for two major reasons: superb scripts and the casting of Richard Boone. The weekly television western ran six seasons, from 1957 to 1963, and was critically acclaimed as superior to Gunsmoke, another popular (and high-rated) western airing over CBS. The series focused on the adventures of a hired gun named Paladin, who offered his stock in trade for a hefty fee. Living a life of lavish luxury as a bon vivant after taking up permanent residency at the Hotel Carlton in San Francisco, Paladin would ride out when clients sent him a telegram requesting his services. With black suit and gun holster, Paladin would visit his employers and accept almost any position ranging from professional bodyguard to performing sheriff-like duties for a town desperate for law and order. Along the way, Paladin would brush alongside his conscience and side with the moral right – even if the ends meant betraying his employer and someone would be buried on boot hill. The name of the program originated from Paladin’s business card, “Have Gun, Will Travel,” which he dispensed often on the program to prospective clients.

 

The series was co-created by Herb Meadow and Sam Rolfe. The former was a radio scriptwriter of soap operas and crime thrillers; the latter a screenwriter who received an Oscar nomination for The Naked Spur (1953). Rolfe would later go on to co-create The Man from U.N.C.L.E., but that is another story for another time. Rolfe acted as story editor for the western, insisting that Paladin’s real name remain elusive, never to be given on the program. It was clear “Paladin” was an alias, and when the premiere episode for the series’ final season offered us a flashback tale that provided us with a superb origin for “Paladin,” his real name remained a mystery.

 

Paladin was played by Richard Boone, an actor who started out doing supporting roles in motion pictures and television (including Jack Webb’s Dragnet). Having played the lead of a doctor on Medic, which ran two seasons over NBC, Boone received an Emmy nomination for his performance. When western movie icon Randolph Scott (the first choice for the role) was unavailable, the producers turned to Richard Boone who, they were overjoyed to find, could ride a horse. Boone's intimidating growl, prominent nose and pock-marked visage physically distanced him from the standard fresh-faced cowboy hero in the same way that his character's cultured background distinguished him from those prairie-tutored rustics. After watching Paladin muse about Pliny and Aristotle, one television critic marveled, “Where else can you see a gunfight and absorb a classical education at the same time?”

 

Have Gun – Will Travel made Boone a television celebrity overnight. Boone’s five-year contract with the network made him a wealthy man, and a one-year extension ensured he wouldn’t have to work again for many years. It was the television series that led to other career possibilities: Boone accepted a part in John Wayne’s The Alamo (1960), and, in 1963, he launched his own repertory group for a weekly television anthology series, The Richard Boone Show. 

 

As for the Have Gun – Will Travel scripts, written by such stalwarts as Bruce Geller (Mission: Impossible), Sam Peckinpah (1969’s The Wild Bunch), Richard Matheson (The Twilight Zone), and Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek), quality took center stage. Roddenberry would ultimately write a total of 24 scripts for the television series and receive a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Script for the episode “Helen of Abajinian.”

 

In various episodes, Paladin went up against a crooked sheriff that could only be stopped by his murder, participated in a race across the desert on a camel, and was forced to kill a young man who needed schooling in the art of self-defense. In the series’ only two-parter, Paladin was witness to a gang of juveniles who, drunk from alcohol, committed a cold-blooded murder. Following the death, Paladin tracked down each of the killers responsible and gave them a chance to put on a pair of handcuffs and be turned over to the law. Paladin, however, believed justice was better suited with a bullet and despite his offer to turn them over to the law, he coaxed each of the boys into drawing on him instead of reaching for the chains just so he could gun them down.

 

In one episode, Paladin helps a woman doctor (played by June Lockhart) gain acceptance from a religious fanatic who convinced the community to reject the doctor because of her gender. In another, he assists with the election of a woman mayor. This progressive attitude influenced the show’s take on minorities, race and ethnics. When Paladin’s close friend, Hey Boy, asked the gunman to help his brother, who, like other Chinese, is being abused by the railroad company where he works, Paladin swung into action for no fee. The western took on the subject of anti-Semitism when Boone spoke in Hebrew and engaged in a discussion of the Torah. In another episode, Paladin witnessed the hanging of an African American who was guilty of a crime but stood up against mob injustice when the townsfolk would not grant the body to his widow.

 

To ensure the series had lavish production, many of the episodes were shot on location in northern California, New Mexico and the scenic beauty of Bend, Oregon. Despite its high ratings and being tops in the popularity polls, the program lasted a mere six seasons. Still, this was a mark of pride when you consider the fact that the series aired during a time the networks were saturated with six-guns, even prompting comedian Milton Berle to remark, “Here I am back at NBC. You know what NBC refers to, don’t you? Nothing But Cowboys.” 

 

If you have never seen Have Gun – Will Travel before, here is your chance to get acquainted.

 

THE GREEN HORNET: A Brief History

During the thirties, forties, and fifties, when dramatic adventure radio programs attracted a juvenile audience craving blood and thunder, parents deplored them as unwholesome trash. (It is ironic that when compared to today’s television programs, they are about as violent as the puffed cereal they peddled.) The Green Hornet, for example, felled his adversaries with a harmless gas squirted from a gun that only the masked man carried. He scared miscreants and knocked them unconscious so the police would find the crooks with possession of the goods and cinch convictions. Like The Lone Ranger, The Green Hornet never killed or permanently injured anybody. Variety described it best when it commented how The Green Hornet program was “aimed for young teeners and it dishes out the kind of excitement that should take them away from their comic book literature for the twice weekly tune-in.” This did not stop concerned parents from writing letters of complaint to sponsors, however, making the program a hard sell on a national coast-to-coast hookup from 1936 to 1952.

The premise was simple: Britt Reid played the militant newspaperman by day, putting his principles into action by night, when, as The Green Hornet, he struck at every phase of crime fostered by a racketeering syndicate. Under cover of night and known only to one other living person as The Green Hornet, Reid waged a one-man fight to bring law breakers to his self-made justice. Through police circles and his own reporters, Britt Reid was familiar with crime and racketeering and this source of information gives him first-hand opportunity to enact the secret role of “The Green Hornet.” 

 

Kato, his faithful valet, was the only person who knew Britt Reid to be The Green Hornet and he rendered valuable assistance in the crusade against crime. Kato usually remained in the shadows, ready to shoot the lights out should a situation become dangerous, or remained behind with the getaway vehicle to apply assistance when the risk was too dangerous for The Green Hornet to act alone.

 

Britt Reid’s father, a retired financier, believing that his dilettante son should find a serious mission in life, turned over the publishing of The Daily Sentinel to Britt, with carte blanche opportunity to handle the newspaper. That was in 1936. Also, the senior Reid, knowing of possible pitfalls to any exuberant young man, assigned as a personal bodyguard Michael Axford, a former police detective. Axford was put on the payroll as a reporter and took his duties seriously, especially when The Green Hornet began his one-man raids upon “law breakers within the law.” As publisher, Reid offered a huge reward for the capture of The Green Hornet, keeping people from suspecting he was, himself, the notorious masked man. This circumstance allowed for highly interesting plots and situations and yet furthered the success of his fight against crime.

 

The Green Hornet debuted on radio two years before Superman premiered in comic books and was among a number of notable airwave heroes to originate from radio station WXYZ, Detroit, Michigan, such as The Lone Ranger, Ned Jordan, Secret Agent, and Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. “It had the best ingredients,” recalled George W. Trendle, the co-creator of the masked avenger. “It was a mystery, really, a melodrama. All the stories were based on common things that you read in the newspapers.” 

 

In truth, the radio program was primarily created by Fran Striker (with Trendle’s request for a modern-day crime thriller to replace Warner Lester, Manhunter). It was Striker who borrowed elements from The Adventures of Jimmie Dale (1914), a pulp fiction hero written by Frank L. Packard. Jimmie Dale was a wealthy playboy by day, but at night put on a costume and became The Gray Seal, who enters businesses or homes and cracks safes, always leaving a diamond shaped, gray paper "seal" behind to mark his conquest, but never taking anything. In Striker’s rendition, The Green Hornet left behind a green seal at the scenes to taunt the police and remind the racketeers who was responsible for betraying their partnership, an element that would be dropped from the program by 1940. It was Striker who decided to replicate The Lone Ranger formula which he himself also created, that of a minority sidekick. Instead of a white horse speeding away, The Green Hornet and Kato sped away from crime scenes in a black roadster known as the Black Beauty. 

 

During World War II, the radio plots were tweaked to feature black market racketeers and fifth column spies as villains. In 1947, due to an ever-growing criticism of The Green Hornet program from concerned parents, the plot device was changed so that The Green Hornet worked alongside Commission Higgins of the police, was cleared of all charges and no longer considered a wanted criminal, and even his secretary, Lenore Case, was brought into Britt’s confidence. During this four-month transition on the program, Britt’s father, Dan Reid, learned of his son’s secret and chuckled in response. Calmly, Dan revealed he once rode alongside a masked man on a white horse… Britt’s great uncle was the masked man known as The Lone Ranger!

 

By 1952, during the final year of the radio program, The Green Hornet found himself exchanging fisticuffs with Communist spies. But after a 13-week revival, the radio program ceased any chance of returning to the major networks. Trendle himself confessed the program had always been a “tough sell,” even after the major revision of the character.

 

Still, the radio program was popular enough to generate a series of comic books beginning in 1940, running for a span of 47 issues through the summer of 1949. These were followed by one Four-Color issue in 1953 and three Gold Key issues tying in to the television series in 1967. 

 

During the course of World War II, The Green Hornet and Kato battled Japanese saboteurs and Nazi fifth columnists as well as racketeers and gangsters. Historically, issue No. 13 was the first Green Hornet comic book to depict a Nazi on the cover. Issue No. 20 featured a two-page text story with a plot involving Japanese who take charge of an old, unused movie studio on Fisherman’s Sound to rig up a television set and demoralize the American people with fraudulent images. That same issue featured “Terror From the Past,” a 10-page comic story about a mad Japanese who seeks revenge against Americans with a Tyrannosaurus Rex, still alive and awakened from its slumber in a cave on Long Island. Not the type of stories children expected to hear on the radio program, but that is what makes the comic books so unique and sought after.

 

Careful review of the publisher’s production files reveals that the first issue had a print run of 213,169 copies, and the comic book reached a peak of 480,000 printing with issue No. 21 (November 1944). While print runs should dictate the scarcity and value of the comic books today, the condition of the issues now also makes a major difference. 

 

In the same year the comic books premiered on newsstands, The Green Hornet made the transition to motion pictures. Universal Pictures produced and released a series of 13 film shorts based on the radio program, a cliffhanger serial in the studio’s finest tradition of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, and with the same production values. Gordon Jones played the title role of Britt Reid, alias The Green Hornet, with radio’s Al Hodge reprising the role of The Green Hornet whenever the mask was covering Jones’ face. The role of Kato was played by Keye Luke, known then for his recurring role as Lee Chan in a series of Charlie Chan movies. 

 

There has long been a common myth circulating that Kato switched from Japanese to Filipino the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In truth, Kato was referred to as Filipino on the radio program months prior to the attack. For the cliffhanger serial, Universal Pictures had its own solution: Kato’s nationality was disclosed in the very first chapter of the serial as Korean, avoiding any possible reference to the Japanese.

 

The cliffhanger was financially profitable for the studio, which produced a second serial, released a year later in 1941. The Green Hornet Strikes Again starred Warren Hull (replacing Gordon Jones) and Keye Luke. Like the first serial, the second recycled plots from radio scripts. Trendle would later attempt to make a TV series cut from the serials. Unable to sell the proposed series by 1951, though, he chose to film a 25-minute TV pilot with Steve Dunne in the title role. (To date, that 1951 pilot is considered “lost” due to a lack of preservation.) 

 

In the summer of 1965, producer William Dozier (of Batman) approached George W. Trendle for the rights to produce a weekly television program based on The Green Hornet. Trendle was open to the idea but negotiations took long months because Trendle insisted that he had all rights of refusal for television scripts. As a result, throughout production, Trendle found multiple flaws in every script and even when it looked like the rewrites were satisfactory, he still found reasons to lodge complaints. Trendle expected the program to resemble the radio rendition, while Dozier was shooting for something to cash in on the James Bond craze, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and his own popular Batman series. 

 

Trendle never liked the gimmick of the fireplace going down to a lower level of the house like a secret passage, nor Kato alongside The Green Hornet. Trendle rationalized that if anyone saw an Asian – also referred to as Kato – standing alongside a masked man, they would be able to put one and one together and identify the Green Hornet as Britt Reid. Dozier assured him that this was television and therefore viewers applied a suspension-of-disbelief aspect. 

 

This did not stop from Dozier having to negotiate for colorful plots such as having John Carradine play a notorious Jack-the-Ripper style killer known as “The Scarf,” who owned a wax museum, or a two-part adventure involving aliens from outer space, despite Trendle’s protests. Having learned the valuable lesson of having two of every prop made for the television series, auto customizer George Barris produced two of the Black Beauty, both of which appear on the same screen in one episode where a counterfeit Green Hornet roamed the streets in his own black speedster. 

 

Today, The Green Hornet television program is best known for having had Bruce Lee in its cast. Before his untimely death in 1973 at the age of 32, the Chinese-American martial arts fighter also played the lead in a handful of international hit films produced in Hong Kong. As The Green Hornet series was his first role for American film studios, his salary was $400 per episode – a mere pittance compared to that of Van Williams, who played the title role, for $2,000 per episode. (By comparison, guest stars on the episodes were paid more.) Overseas in some countries, the program would be re-titled The Kato Show, while Bruce Lee confessed that he had no qualms regarding salary because the program boosted his name status and popularity. In the mid-seventies, three episodes of the TV series were edited into a motion picture and released in theaters. In some countries, including the United States, the movie was not titled The Green Hornet, but instead promoted as Kato. 

The ABC network expected the same popularity from the show as Batman, but the ratings were not as strong, nor was the fan mail. This did not stop ABC-TV from renewing the initial 17-episode contract for an additional nine episodes, for a total of 26. First run episodes of The Green Hornet aired for only half a year and it was never renewed for a second season. By that time, producer Bill Dozier had filmed a five-minute Wonder Woman pilot (starring Ellie Wood Walker) as well as a 25-minute Dick Tracy pilot, neither of which would be bought by the network heads.

 

When Dozier noticed the ratings slipping, he theorized: “I think there was a great deal of curiosity about it at first, particularly because of the great success of Batman, and apparently now that the audience has sampled Green Hornet, they are more inclined to prefer what they see on Wild, Wild West and Tarzan. My personal feeling is that our shows have all looked pretty much the same and that our format is much too narrow.”

 

In desperation, after an exchange of letters, Trendle relinquished script approval to Dozier and granted permission for a Green Hornet crossover on a two-part Batman adventure. The crossover was meant to draw in a ton of fan letters from viewers to convince the network to renew The Green Hornet for a second season. Alas, it was not meant to be. The expected large volume of fan letters totaled four.

 

Over the years, the commercial property has been marketed through a series of short story collections, comic book revivals, and Funko Pops, and even the original radio episodes continue to be released two or three times a year on CD through Radio Spirits. The television program, however, has yet to be released commercially on DVD or Blu-ray, giving fans a practical reason to buy homemade DVD sets from the remastered Action telecasts on the “grey” market. 

 

In January of 2011, a big screen movie of The Green Hornet was produced and released through Sony Pictures, with Seth Rogen in the lead. The film received generally mixed reviews from critics and grossed $227.8 million against a $110–120 million production budget. (Which is not bad when you consider that many eagerly-anticipated movies released this summer never even grossed half the money it cost to produce.)

Rare Old-Time Radio Photographs

Over the past two decades, I made it a habit of scanning photographs of old-time radio personalities from every archive I had access to. Recently cataloging the tens of thousands of photographs, labeling each photo accordingly, I came across a number of them that are truly rare and more than likely never seen in decades. So I wanted to take a moment to share them with you. 

Alice Frost

Abe Burrows

Alice Frost

Betty Allen

Barbara Jo Allen

Bill Johnstone, radio's The Shadow,
circa 1910.

Yes, that is Bob Crane.

Bud Collyer (radio's Superman program)

Deanna Durbin laughs with Charlie McCarthy.

Dorothy Lamour

George M. Cohen

A very young Frank Lovejoy.

Gracie Allen