If you had tuned your radio to WXYZ-Detroit on this day in 1936, you would have heard the inaugural broadcast of the masked hero,The Green Hornet.
Each week brought audiences the latest adventures of Britt Reid, a newspaper publisher by day and masked crusader by night, and his trusty side-kick, Kato.
You can listen to a sampling of the original programs at Archive.org.
Alexander Russo is an American media scholar at the Catholic University of America. He says The Green Hornet had a special appeal to listeners during the Great Depression who may have been frustrated with the lagging success of New Deal policies:
“In all of these characters, you have individuals who step outside the socially sanctioned ways of achieving social change and enacting it themselves.”
Today, The Green Hornet is a movie for the second time and has also been a television show.
The Green Hornet was created by George Trendle and Frank Striker. Their previous radio productions included another masked hero - The Lone Ranger.
-Bridget Bodnar, Michigan Radio Newsroom
