The Green Hornet TV series premiered on September 9, 1966. (For those of you too young to remember the original Green Hornet radio show, it was first heard back in the 1930s. It was produced by station WXYZ in Detroit, which also produced The Lone Ranger and Sgt. Preston of the Yukon radio shows. (In the radio version, Britt Reid, the Green Hornet’s alter ego, was identified as the son of the Lone Ranger’s nephew Dan Reid.) The TV series was produced by William Dozier, who had also produced the wildly popular Batman TV series starring Adam West. While Batman featured bizarre criminals and improbable crimes, The Green Hornet took a somewhat more realistic approach. The first episode to be filmed (but the third to be broadcast) was “Programmed for Death,” which established the basic pattern for the episodes that followed. It is of particular interest because a leopard figures prominently in the action. (If you have more information on the trained leopard used for the filming, or if you actually participated in the filming as one of the leopard’s trainers, your comments will be greatly appreciated by the rest of us.) |
Monday, March 28, 2011
Green Hornet #1 (From Eric Beheim)
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ERIC: Tonight (3/29), I just tried to call Hubert Wells to see if this is his Veronica leopard. I suspect it is, as this was our era, and our guys were back from the England location shooting for DR. DOLITTLE, which would have made Hubert and Veronica available. This sweet girl served as background for the picture, and co-starred with a Weimariner in an act Hubert trained for our Big Stage Arena. Hubert can answer this when he returns from his native Hungary.
ERIC: March 30th - Hubert Wells called from his home in Thousand Oaks, and I got the story. The leopard was Lolita, and it was she who also worked with the dog onstage. The collar seen herein was part of the story, Hubert recalls. When Lolita was given a secret signal, she proceeded to bite somebody. The shot of her asleep was indeed intended to depict her demise. As we know, few episodes or features starred leopards, but Lolita was tops at getting those calls.
Hubert trained the seals and sulphur-crested cockatoo for DOLITTLE, and the otters for RING OF BRIGHT WATER. He and I worked the same Jungleland Fighting Lions. It was said of Hubert Wells that all he needed to train any animal was that it be alive. He is now retired in Thousand Oaks, sharing vast property there with fellow Jungleland alumni Roland Raffler and Cheryl Shawver.
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