Wealthy owners have long been part of American newspapers, for better or for worse. This Green Hornet episode, Dead Man’s Topcoat, opens with a visitor asking newspaper publisher Britt Reid to write a check for $1,000 because a local charity has been robbed just before a big annual event for the city’s poorest families. Of course solving the crime and recovering the charity funds becomes a job for Reid’s masked secret identity, The Green Hornet.

(Yes, I’m a little late writing about a Christmas-themed episode in March.)

The 1947 story takes place after Reid, the Hornet, made his identity known to Police Commissioner Higgins, and after Reid’s secretary Miss Case had become increasingly interested in reporting… although she was not yet part of the Hornet secret-identity conspiracy.

The combination puts Case in jeopardy, Lois Lane style, when Higgins leaves a message for Reid that is actually a tip for the Hornet — which Case takes as her chance to get a big interview. On the way, she does show some aggressive reporting instincts and catches the scent of a story — literally. Unfortunately the person she is interviewing is pretty aggressive too, and has a gun…

And for once the masked Hornet isn’t the one who arrives in the nick of time! I will leave that as a surprise.

This episode is part of the Old Time Radio Researchers Library mp3 collection as well as a CD-quality Green Hornet collection available from Radio Spirits, complete with liner notes.

See the JHeroes Green Hornet page for background and discussions of episodes from the earlier years, when the police as well as the underworld thought the Hornet was some sort of masked gangster himself. As early as 1938, the patient Miss Case had an urge to join the reporting staff, as mentioned on that page.

(Unfortunately the episode download and audio player links on that page may need to be updated after several years of shifting files and file names at the Internet Archive and radio collector websites.)