Actor Van Williams shows off a promotional photo from “The Green Hornet” television series, in which he had the leading role. Photo by Willy Cook
Artists often aspire to imitate life, especially in show business. Van Williams, star of the 1960s hit TV series "The Green Hornet," took inspiration from his work as an actor portraying detectives and other crime stoppers. He left Hollywood and worked as an actual cop.
His is a case of life imitating art.
"I wanted to do it for real and I did," he said this week in an interview at his home north of Hailey. "It was a lot more fun and interesting than play-like law enforcement."
Williams was born into a ranching family with deep roots in Fort Worth, Texas. He had differences with his father about how to run the family business (Van thought planting permanent pasture was the way to go), so he attended Texas Christian University before learning scuba and working as an underwater demolition diver, blowing up ordnance left over from World War II.
When the work slowed down, he taught skin diving at the Hawaiian Village Hotel on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu. It was there that he first thought of a career in Hollywood.
"Someone said they are looking for people just like you and that they could get me into the business," said Williams, who still speaks with a Southern drawl. "I went to meet some MGM people at a party."
He was put under contract with Review Studios at a time when the major studios worked actors hard. He completed 400 TV shows and several big-screen appearances in less than 10 years. He acted in a string of TV detective series, including "Bourbon Street Beat," and the Warner Brothers "Surfside 6," featuring three young detectives living on a houseboat.
Williams said the show's formula was later used by "Miami Vice" producers, just as his big hit series, "The Green Hornet," was borrowed from elsewhere.
"'The Green Hornet' was basically a modernization of 'The Lone Ranger,'" Williams said.
"I didn't particularly want to do the show, but I had a William Morris agent who said this is the hottest show of the year and you can't pass it up."
Williams was reluctant to take part in what looked like a send-up of the detective genre. Before agreeing to take the role, he met with Greenway Productions executive William Dozier.
"I said, 'If this is going to be like Batman, I don't want anything to do with it.' Batman was camp. It was ridiculous. Adam hated putting on all those tights."
Williams was referring to his old friend and fellow Wood River Valley resident Adam West. West called Williams recently and told him they're running "Green Hornet" episodes hour after hour on the Syfy Channel now that a film remake of the TV show is in movie theaters. The movie stars actor Seth Rogen in the leading role.
"Adam said, 'They never did that for me,'" Williams said with a laugh. "I won't see it. I won't support the new movie. They made a boob out of the Green Hornet."
Williams said martial arts expert Bruce Lee, who played his sidekick "Kato" in the original TV series, sometimes annoyed people on the studio set with surprise kicks and other stunts.
"He was a great kid," Williams said. "He could kick at you and just flip up one of your ear lobes, or knock a dime off of the top of a tripod."
Williams said he knew the creator of the original TV show, newspaper publisher George W. Trindle, and that Trindle would not have enjoyed a comical remake of the stoic series. Williams said the half-hour show was mismanaged from the start, ending its first and only season $2.7 million in the hole.
"Trindle was supposed to get $27,000 per episode and he never made a dime on it," he said.
Williams started looking for another line of work before "The Green Hornet" series ended.
"I don't have very many good things to say about the acting business," Williams said. "In 1966, I was making more than anyone else on a half-hour TV show, but 10 percent goes to a business manager and 10 percent goes to an agent and another 10 percent goes to a publicist, and there are no tax write-offs. You couldn't really make any money."
Williams also said he was cheated out of an agreed-upon 5 percent of merchandising rights stemming from action figures and other items based on "The Green Hornet" series.
"It was a stab in the back, really. I would have sued them if I'd had a lot of money."
Williams said he discussed the subject a few years ago with actor Tom Hanks, another valley local, when he invited Hanks to the house he shares with his wife of 51 years, Vicki Williams. The former Vicki Flaxman, she was a pioneering West Coast surfer. The couple also lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., during part of the year.
"Tom told me that I was in the business about 10 years too early. When the major studios controlled everything, you couldn't make any money.
"We were wondering who was the first actor to make $1 million for a movie. It was that guy over there," said Williams, pointing across a pond in his backyard to Bruce Willis' house. "For 'Die Hard.'"
Williams said goodbye to Hollywood around 1970 and followed his interests into a job in the actual world of law enforcement, spending 25 years as a reserve officer with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and also working at the San Diego Police Department and the Los Angeles Police Department.
He said he formed a mountain-rescue team, taking dead and injured people out of the hills around Topanga Canyon, and worked with a partner as a plainclothes officer on Malibu Beach.
"We had more felony arrests than any other team," he said.
But there are some mysteries relating to Williams' second career that he will not discuss, like the seven years he spent working for the federal government.
"I'm not supposed to talk about that," he said.
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A story of such high caliber as this deserves to be linked into the Wikipedia entries of both the Green Hornet and Batman.
The movie was hard to sit thru. They really screwed it up, making the green hornet look like a comic fool. Can't say I would tell others to go see it.
Thanks for your service Van. The world needs more actors turned real life heroes :) You rock!
This guy really believes his cover story doesn't he?
Here's Bruce Lee's screen test for The Green Hornet:
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