As a lover of superheroes and comic book lore, although I am not a comic book reader, adding the actor that played masked vigilante The Green Hornet in the TV series of the same name was a must. The show which ran just one season from 1966-1967 has become legendary mostly because martial artist Bruce Lee was the co-star of the series. It also remains a sought-after show because it is currently unavailable on DVD. Therefore I have never seen it.
But that certainly wasn’t going to stop me from meeting the star of the series Van Williams when he appeared at the Hollywood Show on February 11, 2012. Bob noted that he had made multiple appearances at the shows since the 1990’s, but the Hollywood Show was touting it as if it were a major coup to get him there.
In fact I had been disppointed by not getting to meet him when he cancelled an earlier appearance at a Hollywood Show that I attended in Fall of 2011. So regardless of the fact that he had been around, and that I had never seen his show – although it should be noted that he did make appearances on some great shows like The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Rockford Files, and Mission: Impossible, not to mention some crossover appearances on Batman – I put him on my must-have list. Interestingly he also appeared as the director of The Green Hornet in the biopic Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.
I was a little concerned that he was only going to be doing the professional photo ops, but his handler told me to come back after the photo op had taken place. They only charged the minimal $5 in addition to the $20 for the autograph.
He was very friendly and I was very happy to add another superhero to my autograph collection.
This concludes the celebrity encounters from the Winter 2012 Hollywood Show. Return to the original posting here…
I remember him best from “Surfside 6”.
Dad
December 28th, 2013
The “Rockford” that he’s in is a particularly good one.
Peter
January 6th, 2014