The Green Hornet is a 1940 black-and-white 13 chapter movie serial from Universal Pictures, produced by Henry MacRae, directed by Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor, starring Gordon Jones, Wade Boteler, Keye Luke, and Anne Nagel. The serial is based on The Green Hornet radio series by George W. Trendle and Fran Striker.

Plot
Britt Reid, publisher of The Sentinel newspaper, is secretly the vigilante crime fighter the Green Hornet. He and his Korean valet Kato investigate and expose several seemingly separate criminal rackets. This leads them into continued conflict with “the Chief,” the mastermind behind the criminal syndicate controlling those rackets.

Cast
Gordon Jones as Britt Reid and The Green Hornet
Wade Boteler as Michael Axford
Keye Luke as Kato is Korean in the serial rather than being the original Japanese character of the radio series, due to rising anti-Japanese sentiment around the world. This was two years prior to Japan’s December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into World War II. The radio show dropped Kato’s nationality from the introductory sequence, included passing references in dialogue to his character being Filipino, and years later, after the war, returned to the standard show introduction.
Anne Nagel as Leonore Case
Phillip Trent as Jasper Jenks
Cy Kendall as Curtis Monroe
Stanley Andrews as Police Commissioner [Chs.1,5,8,9,13]
Selmer Jackson as District Attorney [Chs.4,10]
Joseph Crehan as Judge Stanton [Chs.1,9,10,13]
Walter McGrail as Dean
Gene Rizzi as Corey
John Kelly as Pete Hawks
Eddie Dunn as D.H. Sligby [Ch.7]
Edward Earle as Felix Grant [Ch.1]
Ben Taggart as Phil Bartlett [Chs.3-4]
Clyde Dilson as Meadows [Ch.5]
Jerry Marlowe as Bob Stafford [Chs.7,11]
Frederick Vogeding as Max Gregory [Ch.11] (as Fredrik Vogeding)