Radio Recap: The Green Lama

The Green Lama was a pulp magazine hero whose adventures were published from 1940-1943. He was clearly in the shadow of... well, the Shadow; like him, he was a white man (Jethro Dumont) who gained mystical powers from his time in Asia. In fact, Dumont became an actual Tibetan lama.

It's not clear to me why the Green Lama became a radio hero very briefly in 1949; his pulp adventures had ceased by then and so had his comic book stories. But somehow, the Green Lama aired over CBS from June 5 to August 20, 1949 as a summer series. It lasted just 11 episodes and we only have 4 of them now.

What makes the Green Lama interesting - beyond the super hero trappings that were atypical for prime time radio - is that the series starred Paul Frees. Frees was, of course, one of radio's finest performers. He could deliver the character's catchphrase - "Om manipadme hum! The Green Lama strikes - for justice!" with conviction.

Many familiar CBS performers can be heard on the show, notably Ben Wright as the Green Lama's servant Tulku. The episode "the Last Dinosaur" featured a great guest appearance by William Conrad as a Hollywood film producer; it's great fun to hear Conrad as a slick, fast-talking huckster. Norman MacDonnell produced the series (he would later produce Escape and Gunsmoke), so the quality is overall much higher on the Green Lama than that of most radio adventure hero programs.

You can hear the 4 surviving episodes of the Green Lama on the Old-Time Radio Researchers' Library.

Another radio super hero recap tomorrow!