The Greatest American Hero is an American comedy-drama superhero television series that aired for three seasons from 1981 to 1983 on ABC.[1] Created by producer Stephen J. Cannell, it premiered as a two-hour pilot movie on March 18, 1981.[1] The series features William Katt as teacher Ralph Hinkley ("Hanley" for the latter part of the first season), Robert Culp as FBI agent Bill Maxwell, and Connie Sellecca as lawyer Pam Davidson.[1]
The series chronicles Ralph's adventures after a group of aliens gives him a red and black suit that grants him superhuman abilities. Unfortunately for Ralph, who hates wearing the suit, he immediately loses its instruction booklet, and thus has to learn how to use its powers by trial and error, often with comical results.
Contents [hide]
1 Premise
1.1 Suit and Hero persona
1.2 Symbol
2 Cast and characters
2.1 Ralph's surname
3 Episodes
4 Production
4.1 Theme song
4.2 Superman connections
5 Revivals
5.1 The Greatest American Heroine
5.2 Comics
5.3 Remake
6 DVD releases
7 See also
8 References
9 External links
Premise[edit]
Ralph Hinkley (Katt) is a Los Angeles public school substitute teacher of special education high school students. During a school field trip, the group encounters aliens who give Hinkley a suit which endows him with superhuman abilities. Also during the encounter, he is instructed by the aliens to thereafter collaborate with FBI Special Agent Bill Maxwell (Culp). Their instructions are to use the suit as a means to fight crime and injustice in the world.
Subsequently, Attorney Pam Davidson (Selleca), who handled Ralph's divorce, also encounters the aliens. Through some coercion, she eventually agrees to, on occasion, join Ralph and Bill during missions.
Suit and Hero persona[edit]
Ralph's uniform grants him the powers of flight, super strength, invulnerability, invisibility, precognition, E.S.P., telekinesis, X-ray vision, super speed, pyrokinesis, holographic vision, shrinking, psychometry, and even the ability to detect the supernatural. As Ralph lost the suit's instruction manual, his discovery of these different powers often come as a surprise even to himself. Notably, while the suit enables Ralph to fly, it does not endow him with any particular skill at landing, so he frequently crashes in an undignified (if undamaged) heap. In the episode "Fire Man" he displays resistance to fire/heat and uses 'super exhalation' (the ability to blow out a flamethrower - or any other large source of fire); he also uses this ability in the episode "There's Just No Accounting...", to extinguish a Molotov cocktail. Ralph also shows signs of being able to control minds after he's exposed to high doses of plutonium radiation. In the season two finale episode, "Lilacs, Mr. Maxwell", Ralph is shown to control a dog via a holograph. This may have been an improvisational power of the suit, but isn't tried again in later episodes. In "The Shock Will Kill You", he (or the suit) becomes strongly magnetized.
In the season two episode "Don't Mess Around with Jim," Ralph and Maxwell learn they are not the first duo who received such a uniform. Jim "J.J." Beck had received the suit, and Marshall Dunn was his partner, much like Ralph and Maxwell operated. But Jim was overwhelmed with the power of the suit, and he used it selfishly and for ill-gotten gains, until the aliens discover this and take the suit away. It is unknown whether or not there were others before Jim who were visited by the aliens. In "Divorce Venusian Style", the pair meet one of the aliens, whose world was apparently destroyed (which hints as to why the aliens want to protect humanity) and calls Earth one of the few remaining "garden planets". Ralph is given another instruction book during this encounter—-supposedly the aliens' last copy, but he loses it as well. He loses the book when he shrinks to a fraction of normal size, but is not holding the book when he returns to normal.
In the episode, "Vanity, Says the Preacher", it is also revealed there are several humans in seeming "suspended animation" aboard the aliens' ship (Bill speculates that they are possible replacements for them).
Hinkley's hero persona never receives an actual "superhero name" either, although Scarbury sings the Elton John song "Rocket Man" in the pilot. In the pilot episode, Ralph sarcastically refers to himself as "Captain Crash" in reference to his terrible flying ability; and later "Captain Gonzo" in the episode "The Shock Could Kill You".
Like his character, William Katt found the suit very uncomfortable and hated wearing it. Producers made various modifications to the suit to help him, and accommodated him by scheduling filming so he would not have to wear it all day during a shoot.[2]
Symbol[edit]
On the Season 1 DVD, Stephen J. Cannell notes that the symbol design on the front of the suit is actually based on a pair of scissors that he had on his desk during the design of the uniform. He said that the costume designer asked him what he wanted the suit's chest emblem to look like. He said he hadn't really thought about it. The designer then picked the scissors up off the desk, held them upside down, and said "That's your emblem." Cannell was fine with that decision.
The symbol on Ralph's uniform resembles the Chinese character for "center" ㊥. As the symbol is red in color, Hong Kong television station TVB termed the Cantonese-dubbed version of the show (飛天紅中俠), translated to mean "Flying Red Center Hero".
The symbol's bilateral symmetry seemingly avoided the "backward S" problem encountered on the Adventures of Superman. For the low-budget 1950s series, editors would on occasion "flop" stock footage of George Reeves in flight, causing the "S" shield to appear reversed. However, in many Greatest American Hero composite flying sequences, Ralph wore a watch- and the timepiece alternates from one wrist to the other, especially during extended flying sequences.
Cast and characters[edit]
William Katt as Ralph Hinkley/Hanley
Robert Culp as Bill Maxwell
Connie Sellecca as Pam Davidson
Faye Grant as Rhonda Blake
Michael Paré as Tony Villicana
Jesse D. Goins as Cyler Johnson
William Bogert as Les Carlisle
Ralph's surname[edit]
The main character's name was originally Ralph Hinkley, but after the assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley, Jr., on March 30, 1981, the character's last name was hurriedly changed to "Hanley" in two episodes. In "Saturday on Sunset Boulevard", aired within days of the incident, this was accomplished by overdubbing dialogue (i.e. "Hinkley" to "Hanley") whenever the character's last name was spoken aloud. For the rest of the first season, the character was generally referred to as either "Ralph" or "Mister H", although in "The Best Desk Scenario" where Ralph is given a promotion and his own office space, we see the name "Ralph Hanley" on the door plaque. By the season 2 premiere, "The Two-Hundred-Mile-an-Hour Fast Ball", the show's producers returned the character's surname to the original Hinkley.
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