The Greatest American Hero


The Greatest American Hero is an American comedy-drama superhero television series that aired on ABC. Created by producer Stephen J. Cannell, it premiered as a two-hour pilot movie on March 18, 1981, and ran until February 2, 1983. The series features William Katt as teacher Ralph Hinkley, Robert Culp as FBI agent Bill Maxwell, and Connie Sellecca as lawyer Pam Davidson. The lead character's surname was temporarily changed to "Hanley" for a few months immediately after President Ronald Reagan and three others were shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr. on March 30, 1981.
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, he loses the instruction book and must learn how to use the suit's powers by trial and error, often with comical results.
The theme song, sung by Joey Scarbury, was a hit when released as a single.

Premise

Ralph Hinkley is a Los Angeles teacher of remedial education high school students. During a school field trip, Ralph encounters extraterrestrials who give him a suit which endows him with superhuman abilities. During the encounter, he is also instructed by the aliens to thereafter collaborate with FBI Special Agent Bill Maxwell. Their instructions are to use the suit as a means to fight crime and injustice in the world.
Subsequently, attorney Pam Davidson, who handled Ralph's divorce, also encounters the aliens. Through some coercion, she eventually agrees, on occasion, to join Ralph and Bill during missions.
Also seen regularly were Rhonda Blake, Tony Villicana, Cyler Johnson and Paco Rodriguez, four of Ralph's students; and Bill's FBI supervisor Les Carlisle.

Suit and hero persona

Ralph's uniform grants him the powers of flight, super strength, invulnerability, invisibility, precognition, telekinesis, X-ray vision, super speed, pyrokinesis, shrinking, psychometry, and even the ability to detect the supernatural. As Ralph lost the suit's instruction manual, his discovery of these different powers is often accidental. 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 heap. In the episode "Fire Man" he displays resistance to fire/heat and uses "super exhalation" ; 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 is exposed to high doses of plutonium radiation. In the season two final episode, "Lilacs, Mr. Maxwell", Ralph is shown to control a dog via a hologram. This may have been an improvisational power of the suit but is not tried again in later episodes. In "The Shock Will Kill You", 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 discovered this and took 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 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.
In the episode "Vanity, Says the Preacher", it is also revealed there are several humans in seeming "suspended animation" aboard the aliens' ship.
Hinkley's hero persona never receives an actual "superhero name" either, although Joey 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 Will 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.

Symbol

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 had not 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.
Image:MJd1-.svg|50px|right|Red Dragon mahjong tile
By coincidence, the symbol on Ralph's uniform resembles the Chinese character for "center" wiktionary:中. As the symbol is red in color with white background, Hong Kong television station TVB titled the Cantonese-dubbed version of the show Fēi Tīn Hùhng Jūng Hahp, meaning "Flying Red Center Hero", in reference to the red center mahjong tile. An alternate translation of "jūng" in Cantonese is "justice", which gave the other meaning for the title of the show "Flying Red Justice Hero". This alternate translation of the show title alludes to the mandate by the alien grantor to use the suit as a means to fight crime and injustice in the world.
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

  • 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
  • Don Cervantes as Paco Rodriguez
  • William Bogert as Les Carlisle

    Ralph's surname

The main character's name was originally Ralph Hinkley, but after the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley Jr., on March 30, 1981, the character's last name was hurriedly changed to "Hanley" in two episodes. In "Here's Looking at You, Kid", aired within days of the incident, this was accomplished by overdubbing a student's use of "Mister Hinkley" to "Mister H," and later by dropping out the audio and dubbing jet engine roars over June Lockhart's two mentions of Ralph's surname in an airport scene. Two weeks later in "Reseda Rose," the name "Hinkley" was overdubbed "Hanley" whenever the character's last name was spoken aloud, which happened frequently in the episode. This was the only episode in which the name "Hanley" was spoken aloud; for the rest of the abbreviated first season, the character was generally referred to as either "Ralph" or "Mister H". The only other instance of the use of the name Hanley was in episode 9, "The Best Desk Scenario," in which Ralph is given a promotion and his own office space, and 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.

Episodes

Production

On the series' season 1 DVD set, Stephen J. Cannell explained that he had planned The Greatest American Hero as a series emphasizing real-life problems, whereas when a change of management occurred in ABC, they requested more heroic, save-the-day-type episodes. As agreed originally between Cannell and then ABC executives Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, the powers would be in the suit, not the man and Ralph would try to solve ordinary-type problems, such as trying to stop corruption in Major League Baseball or an assassination attempt. The series initially emphasized what Cannell referred to as "character comedy" based on human flaws such as envy or hypochondria. The series differed from previous superhero shows because of the emphasis on "rising above" superhero antics and instead exploring what it was like to live in that environment.
Cannell was trying to avoid save-the-day-type episodes, as per the original Adventures of Superman television series, but according to Cannell on the DVD set, when Carsey and Werner left ABC the new network executives wanted the show to be more like a children's show than an adults' show. So, they pushed for the types of shows that Cannell did not want, shows that involved Ralph trying to stop some sort of calamity from happening, including nuclear war and even a Loch Ness Monster-type of creature. For the season two finale, a serious and appropriate for the time episode was produced: "Lilacs, Mr. Maxwell", written and directed by Robert Culp. The episode's story concerns a KGB mole-agent placed into the FBI with the sole purpose of discovering the methods used by agent Bill Maxwell in catching spies and other assorted villains. Cannell gave Culp free rein to produce the episode.
This was also the first of Cannell's series to feature the "Stephen J. Cannell Productions" logo. The production company's first series Tenspeed and Brown Shoe did not feature the logo.

Theme song

The theme song have been used frequently outside of the show. "Believe It or Not" was composed by Mike Post and Stephen Geyer and sung by Joey Scarbury. The theme song became well known during the show's run. "Believe it or Not" debuted in the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 2. It also peaked at the No. 1 position on both the Cashbox and Record World Top 100 Singles charts.