POLAR LIGHTS BLACK BEAUTY - LET'S ROLL

Being a fan of the 1966 Green Hornet TV series, one of the things I love about it is his superlative automobile, The Black Beauty, expertly driven by his more-than capable side kick, Kato.

Unfortunately, I’ve never seen a full size Black Beauty car, original or replica. I don’t think a real one ever made it over to the UK.

I did, however, recently complete one of the 1998 Polar Lights 1/32 scale kits, a reissue of the old Aurora 1966 kit. Aurora did have some involvement with the original series in that they built the model cars that are seen in the revolving garage floor sequence.

The Green Hornet’s alter ego, Britt Reid drove a Chrysler 300 which he would park in his garage.  The Black Beauty was hidden, suspended upside down beneath the garage floor. Once Kato operated the secret switches on the garage tool rack, securing arms would grab extending restraining bars on the front and rear of the car, and base of the garage would slowly revolve 180 degrees revealing the Black Beauty underneath.

The Black Beauty would emerge from the back of the garage and into a back alley (in actuality, French Alley and Eighth Street at Fox Studios)

I’d already built one a while back, and as the kit doesn’t come with figures I thought this time I’d scratch build a couple using altered 1/32 scale tractor driver figures.

I wanted to fit lights to give a little added realism to my photos and toyed with the idea of altering the front light cluster, which on the kit has two single lamps, seen in several publicity photos, as opposed to the twin infra-green ones seen in the series. I  made a couple of custom housings and fitted some LED’s but felt it didn’t look quite right, so decided to go with the kit’s intended look, although I did leave off the clear plastic covers which tended to act as diffusers.

 As we generally see the Black Beauty on screen as it prowls through the city at night I wanted to reflect this and tried to give a film noir look to the photos.

The Black Beauty build is credited to customizer Dean Jeffries who ran Jeffries Automotive Styling and the car itself is based on a 1966 Chrysler Crown Imperial.

Dean Jeffries was the FOX Studios original choice to build the TV Batmobile, a job that eventually went to fellow customizer, George Barris. But Batman producer, William Dozier kept Mr Jeffries in mind for his next production, The Green Hornet.  George Barris did offer a design for the Black Beauty, which looked like a toned downed version of the Batmobile. This was, however turned down in favour of Dean Jeffries rocket firing Limousine.

Dean Jeffries used designer Howard ‘Buck’ Mook to do the working drawings for the Black Beauty, who was apparently inspired by the 1955 Pacard Request for the distinctive Black Beauty front grill. Mr Jeffries also enlisted the help of car body builder Dick Dean, amongst some 20 others to complete the work.

The studio requested Two Black beauties to be built, a filming car and a back- up. One was the ‘hero’ car with all the gadgets, generally referred to as Black Beauty #1, and the other, was the ‘clone’ car a.k.a. Black Beauty #2. Both cars are seen together in the TV episodes Corpse of the Year parts 1& 2. The ‘clone’ car, which does differ from the number 1 car, in particular the vertical front grill support rods which are blacked out on the ‘hero’ car, was originally thought to be only used for the public appearances and promotions. However, some years’ later restorations on the clone car found that it had the same circuitry as the #1 car, so it could well have turned up on screen in several other unidentified episodes.

The Chrysler Imperial was altered to give its heavy duty muscle car look, with those distinctive 15” ‘Apache’ cast alloy wheels, which were given a customized black and alloy look by Dean Jeffries.  The car was altered inside, as it needed a lot of room for all the fully working gadgets (nowadays it would probably all be done with CGI) the body length remained the same at a touch under 19 feet, but the rear of the roof was extended by around 14”. The doors were altered and the exterior handles replaced with hidden button ones. The rear lights were extended to run over the top of the boot (or trunk, as our American cousins call it).Inside was full of additional control panels and storage areas for the Hornet sting and Hornet gun, although most of that was hardly seen on screen. There’s even a fold down centre section on the rear seats that folds into a desk, complete with a hidden geometry set! 

The car has a flying surveillance scanner, rather like the small drones we have nowadays, which emerges from small opening doors on the top of the boot (trunk) lid. For one episode it also houses a Hornet mortar. 

There are rotating rocket ejectors hidden behind the fold down front side lights, and hidden rocket ejectors built into the moulded rear bumper.

Fitted into the front grill is a flip down gun barrel which can spew non- lethal Green Hornet knockout gas. The rear petrol tank cap cover also hides an extending gun barrel which also ejects smoke, oil etc.

Some gadgets which were part of the car features didn’t make it on screen. Every episode shows the Black Beauty with its distinctive half-lit cat’s eye infra- green twin headlight cluster, however it was originally intended that these lights would be used in the car’s stealth mode, replacing normal single headlights which would revolve out of sight (I have read on another fan site that the lights weren’t actually rigged to flip at the time so they stayed in constant green mode during filming) Although it was unexplained to the TV viewer, the first of the three spin-off Gold Key comics demonstrates how the green radiance from polarised headlights makes the Black Beauty, in conjunction with the silent running engine, practically invisible at night. Kato is able to see clearly through fold down filtered visors.

The car was also supposed to have revolving number plates too, although we only got to see the number V194 on screen. According to the Black Beauty webpage, the actual registered licence plate number for the number 1 car is SUE 206. The number 2 car apparently carried commercial plates X62 994, presumably as it was to be used more for promotional displays.

There is also a pair of flip- down rear brooms that are supposed to cover the tyre tracks which were never used in the TV series. These were apparently suggested by George Barris, the designer of the ’66 Batmobile, who I’ve read apparently liked to take the credit for the Black Beauty build too. He did do his own take on the Black Beauty though, which he toured.

So, what has become of these two original Black Beauties? Surprisingly both still survive, in remarkable restored condition. The ’Hero’’ #1 car currently resides in the basement vault of the Petersen Auto Museum in Los Angeles, and is no longer on public display. The second car is privately owned, and is still displayed at car shows.

Let’s Roll, Kato!