The Our detective this week first appeared in Pulp magazines and comic books before making the leap to radio.

He's Jethro Dumont, better known as the Green Lama, a man of mystery and adventure cut from similar cloth

as another radio crime fighter, the Shadow.

Jethro Dumont was an American playboy who spent a decade in Tibet studying Buddhism and mysticism.

After obtaining the title of Lama, and armed with his newfound knowledge and supernatural powers,

Dumont returned the United States to begin a fight against crime.

The Green Lama was created by Pulp writer Kenneth Foster Crossen,

and he first appeared in stories published by Double Detective magazine in 1940.

Crossin created the Lama in response to Street and Smith's popular novels featuring the Shadow

and he was inspired by a story of an American who had studied with

the Lamas in Tibet.

In addition to the novels, Crossin, under the pen name Richard Foster, scripted the Green Lama's comic book

adventures that were published concurrently with the Pulp magazines. The Green

Lama of the Pulps and the comics didn't carry a gun, but he possessed the power of flight and

had sophisticated equipment at its disposal.

He was aided in his adventures by a series of agents, not unlike those employed by the Shadow. And he earned his nickname

because, as the stories explained it, green was one of Buddhism's six sacred

colors and it was the symbol of justice. In 1949, the Green Lama came to radio in a

CBS series that ran for 11 episodes in the summer. The series toned down some of the more otherworldly powers of the

lava but preserved other aspects of his character. One of them was his refusal to

carry a gun, for as he explained it, to carry a gun would make him no better than the criminals he fought.

The Lama was played by Paul Fries in a rare starring turn for the actor who was usually heard

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