Comics / Cult Favorite

Batmania Revisited

By Philip Schweier
June 9, 2005 - 08:27

My wife and I were poking through the $5 bin at the local Wal-Mart when we came across numerous copies of the 1966 Batman feature film. It reminded me of one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.

I was in college, and my roommate and I sat on the couch watching a rerun of Batman. The Joker escaped prison, Commissioner Gordon gets on the bat-phone, Alfred summons Bruce and Dick into the study, and after being alerted of the Clown Prince of Crime’s nefarious deed, Bruce opens the secret passageway. There are the bat-poles, each labeled clearly, and off we go on another madcap kooky adventure of the Dynamic Duo.

As the opening credits rolled, my roommate turns to me and asks, in complete innocence, “I wonder what would happen if Bruce went down on Dick’s pole?”

I’ll give you a moment to get your mind out of the gutter.

Of course what he was wondering was, would Bruce end up in the Robin costume, and Dick in the Batman costume. A valid question, even if it was phrased poorly.

Batman (the TV show) reigned supreme in the mid-‘60s, and is credited by some as rescuing Batman (the comic book) from cancellation. Sales were lagging, as the character had taken on quasi-science fiction aspects thanks to editor Mort Wesinger.

At a 2003 convention appearance in Atlanta, longtime DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz said, “When I took over Batman, I decided to do something very drastic. I decided to kill off Alfred the butler... and I brought in Aunt Harriet, the aunt of Dick Grayson.”

However Bill Dozier, a producer at 20th Century Fox, was interested in optioning the character for television. Supposedly, the effort was aimed bringing adults who had read comics as kids in the 1940s to the struggling network. The three most popular characters had been Superman, Dick Tracy and Batman. With the first two unavailable, the choice was clear. One story has it that a network exec observed Hugh Hefner and guests getting a hoot out of the goofy low-budget serials of the 1940s, and saw potential in the property.

Batman had fallen on hard times, close to being canceled. Pop culture had become fodder in a lot of mediums, and the network had a narrow window of opportunity before that particular wave crashed upon the shore. It was foolproof. If the show succeeded, the trend could continue a bit longer. If not, failure could be laid at the door of the fickle public, not bad programming. National Periodical Publications (as DC was known back then) had nothing to lose.

“So the first script came in,” continued Schwartz, “And there was no Alfred the butler in this. He (Dozier) said, ‘Where's Alfred the butler?’ and he was told they killed him off. Suddenly they're saying they want him back again. So I had to figure out a way to bring him back, and I did it. And so Alfred the butler was restored, and so both Alfred and Aunt Harriet appeared in the television series.”

Despite a poor response with test audiences, the network spared little expense in promoting the show. Television promos were rampant, including a skywriter at the Rose Bowl game. The show premiered on January 12, 1966, and was an instant hit; popular with kids for the super-hero action, popular with adults for the campy humor. Aired twice a week on Wednesday and Thursday nights, it made stars out of Adam West and his partner in prime time, Burt Ward, a former real estate agent with a young wife to support.

In his biography, Back to the Batcave, West initially discarded the role. “My reaction was ‘Ecch!’ “ he says. Many actors, from George (Superman) Reeves and Bill (Incredible Hulk) Bixby, have cringed at the thought of playing a comic book hero. But like so many, West came to embrace the character that made him a star. West played Batman straight, and for this he got reamed for bad acting. But the truth is he played it as it was written, and like the action figures that followed, Batman had two expressions: mask on and mask off.

Burt Ward, meanwhile, brought a golly-gee-whiz approach to his role, which only came naturally to the 20-year old novice actor suddenly thrust into super-stardom. Unfortunately, sudden fame brought about the end of his marriage. The two actors weren’t used to the attention instant fame and fortune often brings. They were very much in demand for personal appearances throughout America. Their escapades on these tours are recounted in their books, Back to the Batcave by West, and Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights by Ward.

Not only was the show a hit with audiences, but it was in Hollywood, too. Regular cast villains included Cesar Romero, Frank Gorshin, and Burgess Meredith, who had the time of his life portraying the Felon of Fowl Play, the Penguin. Writers kept a script on hand for him whenever he was available. For many actors, it became Hollywood’s most popular gig, leading the producers to create an entire new rogues gallery for Batman to battle. Performers such as Vincent Price, Shelley Winters, Milton Berle, Tallulah Bankhead, and Liberace all made appearances.

Other celebrities made cameos as the Caped Crusaders scaled the side of Gotham’s skyscrapers. Stars such as Sammy Davis Jr., Jerry Lewis, and Van Williams as The Green Hornet – promoting his own show from the same producers – all poked their head out the window long before Laugh-In made it popular. Batmania infected show business like never before. Popular music stars Jan & Dean cut an album, Jan & Dean meet Batman, in which their comedic alter egos Captain Jan and Dean, the Boy Blunder fought evil in between beach songs about the Gotham crimefighter.

Jules Feiffer, in his book The Great Comic Book Heroes writes, “Comic books, first of all, are junk. To accuse them of being what they are is to make no accusation at all; there is no such thing as uncorrupt junk or moral junk or educational junk.” If one applies Feiffer’s reasoning to television, there is no such thing as good junk, only successful or unsuccessful junk. Batman made the jump from one junk medium into another. With one feeding off the other, each became a success.

Lorenzo Semple Jr., chief writer and editorial adviser for the show, said in a Saturday Evening Post interview at the time. “It was all so fantastically easy. Everyone has a certain amount of guilt about Batman.” Which is to say that television, then and now, is a crap-shoot, with no guaranteed formula for success. Semple, a veteran magazine short-story writer, set the tone of the show.

Horribly corny became high camp, silliness became satire, and insipid pablum became ingenious programming. To some, Batman was so bad, it was good. Producer Howie Horwitz, in the same Saturday Evening Post article, strongly disagreed. “If all we had to do was be bad, we wouldn’t be working so hard.” And work hard they did.

A feature film followed the first season, offering producers a larger canvass. Included in the movie were new toys, the bat-boat and bat-copter.

But by the end of the second season, the numbers began to slip. The joke had worn thin, so producers did what they could to inject the show with new life. One solution in the third season was to introduce a new female character. “That was my assignment,” said Schwartz. “So I came up with the idea of Batgirl.”

The show followed the idea as it was laid out in the comics, with the curvaceous Yvonne Craig portraying Commissioner Gordon’s crime fighting daughter Barbara. But even a little sex appeal wasn’t enough to hold viewers.

Following ABC’s cancellation, NBC expressed an interest. But overzealous workmen had already destroyed the sets, and NBC wasn’t up for the task of rebuilding. After 120 episodes, the series was dead.

The impact of the 1960s television series reached well into the corners of pop culture. In the years that followed there was rarely a news story written about super-heroes or comic books which did not feature the sound effects from the old show. Headlines often contained “POW! ZAP!” before going on to detail the evolution of costumed crime fighters, or that comic books had become big business.

Following the demise of the series, stars Adam West and Burt Ward took their act on the road once again, making personal appearances in costume and in character, sometimes together, usually separately. Another popular attraction on the celebrity appearance circuit was the Batmobile itself. Formerly a 1957 Ford Futura, the reconditioned concept car became a hot item at car shows and raceways across the United States, thanks to George Barris. A Hollywood legend, he created vehicles for such shows as the Munsters and the Monkees. A total of five were created for the series, each featuring different functions as called for by the scripts.

Adam West and Burt Ward reunited in 1977 to portray Batman and Robin once again. This time it was in a cartoon series for CBS Saturday mornings. The Filmation production was teamed with Tarzan, and ran for two seasons on CBS. But Adam West wasn’t ready to give up the cape and cowl just yet. He assumed the role on Hanna-Barbera’s Super Friends in 1979.

In 1992, following the success of the Batman feature film directed by Tim Burton, Warner Brothers produced a new animated series. While both the new movie and cartoon were decidedly darker in tone than the Batman of the 1960s, there was still an opportunity for them to pay homage to what had come before. In the episode entitled “The Gray Ghost,” Adam West was cast as Simon Trent, the star of a television series which inspired a young Bruce Wayne. Years later, after Batman had begun his career fighting crime in Gotham City, Trent had fallen on hard times as an actor, unable to find work. When his old TV show figures into an extortion plot in Gotham City, Trent provides valuable assistance to the Dark Knight, which returns him to the spotlight.

In 2003, the Dynamic Duo of television came full circle, when West and Ward starred as themselves in a made-for-TV movie that detailed the development of the 1966 Batman TV show. As Adam and Burt set out on the trail of the stolen Batmobile, it becomes clear that all clues point to their old series. In a series of flashbacks, the details of the TV Batman come to life. Some fans found the movie excruciatingly silly, while other felt it completely in touch with the tone of the original series.

Today, Adam West lives a mostly retired life in Idaho, with his wife and family. He and Burt Ward are still very close friends. Ward operates Boy Wonder Visual Effects, a digital effects company in Hollywood. He and his wife are also active in numerous charitable organizations. Many of the original rogues gallery and supporting characters have passed on, Frank Gorshin (the Riddler) being the most recent.

Praise and adulation? Scorn and ridicule? Email me at philip@comicbookbin.com

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12