Batman

After 9 years of absence from prime time television, DC comics returned on January 12, 1966 on ABC with Batman. I was only about 4 years old but I remember seeing the first episode. It has been rumored that the producer of the show was to meet with network executives who wanted to turn Batman into a series. The producer had never read a comic book until he was on a plane to attend a meeting with the executives. Unfortunately he didn’t get any of those with the new more serious look for Batman. The ones he did get made him laugh and that became the basis of what he thought the series should be like. Oddly enough the campy sit-com has remained timeless. Stanly Ralph Ross, one of the writers on the show, said that the reason the show seems to remain up to date is that they tried not to make jokes about people that were in the news at that time. On occasion they would but usually not. Also, Gotham City was not a real place. Most shows that remain timeless take place in some type of fantasy land. The show was hot it’s first season and so many famous people wanted to be on the show that they couldn’t create enough villains for the series. So they started the cameo scenes. You know they were usually the ones where Batman and Robin where climbing up the wall and Sammy Davis Jr., Jerry Lewis, Col. Klink etc. would open a window and talk to them. The networks also used this as a way to promote their other shows. As I just mentioned Col. Klink from Hogan’s Heroes showed up looking for Col. Hogan. Why was he looking for WWII P.O.W. in the 1960’s? Also, where is the time machine that Col. Klink had used to get there? Before the Green Hornet crossed over with Batman they met as allies when Green Hornet and Kato popped out of a window to promote their new show. Neil Hamilton was once a big movie star. By the time the 1960’s came around his star was not shining as brightly. I read an interview back in the 70’s where he said that Batman saved his life. You see he was about to kill himself because he could not get cast in any parts. What is it with actors who want to kill themselves because they can’t get parts? If your career is not going well there is no shame in finding another way to make a living. I am trained to be a broadcaster but I am making my living as a bill collector.
This was not Adam West first TV show. He had already done a Three Stooges film and co-starred in the TV series The Detectives Starring Robert Taylor. He did some ill fated pilots but this is the one that took off and made him a star. Unfortunately it typecast him and the only parts he has gotten in most films and TV shows have had something to do with Batman. At one time he did the voice of Batman in one of his many Saturday morning cartoons. Burt Ward was not on anything till this show. His name was really Burt Gervis but the producers thought he should change his name. Since he was to play Dick Grayson the ward of Bruce Wayne he changed his last name to Ward. A lot of stunts were done during the series and stuntmen are paid more if the stunt is dangerous. Since Mr. Ward was a rookie actor it cost the producers less to have him do his own stunts. The more dangerous the stunts became the more they used Mr. Ward. If it was just a drive down the street they used the stunt man. If it was where they had to tie him up to a bomb with real dynamite then they used Mr. Ward. The show slowed down in the ratings and in order to save it half way through the second year they cast Yvonne Craig as Barbara Gordon aka Batgirl. How good a cop could Commissioner Gordon be to not figure out that his own daughter is Batgirl? The show aired on Wednesday and Thursday nights. Between the two Thursday was the biggest in the ratings because it was the ending to the two part adventure. With ratings low there was no way they were going to have a low rated show anchor two nights. Batman was dropped from Wednesday and continued as a regular half hour sit-com on Thursday. The changes didn’t save the show and ABC canceled the series. The producers tried to get another network interested but none of them were. They destroyed most of the sets. Ironically NBC called to say they might be interested if all the sets were still intact. Since they weren’t that was the end of the series. It lived on in reruns on local stations in the 1970’s and still appears on cable networks from time to time. During its brief time on network television it made stars out of the entire cast and the guest villains who ranged from Julie Newmar and Frank Gorshin to Victor Buono and Eli Walich got an added boost to their careers. There have been other TV series based on Superman since the 1950’s. Fox once aired some episodes of their Batman animated series in prime time. Perhaps one day there will be another live TV series in prime time based on Batman. You can click here to go to Adam West website.