| Batman | |
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Title card for the Batman television series |
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| Genre | Action/Adventure Situation Comedy |
| Created by | William Dozier (series) Lorenzo Semple, Jr. (developer for television) Based on characters created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger |
| Starring | Adam West Burt Ward Alan Napier Neil Hamilton Stafford Repp Madge Blake (Seasons 1–2) Yvonne Craig (Season 3) Cesar Romero Burgess Meredith Frank Gorshin Julie Newmar (Seasons 1–2) Eartha Kitt (Season 3) |
| Narrated by | William Dozier |
| Opening theme | "Batman Theme" by Neal Hefti |
| Ending theme | "Batman Theme" by Neal Hefti |
| Composer(s) | Nelson Riddle Billy May (incidental music) |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 3 |
| No. of episodes | 120 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | William Dozier |
| Producer(s) | Howie Horwitz |
| Running time | 25 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Greenway Productions 20th Century Fox Television |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | ABC |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original run | January 12, 1966 – March 14, 1968 |
| Chronology | |
| Related shows | Batman (1966 film) (spin-off) The Green Hornet |
Batman is an American television series, based on the DC comic book character of the same name. It stars Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin — two crime-fighting heroes who defend Gotham City.[1][2] It aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) network for three seasons from January 12, 1966 to March 14, 1968. The show was aired twice weekly for its first two seasons, and 120 episodes were produced in total.
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In the early 1960s, Ed Graham Productions optioned the television rights to the comic strip Batman and planned a straightforward juvenile adventure show, much like Adventures of Superman and The Lone Ranger, to air on CBS on Saturday mornings. Former American football linebacker and actor Mike Henry was set to star as Batman.
Reportedly, DC Comics commissioned publicity photos of Henry in a Batman costume. Around this same time, the Playboy Club in Chicago was screening the Batman serials (1943's Batman and 1949's Batman and Robin) on Saturday nights. It became very popular. East coast ABC executive Yale Udoff, a Batman fan in his childhood, attended one of these parties at the Playboy Club and was impressed with the reaction the serials were eliciting. He contacted ABC executives Harve Bennett and Edgar J. Scherick, who were already considering developing a television series based on a comic strip action hero, to suggest a prime time Batman series in the hip and fun style of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. When negotiations between CBS and Graham stalled, DC Comics quickly reobtained rights and made the deal with ABC, who farmed the rights out to 20th Century Fox to produce the series.
In turn, 20th Century Fox handed the project to William Dozier and his Greenway Productions. ABC and Fox were expecting a hip and fun—yet still serious—adventure show. However, Dozier, who loathed comic books, concluded the only way to make the show work was to do it as a pop art camp comedy. Ironically, the Batman comic books had recently experienced a change in editorship which marked a return to serious detective stories after decades of tales with aliens, dimensional travel, magical imps and talking animals.[3] Originally, espionage novelist Eric Ambler was to write a TV-movie that would launch the television series, but he dropped out after learning of Dozier's camp comedy approach. Eventually, two sets of screen tests were filmed, one with Adam West and Burt Ward and the other with Lyle Waggoner and Peter Deyell, with West and Ward winning the roles.
By that time, ABC had pushed up the debut date to January 1966, thus forgoing the movie until the summer hiatus. The film would be produced quickly to get into theatres prior to the start of Season Two of the television series. Lorenzo Semple, Jr. had signed on as head script writer. He wrote the pilot script, and generally wrote in a pop art adventure style. Stanley Ralph Ross, Stanford Sherman, and Charles Hoffman were script writers who generally leaned more toward camp comedy, and in Ross's case, sometimes outright slapstick and satire. Originally intended as a one-hour show, ABC only had two early-evening time slots available, so the show was split into two parts, to air twice a week in half-hour installments with a cliffhanger, originally to last only through a station break, connecting the two episodes, echoing the old movie serials.
The Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler, the Catwoman, Mr. Freeze, and the Mad Hatter, all of whom are regular Bat-Villains, appear in the series, which was deliberately villain-driven as well as action-comedy-heavy. There had been plans for Two-Face to appear, depicted as a news anchor who was disfigured when a camera blew up in his face. Though Clint Eastwood was discussed for the role of Two-Face, the show was cancelled before any appearance by this character was made.
The typical story began with a villain (often one of a short list of recurring villains) committing a crime, such as stealing a fabulous gem or taking over Gotham City. This was followed by a scene inside Commissioner Gordon's office, where he and Chief O'Hara would deduce which villain was responsible. To summon Batman for his assistance, Commissioner Gordon would press a button on the Batphone, a bright red telephone located on a pedestal in his office. The scene would then cut to stately Wayne Manor where Alfred (the butler) would answer the Batphone, which sat like a normal everyday telephone on the desk in Bruce Wayne's study. Frequently, Wayne and his ward, Dick Grayson, would be found talking with Dick's aunt, Harriet Cooper, who was unaware of Bruce's and Dick's secret identities. Alfred would discreetly interrupt so they could excuse themselves to go to the Batphone. Upon learning which criminal he would face, Wayne would turn a switch concealed within a bust of Shakespeare that stood on his desk. This would cause a bookcase to slide back and reveal two fireman's poles. "To the Batpoles!" Wayne would exclaim, and he and Grayson would slide down to the Batcave, activating an unseen mechanism on the way that dressed them as their alter egos. The title sequence often began at this point.
Similar in style and content to the 1940s serials, Batman and Robin would arrive in the Batcave in full costume and jump into the Batmobile, with Batman in the driver's seat. Robin would say, "Atomic batteries to power...turbines to speed." Batman would respond, "Roger, ready to move out" and, after fastening their seatbelts, the two would drive out of the cave at high speed. As the Batmobile approached the mouth of the cave (actually a tunnel entrance in Los Angeles's Bronson Canyon) a camouflaged door would swing open and a hinged barrier outside the Batcave would drop down to allow the car to exit onto the road. Scenes of Batman and Robin sliding down the Batpoles and getting into the Batmobile, the Batmobile exiting the Batcave, and the arrival at Commissioner Gordon's building (while the episode credits are shown), are reused footage utilized in nearly all episodes.
After being summoned to Commissioner Gordon's office via the Batphone, the initial discussion of the crime usually led to Batman and Robin conducting their investigation alone. This investigation usually resulted in a meeting with the villain, with the heroes engaging in a fistfight with the villain's henchmen, and the villain getting away, leaving a series of unlikely clues for the two to investigate. Later, they would face the villain's henchmen again, and he or she would capture one or both of the heroes and place them in a deathtrap leading to a cliffhanger ending, which was usually resolved in the first few minutes of the next episode.
The second part of the episode (until late in Season Two) would begin with a brief recap of part one. After the opening credits and the theme music, the cliffhanger was resolved.
The same pattern of plot was repeated in the following episode until the villain was defeated in a major brawl where the action was punctuated by superimposed onomatopoeic words, as in comic book fight scenes ("POW!", "BAM!", "ZONK!", etc.). Not counting five of the Penguin's henchmen who disintegrate or get blown up in the associated Batman theatrical movie, only three criminal characters die during the series: the Riddler's moll Molly (played by Jill St. John in Episode 2) who accidentally falls into the Batcave's atomic reactor, and two contracted "syndicate" gunmen who shoot at Batman and Robin toward the end of the "Zelda The Great/A Death Worse Than Fate" episode, but end up killing each other instead. Twice, Catwoman (Julie Newmar) appears to fall to her death (into a bottomless pit and from a high building into a river), but since she returned in later episodes, it is presumed that as a "cat," she has nine lives and thus has several more left to go. In "Instant Freeze," Mr. Freeze freezes a butler solid and knocks him over, causing him to smash to pieces, although this is implied rather than seen. There is a later reference suggesting the butler survived. In "Green Ice," Mr. Freeze freezes a policeman solid; it is left unclear whether he survived. In "The Penguin's Nest," a policeman suffers an electric shock at the hands of the Penguin's accomplices, but he is presumed to survive, as he appears in some later episodes. In "The Bookworm Turns," Commissioner Gordon appears to be shot and falls off a bridge to his death, but Batman deduces that this was actually an expert high diver in disguise, employed by The Bookworm as a ruse (implying that the diver survived the fall).
Robin, in particular, was especially well known for saying "Holy (insert), Batman!" whenever he encountered something startling.
The series utilized a narrator (producer William Dozier, uncredited) who parodied both the breathless narration style of the 1940s serials and Walter Winchell's narration of The Untouchables. He would end many of the cliffhanger episodes by intoning, "Tune in tomorrow — same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!"
Only two of the series' guest villains ever discovered Batman's true identity: Egghead by deductive reasoning, and King Tut on two occasions (once with a bug on the Batmobile and once by accidentally mining into the Batcave). Egghead was tricked into disbelieving his discovery, as was Tut in the episode when he bugged the Batmobile. In the episode when Tut tunnelled into the Batcave, he was hit on the head by a rock which made him forget his discovery and jarred him back into his identity as a mild-mannered Professor of Egyptology at Yale University. While under the spell of the Siren (Joan Collins), Commissioner Gordon found the Batcave beneath Wayne Manor and deduced Batman's true identity, but Alfred gassed him to prevent his informing her, the memory of the discovery gone after leaving the Siren's spell.
In Season 1, Batman and Robin are super crime-fighting heroes, contending with the villains of Gotham City. It begins with the two-parter, "Hi Diddle Riddle" and "Smack in the Middle", featuring Frank Gorshin as The Riddler.
In Season 2, the show suffered from repetition of its characters and formula. In addition, critics noted that the series' delicate balance of drama and humor that the first season maintained was lost as the stories became increasingly farcical. This, combined with Lorenzo Semple, Jr. contributing fewer scripts and having less of an influence on the series, caused viewers and critics to tire of the repetitive structure of the show.
By Season 3, ratings were falling and the future of the series seemed uncertain. A promotional short featuring Yvonne Craig as Batgirl and Tim Herbert as Killer Moth was produced, since the Batgirl character had made her major debut in a 1966 issue of Detective Comics and the producers, to keep up with the comic book, wanted to add her to the TV series. The short was convincing enough for ABC to pick up Batman for another season, and for Dozier to introduce Batgirl as a regular on the show in an attempt to attract more female viewers. Batgirl's alter ego was Barbara Gordon, Commissioner Gordon's daughter–a mild-mannered librarian at the Gotham Library.[4] The show was reduced to once a week, with mostly self-contained episodes, although the following week's villain would be in a tag at the end of the episode, similar to a soap opera. Accordingly, the narrator's cliffhanger phrases were eliminated, but most episodes would end with him saying something to encourage viewers to watch the next episode.
Aunt Harriet was reduced to just two cameo appearances during the third season because of Madge Blake's poor health (Aunt Harriet was also mentioned in another episode, but was not seen; her absence was explained by her being in shock upstairs). The nature of the scripts and acting started to enter into the realm of surrealism. For example, the set's backgrounds became mere two-dimensional cut-outs against a stark black stage. In addition, the third season was much more topical, with references to hippies, mods, and distinctive 1960s slang, which the previous seasons avoided.
Near the end of the third season, ABC planned to cut the budget even further by eliminating Robin and Chief O'Hara, and making Batgirl Batman's full-time partner. Both Dozier and West were against this idea, and ABC cancelled the show. Weeks later, NBC offered to pick the show up for a fourth season and even restore it to its original twice-a-week format, if the sets were still available for use. However, Fox had already demolished the sets a week before. NBC had no interest in paying the $800,000 for the rebuild, so the offer was withdrawn.
Many sports, music, and media personalities, and a number of Hollywood actors, looked forward to and enjoyed their appearances as villains on the Batman show. They were generally allowed to overact and enjoy themselves on a high-rated television series, guaranteeing them considerable exposure (and thus boosting their careers). The most popular villains on the show included Cesar Romero as Joker, Burgess Meredith as Penguin, Frank Gorshin as Riddler, and Julie Newmar as Catwoman. Other famous names from the "rogues gallery" in the comic book series made appearances on the show (notably Mad Hatter), and some were taken from other superhero comics, such as Puzzler and Archer (Superman villains) and The Clock King (a Green Arrow villain, who was again portrayed as a Batman villain in the 1990s animated series). Many other villains were created especially for the television show, thus owned by Fox, and never appeared in the comic books (e.g., Shame, Lorelei "The Siren" Circe, Chandell/Fingers, the Bookworm, Lord Marmaduke Ffogg, Dr. Cassandra Spellcraft, and Louie the Lilac), while some were hybrids. The comics' Mr. Zero was renamed Mr. Freeze, a name change that was copied in the comics with lasting effect, and the comics' Brainy Barrows was reworked as Egghead (later, an Egg Head appears in the June 2010 issue of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold comic). A second Batgirl was introduced to the comic book, this time as Commissioner Gordon's daughter Barbara. The Riddler, who previously only appeared once in the comics, became a frequent opponent. The comics featured Eivol Ekdol and his partner in crime the Great Carnado. The television show used Ekdol, but replaced Carnado with Zelda the Great. A 2009 comic book featured the first appearance of a version of King Tut.[7]
A celebrity making a prominent appearance in another role was Lesley Gore playing "Pussycat," an "apprentice" of Catwoman. On the January 19, 1967 episode, she sang her top 20 hit "California Nights". Gore was also the niece of Howie Horwitz, one of the show's producers.
A film based on the television show, Batman, was released in 1966. While it did not initially perform well at the cinema, its continued re-release at theaters and showings on television and video have proven profitable for decades. Originally, the movie had been conceived to help sell the television series abroad, but the success of the series in America was sufficient publicity. The film was shot after season one was filmed. The movie's budget allowed for producers to build the Batboat and Batcopter, which were used in the second and third seasons of the television show.
The live action television show was extraordinarily popular, called "the biggest TV phenomenon of the mid-1960s".[8] At the height of its popularity, it was the only prime-time television show other than Peyton Place to be broadcast twice in one week as part of its regular schedule, airing at 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays. Episodes of the show were filmed as two-part cliffhangers, with each storyline beginning on Wednesday and ending on the Thursday night episode (in the second season, a pair of three-parters were also seen). At the very end of the Thursday night segment, a little tag featuring the next week's villain would be shown, such as, "Next week: Batman jousts with The Joker again!" This started on the third week of the series' run and continued until the end of season two. The first episode of a storyline would typically end with Batman and Robin being trapped in a deathtrap, while the narrator (Dozier) would tell viewers to watch the next night with the repeated phrase: "Tune in tomorrow — same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!" Even many years after the show ceased production, this catch-phrase still remained a long-running punchline in popular culture.
On March 16, 1966, the East Coast broadcast of "The Purr-Fect Crime" was interrupted, then cut-off, by news bulletins and special coverage of the Gemini 8 space mission, which had run into trouble and had to be brought back to Earth later that evening. On the West Coast, the live coverage of the emergency splashdown pre-empted the show entirely. Part two of this episode, "Better Luck Next Time", aired as scheduled the following night (March 17). These were the first two episodes to be repeated later that spring, since when originally aired on March 16, East Coast viewers had seen only bits and pieces of Part 1 while West Coast viewers did not see Part 1 at all.
Several cast members recorded music tied in to the series. Adam West released a single titled "Miranda", a country-tinged pop song that he actually performed in costume during live appearances in the 1960s. Frank Gorshin released a song titled "The Riddler", which was composed and arranged by Mel Tormé. Burgess Meredith recorded a spoken word single called "The Escape" backed with "The Capture", which consisted of The Penguin narrating his recent crime spree to a jazz beat. Burt Ward recorded a song called "Boy Wonder, I Love You", written and arranged by Frank Zappa.
In 1972, Burt Ward and Yvonne Craig reunited as Robin and Batgirl for an Equal Pay public service announcement. Dick Gautier played Batman because Adam West was, at the time, trying to distance himself from the role. It was narrated by William Dozier. In 1977, Adam West and Burt Ward returned as voice actors for the Filmation-produced animated series, The New Adventures of Batman. West would once again reprise his role as Batman in animated form when he succeeded Olan Soule in the final two seasons of Super Friends. In 1979, West, Ward, and Frank Gorshin reunited on NBC for Hanna-Barbera's two Legends of the Superheroes television specials. In the 1980s, West, Meriwether, Ward, Craig, and Price teamed up for a series of celebrity editions of Family Feud.
In 1986, the department store chain Zayre ran a Christmas commercial paying homage to the Batman series including the Shakespeare bust opening the bookcase secret passage in the study revealing Batpoles leading to the Batcave, changing clothes while going down the poles, running and jumping into the TV series' Batmobile, and using similar language including Robin's "Holy" exclamations.
The series' stars, Adam West and Burt Ward, were typecast for decades afterwards, with West especially finding himself unable to escape the reputation of a hammy, campy actor. However, years after the series' impact faded, an episode of Batman: The Animated Series paid tribute to West with an episode titled "Beware The Gray Ghost". In this episode, West played the role of an aging star of a superhero television series Bruce Wayne had watched as a child and from which he later found inspiration. This gave West new popularity with the next generation of fans. He also played Gotham City's Mayor Grange as a somewhat recurring role in The Batman.
In 2003, West and Ward reunited for a tongue-in-cheek television movie titled Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt which combined dramatized recreations of the filming of the original series (with younger actors standing in for the stars), with modern day footage of West and Ward searching for a stolen Batmobile. The film included cameo appearances by Newmar, Gorshin, and Lee Meriwether, as well as Lyle Waggoner, who had been an early candidate for the role of Batman. Yvonne Craig did not appear in the movie — she reportedly disliked the script. The movie received high ratings and was released on DVD in May 2005.
The animated television series Batman: The Brave and the Bold is influenced by the 1960s television series. The opening credits feature Batman rope-climbing up a building, something that Adam West and Burt Ward often did in the show.[9] Several villains from the 1960s show including King Tut, Egghead, Mad Hatter, Archer, Bookworm, False Face, Black Widow, Siren, Marsha Queen of Diamonds, Louie the Lilac, Ma Parker, and Shame make cameo appearances as prisoners at Iron Heights prison in the episode "Day of the Dark Knight!". They are all captured by Batman and Green Arrow during a mass escape attempt. The episode "Game Over for Owlman!" shows a room in the Batcave containing "souvenirs" of deathtraps that the Joker employed in the 1960s series, with accompanying flashbacks: the giant key from the "Human Key Duplicator" from "The Impractical Joker", the slot machine-controlled electric chair from "The Joker Goes to School", and the giant clam from "The Joker's Hard Times". The episode "The Color of Revenge!" begins with a flashback to the time of the 1960s television series, using attributes such as the red Batphone, the Shakespeare bust, the sliding bookcase, the Batpoles, Robin in his old television-series costume, and the shot of Batman and Robin fastening their seat belts in the Batmobile. Additionally, the Adam West Batman briefly appears in "Night of the Batmen!" as part of an army of Batmen gathered across the Multiverse.
The Young Justice episode "Schooled" briefly references the show as well by featuring a Shakespeare bust in Bruce's office at the Waynetech building in Metropolis. As a further homage to the series, Bruce is shown accessing an emergency Batsuit hidden in his desk by flipping a switch concealed within the bust.
A line spoken by Robin (Chris O'Donnell) in Batman Forever is a homage to the television Robin's catch-phrase exclamations that started "Holy" and sometimes ended "Batman!", for instance "Holy bargain basements, Batman!" (from the television series' first season) and "Holy flypaper, Batman!" (From the television series' second season). During the movie, Robin says "Holey rusted metal, Batman!" after the duo climb onto twisted metal girders beside some water. This catchphrase also appeared for a time in "Batman" comic books.
Despite considerable interest,[10] there is no official home entertainment release of the series.
Conflicting reports of the reasons behind the non-release of the series point to a number of different factors, which may or may not indeed play a part. These include:
The series, under the Fox/ABC deal, is however still in syndication, and regularly shown on a number of channels around the world. Thus far, though, only the 1966 feature film is available on DVD for non-broadcast viewing in North America. This affected the 2003 television movie reunion Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt, also released to DVD, which was able to make use of footage only from the 1966 movie.
With Batman being unavailable for home-video release, an unusual situation has occurred in which material that would be considered DVD featurettes has been released separately. In 2004, Image Entertainment released Holy Batmania, a two-DVD set that included documentaries on the making of the series, as well as rare footage such as the original screen tests of the cast and Lyle Waggoner.[18] In 2008, Adam West released a privately issued DVD with the tongue-in-cheek title Adam West Naked for which he recorded anecdotes regarding all 120 episodes of the series.[19]
The series returned to national network TV for the first time in October 2011 when it begins a run on the nostalgia programming Me-TV network in October 2011.[20]
Starting in 1966, an enormous amount of Batman merchandise was manufactured and marketed to cash-in on the TV show's vast popularity. This includes trading cards, scale model kits of the Batmobile, coloring books, and board games. Items from this particular era have gained substantial collector appeal with their remarkable variety, scarcity, and style.
One of the most desired collectibles involves the episodes introducing Catwoman ("The Purr-fect Crime" / "Better Luck Next Time"), which were the subject of a View-Master reel & booklet set in 1966 (Sawyers Packet # B492). While the series was first-run on ABC, packet cover indicia reflected the "Bat Craze" cultural phenomenon by referring to the booklet as a "Batbooklet, Dynamically illustrated." By the time the television series was cancelled in 1968 and GAF had taken over the View-Master product, "Batbooklet" was removed in favor of then-standard View-Master packaging for all future releases in the decades to follow, right up the period when the standard packet line was discontinued. The first season's superimposed fight onomatopoeias were not used for the View-Master's scenes of fights. Instead, black-lined "blast" balloons (transparent inside), and series-like onomatopoeias were illustrated and superimposed over fight images.
The popularity of the TV series has carried several decades after its debut; toy company Mattel has made the 1966 Batmobile in various scales for the Hot Wheels product line.
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