Billion Dollar Batman
Page 13
Anderson left Hawaii when MGM invited him to come to Hollywood for a screen test. He also tested at Warner Brothers, and the studio immediately signed him to a seven-year contract, thinking he would be perfect for a series they were developing about gunslinger Doc Holliday, to be produced by Howie Horwitz, producer of the popular 77 Sunset Strip. Warner Bros. also changed his name. Since there had already been a silent cowboy star named Bronco Billy Anderson, and since he was going to be appearing in a Western TV series, he adopted his middle name, West, as a surname, and coupled it with Adam because he liked the way the two names sounded together.59 The Doc Holliday pilot, however, didn’t sell. “I played a consumptive and an alcoholic,” said West. “ABC was reluctant to go with it. I can understand—it wouldn’t be good for merchandising, except for hospitals.”60 For the next seven years, West made guest appearances on numerous Western TV series such as Maverick, Laramie, Sugarfoot and Gunsmoke, and drama series like Goodyear Theatre and Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse.61 He also starred in three other pilots: Johnny Cinderella for Desilu, playing a troubleshooter for a retired gambling czar; Rio for RonCom; and Alexander the Great for Selmur, a pilot that reportedly cost close to one million dollars to produce.62
He also picked up small roles in films, acting opposite Paul Newman in The Young Philadelphians (1959), Chuck Connors in Geronimo (1962) and Steve McQueen in Soldier in the Rain (1963). The pressures of launching a film and TV career took their toll on his second marriage; he and his wife divorced in 1962. After a small role in the 1964 cult sci-fi classic Robinson Crusoe on Mars, West starred in two films in 1965, The Outlaws is Coming, the last feature film starring the Three Stooges, and Mara of the Wilderness. Though television offered the promise of steadier work, West was becoming discouraged. “I had done four TV pilots here in Hollywood and they all had been approached with a great deal of enthusiasm and money and gloss,” said West. “But I’m not an 8x10 glossy photo. I’ve got to find something special. The pilots had all gone right up to the wire but they never got on the air so my mortality rate in that area was high. And I had no desire to keep doing guest spots on TV.”63 Then, like Ty Hardin, he went to Italy. “I decided to go to Europe and approach my work as if it were completely fresh and new,” said the actor. In Italy, West starred in the spaghetti Western, I quattro inesorabili, released in the U.S. as The Relentless Four. “I did the one picture and had offers to do five more. If I had done them, they would have opened some prestigious doors. But I decided to come home because I wanted to see my kids.”64 When he returned to Los Angeles, West received a call from his agent, Lew Sherrell, who told him about Batman. Asked a couple of years later what his first response was when he heard he was being sent to read for Batman, West said, “My reaction was Ecch!”65 He changed his mind, however, once he stepped into Dozier’s office and was handed the script, which he was invited to read in an adjoining room. Soon, the down-on-his-luck actor who saw so many opportunities for a starring role in a TV series come and go, who saw his marriage disintegrate while he chased film and TV roles, and who fled to Europe in search of more meaningful and fulfilling work, was laughing. West thought Lorenzo Semple, Jr.’s script was hilarious. Not only was it funny, but it was something new and fresh and exciting. He knew he’d been handed a winner.
William Dozier's daughter, Deborah, poses with Adam West on the set of Batman. Off-camera, West wore a bathrobe to protect the Bat-uniform— and to give him pockets (© Deborah Dozier Potter).
William Dozier later recalled, “I had him come in and let him read the first script and we talked and he had an immediate and very intelligent insight into what we were trying to do. He grasped the duality of this thing immediately, that he would have to play it very straight and very square in order to have it come through as humor.”66 Dozier always appreciated that West “could resist the terrible temptation to be charming. All we wanted from him was eternal squareness, rigidity and purposefulness.”67 Deborah Dozier Potter recalled that her father “loved Adam. He thought Adam was just spot on and right for the character.”68 Just three days after West’s 37th birthday, Daily Variety announced that he had been set for the title role in Batman.69
West later told Los Angeles Times reporter Sylvie Reice, “When I got the part, I tried to remember Batman as I knew him when I was a kid—with emotional recall. We’re trying to create a folk hero...when you play a legend, you have to play it with a straight direct line, direct speech and movement. Now Bruce [Wayne], on the other hand, has to come across as the kindest, noblest, most charitable guy—again ‘straight line’—not Cary Grant charming—know what I mean?”70 To another Los Angeles Times reporter, Aleene MacMinn, he said, “All the money is fine. But more important is the freedom I get in my work. It’s the freedom I went to Europe to find. So many people ask if I fear losing my identity—if Adam West the actor is lost in this costume. Well, the answer is strongly negative. At the moment, I’m very happy to be Batman.”71 He was also happy to have a regular paycheck; the first season of Batman would pay him a salary of roughly $45,000.72
“Adam was a terribly nice guy, unlike many actors,” said Lorenzo Semple Jr. “When the show was at its height, he was mobbed everywhere he went, but he was very modest and gave autographs to anybody, he never acted badly at all. I mean, he was excellent. And of course it ruined any career he might have had because he was always Batman. I always liked him enormously. He was a genuinely nice guy.”73
With a potential Batman on board, Dozier continued looking for a young actor to play Robin, the Boy Wonder. His search ended when Bert John Gervis, Jr. entered his office. Gervis, whose mother nicknamed him “Sparky” because of his energetic nature, was the son of an ice skater who owned and operated a traveling ice show called Rhapsody on Ice. At age two, Sparky Gervis began appearing in his parents’ ice shows, billed as “the world’s youngest professional ice skater.” After making his showbiz debut at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, he was featured in Ernest Hix’s Strange as It Seems newspaper strip (a Ripley’s Believe It or Not! imitator). But as he got older, neither his mother, who had been Miss Fort Worth, Miss Texas, and a professional tap-dancer performing with the Freddy Martin Band, nor his father, who later sold the ice show and worked briefly for MCA and NBC, encouraged Sparky to go into show business.74
While attending Beverly Hills High School, he changed the spelling of his first name from “Bert” to “Burt” because he thought it looked cooler.75 Always an exceptional athlete, he made the varsity teams in track and field, wrestling and golf. 76 At age fifteen, he began studying karate and earned a brown belt. He also enrolled in a speedreading class, eventually being tested at 30,000 words per minute with ninety percent comprehension, or so it was claimed. Whether true or not, the assertion brought him national newspaper attention and an appearance on the TV program Read Right.77 “That’s like reading Macbeth in 60 seconds, or War and Peace in an afternoon,” he later told Linda Crawford of The Chicago Tribune.78 Most competitive speedreaders manage 1,000 to 2,000 words per minute with 50% comprehension; world champions generally read less than 5,000 words per minute, which indicates Gervis’s claim of 30,000 words per minute was likely a publicity stunt.
At seventeen, Gervis fell in love with Bonney Lindsey, the daughter of Mort Lindsey, musical conductor on The Merv Griffin Show. Mort Lindsey arranged for Burt and Bonney to spend the summer of 1963 as apprentices at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania, where they met another young hopeful named Rob Reiner. At summer’s end, Gervis returned to California and attended the University of California at Santa Barbara for a semester before transferring to UCLA, where he was a motion picture and theater major.79 To earn money for school, he followed his father into the real estate business. His father introduced him to a client, Saul David, who was a producer at 20th Century Fox. Gervis asked David if he could help him find work as a film extra. Instead, David sent him to an agent, who signed him up only as a favor to David.80
In defiance of their parents,
Burt and Bonney, who had begun living together and were barely scraping by, got married. They were, in Gervis’s words, “starving to death.” He told Aleene MacMinn of The Los Angeles Times, “We had a little apartment on the beach and we’d take Coke bottles back to get money to pay for food. We also had a horse and it took most of our money to feed him. I really felt terrible. I had taken on the responsibility of a husband but I wasn’t supporting my wife.”81 Soon after, Bonney got a raise at her telephone company job, and Burt got a call from his agent about a role for a new TV series. He went to meet William Dozier at Fox. Dozier took one look at the slender, 5’8” Gervis and said, “You’re big.” Gervis replied, “I promise you, sir, I won’t grow any more.”82 Reflecting on it later, Dozier said, “The moment he walked into this office, I knew he was Robin, because he had that ‘Gee whiz, Mr. Dozier,’ y’know, approach right off the bat that couldn’t be duplicated. And he’d never done anything. He’d never acted in any medium before for five minutes, but he was just one of those natural kids.”83
Three weeks later, Gervis was called in to test with Adam West. To give the network a choice, Dozier also tested another pair of actors—Lyle Waggoner, a 30-year-old former encyclopedia salesman who was just beginning his TV and film career, and a young actor named Peter Deyell, who had been appearing in TV and film productions since 1958. The screen test consisted of two scenes from the first episode. First, the actors appeared as Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, with Dick reading a newspaper article about how the Riddler was suing Batman, which would cause him to reveal his identity in court. Realizing that there were other clues they’d overlooked, the two headed to the Batcave. In the next scene, they were seen in costume as Batman and Robin, though Batman didn’t put on his cowl until the end of the scene, when he figured out the address hidden in a coded riddle was that of a nightclub and told Robin he’s too young to come along. In the screen tests, it’s interesting to note that the Batman uniform was different from what would be seen on television—the cowl had longer ears, and the bat symbol on the chest was larger, more jagged, and not encased in a yellow circle. The dialogue in the scenes hinted at the camp parody that would become a staple of the series; when Bruce Wayne said, “And when our good housekeeper, poor Mrs. Cooper, finds out what you’ve been doing on these supposed fishing trips of ours, I’m afraid the blow will kill her,” it was the kind of line that, taken out of context, would give Dr. Frederick Wertham fits.
Waggoner, whose comedic talents would later land him a long-running gig as part of the ensemble of The Carol Burnett Show, certainly looked the part with his matinee-idol handsomeness, jet-black hair and square jaw. “My experience in television was in comedy,” said Waggoner, “and I considered this pretty much a comedy part, and so I was excited about trying out for it, and hopefully getting it, because it looked like a lot of fun. Campy.”84 However, Waggoner’s radio announcer voice and earnest delivery lacked the distinctive character of West’s. As for Deyell, he was not as handsome as Gervis, and his voice sounded too much the conventional teenager, a bit too squeaky for a crime fighter. Both performances were lacking in the energy and conviction of the West/Gervis screen test. Though West, with his sandy brown hair and more rounded chin, looked less the traditional hero than Waggoner, he inhabited the role in a captivating way that Waggoner missed. But while Lyle Waggoner didn’t end up winning the role, he had no lasting regrets about it. Asked if, considering the typecasting that befell Adam West, he felt he dodged a bullet by not playing Batman, Waggoner said, “If I had gotten that part, it probably would have changed the whole career that I’ve had, and resulting in the business that I formed, and in that case, yes, I would’ve dodged a bullet, because the business that I have is more successful than any television role that I could’ve had.”85 In 1979, Waggoner formed Star Waggons, a company that provides custom location trailers for TV and motion picture productions.
Along with the brief scenes from the pilot script, Dyell and Gervis did tests to show their stunt prowess. Dyell, in street clothes, performed a choreographed fight with two stunt men, and appeared to miss one of his cues. Gervis, wearing the Robin outfit sans mask and cape, did some falls and throws with a companion, then demonstrated karate, breaking a board with his hand.
Two months passed, during which Gervis wondered if he’d won the part or not. He didn’t realize he’d bagged it until he was asked to come to Fox to sign his contract. “The studio thought my agents had told me, and my agents thought the studio had told me,” he wrote in his biography, Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights. He had just been turned down for a $1.25 per hour job as a gas station attendant; now he would be making $350 a week in his first professional acting job.86 Before the pilot began filming, he changed his name, adopting the surname of his grandparents to become Burt Ward. Ward’s natural athleticism and eagerness served him well as Batman’s crime-fighting partner. “Robin was strictly one-dimensional in the comic book, but I’ve given him another side,” Ward told The Chicago Tribune’s Linda Crawford. “I’ve made him appealing to teen-agers. I do this by being suave sometimes, youthful other times, very cool at certain moments. Robin had enthusiasm, but I’ve given him style and an attitude toward life. That attitude is typical of the American teen-ager—life is full of excitement, full of color, completely uncorrupted. I gave myself to the part by my body actions, my voice, my enthusiasm, and my style of showing that enthusiasm.”87
THE PILOT
With the main cast selected, Dozier turned his attention to other elements of the show. To begin with, he did a slight redesign of the Batman logo. Deborah Dozier Potter recalled, “I remember when they were designing the logo, he asked my opinion about it, and I remember telling him it should be a little longer, and he did that. If you notice, the logo for the television series is a little bit skinnier than the logo for today’s Warner Bros. films.”88
Next, Dozier ordered an animated title sequence that would echo both the comic books and the pop art of Roy Lichtenstein. Lee Mishkin, who had animated Linus the Lionhearted for Ed Graham, created the iconic title sequence,89 while jazz musician Neal Hefti composed a title theme. “When Bill Dozier originally called me in, I saw some footage and read some scripts,” said Hefti. “It was so fantastic—funny, yet so deadly straight-faced. What I had to write couldn’t be tongue-in-cheek or cute. You had to make it sound like you weren’t putting it down—and there’s a very fine line between put-down and put-on.”90 Hefti spent weeks trying to come up with a tune that captured the right flavor, but felt he was missing it; he later commented that it was “the hardest piece I ever wrote.”91 Finally, he settled on a traditional 12-bar blues tune, composed of a repeated two-note phrase.92 The music was performed with bass guitar, low brass, and percussion, plus an eight-voice chorus singing “Batman!” in perfect unison, not octaves apart, in harmony with the trumpets on the first, fourth and fifth notes of the scale.93
When Hefti finally presented the theme to Dozier, he went into the meeting “reluctantly, apologetically, shuffling my feet and looking like Tom Sawyer. I thought they would throw it back in my face.”94 He needn’t have worried—Dozier loved it. “I wrote the lyrics, too, so I get double credit on it,” said Hefti. “As you know, the lyrics consist of the title repeated six times. One of the choir members on the recording session wrote on his part ‘Word and Music by Neal Hefti.’ Sure, you may say I could have written the theme itself in two minutes—but it took two weeks to work out the arrangement, which is inseparable from the melody. It often takes time to write something that sounds like you just turned on a faucet and it flowed out. Uncluttering is as big a job as cluttering. That’s what made the Dragnet and Peter Gunn themes so great.”95 After the show’s premiere, the theme became such a hit that it won Hefti a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Song of 1966.
When ABC rushed Batman onto the air, Hefti was unable to continue as composer, since he was already committed to provide scores for the films Duel at Diablo and Barefoot in the Park. Consequently, William
Dozier turned to another jazz great to provide the incidental music—Nelson Riddle. Riddle arranged music for classic recordings by Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin and Judy Garland, as well as releasing his own instrumental albums. In the early 1960s, he began composing music for TV shows such as Route 66, The Untouchables and Naked City, and movies like Robin and the 7 Hoods and Ocean’s Eleven. His son, bandleader Christopher Riddle, said his father regarded scoring Batman as a way to increase his BMI royalties by writing “a lot of stuffing music, music to be punched by.”96 For Batman, Riddle made liberal use of Hefti’s tune for shots of the Batmobile in action, and also wrote distinct, individual themes for the villains, all in a brash, over-the-top style that was a far cry from the lush arrangements of his collaborations with Sinatra, but was perfectly in tune with the comic book style of the show.
Batman went into production at a time when networks were still making the switch to color, although most households still had only black-and-white TV sets. At the beginning of the 1965 TV season, NBC broadcast nearly all of its shows in color, while CBS and ABC had almost half their primetime shows in color; the following year, all primetime TV shows on all three networks would be in color. From the beginning, Batman would showcase the bright primary hues one would expect of a program based on a comic book. The sets—which included stately Wayne Manor, the high-tech Batcave, and various villains’ lairs—were the work of a 51-year-old Yugoslav named Serge Krizman. As Batman’s art director, he was also responsible for developing all the Bat-gadgetry. “I’m really having a ball with Batman,” said Krizman, a sports car enthusiast who was the former vice-president of the International Jaguar Owners Association.97