Billion Dollar Batman

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Billion Dollar Batman Page 16

by Bruce Scivally


  In a 1966 interview, Romero—an actor and dancer known in his Hollywood heyday as “the Latin from Manhattan”—said that he loved playing the Clown Prince of Crime. “It’s a kooky, way-out character,” he said, “the easiest I ever played. I can be as hammy as I like and do all the things we were told not to do: mug, over-act, accentuate. It’s fun because you’re not tied down, inhibited. And I don’t have to worry about circles under the eyes or whether my hair is combed.”165 As the Joker, Romero’s handsome visage was covered in white greasepaint, and he wore a green wig. He refused to shave his famous mustache, so makeup was applied over it; the mustache is clearly visible in close-ups. “The make-up took about an hour to put on, but the wig was a thing that bothered me more than anything else. The wig was green, of course, but it sometimes photographed red, yellow—everything but green. They would glue the wig to the front of my forehead, and after a while it would give me a headache.”166

  It has been long rumored that after Romero was cast, Frank Sinatra expressed an interest in playing the role. Sinatra may not have had the chance to play the part, but the show did co-opt the title of his 1957 film for the first Cesar Romero episode, “The Joker is Wild.”

  Recalling the fervor among actors to appear on the show, Deborah Dozier Potter said, “It was the chic ‘in’ show at the time in the television business. The only equivalent was The Soupy Sales Show, I remember people would love to guest star on that and be hit in the face with a pie. Everybody was calling my father wanting to be on the show and he loved that. He suddenly became very popular socially again, not that he hadn’t been, but it was a whole different kind of popular. And he just loved it, he loved every minute of it.”167

  William Dozier made Lorenzo Semple, Jr. the show’s executive story editor, and solicited other writers to help ease his workload. At first, it was hard to find writers who would write for the show, until it went on the air and was an instant hit. “I even drafted my son, Bob, who I discovered knew more about Batman than I did,” said Dozier. “I guess he was reading comic books, fortunately, when he was a boy and I was trying to get him to read Moby Dick.” Robert Dozier, who had been writing for television for a decade, wrote the first pair of episodes featuring the Joker. “But now he’s gone back to his movie writing,” said William Dozier, “and other writers are knocking down the door to write for Batman.”168

  Among the writers contributing scripts were relative newcomers Max Hodge and Fred De Gorter as well as veterans like Charles Hoffman, screenwriter of 1946’s Night and Day, and Stephen Kandel, who wrote several episodes of the Lloyd Bridges series Sea Hunt. “They mailed their scripts to me, and I rewrote them and mailed them back,” said Semple. “And that went on for maybe three weeks. And then they said, ‘You’ve got to come back. You have no phone and no communication.’ We were just doing this by ordinary mail. So I said okay, I’ll come back. I said I won’t come all the way to L.A., and I came back as far as Westport, Connecticut. I rented a house there. I did the executive story editing from there. And finally, toward the end of the first year, I moved to L.A. with the family, and was in L.A. for the rest of it.”169

  One of the problems Semple faced was finding writers who understood the show. “They either made it too silly, or they didn’t get the humor of it properly,” said Semple. “I wrote Bat-notes, as I called them, which I would give to the writers to give samples of the type of humor it was meant to be.”170 With a sign that read BAT-BARD on his desk, Semple drew up a list of commandments for the other writers, including a prohibition against killing. “This makes our plotting more difficult; there isn’t much for the villains to do except steal things,” Semple told John Skow of The Saturday Evening Post. With characters such as the Riddler, the Joker, the Penguin and Catwoman returning regularly, he added, “It would be immoral for them to commit murder and then come back on the air.”171 However, to Judy Stone of The New York Times, Semple said of the show, “Of course, on a very sophisticated level, it’s highly immoral, because crime seems to be fun.”172

  One writer who did get the show’s tone was Stanley Ralph Ross, who began his career in advertising before becoming a TV writer and actor. It was Ross who penned the classic words, “Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport... the thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat... the human drama of athletic competition... this is ABC’s Wide World of Sports!” Remembering Ross, who stood 6’6” and weighed nearly 300 pounds, Semple said, “We called him the Jolly Jewish Giant. He was a big guy, and joked a lot, and he got the spirit of the thing.”173 Ross broke into Hollywood rewriting the dialogue of the Annette Funicello-Frankie Avalon beach films to make them sound more authentic and youthful. He then began writing comedy songs for Allen Sherman, of “Hello, Mudduh, Hello, Faddah” fame, and wrote an album for Chris Nelson, one of Sherman’s singers. At a listening party at Nelson’s home in November 1965, he met Batman line producer Howie Horwitz. Ross’s agent had been trying to get Ross a meeting with Horwitz, so now the producer, listening to the songs, put two and two together and asked Ross if he was the one whose agent had been calling him. When Ross said he was, Horwitz said, “I’ll call you.” The next day, Ross was given the assignment of writing the initial Catwoman episode. In an interview with Pat Jankiewicz in Filmfax magazine, Ross recalled, “My agent said, ‘Look, they won’t give you the job by yourself, so you’ll have to write it with Lee Orgel.’ Lee was a producer, always busy out of town, so when the time came for the second draft, I wrote it by myself, at Howie’s house, in front of Howie so he knew I was the writer! After that, he gave me the rest of the jobs by myself.”174 Ross eventually wrote 28 episodes over all three seasons of Batman, including all but two of the episodes featuring the Catwoman. “I was always fascinated with the Catwoman,” said Ross. “I liked to write the Catwoman shows because I wrote this underlying sexual tension between Batman and Catwoman. At one point she almost convinced him to marry her, and they were going to go off and fight crime. She said, ‘We’ll make a marvelous pair, Batman. You know how to catch criminals. I know how the criminal mind works. We’ll get married. We’ll fight crime together. I’m totally reformed.’ And Batman said, ‘What about Robin?’ And she replied, ‘Robin? We’ll kill him.’ I liked that.”175

  The Catwoman debuted in the twentieth episode of the first season. The producers wanted Suzanne Pleshette, a 28-year-old actress from New York, for the role, but when negotiations broke down with the 5’4”, husky-voiced actress, the part went to 5’11”, 32-year-old Julie Newmar. Once a prima ballerina for the Los Angeles Opera, Newmar danced her way through numerous films in the early 1950s, including as one of the brides in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), but it was her role as Stupefyin’ Jones in the Broadway adaptation of the popular comic strip L’il Abner that made her a star. She reprised the role for the 1959 film version. She continued on stage with a Tony-winning role opposite Claudette Colbert in 1961’s The Marriage Go-Round, and in the early 1960s began appearing on television. After guest appearances on The Defenders, Route 66 and The Twilight Zone (playing the devil), she co-starred with Robert Cummings in the short-lived 1964-65 series My Living Doll, as Rhoda the robot.

  In a 1989 interview for Amazing Heroes, Andy Mangels asked Newmar how she won the Catwoman role. “Someone must have thought I’d make a good cat,” she replied. “Some casting agent from Hollywood called me, but I had never seen the series. My brother, who was going to Harvard, had. ‘You’ve got to do it. This is great!’ I was going to turn it down because I was having a good time in New York. I didn’t want to fly out on a weekend.”176

  At her brother’s urging, Newmar made the trip to Hollywood, and was won over when she read the script. “I always felt that cats went to ballet school, and I started at age 5,” said Newmar in a 1995 Entertainment Weekly interview. “Catwoman had to have an intelligent body—which I have—and express physically what’s not in the script.” In a skin-tight black costume that accentuated her voluptuous, narrow-waisted
figure, Newmar’s Catwoman entranced male viewers, and inspired young women. “The girls identify with how good it feels to have that kind of mastery over boys,” said Newmar. “Catwoman is one of the great roles for women in theatrical history.”’ In a 2008 interview with Greg Hernandez, she said, “It’s just a delicious character to sink your body into. First of all, you’re wearing black so it slims you down and you slink around and it’s a very forthright kind of femaleness. It’s just the right amount of aggression and seduction and sassiness.”177 As in the comics, Batman is shown as having a physical attraction to his evil female counterpart. “The Catwoman-Batman combination worked because she desired him and he desired her. But at the heart, they were just incompatible,” Newmar told Brenda Rees of The Los Angeles Times. “She never wanted to destroy Batman; she played him how a cat plays with a mouse. She just wanted to ruin his day. She was naughty for naughtiness’ sake. That’s what made her such a delicious villain.”178 Newmar’s first episode as the Catwoman was the one interrupted by the Gemini VIII newscasts; no wonder so many viewers complained.

  One of the classic roster of Batman villains who did not appear in the series was Two-Face, though he was considered as a potential villain during the first season. Charles FitzSimons, the show’s line producer—and real-life brother of actress Maureen O’Hara—told Donald Freeman of The Chicago Tribune that among the show’s “guest villains” would be Two-Face, adding, “Two-Face is a television commentator, you see, who unfortunately has a TV tube blow up in his face. Henceforth, one side of his face becomes contorted and gruesome, while the other side remains even-featured. Although one half of him could have remained on TV, he decides instead to turn— naturally—to crime.” Whether or not a script was commissioned, Two-Face did not make the cut, perhaps because he was considered too gruesome for the show’s young viewers.179

  In the first season, George Sanders, an actor best known for playing cads in films such as Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve (1950), appeared as Mr. Freeze, a villain who had first appeared in the Batman comic books in February 1959 as Mr. Zero. After the TV show changed his name to Mr. Freeze, the comic books followed suit.

  Another first season villain who came straight from the comic books was Jervis Tetch, also known as the Mad Hatter, who first appeared in the comics in 1948 as a very short, auburn-haired thief patterned after the character from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. He reappeared in the comics of the 1950s and 60s as a more average-sized man with red hair and a thick mustache who concealed all sorts of weaponry in his hat. Though this version of the Mad Hatter would later be revealed as an impostor in the comic books, it is the one that the TV show’s Mad Hatter was based on. Tony Award-winning actor David Wayne played the role.

  False Face also had his beginnings in the comics. Created by Bill Finger, the master of disguise and mimicry appeared in Batman #113 in February 1958, never to be seen again. It was the same with the TV show, where he became a one-off villain, played by character actor Malachi Throne, whose face was hidden under a plastic mask. This angered him so much that he asked for his name to be removed from the credits. The producers complied, and the opening credits read “Special Guest Villain ? as False Face.”

  The show also invented new villains, such as Zelda the Great, who was based on escape artist the Great Carnado from the comic books, but given a sex change by Lorenzo Semple Jr. because it was felt that women were underrepresented among the villains. Dozier originally wanted either Bette Davis or Zsa Zsa Gabor in the role, but it went to Anne Baxter, star of All About Eve (1950), who would return for three episodes in the third season as Olga, Queen of the Bessarovian Cossacks. The first wholly original villain created for the series was King Tut, a Yale professor of Egyptology who, after a bump on the head, believed he was the ancient King of the Nile. Though Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner expressed interest in the role,180 it eventually went to 28-year-old Victor Buono, who had been nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role opposite Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? At 6’3” and weighing nearly 400 pounds, Buono was a physically imposing presence who possessed a marvelous way with words. “Victor could say anything and make me laugh,” said writer Stanley Ralph Ross. “He had this wonderful way of biting off a line. Even the simplest line would be funny in Victor Buono’s mouth.”181 Buono would return as King Tut for four more episodes in the second season and two in season three.

  The Bookworm, on the other hand, only made one appearance. Roddy McDowall, an actor who had been busy in film and television since age 10, played the villain, who—dressed in a brown leather coat and hat—was the living embodiment of a book (he was leather bound). Naturally, the Bookworm episodes premiered during National Library Week.

  With the show not only a hit but a bona fide cultural phenomenon, Dozier became inundated with calls from people wanting to be Batman evil-doers. Among those who vied for villainy were Cyril Ritchard, Nanette Fabray, James Mason and Jonathan Winters. Winters was immediately disqualified. “We can’t have any comedians on this show,” said Dozier. “If any actor plays it for laughs, he goes. He’s got to act as if he’s deciding whether to drop a bomb on Hanoi.”182 Laying out his criteria, Dozier said, “They must be classic actors. John Barrymore would have been great, because the character must have a Machiavellian quality, a sense of humor, and above all be capable of murder.” Those who won the coveted Guest Villain slots were paid between $3,500 and $4,500 to menace the Dynamic Duo.183 This was considered quite high in a time when guests on Lucille Ball’s The Lucy Show received no more than $2,500.184

  William Dozier found a novel way of dealing with the overflow of celebrities who wanted to be seen on the show—the wall climb window cameo. The gag was initiated with the Bookworm episodes. While Batman and Robin are scaling a building (a shot achieved by turning the set and the camera sideways, so the actors are actually walking horizontally but—when the shot is projected normally—appear to be walking vertically), Jerry Lewis opens a window and says, “Are you Batman? Oh, you must be because that’s Robin. Hi, Robin.”

  “Yes, citizen,” says Batman, “but don’t be alarmed. We’re here on official business.”

  “Holy human flies!” exclaims Lewis, closing the window.

  Other performers who made window cameos included Dick Clark, Ted Cassidy as Lurch from The Addams Family, Edward G. Robinson, Art Linkletter, Werner Klemperer as Col. Klink from Hogan’s Heroes, Bill Dana as José Jimenez, Sammy Davis Jr., Don Ho, and—for the Christmas episode—Santa Claus, as played by veteran B-Western sidekick Andy Devine. “It was a huge fad for stars to play the cameo bit for a while,” said Semple. “Everybody wanted to get in the show.”185 The lucky few who made the cut, according to Daily Variety, were paid $100 for their window-popping bits.186

  Not all of the actors who were approached to appear on Batman leapt at the chance, however. Doris Day was asked in January 1966, and politely declined.187 Venerable actor Spencer Tracy was also courted. “Just the other day Bill Dozier sent me a letter and asked me to do—what the devil do they call it?—a cameo,” said Tracy. “Said didn’t I have a grandchild who’d get a kick out of seeing Grandpa as a cameo on Batman. Wasn’t even one of those villain things.” Tracy said it reminded him of when Margaret Sullavan was asked to play a role in an Andy Hardy film. Said Tracy, “She wrote back and said she’d be delighted to appear in the one entitled Death Comes to Andy Hardy.”188 After the second season, the cameos were dropped.

  BATMANIA

  In the spring and summer of 1966, Batman fever exploded across the nation. At the end of January, when the show had been on the air for only three weeks, Chicago DJ Ron Riley announced on his program that he was beginning a Batman club. Riley ordered 25,000 Batman kits, which included bumper stickers, club cards, and buttons. Within 24 hours of announcing the club, he received 30,000 requests.189 By the end of the week, the number had climbed to 90,000.190 In Orange County, California, students at McPherson Junior High School circul
ated a petition to keep their teachers from assigning homework on the evenings that Batman was broadcast. The Los Angeles Times said parents and school officials cheered the show for providing teens with clean-cut role models instead of long-haired rebels.191 At the University of Michigan, Batman became the theme of the winter wonderland. UCLA’s Mardi Gras also adopted a Batman motif. In New York, Upper East Side bars such as Geordie’s, Friday’s and the White Horse Inn posted signs notifying their customers that Batman was on the house TV every Wednesday and Thursday. “The customers come in here, sit around and have a few laughs watching Batman,” said the owner of Geordie’s. “They joke about the show and yell out when certain things happen. Batman is more enjoyable when you’re having a couple of beers.”192 A marquee over a bar on Chicago’s Clark Street read “Protected by Batman.” Across the street, a sign at a laundry said, “Help Batman and Robin Fight Grime.”193 In Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Peacock Lounge was renamed the Peacock Batroom, and featured a combo that billed itself as “The Batmen with Linda Robin.”194 A laundry service in the San Fernando Valley, just above Los Angeles, advertised on its trucks, “Batman capes cleaned free.”195

 

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