Billion Dollar Batman

by Bruce Scivally

  San Francisco seemed to go particularly “batty,” as reported by Daily Variety on February 7, 1966. KGO-TV, the local ABC outlet, had promoted Batman by using a spotlight to project a Batsignal on city landmarks like the Mark Hopkins Hotel, the Hall of Justice, and City Hall, as well as some low-lying clouds. Meanwhile, a North Beach cabaret called Big Al’s began featuring a topless Batgirl costumed in hood, cape, utility belt and tights—effectively covering everything but her naked torso. She writhed to music provided by a combo called The BatMen. A Sunnyvale discotheque changed its name to “Wayne Manor” and redecorated itself as the Batcave, offering “Batinis” served by Batgirl cocktail waitresses. At bars like the Pierce Street Annex, a popular after-hours watering hole for advertising executives and young professionals, patrons began Batman Fan Clubs, gathering together on Wednesdays and Thursdays to cheer Batman and boo the villains while downing martinis. KGO-TV morning show host Jim Dunbar began offering “Batman for Governor” bumper stickers, and received more letters and mail requests than for any other promotional campaign in the station’s history.196

  In Los Angeles, elementary schools enticed children to buy school lunches by serving a special Batman lunch. Virginia Starr, director of school food services, said, “When the lunch prices were raised from 25 cents to 35 cents this year, the number of lunches served dropped about 300 a day. I had to do something so I dreamed up this way to make the lunches attractive to the children. After all, the food service has to be self-supporting. And if we can bring nutrition to the children by giving it a fancy name, this is good.” The Batman lunch included a Bat Burger (hamburger and relish on a bun), Robin Succotash (lima beans and corn) and Commissioner’s Salad (chopped fruit in raspberry Jell-O topped with marshmallows). Steven O’Connor, an 8-year-old at Santa Anita School, said, “This sure tastes different,” as he bit into his Bat Burger, which—despite its fancy name—was regular school fare.197

  The success of the show kept the 1943 Columbia Pictures Batman serial in the limelight. Already a hit in college towns, Columbia now rolled the serial out to other theaters nationwide as a two-part kiddie matinee attraction, showing eight chapters in one sitting and seven in the next.198 When it was shown at the Cinema Theater in Los Angeles in January—after the premiere of the TV show—it broke house attendance records.

  The serial became an international phenomenon when it played in London in February, where it was such a hit at the Columbia Theatre that it was moved to the Gala Royal Theatre to finish its run.199The Daily Mail said the London audience “almost steals the picture from the actors. Boos and hisses rend the air, cheers raise the rafters and laughter drowns the ballroom-fabric dialogue.”200

  On March12, 1966, the chapter-play began a 16-day run at the prestigious DeMille Theatre in Times Square, which normally presented first-run features with reserved seating.201 On its first two-day weekend, it grossed a very respectable $11,800.202 One of the reviewers who saw it in New York was Raymond Durgnat, who wrote in Films and Filming that the serial “raises abysmal awfulness to the heights of hilarity. It stirs the critical faculties, activating the mind on that strange level where boredom allies itself with total relaxation, so that utter irresponsibility comes bubbling exhilaratingly up, like champagne...one of its charms is that it’s so ideal for amateur satirists that one can’t help but surrender to its anti-aesthetic delights.”203

  Meanwhile, current Batman Adam West delighted in piles of fan mail. In one three week period in February, he received 4,000 fan letters. “I even get them from teachers, with little drawings from grade school kids,” said West, who reflected on his own childhood by saying, “I was a maverick. I went to five different colleges looking for I don’t know quite what...Teens are mavericks today. I like that. It keeps them from that terrible thing—the herd. I dig their individualness.”204 Two months later, the piles of mail became mountains; in April, West received 33,958 letters, 24,731 addressed simply to Batman and 9,587 addressed to him personally.205

  Burt Ward also received “from 3,000 to 5,000 letters a week,” he said, adding, “One girl was so far gone that she said, ‘I watch you every night of the week.’ We’re only on two nights.” Teenage girls wrote begging Ward to call them, and on occasion, he did. “That really drives them crazy,” he said. Once, a young girl wrote asking Ward to call her collect. He complied, but the girl’s mother answered the phone when he called. “Her mother said, ‘She’s a minor. She can’t accept the call. I said, ‘This is Burt Ward, I’m Robin, and your daughter asked me to call her.’ ‘Yeah,’ her mother said, ‘and I’m a monkey’s uncle.’”206

  Batman received more requests for press visits than any other program in 20th Century-Fox Television’s history.207 Its Batcave location at the Desilu Culver City lot also became one of the most-visited sets in film history; practically everyone working in the film industry who wanted to seem like a hero to their kid had to take their young ones to visit the Batman set; by the second season, it was common for as many as 200 guests to be watching the filming from the sidelines.208

  In an era when practically every top TV star released a 45rpm novelty record—and some, like Sebastian Cabot of Family Affair, released whole albums—the Batman stars were corralled to record a trio of singles. Frank Gorshin fared best, recording vocals to “The Riddler Song,” composed and arranged by jazz great Mel Tormé. Adam West, who had a pleasant enough voice, recorded “Miranda,” an ode to a woman who wants to look under his mask. Burt Ward, on the other hand, should have called in sick to the studio. His 45 single contained two songs produced by Frank Zappa, featuring Ward backed by The Mothers of Invention. “Boy Wonder, I Love You” was a typical novelty song, which basically consisted of Ward reading a love letter from a fan. The flip side, “Orange Colored Sky,” was Ward’s take on a song recorded earlier by Nat King Cole. Instead of talking his way through it, Ward actually tried to sing. He claims that the recording company hired a voice coach to work with him, but the coach quickly gave up in frustration. The end result was one of the worst songs ever committed to acetate. Another Ward recording, “Teenage Bill of Rights,” was never released. Four albums that included the Batman theme were released almost simultaneously in March, 1966—The Ventures Play Themes From Batman, Get Smart and Other TV Shows (Dolton LP), Neal Hefti (RCA LP), The Marketts Interpret the Batman Show (Warners LP), and Sunday Morning With the Comics (Reprise LP).209 In the following months, Jan and Dean recorded the theme, and the British rock group The Who covered it on their album, A Quick One. Even Bob Kane got into the act, writing sketches for the comedy team of Marty Allen and Steve Rossi for their parody album, The Adventures of Batman and Rubin (Mercury).210

  Adam West made his television singing debut when he was a guest on ABC’s variety series The Hollywood Palace in early March. Milton Berle, handling the hosting chores that week, kicked off with a monologue in which he said Batman was on his way to the Hollywood Palace. After a cutaway to a stock shot of the Batmobile leaving the Batcave, West—in full Batman regalia—strode onto the stage to trade jokes with Berle (and this just weeks after Berle had publicly slammed the show). West sang “Miranda” and “Only You Can See Her” on the program. Later in the show, Berle appeared as Superman in a sketch that had Martha Raye trying to destroy the Man of Steel by seducing him, until Batman comes to the rescue. On October 8, West returned to host The Hollywood Palace, with guests Ray Charles, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans and Joey Heatherton. This time around, he sang “Orange Colored Sky”—the song Burt Ward had recorded—and “The Summer Wind.” When Bing Crosby hosted the program’s Christmas show, West was back, this time joining Louis Nye in a sketch where Bruce Wayne tries to return a Batman costume to a department store before sitting down with the Crosby children to sing “This Old Man.”

  The popularity of the Batman series also brought Bob Kane into the limelight. Sought out for newspaper and talk show interviews, Kane proudly touted himself as Batman’s creator. Publicly, Kane championed the series, but privately he wa
s less enthused, according to scriptwriter Stanley Ralph Ross. “He was pleasant, complimented me a few times, but he thought the show was ‘too funny,’” said Ross. “He was very annoyed with what we were doing to Batman, didn’t like it, and wanted it more serious. But the show went far beyond what Bob created originally. Bob’s original stuff was sort of primitive.”211

  In April 1966, a 50¢ Signet paperback reprinting some of the early comic book adventures, Batman: The Best of the Original Batman, entered The New York Times paperback bestsellers top ten list upon publication.212 The first printing was originally to have been 850,000 copies, but while the presses were still turning, it was upped to 1,150,000. Signet followed this with another paperback, Batman vs. Three Villains of Doom, by Winston Lyon, with an initial printing of 850,000 copies.213 Winston Lyon was a pseudonym for William Woolfolk, a prolific writer of Golden Age comic books such as Batman, Superman, and Captain Marvel who was known in the industry as “the Shakespeare of the comics.” He later moved into television, where he earned Emmy nominations for scripts he penned for the TV series The Defenders. Later, Woolfolk—again using the pen name Winston Lyon—wrote Batman vs. The Fearsome Foursome, a novelization of the Batman movie.214

  Besides books, there were Batman costumes, soap, greeting cards, tee shirts, toy Batmobiles, jigsaw puzzles, model kits and board games. The first store to carry Batman tee shirts, Gimbels of Philadelphia, sold out of their entire stock of 360 in one day, and immediately ordered 2,400 more.215 National Periodical Publications made so much money from these items that they purchased their sales agent, Licensing Corporation of America, on June 23, 1966.216 Sales of Batman items were projected to bring in $3 million in profit for the year.217 This was good news for William Dozier, whose production company, Greenway Productions, greatly benefited from the sale of Batman products. “In our first year of merchandising from Batman we expect gross sales up to 80 million dollars. We have toys, capes, masks, shirts, recordings—some 500 items—every title preceded with the distinguishing word, bat,” said Dozier. “Greenway, in its corporate set-up, has substantial interest in the profits of all these enterprises.”218

  Even E. William Henry, the head of the Federal Communications Commission, was infected with Bat-fever. At a benefit dinner dance at New York’s Shoreham Hotel on March 5, Henry played Batman and writer Philip Stern played Robin in a skit written by columnist Art Buchwald, in which Batman helped President Johnson solve the Vietnam War. Among those observing the shenanigans were Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., who was the Master of Ceremonies, Senators Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, Joseph D. Tydings of Maryland, Warren G. Magnuson of Washington, and Frank Church of Idaho, Presidential assistant Jack Valenti, Associate Justice Potter Stewart and ambassadors from Algeria, Belgium, Ireland, Kuwait, New Zealand, Spain, and Sweden.219 A month later, when Henry resigned as FCC chairman, Mrs. Edmond Howar, fashion advisor to Lynda, Luci and Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson, saluted him with a Batman-themed party at a Washington discothèque, featuring a huge statue with a Batman cape and napkins that said “Holy Resignation?” The guests were encouraged to come in costume, and The New York Times noted that Robert Vaughn, star of the TV spy series The Man From U.N.C.L.E., came as the man from U.N.C.L.E.220

  Pravda, the Soviet newspaper, commented on Batman in April, accusing the show of brainwashing Americans to become “willing murderers in the Vietnam jungle” and saying that Batman was “the representative of the broad mass of American billionaires” who “kills his enemies beautifully, effectively and with taste, so that shoulder blades crack loudly and scalps break like cantaloupes.” The article said those responsible for Batman, besides becoming rich, were “striving to brainwash the ordinary American, to get him used to the idea that murder is beautiful, that it is a worthy occupation for a real man, a superman.” An ABC spokesman countered, “Pravda, as usual, is a little mixed up. Batman doesn’t kill anyone. He socks them—BIFF! POW! BAM!—but they always come back. The underlying theme of Batman is good triumphing over evil. Pravda seems to have difficulty understanding this or the humor of Batman.”221 Later in the year, a Russian satirical magazine, Krokodil, said that Batman and Robin were “like idealized representatives of the F.B.I.” and accused them of “deepening the spiritual vacuum of the United States.” The magazine went on to say that Batman had hardened American schoolchildren to violence so that they no longer flinched at cruelty and took the death of relatives in their stride. It also called the Dynamic Duo tools of capitalism, claiming that businessmen had made $75 million to $80 million from the “children, teen-agers and underdeveloped adults” who followed Batman’s exploits.222

  When tens of thousands of protesters marched through major cities across the country on May 26, 1966 in protest of America’s involvement in Southeast Asia, marchers on Pennsylvania Avenue carried a sign saying, “Batman opposes the war in Viet Nam.”223 In fact, Batman was being seen in Vietnam by the summer, when ABC struck a deal with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Network to beam Batman to U.S. soldiers in the Asian country.224 By August, the Caped Crusader had entered the war zone in another way. When a development group called the Army Combat Team in Vietnam equipped combat helicopters with a prototype night vision technology, the experiment was called Project Batman. After months of testing, five helicopters were equipped with television systems that amplified light cast by the moon or stars sufficiently to illuminate the landscape, allowing the soldiers to see enemy movement in the darkness. On the nose of each helicopter was a silhouette of a black bat inside a white circle. Each member of the team wore a shoulder patch that said “Batman” with a cartoon of the bat symbol on a TV screen. When the helicopter pilots spoke over their radios, they used the call sign “Batman.”225

  Not everyone was swept up in Bat-fever, however. In February, Compton Advertising, Inc. handled a promotion for Procter & Gamble that, on the surface, seemed innocuous enough. The plan called for an announcement during the Batman program telling kids that they could get an autographed photo of Batman and Robin by simply mailing an empty Gleem toothpaste carton to “Batman, Bat Cave, North Carolina.” The agency had prepared 250,000 photos, with an option for another million.226 The New York advertising agency wanted a memorable address for the offer, so they checked the post office for a Gotham City, but found none. However, looking under “B” for “Bat,” they found Bat Cave, population 200. The agency also contacted the regional post office headquarters in Asheville, North Carolina, who said they would be willing to cooperate.

  In advance of the promotion, news offices around the country were flooded with a press release that read: “The Batman cometh—into your home via an offer of a personal photo.” The release predicted “one of the largest avalanches of photo requests in history.” The news release prompted a mention of the gimmick in The New York Times, a newspaper read by Mrs. Walter Flinch. Mrs. Flinch, the granddaughter of the late Harley Procter, a founder of Procter & Gamble, lived in St. Louis, but also just happened to have a home in Bat Cave, North Carolina. In fact, she owned the cave that gave the community its name. She also owned a lot of stock in Procter & Gamble. Mrs. Flinch promptly phoned Procter & Gamble to voice her displeasure with the stunt, which was sure to overwhelm the tiny Bat Cave post office. William Donaldson, of Procter & Gamble’s promotional staff, said Mrs. Flinch “expressed considerable displeasure—I might even say she made her protest in spades. We felt it worthwhile to listen to her.” As a result, the TV commercials, which were already prepared, were hastily revised, so that viewers were now asked to send their empty toothpaste cartons to Maple Plain, Minnesota. “That’s a town of 754 souls 20 miles from Minneapolis,” said Donaldson. “It has nothing to do with bats, but it is a mailing address used by a large custom service firm which handles such premium offers for P&G and other companies. They are geared for this operation.”227

  Batman also came under attack from Dr. Benjamin Spock, the author of Baby and Child Care, which became one of the biggest best sellers of all time after it
s publication in 1946. When the show first appeared, Dr. Spock, a professor of child development at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said he thought it would be fine viewing, although he hadn’t watched it himself. By the summer, he had changed his mind. “I may have said casually that Batman was okay, I don’t deny it,” said Spock. “I’ve made mistakes before. But if I said it, I said it in ignorance. I was thinking about it in regards to teenagers and adults.” After hearing from parents, psychologists, psychiatrists and students, he concluded, “Batman is bad for pre-school children. It encourages free expression for violence. All this smash, bang, it says to children that adults think this is all right...We are a country of people who indulge themselves in free expressions of aggressiveness. There’s much too little restraint on aggressiveness. Television is one of the places where you see our appetite. We delight in Westerns, crime and brutality. Our treatment of Indians, Negroes and immigrants is unbelievable. We seem to glory in aggressiveness if we make believe or if we think the other guy is a bad guy. I make an earnest plea that we stop.” Dr. Spock believed that Batman on TV was more harmful than the comic book version, because he was “a lot more vivid in motion. There are flesh and blood people. It’s easier to recognize fantasy in books. But pre-school children have no way of telling what’s make-believe. The fact that parents let them see this makes children consider it okay.”228

  Dr. Joyce Brothers also hopped on the Bat-bashing wagon. Addressing a meeting at the Iowa Floor Covering Club in Des Moines in June, 1966, Brothers said, “A child can point a toy gun at another child and say, ‘bang, bang’ and the other child plays dead...But little kids can punch each other and do a lot of damage...There’s been a rash of nursery school incidents in which kids were kicking and hitting each other as a way of solving their conflicts.”229 Other newspaper columnists echoed Spock’s and Brothers’s concerns, noting that Batman seemed to provoke young children to fight in mimicry of their TV idols. William Dozier responded by saying, “As for the criticism that it incites youngsters to slug one another and yell ‘pow’ and ‘wham,’ I suspect they’d do it anyway but just not yell ‘pow’ and ‘wham.’”230