When Variety’s Army Archerd asked Adam West about rumors that the show had a “homosexual leaning,” West quipped, “Can’t understand that—how could anyone claim it when all we do is fly around in tights and boots, and shun any female entanglements?”231 Archerd got a first-hand demonstration of Batman and Robin’s sex appeal when he observed Adam West and Burt Ward, in costume, making an appearance at a 20th Century-Fox/Bristol Meyers party on the Fox lot to promote the local test of ten specials to be produced by Fox and sponsored by Bristol Meyers. Archerd wrote that the duo was attacked by a horde of adult female fans, adding, “the excitement equaled the squeals, yells exhibited by teen and sub-teenagers to the Beatles. Bill Self, Fox-TV production boss, seated at our table, observed, ‘And to think I came close to turning down Bill Dozier’s ideas for this series!’”232
A Congressman, Democratic Representative Andrew Jacobs Jr. of Indiana, decided to use the power of Batman to effect positive change. When one of his nephews refused to wear a seat belt because “Batman never uses seat belts,” Jacobs said in a House of Representatives speech, “If Batman can get millions of American children to turn their coats into capes, I just have the suspicion that he could also get them to wear their seat belts. Holy belt buckle! Think of the lives that might be saved if Batman could influence more people to fasten their seat belts.”233 In that instance, Dozier listened, and in subsequent episodes of Batman, when the crime fighters leapt into the Batmobile, they were seen snapping their seat belts together before the vehicle roared out of the Batcave.
Batman's Batmobile became as big a star as the superhero. It spawned miniature Corgi and Hot Wheels versions for kids, as well as an Aurora model kit. The original still tours on the classic car circuit (Courtesy Adam West, © Twentieth Century Fox Television).
Besides being phenomenally popular, Batman also received industry recognition at the end of April 1966. When Emmy Award nominations were announced, Frank Gorshin was honored with a nomination in the category of Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Comedy Supporting Role.234 He lost to Don Knotts, who won for an episode of The Andy Griffith Show where Barney Fife returned to Mayberry.
As the first season of Batman ended, the show rode high in the ratings, was splashed across countless magazine covers, and moved millions of dollars in merchandise. Having conquered television, Batman was now poised to conquer movies.
BATMAN—THE MOVIE
William Dozier set the wheels in motion for a Batman feature film at the end of February 1966, just weeks after the show exploded on the airwaves.235 “We’ll have the Joker, the Riddler, the Catwoman and the Penguin get together to stamp out Batman,” said Dozier, “and the humor comes in when they fight about what to do. It’s an exploitation film.”236 With a budget of $1,600,000, the film was scheduled for 26 days of first-unit shooting and six days of second unit filming.237
Dozier hired Leslie H. Martinson, director of a couple of Batman episodes featuring the Penguin, to bring the show’s peculiar brand of camp humor to the big screen. Martinson, who a few years earlier had directed PT 109, a film about the World War II experiences of John F. Kennedy starring Cliff Robertson, appreciated that the Batman script’s ending made a wry comment about international relations. “I’ve waited all these years to make a picture with a great social comment,” said Martinson, “but I never thought it would be on Batman.”238
The same actors who made the roles famous on television played the villains in the Batman film, with the exception of the Catwoman. On March 31, 1966, Daily Variety announced that Julie Newmar would be reprising her role,239 but on April 19 came the news that she would have to bow out of the feature because of a recurrence of a chronic back ailment240 (not, as has often been reported, because she was filming McKenna’s Gold, which didn’t start rolling until late in 1967). With Newmar unavailable and less than a week to go before the commencement of filming, Dozier found a last-minute replacement in Lee Meriwether, a stunning 5’8-1/2” former Miss America who was about to start filming 20th Century-Fox’s TV series The Time Tunnel.
Meriwether beat out hundreds of other actresses who were vying for the part by becoming a feline. In her audition with director Leslie H. Martinson, she curled up in a chair and licked her hand, imitating a cat. Martinson was sold, and Meriwether was measured for a catsuit. In a 1966 interview with Don Alpert of The Los Angeles Times, she said, “I’m very big in the neighborhood now with the kids. I took the costume home and worked in it to get the cat movements. My daughters insisted I parade up the street to show their friends. The looks I got from the mailman and the Helms man [bakery salesman] and the man up the street who was watering his lawn—he took a leap into the house. And I had to stop at Netta’s house and Holly’s house. It was double-take time.”241
The production office at 20th Century Fox generally allowed ten weeks for the completion of a script. Dozier joked that the entire Batman film would be made in that time. “Lorenzo Semple Jr., our principal TV writer, wrote the feature treatment in one week, the script in 10 days and a revised one 72 hours later,” said Dozier. “The whole picture should be finished within these 10 weeks.”242 Semple recalled, “They said they wanted to do a movie, and so I wrote a feature Batman movie. I just said I’ll write one. The only requirement was that it have all the villains in it. So I wrote it. And they did it.”
“I haven’t made features in 10 years, the last at RKO,” said Dozier. In fact, his last film, Stage Struck, a backstage drama directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Henry Fonda, had been made eight years earlier, but those years had seen a lot of changes in the industry. “All my friends are in pictures and I’ve heard many of them say that most of the fun has gone out of it,” said Dozier. “I don’t anticipate the fun going out of Batman because that’s what it is—fun.”243
Before the cameras rolled, however, there was a major detail that had to be worked out. 20th Century Fox prepared a contract offering Adam West $45,000 to play Batman in the film, roughly the same as for 10 weeks of the TV show. But with the explosive popularity of the series, West decided to take a gamble—he demanded $100,000. With filming imminent, the studio agreed to his terms.244
Filming began Monday, April 25, 1966 on Fox’s Stage 10, less than a week after the first season episodes finished shooting. “It’s a total amplification of the television show,” said Dozier. “Big screen—plus color, which 30 to 40 million people who haven’t got color at home will be seeing for the first time in theaters. Plus four of their favorite villains at once. Plus 1-1/2 hours of entertainment instead of 30 minutes. And a much more involved plot, a much broader-scope story.”245
Adam West, who pronounced that the movie’s script was “like What’s New Pussycat—only funnier and wilder,”246 pressed for more scenes as Bruce Wayne than the average TV episode allowed. Leslie Martinson, who directed West’s failed Doc Holliday TV pilot, helped the actor find some new insights into the dual characters of Bruce Wayne and Batman. In Back to the Batcave, a book he wrote with Jeff Rovin, West said, “I found things in the characters that surprised me, for example some steel in Bruce. He didn’t have to put on the Batsuit to stand up for himself or be sexy or confident. Conversely, I realized how much he needed the Batsuit for other things. In musicals, people sing things that would be ludicrous if expressed in dialogue. The costume is like that. When he’s Batman, Bruce can express anger or sadness that his social standing and emotional walls won’t let him show in his day-to-day life.”247
Once on the set, Lee Meriwether’s biggest challenge was keeping a straight face, especially in the love scenes with Adam West. “The kissing in films as an actress is ridiculous,” she said. “I have trouble from getting giggly. You have thirty men staring at you. And at eight in the morning, to kiss Adam West! I mean, he’s very nice, but I giggled. I was afraid he would take it personally.”248
With a budget more befitting of a movie than a TV episode, production designer Serge Krizman was tasked with building some new vehicles. “We’
ve done lots of new things for the movie which also will be used in the new TV episodes,” said Krizman. “There’s a Batboat—jet-powered, of course—a new Batcycle with sidecar, a Batcopter with bat-type wings—believe me, that wasn’t easy to do—and Penguin will have a submarine.”249 The film also answered a question that schoolchildren had been debating all winter: After sliding down their Batpoles, how did Batman and Robin return to stately Wayne Manor? Krizman came up with the answer: jet-powered platforms.250 The shot of Bruce Wayne being propelled up the pole would be recycled for later TV episodes.
As it turned out, the Batcycle had been seen once before. In a pair of Penguin episodes two-thirds of the way through the first season, Batman and Robin leapt on a Batcycle. Leased from a Hollywood company that rented vehicles for motion pictures and TV shows, the first Batcycle was a 1959 Harley Davidson and sidecar, painted black with red trim and with a scalloped Plexiglas windscreen added. While the series was in production, Dan Dempski, a mechanic who worked for car customizer and Batmobile creator George Barris, decided to create his own version of a Batcycle for possible use on the show. He contacted Yamaha, who agreed to provide a Yamaha Catalina 250 to be customized. Working with designs sketched by Tom Daniel, Dempski and a friend, Korki Korkes, began building the bike in Dempski’s garage. When it was finished, Dempski contacted Charles FitzSimons, the line producer of Batman, to sell him on the bike. With the movie about to go into production, there was more money available for assorted Bat toys, so FitzSimons agreed to have a look at Dempski’s Batcycle and sidecar. Impressed, he entered into an agreement with Dempski and Korkes, who formed their own company, Kustomotive, to market the bike. The agreement called for Kustomotive to deliver the Batcycle to the 20th Century Fox lot on April 18, 1966—in time for filming of the movie—at which time they would be paid $350. Kustomotive would also receive $50 per week for each week that the bike was used by the producers, up to a ceiling of $2500. Kustomotive got to keep all profits from car show exhibitions, and promptly made four duplicates to put on the car show circuit.251
Part of the idea behind the Batcycle was that the sidecar was actually a go- kart that could shoot off on its own course. Though a neat idea in theory, it was rather scary in practice. The four-wheeled go-kart, with a 50cc Yamaha engine, rested inside a wooden platform attached to the Batcycle. As the Batcycle slowed, the go-kart would shoot out and take off under its own steam. Stuntmen Hubie Kerns and Victor Paul—doubling for Adam West and Burt Ward—were less than impressed when they were initially shown the vehicle. “They brought it out at four o’clock at night and we gotta use it at eight o’clock the next morning,” said Paul. “I said, ‘Jesus, give me a break—this is ridiculous.’ The guy who built this nightmare, as I call it, takes it around the parking lot and almost kills himself. He hits a parked car with it, gets up, and says that’s the way it works. I said, ‘That’s the way it works? You almost killed yourself!’ Sam Strangis, the production manager, just put his eyebrows up and walked away and left us standing in the parking lot, so Hubie and I stayed until six o’ clock at night trying to work this out.”252
Operating the go-kart while on his hands and knees was perilous for Paul. “Hubie wasn’t that much of a bike man at that time,” said the stuntman. “He drove a motorcycle but this weirdo thing was different. If Hubie was doing 35 miles an hour, I really had to rev it up and really gun it to shoot off this platform going the same direction, and that was hard to do. That was the nightmare of it. I used to yell, ‘Would you slow down for crying out loud, before you kill me?’ He used to laugh.”253
The Batcopter was a Bell 47 helicopter—the same type seen years later in the opening credits of M*A*S*H—provided by National Helicopter, a company begun in 1957 and located at the Van Nuys Airport, northwest of Hollywood. National developed some of the first traffic helicopters used in the Los Angeles areas, and also ran aerial tours, conducted geological surveys, and dusted crops. They also provided helicopters for the 1957-1959 Desilu TV series, Whirlybirds. By the mid-1960s, National had a stable of over thirty Bell 47’s, which they rented out to movies and TV programs. When they were asked to provide a helicopter for the Batman feature, they chose a G3B-1 model Bell 47 that was built in 1964, which had previously been used as a news helicopter by ABC. The helicopter was painted red and fitted with bat wings—actually, tubular frames covered with canvas, which unfortunately reduced the power of the helicopter by 50%. All of the shots involving the helicopter were filmed at the Van Nuys airport, except for shots of the helicopter at sea, which were shot at Marineland in Palos Verdes, and the shots of the helicopter after landing at the Foam Rubber Wholesalers Convention, which were filmed on the New York Street on the Fox backlot. National leased the helicopter to Fox for five days at a rate of $750 per day. Pilot Harry Hauss doubled for Adam West flying the helicopter, while Hubie Kerns doubled for West for the shot of Batman getting dunked in the ocean while holding onto the helicopter ladder.254
The Batboat was designed by Glastron, a company founded in Austin, Texas in 1956 by Robert Hammond, an aircraft designer who had seen what a new material called fiberglass had meant to aviation, and was eager to see what it would do for the family boat. The first year, Hammond and his designer, Mel Whitley, built 24 boats. Over the next two years, they built nearly 5,000. When it was decided to give Batman a boat, Dozier contacted Glastron with the specifications: it needed seating for Batman and Robin, glowing bat eyes, a red flashing bat beacon, hatches for the Batzooka, a glowing Batsignal in the tailfin, and it had to pass a Coast Guard inspection and be done in good taste. It also had to be ready in 31 days. Designer Mel Whitley took up the challenge. With contractors Tony Bell and Rob Robertson, he got a Glastron V-174 test hull and created a mock-up using ten rolls of masking tape and a hundred pounds of cardboard. Production designer Serge Krizman and producer William Dozier approved the design, and Whitley and his team set to work in earnest, building the boat in a garage. Working double shifts, they outfitted the craft with prop gadgets, twin windscreens, a center console, and an aft to deck cover with a bat fin that included the glowing bat signal. There was also a fake jet nozzle that squirted water and gave the illusion of a nuclear boat motor; in fact, the boat was powered by a MerCruiser Chevrolet V-6 engine. The finished boat had a top speed of 45mph. When it was tested, the bat fin in the back was too heavy, and wouldn’t allow the boat to plane down. An adjustment to the drive and the addition of a new prop solved that problem, but then a new one arose—the water squirter in the rear wasn’t seated properly, and was taking in too much water, threatening to sink the boat. After that was corrected, the boat was delivered.255
Adam West piloted the Batboat for several scenes, and wrote in his book Back to the Batcave that it was his “favorite show toy.”256 Burt Ward had somewhat different feelings about it, especially after a frightening accident. He arrived on location at the Santa Barbara pier one morning to see the boat moored at the dock, and learned that stuntman Hubie Kerns, dressed as Batman, would be driving the Batboat for a shot where, in pursuit of the villains, Robin stands up in the boat and shoots a Batzooka. Since the camera boat would be alongside and filming tight on Robin when he fired the weapon, it was felt that Ward’s stunt double, Victor Paul, could not be used. Ward was apprehensive; he remembered the first day of filming the series, when Kerns was at the wheel of the Batmobile and Ward was almost flung from it as the car zoomed out of the Batcave. Now, faced with a similar set-up, Ward said to the stuntman, “Hubie, I swear I’ll kill you if you drive this boat recklessly.” Soon, they were on the water, bouncing along at 45 knots, one second airborne, the next second slamming into the waves. When the director on the camera boat, signaled “Action,” Ward stood and pretended to fire the Batzooka. The camera boat, bouncing on the waves ahead of the Batboat, hadn’t gotten a steady shot, so they swung around to get a close up. Unfortunately, this created a trough, which the Batboat fell into, flipping over on its side—the side where Ward was positioned. Forced underwater,
he was dragged through the brine, holding his breath and holding on to the Batzooka until the boat righted itself.257
Since the four villains spent about half the movie aboard the Penguin’s submarine, that craft also had to be fabricated. Production designer Serge Krizman knew of a submarine hull built for the Frank Sinatra film Assault on a Queen, which just finished shooting at Paramount. Krizman added a penguin to the conning tower of the hull and repainted it, then had a matching 6-foot model created for underwater shots. At the suggestion of line producer Charles FitzSimons, Krizman added penguin flippers to the back of the sub instead of propellers. Both the miniature and the full-size sub were filmed at 20th Century Fox’s Malibu Ranch location, where they had a 4’ deep lake and a giant blue sky backing. During filming of the climactic fight scene, the stuntmen had to dive into the water at an angle to keep from hitting the bottom. One stuntman, Ace Hudkins, still ended up in the hospital when he dove into the shallow water and struck his head.258
While filming on location on the Santa Barbara pier, 20,000 fans showed up to observe the proceedings. As the crowd became more and more restless and were threatening to break through a police barrier, Adam West grabbed a bullhorn and calmly walked over to them, explaining what the crew was doing and asking for cooperation. The crowd settled enough for filming to resume, but when they were finished, West and Burt Ward had to leave by boat.259 Filming wrapped on May 31, 1966.
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