INTO THE SECOND SEASON
After completing the Batman movie, Adam West finally took a break, his only official time-off since he’d begun filming the series eight months earlier. With a grand total of three days to relax before filming of the second season commenced, West went sailing off Catalina. He returned to the set with the color of his hair lightened by the salt breezes, so he had to have it dyed “Bat-brown.”260 He told Clay Gowran of The Chicago Tribune that he felt Batman would be a long-running show. “This was a matter of concern at first,” said West, “but now we definitely feel it’s not a hula-hoop fad but real gold.” He also confided that Batman would become “socially satirical” in the second season, saying, “We will start making comments, for instance, on social phenomena, like the poverty program and school dropouts.”261 Speaking to Los Angeles Times critic Charles Champlin, West seemed optimistic about the upcoming season, saying, “When people who have talent and ideas get together and have a good time doing what they’re doing, that’s half the battle. I’ve always said that if we can keep the show fresh and fun, it could go on and on. We’re not patronizing the audiences. We’re not putting them on; we’re giving them credit for understanding what we’re doing.” Reminded of all the pundits who said Batman wouldn’t last, West simply responded, “Poor deluded journalists.”262
With Batman a hit, William Dozier set about preparing other hero-themed TV shows. He hired Stan Hart and Larry Siegel to write a pilot for a Wonder Woman series, but unwisely discarded the comic book conception of the character. In Dozier’s version, Diana Prince, played by Ellie Wood Walker, was an awkward woman with super powers who clearly had an idealized view of herself. When she changed into her Wonder Woman outfit, she preened in front of a mirror, seeing the reflection of a much more attractive woman, played by Linda Harrison. The five-minute pilot failed to generate a series. Dozier had better luck with an adaptation of the popular radio series The Green Hornet. Van Williams starred as Britt Reid, a newspaper publisher who fought crime in the guise of the Green Hornet with his trusty Asian manservant Kato, played by martial arts phenomenon Bruce Lee. Unlike Batman, The Green Hornet was played straight. “It would be foolhardy to try to copy Batman,” said Dozier. “Batman is in a class by itself and any imposter would fall on its Batface.”263 As it happened, The Green Hornet fell on its face anyway, despite Dozier’s effort to boost its ratings by having the Green Hornet and Kato make a window cameo on Batman, and joining the Caped Crusaders in a pair of episodes in Batman’s second season; ABC cancelled the show after one season. Dozier also produced a half-hour pilot for a Dick Tracy series, with Ray MacDonnell as Chester Gould’s detective, which was supposed to have been a mid-season replacement for NBC in the 1966-67 season, but when The Green Hornet fell to the bottom of the ratings, NBC changed its mind.
For Batman’s second season, ABC-TV ordered 52 half-hours, with a $3,500,000 budget for the bunch.264 The premiere episodes introduced the Archer, a villain who had originally appeared as a nemesis of Superman in Superman #13 (November/December 1941). Famed actor Art Carney, immortal to many as Ed Norton from the Honeymooners shows and skits, played the villain, who dressed like Robin Hood and spoke in pseudo-Olde English. “It’s an opportunity, basically, to overact and to have some fun,” said Carney.265 Stanley Ralph Ross, who wrote the Archer episodes, was less than thrilled with their execution. “The favorite Batman episode that I wrote was not the best one on the air,” he said in an interview in James Van Hise’s book, Batmania. “I really liked writing the Archer, but it didn’t play well. I don’t know if Art Carney was wrong for the part or if it was the director...It was very slow for me.”266
Next up was a pair of episodes featuring the Catwoman, with Julie Newmar returning to the role she’d been unable to perform in the movie, and then another new villain was introduced, the Minstrel. Van Johnson, a top star of MGM dramas and musicals in the 1940s, was cast in the role. “I still have trouble with this baby-face of mine,” said the actor, who was 50 years old at the time but looked younger. “You know I’ve never been able to play a villain? Until now. I’m going to play a character called Minstrel on Batman. My agent had a dickens of a time convincing them I could play a villain.”267 As with the Archer episode, the villain was poorly conceived, and Johnson’s performance lacked the spark that Julie Newmar, Cesar Romero, Frank Gorshin and Burgess Meredith regularly brought to their recurring characters.
In-between filming new episodes, as the Batman movie was being edited and readied for theaters, Adam West and Burt Ward went on promotional tours around the country. West was scheduled to kick off the “Concerts at the Shea” series at Shea Stadium with a Batman-themed show on the afternoon and evening of June 25. Sharing the bill were Frank Gorshin, the Warren Covington Orchestra, musical acts including the Young Rascals, Junior Walker and the All-Stars, and the Chiffons, and 24 Batusi girls.268 Within a month, 20,000 tickets were reportedly sold (the Beatles had played Shea Stadium the previous August, to a record crowd of 55,600).269 However, events over the next few weeks threatened to derail the concert.
First, a newspaper exposé of the show’s producer, Harry Bloomfield, revealed that the city had previously refused him a show license because in 1949 he had been sentenced to four months in jail for failing to give the Federal Government income tax and Social Security money from a production that failed.270 Next came threatened defections by some of the scheduled rock groups, which led to rumors that the show might be canceled.271 Then, just three days before the show, a thousand tickets were stolen from the offices of the publicist, Mal Braveman Associates. The tickets, valued at $6 each, had been set aside for the press. Braveman discovered the theft after arriving at work and finding the office doors unlocked.272 As if that wasn’t enough, the day before the show Parks Commissioner Thomas P.F. Hoving threatened to cancel the concert unless the sponsors, Concerts at the Shea, Inc., put up a $5,000 security against possible damage to the park. Hoving set a 9 PM deadline, and waited. As the hour grew later and later, he began to wonder what would happen if he followed through and pulled the plug on the show. “I was sweating it out,” he said. “I had visions of real screams and teen-agers marching on City Hall.” Finally, at exactly 9 PM, a representative from the sponsors arrived at Hoving’s office with the cash.273
The next afternoon, on a blistering hot day, only 3,000 fans showed up. An hour before the 2 PM show time, carpenters and stagehands who feared they would not get paid began dismantling the stage platforms. Adam West had to personally assure them that, if necessary, he would pay their fees to keep them from sabotaging the show. When the show started, the hot-dog chomping kids, anxious to see their hero, had to endure two and a half hours of one rock group after another coming out and performing to little or no applause. But then, at 4:40 PM, Batman appeared from left field, circling the stadium in a Cadillac. New York Times reporter Robert Sherman wrote “shouts and cheers rolled down from the stands—the 3,000 sounded like 30,000.” Frank Gorshin appeared as the Riddler, joining West for a routine that included the Riddler asking, “Why are the Mets like my mother-in-law’s biscuits? Answer: they both need a better batter.” Then, both West and Gorshin appeared dressed in normal attire to sing a few solo songs. “Gorshin’s impersonations were, for the most part, lost in the wide open spaces,” wrote Sherman, “but Adam West revealed a mellow, resonant, crooning voice that set the kids to cheering all over again.” Then, after a performance by The Temptations, the show ended, to be repeated at 7:30 PM—again to a crowd of only approximately 3,000 fans.274 Wrote Herm Schoenfeld in Weekly Variety, “There is nothing more oppressive than the sight of enormous expanses of empty seats bearing down on a handful of people.”275 After the shows, West went to the post-show party, where Bob Kane handed him a script for a feature he hoped to produce called Blind Man’s Bluff.276
But the saga was not quite over. In July, The New York Times reported that Licenses Commissioner Joel J. Tyler had opened an investigation of the Batman concert following complaints by cred
itors that they had not been paid. Three investigators were assigned to the case, and Tyler ordered Concerts at the Shea, Inc. to turn over their records from the event. The executive director of the Parks Department, Henry J. Stern, nonetheless reported that the city had received its $10,000 rental for the stadium and the $5,000 security against damage to the field.277 Adam West had also been paid his $20,000 fee up front. Losses for the Batman concert ran to over $100,000, an amount that bankrupted Concerts at the Shea and ended plans for additional concerts, including one in August 1966 that was to have featured Bob Dylan.278
West returned to Los Angeles to continue filming new second-season episodes, and entertained an honored guest on the Batman set. His Highness Prince Surachatra Chatrachaya Purachatra of Thailand, visiting the United States in mid-July, made it a priority to meet Batman. The prince told Leonard Greenwood of The Los Angeles Times, “I’d like to buy Batman, but I’m not sure it would be hip in Thailand. Not yet, anyway. We’d have to educate the people to this sort of thing first, so I’m thinking of buying the full-length Batman film. This will prepare the ground and we might buy the television series later. The big difficulty is with the jargon. How do you translate ‘Zap’ and ‘Zowie’ into our language?”279
When the Batman film was completed, it had its first screening on a Saturday morning at the Carthay Circle theatre in Los Angeles on July 23 for a select audience that included director Leslie Martinson, Neil Hamilton, Lost in Space star Mark Goddard and his daughter, and a lot of kids. Before the film began, Adam West told the audience, “I can remember when my mother used to bring me to the Roxy early Saturday mornings—now, 20th-Fox is MY mother!”280 Filming of new episodes was again interrupted for the premiere of the Batman film, held in Austin, Texas, as a tribute to Glastron, builders of the Batboat.281 On July 30, 1966, William Dozier, Adam West, Burgess Meredith, Cesar Romero, and Lee Meriwether flew to Austin, where the film had two premiere screenings to benefit the Austin Aqua Festival. After a press conference, the stars, wearing their costumes, were driven in open cars past 10,000 fans lining Congress Avenue to the theater, where the Batboat was on display. Burt Ward, whose wife was expecting, remained in Los Angeles.282 The Batboat, but not the stars, then moved on to San Antonio, where local radio station KBAT sponsored two showings only of the film the following Friday at 11 PM and Saturday at 10 AM. Tickets for the special preview showing sold for $1 in advance, and $1.25 after 5 PM on the Friday.283
On August 6th, 20th Century Fox held a screening of the film at the studio to benefit the Los Angeles Orphanage Guild, followed by a luncheon.284 The following day, Batman received a public blessing from a clergyman. In a Sunday sermon at Manhattan’s All Saints Episcopal Church, the Rev. Dr. Robert E. Terwilliger proclaimed that Batman was so successful not because it appealed to people’s love of adventure and satire but because it provided a “much-needed emotional and almost religious” outlet for viewers. He qualified his statements, however, by saying it was a “second rate” emotional release, since it was grounded in a world of fantasy where total good triumphs completely over total evil. He went on to say that while he did not want to make too much of a “passing fad,” Batman overcoming demonic characters like the Joker with Bat-gas and other “incredible devices” appealed to the public’s attraction to “practical messiahs.” “Batman is the savior who comes in from above to rescue the victims of malignant power with absolute goodness,” said Dr. Terwilliger. “He is called into situations the police can’t handle with a special cultic or prayer device called the Bat-phone. His miracles are the kind modern man likes most—not supernatural but scientific.” Terwilliger said that Batman was “a savior figure,” but added that he didn’t like “this cultish worship of Batman,” which he felt was unhealthy because “it is worship without commitment.”285
The sermon, which was reported in The New York Times, earned Dr. Terwilliger a chance to meet Batman and Robin. Three weeks later, Adam West and Burt Ward came to Manhattan to promote the New York opening of the Batman movie. They were put on a bus and carted from theater to theater along with 20 bodyguards dressed as Gotham City police officers. Upon arrival at each venue, they charged out of the bus, ran through the mob, dashed into the theater and down the aisles, interacted with the filmgoers, and dashed back onto the bus before the screaming fans tore them to pieces. At one appearance, a teenager conked West over the head with a piece of pipe; luckily, his plastic cowl took the brunt of the blow, but still left him dazed. At another stop, the fans crowded around the bus and rocked it so violently it nearly overturned.286
The Rev. Dr. Terwilliger’s encounter with the Caped Crusaders came at an event in Central Park, where 7,000 children turned out to see Batman and Robin at ceremonies honoring 43 children who had been selected as Junior Good Citizens. Parks Commissioner Thomas P.F. Hoving congratulated the Junior Citizens, but his remarks were drowned out by the army of youngsters screaming for their heroes. Hoving introduced Batman, and West, as loudly as he could, said, “Welcome on behalf of Robin the Wonder Boy and all those people in Gotham City.” With Ward’s assistance, he called off the names of the Junior Good Citizens—children selected from 25 youth groups who were ranked high in helping their youth centers—presenting each one with an award. Then, it was off in the Batbus to three parks in the Bronx—St. Mary’s Recreation Center, James L. Lyons Square, and St. Mary’s West playground. For safety’s sake, they stuck close to the bus at each location, having become a little fearful of the cultish worship of savior figures.287 “I had wanted to experience New York,” wrote Adam West, “but all I got to experience was Batmania.”288
During the few days that West and Ward were in Manhattan, The New York Times carried a story of an unfortunate accident resulting in the death of a child that was being blamed on Batman. While wearing a homemade Batman-style outfit, Charles Lee, a 12-year-old from Leicester in the English Midlands, had leapt from a cabinet in the garden shed and was hanged when he got his neck caught in a nylon loop hanging from the roof. After the inquest, at which the death was found to be the result of misadventure, the boy’s father, 51-year-old engineer Reginald Lee, said that he hoped Batman would be taken off British television. “It is far too dramatic and hair- raising,” said Lee. “It encourages children to attempt the impossible.” A spokesman for England’s ABC Television, Ltd., which broadcast the series to 20 million viewers, replied, “We regret that the death of Charles Lee should be attributed to his viewing of Batman. Young viewers are cautioned that they should make no attempt to imitate Batman’s activities. Before each episode young viewers are reminded that Batman does not in fact fly and that all of his exploits are accomplished by means of his ‘secret equipment.’”289
Despite the accident and the resultant outcry, Batman was still a hot commodity in the U.K. In mid-August, after the first five weeks of the series being shown by Scottish Television in Central Scotland, Batman dolls, shirts, candies, guns, planes, comics and cars had disappeared from store shelves. A buyer for Wylie Hill’s, a legendary Glasgow department store with an elaborate toy department, told Weekly Variety, “We have been cleaned of our complete range of Batman toys over the past week, but Batman suits, and all the rest of the gear, should be available again by the end of August.” Stores in Dundee and Aberdeen, where Grampian-TV carried the show, were also selling out.290
In America, the Batman merchandising boom continued with the introduction of new products, including food items like Batman bread, Batman cola, and Batman milk and ice-cream products. Licensing Corporation of America’s Jay Emmett estimated that they had negotiated more than 1,000 Batman toy, game, doll and other official licenses for the Caped Crusader, including a new bumper sticker: “Send Batman to Vietnam.”291
The Batman feature opened on 56 screens in New York City on Wednesday, August 24, 1966. With the excitement provided by West and Ward’s personal appearances, the film grossed $250,000 in five days.292 Howard Thompson, film critic of The New York Times, wrote, “Photographed in ex
cellent color, with Adam West and Burt Ward repeating their key roles, along with other TV colleagues, the show is pretty good for half an hour, and there’s the rub. The joke has been stretched out for nearly two hours. But those first 30 minutes—the exact length of a TV segment, minus the commercials, which were mercifully absent yesterday—are fun. The older home-screen fans who relish Batman for its ‘high camp’ calorie quota, and the legion of young viewers who take the comic-strip derring-do straight, shouldn’t be disappointed. It’s exactly the same thing, only longer. Infinitely. Batman addicts, be warned.”293
When the film opened in Los Angeles the following Wednesday, The Los Angeles Times critic Philip K. Scheuer said, “Reviews of Batman on television have long since become superfluous and I doubt if there’s any sensible reason for this one on Batman, the feature film. It is just more of the same, although stretched interminably. For myself, I became numb and came out numb.”294 By mid-September, it was playing in Chicago, where reviewer Clifford Terry of The Chicago Tribune took a somewhat kinder view, writing, “A wild, zany film filled with good, hoked-up fun, Batman was imaginatively written by Lorenzo Semple Jr. and directed by Leslie Martinson, who turned out a much more careful and elaborate production than its tube counterpart. In addition to the Batomobile [sic], they have added a Batcopter (with Bat Ladder), a Batcycle, Batboat, and even Bat Repellent to subdue a terrifically phony-looking shark...If you dig the TV series, you’ll love the movie. If not, Holy Dragsville!”295
Daily Variety’s John Dooley wrote, “With a big, opulent color feature production Batman is now ready to take on the world. The Mary Poppins of high camp, pic is packed with action, clever sight gags, interesting complications and goes all out on a bat with batmania: batplane, batboat, batcycle, etc., etc. Deadpan humor is stretched to the limit, De Luxe color is comic strip sharp and script retrieves every trick from the popular teleseries batbag, adding a few more sophisticated touches. Pic should prove a big success although hour and 45 minutes length may prove too much of a dose for one sitting.”296
Billion Dollar Batman Page 19
