I came across this silly bit of trivia today:
How Adam West made the 'most comic book accurate' Batman version - AOL
Though the late Adam West is not quoted, I'm reasonably sure that I remember hearing the actor make this claim something like fifteen years ago. And no, it's not true that BATMAN '66 was the "most comic book accurate BATMAN version."
I love Adam West's work on the show. Fans will never know how much instruction he got from the writers and producers as to how to play "camp Batman." Yet, whatever guidance they gave West cannot take away from his own actor's instincts as to how to make such a fantasy-character seem consistent on its own terms. One has only to look at the test footage Lyle Waggoner did for the Caped Crusader to see how the showrunners lucked out in getting West and his faux-urbane persona (which had admittedly already appeared when the actor portrayed "Captain Q" for the NESTLE'S QUIK product).
All that said, I doubt Adam West ever did more than flip through a few of whatever comics ABC gave him. That's entirely appropriate for the job he was hired to do. But no fan of the period would agree that the TV show reflected the comics, either from the Julie Schwartz era (which was ongoing during the run of the TV show), or from the Jack Schiff editorship that had prevailed for roughly the previous nine years. (Schiff was a Batman editor before that, but I regard his tenure on the feature from 1955 to 1964 to be in its own category since everything after 1955 was in part a response to the newborn Comics Code.) Since the Scwartz era emphasized sober ratiocination as the heroes tracked down criminals-- even if they dressed like scarecrows or penguins-- West *might* have seen some of the generally wackier Schiff comics, so that he drew the conclusion that they were typical of all sixties Batman comics. Hence the "comic book accuracy" fallacy, whether it comes from West or anyone else.
I frankly don't know why anyone would make the claim. BATMAN '66 was successful, at least briefly, because it was its own animal. Producer William Dozier is credited with the idea of infusing the show with the sort of camp/pop art aesthetic that was enjoying popularity in the fine arts; Dozier just transferred the same highly-ironic approach to a show based on juvenile "commercial art."
Neither BATMAN comics nor any of DC's actual humor comics of the period had the slightest conception of irony. I've never seen a DC humor comic from the sixties or earlier that was anything but baggy-pants comedy. The closest the company came to irony was National/DC's acquisition of MAD Magazine in 1964. Some post-Code Schiff BATMAN stories are deliberately wacky in that baggy-pants manner, particularly the notorious Bat-Mite stories. But the ironic approach that made the series popular was not "comic book accurate." That's why dozens of staunch Bat-fans, whether juvenile or middle-aged, didn't like the TV show, and often expressed their disdain in the letters-pages of BATMAN titles, and even in related titles like JUSTICE LEAGUE.
The AOL article is just fluff and its writer seems to have done zero research on his subject. But he didn't need to make false statements about BATMAN '66 to build it up, because the truth is much more interesting.
I'm probably alone in this view, but I'd like to have seen Adam West reprise his role as Batman in the 1989 Tim Burton movie, played exactly as Michael Keaton portrayed the character. As Batman was mostly a stuntman in a bat suit, West could've carried it off, especially if he was meant to have come out of retirement as in Frank Miller's Dark Knight.
ReplyDeleteI can see why the Bat-producers preferred to go with a thirty-something for the general audience, but yeah, it's interesting to speculate if in 1989 West could have tapped into his original actors' instincts. After looking over his credits, I see a handful of "serious" roles, but I only remember a couple that I actually saw and thought he did well in-- say, an old TV-western where he played a very morose Doc Holliday. And in 1989, he wouldn't have done such a shit-ton of "I'm the Batman Guy" performances, especially in animation. "Adam the Dark Knight" might have worked if he'd been willing to put on more weight, artificially or otherwise, to better distance him from Young Batman.
ReplyDeleteOne result of this conversation was that as I looked over West's credits, I saw something called "The Frontier World of Doc Holliday." I found it on YouTube, and it's a half hour pilot for a series that was never greenlighted. West plays the title character of course, and he does it totally straight, as one would expect. That's the sort of acting experience he would have had to called upon, to play Dark Knight Batman-- who was, like Holliday, also just waiting to die.
ReplyDeleteI'll take a wee look for that when I get a spare moment. Sounds interesting. Incidentally, back in the late '80s, because of a strike on ITV, West's Batman TV show was repeated every day and built up a new following. So much so, in fact, that they flew him over to the UK to interview him about the show and rumours of the planned movie. He said he'd be interested, but only if it were a dark, grim, realistic portrayal, in a film-noir type movie. Then he was offered a cameo as Thomas Wayne, which he declined. As Dr. Wayne is murdered at the start of the movie, West may have seen the small part as being intended to symbolise that 'his' Batman was dead, which is probably why he turned it down.
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