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Birth of the Series |
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By the time Batman rolled into the Twentieth Century Fox studios as a possible feature for the growing television series market, the comic was facing cancellation due to poor sales. Batman had just gotten a newer look in 1964 by Carmine Infantino under DC’s editor, Julius Schwartz, which included the famous yellow “Batsignal” version of his chest logo. The extended members of the “Batman family “ were dismissed and so were the monsters and space aliens. Even with these changes to the comic, it was still in recovery mode when the assignment for developing a television program about the dynamic duo was put in the lap of William Dozier. Many years prior to starting his own production company, Greenway Productions, William Dozier had been a literary agent, then the head of the writing and story department during his run at Paramount Studios. He later became the executive assistant to Charles Koerner, who was the head of |
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production for RKO. Eventually he went to CBS as an executive producer for
dramatic programming and later vice president of Hollywood programming.
By 1959, he took on the position of vice president of Columbia’s
television division, Screen Gems, but eventually started Greenway
productions in 1964. Dozier had never having read the comic (or any comic books for that matter ) but the task was laid out before him and he set out to see if he could make this bat fly. Dozier recalls: “I went to New York, and after the meeting I scurried around and bought maybe seven or eight different vintage copies of the Batman comic books. I got on a plane coming back, and I was sitting there in an aisle seat, with these things in my lap, as I didn't have time to read them in New York. I remember Bud Barry, who was the head of television for Young and Rubicam, the ad agency at |
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the time, came up the aisle, looked over my shoulder, saw me reading these comics, and said, 'I guess those scripts do get a little dull after a while.' Now, I couldn't tell him why a full-grown man was sitting there with a lap full of Batman comic books, because it was a big secret. I felt a little bit like an idiot. Then I digested all of those books. At first, I thought they were crazy. I really thought they were crazy, if they were going to try to put this on television. Then I had just the simple idea of overdoing it, of making it so square and so serious that adults would find it amusing. I knew kids would go for the derring-do, the adventure, but the trick would be to find adults who would either watch it with their kids or, to hell with the kids, and watch it anyway.” |
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The show would reflect the color of the comic, the action of the stories and even go as far as including the now famous “ZAP” and “POW” that previously landscaped the comic’s fighting scenes onto the viewers’ television screens. Meeting with the heads of ABC in New York, Dozier laid out his proposed plan for the show,” I tell them the story of Batman, whose mother and father were killed by dastardly criminals, and he took an oath for the rest of his life that he would avenge their deaths. They looked at me, and they thought I was a little crazy. I said, 'That, gentlemen, is his motivation, and he dedicates his life to fighting crime.' Then I explained how we were going to do it—that we were going to have 'ZAP' and 'POW.' And I remember Leonard Goldenson said, 'We are going to have, right on the screen, "ZAP" and "POW"?' I said, 'Yeah, and a lot more, Leonard.' 'Oh, my’ he said.” .” After ABC gave Dozier the go ahead to “do whatever he wants,” he got together with writer Lorenzo Semple to draft out the pilot and other storylines. Once the scripts and designing started came together, the search for the right cast commenced. British born actor, Alan Napier, who was to play Bruce Wayne’s butler, Alfred, recalled in an interview: |
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"It was very clever casting—the whole thing was. I didn't have much character guidance in the first episode. When I went to see Dozier about my moustache—I wanted to know if he wanted me to shave it off or not—I asked him about his ideas about the character. He said, 'I just want you to be yourself.' The character of Alfred has a last name of Pennyworth in the comics, but we never used it on the series." |
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Other cast members Neil Hamilton (Commissioner Gordon), Stafford Repp (Chief O’Hara) and Madge Blake (Aunt Harriet) were being added to the growing roster, but it was going to be the casting of Batman and Robin that were going to spearhead the show’s success. As if one could hear William Dozier’s famous narrative voice saying, “Meanwhile, somewhere in Italy…” a handsome actor who had built up an acting resume that included not only working along side an orangutan hosting a Hawaiian kid show but also a string of B movies, TV pilots and currently finished a spaghetti western. That actor was indeed Adam West.
To Be Continued ... |
"I was actually the first person hired for
"Batman," before Batman or Robin or anybody, because Charles FitzSimons was an associate of my agent years before and had moved on to be Dozier's assistant. He, for some reason, envisioned me as Alfred because, after all, what I did as Alfred was quite different from what was written. He sold the idea to Dozier, and I was hired. I have never read comics before I did it. My agent rang up and said, 'I think you are going to play on "Batman," ' I said, 'What is "Batman"?' He said, 'Don't you read the comics?' I said, 'No, never.' He said, 'I think you are going to be Batman's butler.' I said, 'How do I know I want to be Batman's butler?' It was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard of. He said, 'It may be worth over $100,000.' So I said I was Batman's butler.”