Pre-History

Creator Bob Kane		              Before one begins to talk about the history of the 1966 Batman television series, they have to start back in 1939 with a young artist named Bob Kane.  After Kane had worked on a few strips for D.C., editor Whitney Ellsworth approached him about creating a costumed hero to help the company follow the success they had been having with Superman.  Kane shared his ideas with writer Bill Finger.  Bob created a character with what looked like batwings and a regular “domino” mask.  Bill suggested a cowl with ears like a bat and a cape, and Batman took his recognizable form.  Though Bob came up with the initial  character, Bill fleshed him out and gave him a background and an air of mystery.  They made him a millionaire playboy by day, Bruce Wayne, and a grim vigilante / detective by night, Batman (or as he was first
called The Bat-Man.)   Following such leads as other popular heroes of the day like Zorro, the Shadow and the Green Hornet, Batman took on the seedy world of crime in Gotham City.


                He was first featured in Detective Comics 27 in May 1939, but his famous origin was not told until issue 33.  The story is well know to even some the newest of Batman fans.  Young Bruce Wayne witnessed his parents gunned down by a street thug, Joe Chill, for a  necklace that Bruce’s mother wore (not by the Joker as some Hollywood movies would have you believe.)  This event shaped the boy’s entire future as he made a pledge praying at the edge of his bed, “And I swear by the spirits of my parents to avenge their deaths by spending the rest of my life warring on all criminals.”  Through his development into manhood, he learned to become a master scientist and pushed his body to physical perfection.  Understanding that criminals were a 


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“superstitious and cowardly lot,” Bruce figured he should become something that would strike fear into their hearts.  He found his answer when a bat suddenly flew through the window.  He would become a bat… Batman was born!

                Batman evolved quickly for the next year and by issue 38 he took on a youthful partner and sidekick, Robin the Boy Wonder.  Named and costumed after Robin Hood originally, though the bird association would prevail over the years, Robin was a young acrobat, Dick Grayson.  His parents were murdered during a trapeze act by a saboteur to pressure the circus to pay “insurance” money.  Bruce Wayne, who witnessed the tragedy and sensed the boy’s loss as the same he experienced with his parents, took Dick Grayson under his wing as Batman.  He then  revealed his true identity as Bruce Wayne and created the classic team of Batman and Robin.  The rest, as they say, is history….

BUT WAIT!!…THE BEST IS YET TO COME!!!

 

Douglas Croft (Robin) & Lewis Wilson (Batman) circa 1943

    The 1966 Batman television show was not the first live action incarnation of Batman and Robin on film by no means.  Two serials were made prior.  The first was the 1943 “Batman” by Columbia Pictures, starring Lewis Wilson as Batman and Douglas Croft as Robin.  Rather than fight Gotham's costumed criminals, Batman was after a Japanese spy, Daka.    Since this was just after Pearl Harbor and the United States was well in the thick of WWII, the film was filled with anti-Japanese racism that was commonplace for its day. 

    The second was 1949’s “Batman and Robin” and starred Robert Lowery and John Duncan in the respective roles.  Both serials

were low budget and par for their period and never stood out from some of the better  serials of the day.  Some familiarities to the comic were missing as well from the films, such as the Batmobile or popular villains like the Joker or Penguin.  Neither feature was a major success.

By this time, the comic had run the gamut of the duo heroically fighting and punching their through Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s unique Rogue’s Gallery of villains.  But after the infamous publishing of Dr. Frederic Wertham’s 1954 book “Seduction of the Innocent,” that claimed comic books were driving children and teens into acts of crime, sex and violence, Batman faced his deadliest foe, the 1955 self imposed “Comics Code Authority.”  Among the many strict guidelines the code outlined as appropriate for kids and young adults were the ones that stated that there could not be any criminal activity that could possibly be copied by a youth.  Out were the criminals and Batman and Robin were forced to deal with aliens and monsters and the silliest of scenarios that were not in keeping with what made the team great in the first place.  The most sorted of Dr. Wertham’s claims was one that suggested that Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson might be gay.  This forced DC to create the “Batman Family” with a Batwoman and an early representation of Batgirl (though quite different from what was to come) to dispel any further attention of that nature.  The comic suffered and sales suffered.  The Golden Age of comics was gone.