Batman
Genre	Superhero Comedy
Created by	William Dozier
Based on	Batman by Bob Kane (credited) and Bill Finger (uncredited)
Developed by	Lorenzo Semple Jr.
Starring	Adam West Burt Ward Alan Napier Neil Hamilton Stafford Repp Madge Blake Yvonne Craig Cesar Romero Burgess Meredith Frank Gorshin John Astin Julie Newmar Eartha Kitt Victor Buono David Wayne Vincent Price Carolyn Jones Cliff Robertson Anne Baxter
Narrated by	William Dozier
Opening theme	"Batman Theme" by Neal Hefti
Composers	Nelson Riddle Billy May (incidental music)
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	120 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer	William Dozier
Producer	Howie Horwitz
Editor	Byron Chudnow
Camera setup	Single-camera
Running time	25 minutes
Production companies	Greenway Productions 20th Century-Fox Television
Original release
Network	ABC
Release	January 12, 1966 (1966-01-12) – March 14, 1968 (1968-03-14)

Batman is an American live-action television series based on the DC Comics character of the same name. It stars Adam West as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Burt Ward as Dick Grayson/Robin—two crime-fighting heroes who defend Gotham City from a variety of archvillains.^[1][2] It is known for its camp style and upbeat theme music, as well as its intentionally humorous, simplistic morality aimed at its preteen audience.^[3] It was described by executive producer William Dozier at the time as "the only situation comedy on the air without a laugh track".^{[citation needed]} The 120 episodes aired on the ABC network for three seasons from January 12, 1966, to March 14, 1968, twice weekly during the first two seasons, and weekly for the third. In 2016, television critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz ranked Batman as the 82nd greatest American television series of all time. A companion feature film was released in 1966 between the first and second seasons of the TV show.

Batman held the record for the longest-running live-action superhero television series (in terms of episodes) until it was surpassed by Smallville in 2007.

Overview

The series focuses on Batman and Robin as they defend Gotham City from its various criminals. Although the lives of their alter-egos, millionaire Bruce Wayne and his ward Dick Grayson are frequently shown, it is usually only briefly, in the context of their being called away on superhero business or in circumstances where they need to employ their public identities to assist in their crime-fighting. The "Dynamic Duo" typically comes to the aid of the Gotham City Police Department upon the latter being stumped by a supervillain, who is usually accompanied in their appearances by several henchmen and, in the case of male villains, an attractive female companion. Throughout each episode, Batman and Robin follow a series of seemingly improbable clues (also known as "bat logic") to discover the supervillain's plan, then figure out how to thwart that plan and capture the criminal.

For the first two seasons, Batman aired twice a week on consecutive nights. Every story is a two-parter, except for two three-parters featuring villainous team-ups (the Joker and the Penguin, then the Penguin and Marsha, Queen of Diamonds) in the second season. The titles of each multi-part story usually rhyme. The third and final season, which aired one episode a week and introduced Yvonne Craig as Barbara Gordon/Batgirl, consists of self-contained stories. Each third-season story ends with a teaser featuring the next episode's guest villain, except for the series finale. The cliffhangers between multiple-part stories consist of villains holding someone captive, usually Batman and/or Robin, with the captive(s) being threatened by death, serious injury, or another fate. These cliffhangers are resolved early in follow-up episodes with captives getting themselves out of the traps.

Ostensibly a crime series, the style of the show is intentionally campy and tongue-in-cheek. It exaggerates situations and plays them for laughs, even while the characters take the absurd situations very seriously.

Cast and characters

Regular cast

• Adam West as Bruce Wayne / Batman:
  A multi-millionaire industrialist whose parents were murdered when he was a child and who now secretly uses his vast fortune to fight crime as the superhero Batman. Producer William Dozier cast Adam West in the role after seeing him perform as the James Bond-like spy Captain Q in a Nestlé Quik television commercial. Lyle Waggoner had screen-tested for the role, though West ultimately won out because, it was said, he was the only person who could deliver his lines with a straight face. West later voiced an animated version of the title character on The New Adventures of Batman while Waggoner would appear in a later superhero TV series of his own, as Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman.
• Burt Ward as Dick Grayson / Robin:
  Batman's sidekick, dubbed the "Boy Wonder": a high school student noted for his recurring interjections in the form of "Holy ________, Batman!" The series avoids referencing Robin's origins as Bruce Wayne's fellow "crime orphan", as whose legal guardian the courts appoint Bruce. Ward voiced an animated version of this character on The New Adventures of Batman. Since the death of Adam West on June 9, 2017, Burt Ward is now the only surviving main Batman cast member.
• Alan Napier as Alfred:
  Batman's loyal butler and Batgirl's discreet confidant. He is the only person who knows the true identities of Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, and Barbara Gordon.
• Neil Hamilton as Commissioner Gordon:
  The Commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department and one of Batman's two major police contacts. He summons the Dynamic Duo via the Batphone or the Bat Signal.
• Stafford Repp as Chief O'Hara:
  Gotham City's Chief of Police, and Batman's other major police contact. The character was created by Semple for the series, as someone for Gordon to talk to, and later briefly added to the comics. In 2013, DC revealed this incarnation's first name to be "Miles" in their Batman' 66 comics.
• Madge Blake as Harriet Cooper:
  Dick Grayson's maternal aunt. She first appeared in the comics, two years before the series premiered, to give Bruce and Dick a reason to be secretive about their dual identities.
• Yvonne Craig as Barbara Gordon / Batgirl:
  Commissioner Gordon's daughter, Gotham City librarian, and crime-fighting partner for Batman and Robin in the third season. Occasionally, this threesome was nicknamed the "Terrific Trio".
• William Dozier as Narrator (uncredited).

According to Adam West's memoir Back to the Batcave, his first exposure to the series concept was through reading a sample script in which Batman enters a nightclub in his complete costume and requests a booth near the wall, as he "shouldn't wish to attract attention". It was the scrupulously formal dialogue, and the way that Batman earnestly believed he could avoid standing out while wearing a skintight blue-and-grey costume, that convinced West of the character's comic potential.

Recurring villains

• Cesar Romero as The Joker:
  A clown-themed, prank-loving villain and Batman's arch-enemy, who leaves behind jokes as clues to his crimes.
• Burgess Meredith as The Penguin:
  A penguin-themed gentleman thief who commits crimes using multipurpose umbrellas.
• Frank Gorshin (Seasons 1 and 3) and John Astin (Season 2) as The Riddler:
  A criminal who leaves behind riddles as clues to his crimes.
• Julie Newmar (Seasons 1–2) and Eartha Kitt (Season 3) as The Catwoman:
  A cat-themed jewel thief and cat burglar in a complicated love-hate relationship with Batman.
• Victor Buono as Professor William McElroy / King Tut:
  An Egyptologist who developed a split personality after being struck on the head during a student protest. Each time he is hit on the head, he switches between the personalities of a university professor and a reincarnated version of the pharaoh Tutankhamun.
• George Sanders (Season 1), Otto Preminger and Eli Wallach (Season 2) as Dr. Art Schivel / Mr. Freeze:
  A mad scientist who, after exposure to a freeze solution, now needs sub-zero temperatures to survive. His weapon of choice is a freeze-blast gun, capable of freezing its target solid. In his first appearance, the gun can also produce a heat/incendiary beam.
• David Wayne as Jervis Tetch / The Mad Hatter:
  A formally dressed villain with an obsession for collecting hats (he steals the hats from his victims, then knocks them out with a mesmerizing ray that pops out of the top of his hat).
• Vincent Price as Egghead:
  A smug, bald-headed genius whose crimes and speech patterns involve eggs.
• Carolyn Jones as Marsha, Queen of Diamonds:
  A criminal with a fondness for jewelry.
• Cliff Robertson as Shame:
  A Western-themed villain whose partners at various times include Okie Annie and Calamity Jan. The three of them spoof famous Western characters from the movies (namely Shane, Annie Oakley, and Calamity Jane).
• Anne Baxter as Olga, Queen of the Cossacks:
  A Russian villainess often paired with Egghead. Before this role, Baxter first appears in one story as "Zelda the Great", a magician criminal.
• Milton Berle as Louie the Lilac:
  A gangster with a fondness for flowers.

Producers did develop several tentative scripts for Two-Face, but never produced any of them. Clint Eastwood was allegedly considered for the role shortly before the series was cancelled.^[4]

Episodes

Production

Origin

In the early 1960s, Ed Graham Productions optioned the television rights to the comic book Batman and planned a straightforward juvenile adventure show, much like Adventures of Superman and The Lone Ranger, to air on CBS on Saturday mornings.

East Coast ABC executive Yale Udoff, a Batman fan in his childhood, contacted ABC executives Harve Bennett and Edgar J. Scherick, who were already considering developing a television series based on a comic-strip action hero, to suggest a prime-time Batman series in the hip and fun style of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

As well, in 1964, film buff Hugh Hefner had screened all 15 chapters of the 1943 Batman serial at the Playboy Mansion. The trendy event received much notice in the press, prompting Columbia to offer the unedited serial to theaters in 1965 as An Evening with Batman and Robin in one long, marathon showing.^[5] This re-release was successful enough to inspire the development of a television series based on the property. When negotiations between CBS and Graham stalled, DC Comics quickly reobtained rights and made the deal with ABC, which farmed the rights out to 20th Century Fox to produce the series.^[6]

In turn, 20th Century Fox handed the project to William Dozier and his production company, Greenway Productions. ABC and Fox were expecting a hip and fun—yet still serious—adventure show. However, Dozier, who had never before read comic books, concluded, after reading several Batman comics for research, that the only way to make the show work was to do it as a pop-art campy comedy.^[7] Originally, espionage novelist Eric Ambler was to have scripted a TV movie that would launch the television series, but he dropped out after learning of Dozier's campy comedy approach. Eventually, two sets of screen tests were filmed, one with Adam West and Burt Ward and the other with Lyle Waggoner and Peter Deyell, with West and Ward winning the roles.^[8][9]

Season 1

Lorenzo Semple Jr. had signed on as head scriptwriter. He wrote the pilot script, and generally wrote in a pop-art adventure style. Stanley Ralph Ross, Stanford Sherman, and Charles Hoffman were script writers who generally leaned more toward campy comedy, and in Ross's case, sometimes outright slapstick and satire. It was originally intended as a one-hour show, but ABC changed the premiere date from Fall 1966 to January of that year and, with the network having only two early-evening half-hour time slots available, the show was split into two parts, to air in 30-minute installments on Wednesdays and Thursdays.^[10] A cliffhanger connected the two episodes, echoing the old movie serials.

Some ABC affiliates were not happy that ABC included a fourth commercial minute in every episode of Batman. One affiliate refused to air the series. The network insisted it needed the extra advertising revenue.^[11]

The Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler, Catwoman, Mr. Freeze, and the Mad Hatter, villains who originated in the comic books, all appeared in the series, the plots of which were deliberately villain-driven. According to the producers, Frank Gorshin was selected to portray Riddler due to the fact that he had been a Batman fan since childhood. Catwoman was portrayed by three different actresses during the series run: by Julie Newmar in the first two seasons, by Lee Meriwether in the feature film based on the series, and by Eartha Kitt in the third and final season.

The show was extraordinarily popular, and was considered "the biggest TV phenomenon of the mid-1960s".^[12]

Season 2

Semple's participation in the series decreased in the second season. In his autobiography Back to the Batcave, Adam West explained to Jeff Rovin – to whom he dictated the autobiography after rejecting an offer to contribute to The Official "Batman" Batbook written by Joel Eisner – that when work on the second season commenced following the completion of the feature film, Dozier, his immediate deputy Howie Horwitz, and the rest of the cast and crew rushed their preparation. Thus, they failed to give themselves enough time to determine what they wanted to do with the series during season two.

John Astin replaced Frank Gorshin as The Riddler for a pair of episodes when Gorshin's new agents at William Morris demanded more money.^[13]

Season 3

By season three, ratings were falling and the future of the series seemed uncertain. To attract new viewers, Dozier opted to introduce a female character. He came up with the idea of using Batgirl, who in her civilian identity would be Commissioner Gordon's daughter, Barbara, and asked the editor of the Batman comics to further develop the character (who had made her debut in a 1966 issue of Detective Comics).^[14] To convince ABC executives to introduce Batgirl as a regular on the show, a promotional short featuring Yvonne Craig as Batgirl and Tim Herbert as Killer Moth was produced.^[15] Batgirl was the first Superheroine to appear in an ongoing capacity on television. The show was reduced to once a week, with mostly self-contained episodes, although the following week's villain would be introduced in a tag at the end of each episode, similar to a soap opera. Accordingly, the narrator's cliffhanger phrases were mostly eliminated, most episodes ending with him encouraging viewers to watch next week.^{[notes 1]}

Aunt Harriet was reduced to just two cameo appearances during the third season, due to Madge Blake's poor health and the issue of trying to fit so many characters (Batman, Robin, Batgirl, Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, Chief O'Hara, and a guest villain) into a half-hour episode. Another cast change during the final season was replacing Julie Newmar, who had been a popular recurring guest villain as the Catwoman during the first two seasons. Singer-actress Eartha Kitt assumed the role for season three, as Newmar was working on the film Mackenna's Gold at that time and thus unable to appear. In the United States, Kitt's performance in the series marked the second mainstream television success of a black female, following Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura in Star Trek and continued breaking the racial boundaries of the time. Kitt's performance as Catwoman would also, later, inspire Halle Berry's portrayal of the character in the 2004 film Catwoman, in which Berry would mimic Kitt's purrs. Frank Gorshin, the original actor to play the Riddler, returned after a one-season hiatus, during which John Astin made one appearance in the role.

The nature of the scripts and acting started to enter into the realm of surrealism. In addition, the third season was much more topical, with references to hippies, mods, and distinctive 1960s slang, which the previous two seasons had avoided.

Episode format

As head scriptwriter, Lorenzo Semple wrote four episodes himself and established a series of "Bat-rules" for the freelance writers working under him. The show's campiness was played up in elements, including the design of the villains, dialogue and in signs appearing on various props. Batman would frequently reveal one of his many crime-fighting gadgets, which were usually given a ridiculous-sounding name, such as Shark Repellant Bat-Spray or Extra-Strong Bat-Knockout Gas. The series used a narrator (executive producer William Dozier, uncredited) who would end the cliffhanger episodes by intoning, "Tune in tomorrow – same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!" During the climactic fistfights in each episode, the punches and other impacts were punctuated by onomatopoeia (sound effects such as "POW!", "BAM!", "ZONK!") superimposed on the screen, as in comic-book fight scenes.

A typical story begins with a villain's nefarious caper (stealing a fabulous treasure, kidnapping a prominent person, attempting to take over Gotham City, etc.). At police headquarters, Commissioner Gordon and Chief O'Hara deduce the villain's identity, admit they're outclassed and gaze reverently at the Batphone. At "stately Wayne Manor", Alfred (Wayne's butler) answers the Batphone and calls Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson away from an oblivious Aunt Harriet with a humorously transparent excuse. Batman and Robin race the Batmobile to police headquarters and begin to work on the case, usually insisting doing it alone. Batman and Robin locate the villain, lose in a brawl and are left alone in a ridiculously complex deathtrap. The episode ends in a cliffhanger. The next episode resolves the cliffhanger in a comically improbable fashion. The same general plot pattern of investigation and confrontation repeats until another major brawl (accented by onscreen onomatopoeic words) that defeats the villain.^[16] Scene transitions in the show were accompanied by a Batman logo appearing over a rapidly-spinning background along with an iconic stinger. Episodes also frequently featured "Window Cameos", in which Batman and Robin are shown climbing up the side of a building by rope, and a guest celebrity appears out of a nearby window of the building and makes a joke or aside.

Cancellation

Near the end of the third season, ratings had dropped significantly, and ABC cancelled the show. NBC agreed to take over the series, but before it could do so, it was discovered that hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of Batman sets had been destroyed. Rather than rebuild the sets, NBC dropped the project.^[17]

Camera shots

From the beginning, cameras were purposely placed out of level with the set (known as "Dutch tilt"), and characters were filmed from high and low angles. This technique was most often used when filming on the set of a villain's lair to lend a surreal, comic-book quality to the scenes, as well as to imply or merely remind the viewer that the crooks were crooked.

Batmobile

The original Batmobile from the 1960s TV series was auctioned on January 19, 2013, at the Barrett-Jackson auction house in Scottsdale, Arizona.^[18] It was sold for $4.2 million.^[19]

Tie-in music

Several cast members recorded music tied into the series. Adam West released a single titled "Miranda", a country-tinged pop song that he actually performed in costume during live appearances in the 1960s. Frank Gorshin released a song titled "The Riddler", which was composed and arranged by Mel Tormé. Burgess Meredith recorded a spoken-word single called "The Escape" backed with "The Capture", which consisted of the Penguin narrating his recent crime spree to a jazz beat. Burt Ward recorded a song called "Boy Wonder, I Love You", written and arranged by Frank Zappa.

In 1966, Batman: The Exclusive Original Soundtrack Album was released on LP, featuring music by Nelson Riddle and snippets of dialogue from Adam West, Burt Ward, Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorshin, Anne Baxter (as Zelda the Great) and George Sanders (the first Mr. Freeze). The "Batman Theme" was included, along with titles like "Batusi A Go! Go!", "Batman Thaws Mr. Freeze", and "Batman Blues". It was reissued later on compact disc. Neal Hefti, who wrote the iconic theme song for the series, also released a soundtrack album in 1966, Batman Theme and 11 Hefti Bat Songs.^[20]

Release

Home media

Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=Batman_(TV_series)
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