“Batman is always going to be the first actor you saw in the role,’’ filmmaker/comic 🔯book writer Kevin Smith says in one of the many hours of featurettes included in Tuesday’s long-awaited home video debut of the beloved 1960s TV show.
For most of us boomers, Batman will always be Adam West’s deliciously tongue-in-cheek Caped Crusader. Along with his Boy Wonder Robin (Burt Ward), West was at the center of a cultural phenomenon that combined a decidedly camp sensibility, arresting pop-art 🍌visuals and a nonstop parade of aging Hollywood personalities for 120 delirious episodes.
Held back from video for decades because of , all of the episodes are 🅷finally available from Warner Home Video (as deluxe gift sets on Blu-ray o☂r DVD) in beautiful, razor-sharp transfers that show off the series’ superbright palette better than pretty much any feature film from the era in Fox’s often-problematic Deluxe Color.
“Batman” was unlike anything else on TV up to that point, with a cli🍬ffhanger format inspired — at least for the first two seasons — by a pair of black-and-white 1940s Batman movie serials that were long out of circulation by that point. (They were quickly issued in a predecessor to home video — on Super 8 movie reels — to cash in on the series’ popularity.)
Generations yet unborn when the show went on the air as a midseason replacement in January 1966 are familiar with the show’s most famous villains, plaಌyed by the perfectly cast Cesar Romero (Joker), Burgess Meredith (Penguin) and Frank Gorshin (Riddler).
Gorshin was temporarily subbed, in a two-part 1967 episode, by John Astin of “Addams Family’’ fame, while Julie Newmar’s immortal Catwoman from the first two seasons was replaced by Eartha Kitt for the third. And the d꧙iabolical Mr. Freeze was played (in totally different styles) by no fewer than three distinguished actors: George Sanders, Otto Preminger (more famous as a director at that point) and Eli Wallach.
Everybody hams it up and puns like mad — great fun in this context, at least in small doses — including equally well-known personalities (at least at the time) playing more dimly recalled “special guest villains.’’ They include Vincent Price (Eggꦚhead), Liberace (Chandell), Walter Slezak (Clock King), Shelley Winters (Ma Parker), Victor Buono (King Tut), Art Carney (Archer), Roddy McDowall (Bookworm), David Wayne (Mad Hatter) and many more. Lots of character actors from Hollywood’s golden age, like Elisha Cook Jr. and Grady Sutton, pop up, plus unbilled cameos by the likes of George Raft and Art Linkletter.
That the first two seasons are so remarkably consistent is a tribute to the series’ producers and supervising writer, Lorenzo Semple Jr. But ultimately, “Batman’’ was a victim of its own success, with ratings plummeting due t✃o overeꦉxposure — because it aired twice a week, “Batman’’ had burned through 94 episodes by the end of March 1967, not to mention a feature-film version bridging seasons 1 and 2.
The show was cut to once-weekly beginning that fall, and many of the episodes were self-contained. Aunt Harriet, who had served as the beard for Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson’s sexually ambiguous living arrangement, disappeared because actress Madge Blake was ailing. Her function was sort of replaced by the vastly younger Batgirl (Yvonne Craig), though it’s anyone’s guess whether she’s romantically interested in Bruce, Dick, Ba🌟tman, Robin, Alfred the butler (Alan Napier) or none of the above.
In Season 3, the series tries a bit too had to simultaneously hold onto both younger and older viewers, with some me꧙morably bizarre results: Ethel Merman’s Lola Lasagne in a brightly colored minidress; Batman traveling to mod “Londinium’’ for a three-episode arc to investigate thefts perpetrated by Rudy Vallee and Glynis Johns; and Milton Berle’s Louie the Lilac,ꦉ trying to mind-control flower children just before the Summer of Love.
As Black Widow, frail-looking legend Tallulah Bankhead — she died the following year — delivers most of her one-liners while sitting. She somehow pulls it off, which is more than you can say for Ida Lupino and Zsa Zsa Gabor in the fairly desperate fi⛎nal episodes.
West’s dual performance as Batman and Bruce Wayne buoys even the weakest outings, and often he’s inspired — as when Bruce has to p♓retend to speak to Batman for the benefit of the terminally obtuse Commissioner 𝔍Gordon.
Gordon is played with great gusto and h🎃umor by silver-haired Neil Hamilton, whose career stretched back to l✱eading-man roles in the silent era. It’s probably not a coincidence that the Warner Archive Collection has just released his final silent, the superb “Why Be Good?’’ (1929).
A handsome young Hamilton plays a deꦑpartment store heir smitten by a sexy flapper (top-billed Colleen Moore, a big star at the time, looking a lot like Louise Brooks). But his father cautions not to marry her unless he can determine she’s a “good’’ girl — and Moore delivers a terrific speech (via intertitles) when the son tries to test her virtue.
Directed by William Seiter, this is an extremely witty film with a great jazz score, and the transfer is the sharpest I’ve seen on DVD from the problematic transitional period between silents and sounds. The film — long believed lost — has been with an Italian archive (which held a print) and the Vitaphone Project, a group of volunteers that’s undertaken the mission of locating missing soundtrack discs and reuniting them with ear𒉰ly sound pictures (some of which, like “Why Be Good?,” have soundtracks with only music and sound effects).
WAC has also recently released Georg𝕴e Hill’s silent “The Cossacks’’ (1928), starring John Gilbert and Renée Adorée, as well as an eclectic trio of Robert Blake films that cover three decades: “Mokey’’ (1942), with Donna Reed as his mother; “Revolt in the Big House’’ (1958🅷); and the racing drama “Corky’’ (1972), with Charlotte Rampling.
Pre-orders are being taken for WAC’s Nov. 18 release of Volume 8 of “Forbidden Hollywood.’’ The ﷺfour pre-Code titles are “Blonde Crazy’’ starring James Cagney, “Strangers May Kiss’’ (Norma Shearer), “Dark Hazard’’ (Edward G. Robinson) and the journalism comedy “Hi, Nellie!’’ with Paul Muni and Glenda Farrell. Unlike most WAC releases, this one will be on pressed discs. A BD upgrade for “The Picture of Dorian Gray’’ (1945) w🌜ill also be out on that date via WAC.
On the retail side, Vincente Minnelli’s classic “The Band Wagon’’ starring Fred Astaire will bow on Blu-ray from Warner Home Video on March 3, along with high-def upgrades for a pair of other 1953 musicals, these both staring ꦯHoward Keel: “Calamity Jane’’ with Doris Day, and a combo-pack of🍬 the 2-D and 3-D versions of George Sidney’s “Kiss Me Kate’’ with Ann Miller. All three are available individually or as part of a set with the previously available BD of “Singin’ in the Rain.’’