Adam West, the star of the 1960s Batman television series, died this weekend at the age of 88 after a brief battle with leukemia. West, born William West Anderson, is perhaps still the actor most commonly associated with the Caped Crusader. This is despite the fact that he was not the first live-action Batman (due to two different serials in the 1940s), but was the only man to wear the cowl from 1966 until 1989, the longest period of a single actor’s ‘reign’ as Batman, even though after the series’ conclusion in 1968, he only donned the cowl on screen a handful of times.
West began his professional career in the late 1950s, securing supporting roles in film and television before breaking through as Bruce Wayne/Batman on the ABC Network. The show also spawned a feature film, the first ever Batman film, originally titled simply Batman, it has been lovingly referred to as Batman ’66 for many years now.
As Batman, West set the tone for the series: fun, campy, vaguely sexual, and straddling the line between loving tribute and open mockery of the Batman comics, though the idea of the brooding ‘Dark Knight’ was not really present at the time of the series. West’s stilted line delivery was reminiscent of another television star of the day, Star Trek‘s William Shatner, but you always got the impression that West was more in on the joke than Shatner was.
After the series ended, West never left the cowl far behind, voicing Batman on a number of animated series, donning the costume for a few public appearances (including one with Jerry “The King” Lawler at a Memphis wrestling card) as well as some television specials, including the Legends of the Superheroes roast, one of the weirdest things ever broadcast on television. Plus, he was in the “Mr. Plow” episode of The Simpsons, which alone should make him a legend. Why doesn’t Batman dance anymore?
West continued to work until very recently, most significantly playing a fictionalized version of himself on Family Guy.
Speaking personally, I was seven years old when Tim Burton’s Batman came out, and so while Michael Keaton may have been the first Batman I saw on a movie screen, West was my first live-action Batman, and I loved that show immensely as a child. Sure, it was hokey, but it felt very ‘adult’ to me – the innuendo, the Dutch angles, the talk of ‘atomic engines’ – to a small child, that’s essentially Hamlet. It also taught me that you could joke about the things you love in a way that didn’t feel insulting. Batman ’66 lives on today because it was fun and reverent, winking and sincere.
To paraphrase the greatest line reading in cinema history, Bon Voyage, Adam.
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