To The Batpoles! Batman 1966

Mr. Freeze is back - WILD! He's gone all Steve Jobs and put a device in everyone's pocket — one that will plunge Gotham City into year-round winter! Can Batman turn the tables? Meanwhile, Batgirl is going up against a "villain" who, well, very nicely offered Bruce "milk and cookies" in the TV series itself. Yup, it's Lisa Carson ! Did anyone ask for this Egyptian heel turn? Tim and Paul discuss th...

Just a couple of months after Batman hit the airwaves in 1966, another superhero emerged from the comics, as Superman arrived at the Alvin Theater on Broadway in It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman . How did the musical's creators approach the same question William Dozier and Lorenzo Semple, Jr. , dealt with in 1965: how to make a "children's character" appealing to adults? We compare and c...

As we know, many episodes of Batman — especially in the first season — were based on stories from the comics. And additional comics stories were floated as possible episodes but didn't make the cut. This time, we focus on one such story: The Joker Jury , by Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff , originally appearing in Batman 163 (May 1964) and adopted into an unproduced treatment by Max Hodge , writer...

The cover of Batman '66 #9 includes Zelda the Great hanging above the Duo , and Shame 's boots in the foreground. Zelda's in the issue, but where's Shame? Um... in issue #8?! (We discussed that story in episode 182!) Jeff Parker 's Zelda story has its moments, but in other ways it's just weird. Meanwhile, Tom Peyer 's backup story brings back Alfred 's cousin Egbert from The Joker's Provokers , bu...

Stanford Sherman 's Hizzoner the Penguin is a bit hard to reckon with. Satire on Batman is not in line with Lorenzo Semple Jr 's vision for the show, and the 1966 political references date this arc much more than many others. And yet, it has some brilliantly funny moments. This time, we take a look at Sherman's treatment, first draft, and final script for Hizzoner to learn about the development of...

A huge aspect of the Batman show is the colorful costumes, overseen by designer Jan Kemp . Sadly, Kemp is no longer with us, and his records, if they exist, are not easily available, so if you want to make a really accurate Batman '66 replica costume, some detective work is required. Chuck and Lynne Williams have done just that, making patterns from original costumes owned by collectors, tracking...

On January 18, 1968 — just two weeks after her final appearance on Batman was broadcast — Eartha Kitt attended a White House ladies' luncheon held by Lady Bird Johnson . After a brief, unsatisfying conversation with Lyndon Johnson , Kitt, annoyed, stood up and denounced the Vietnam War. This prompted an apparent effort by the President to kill her career in the US. We discuss a recent video from t...

A lot of people work behind the scenes on a TV show, and some of them are never named in the credits. One is Assistant Director Reuben Watt , who nonetheless did get some credit in the form of coverage in magazines aimed at African-Americans. (The image shown here is from the cover of Sepia magazine.) The June 1966 issue of Ebony included a photo feature on Watt , which tells us some interesting t...

The Thirteenth Hat/Batman Stands Pat is Charles Hoffman 's first produced Batman script. But what did earlier versions of the story look like? It turns out that the original plot had the Mad Hatter simply stealing the jurors' hats! The stakes - and potential profits from Hatter's crime wave - had to be raised. At the same time, certain too-expensive-to-film gags and distracting subplots were aband...

Batman and Star Tre k are among the most iconic TV series of the 1960s, and many fans fantasize about a crossover between the two shows. In 2005, amateur film director Christopher Allen didn't just fantasize: he decided to make a film, Star Trek vs. Batman (released in 2006), where Batman and Robin meet Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the Enterprise crew . While Chris had imagined just shooting it in...

For decades, the creation of Batman , and all the characters and things surrounding him, was credited to Bob Kane . But it turned out that someone else, Bill Finger , was heavily involved in the character's creation and was the uncredited writer of many of the early stories. Kane actively quashed rumors that the words "Batman by Bob Kane" were less than accurate. Kane became rich and famous; Finge...

As we showed last time, Cannan and Cash 's Marsha script wasn't produceable for many reasons. So Greenway handed off the project to Stanford Sherman , fresh off Hizzoner the Penguin , to salvage it, and he quickly realized he had no choice but to start from scratch. The result, of course, is the Marsha two-parter we all know (though perhaps not love). It comes as no surprise, though that some chan...

We don't know whose idea the character Marsha, Queen of Diamonds , was, but it's clear that she was created with one woman in mind: Zsa Zsa Gabor . A script for the actress was commissioned by Greenway Productions through a talent agency to two writers, Tom Cannan, Jr , and Jack Cash . The script they produced , Marsha, The Queen of Diamonds (note the extra definite article) is riddled with proble...

More than one attempt was made to include Two-Face among the villains of Batman '66 . We've already discussed Peter Rabe 's attempt ; this time, we discuss a treatment by science fiction legend Harlan Ellison , The Two-Way Crimes of Two-Face . Why didn't it go to a full script? What would have needed to be changed to fit the rules of the Batman '66 world? How well does the 2014 comics adaptation,...

These Batpoles were made for slidin'! This time, we enjoy the holidays and take a break from the Batpoles to present our special look at the 1967 Nancy Sinatra TV special Movin' With Nancy ! It's a detailed, admiring, but sometimes irreverent look at a program we love.

While Batman season one seemed to have a consistent view of women - incapable of being hardened criminals, attracted to luxury items (and Batman ), etc. - season two (as is true in many respects) tends to be less consistent. While some molls are ditzy and childish, others not only have agency, but seem more intelligent than the villain. Ma Parker and Marsha appear as the first two truly villainous...

What was the cultural environment in the US in 1965, as Batman was being developed? What were the events that led up to the decision that William Dozier would indeed make a Batman show? If TV in the '60s was thinking about what it could do better than movies, what's the answer to that question, and did it show up on Batman ? What were some of the rules that Lorenzo Semple Jr made regarding how Bat...

When producer William Dozier and writer Lorenzo Semple, Jr , met up in Madrid in May 1965, Batman wasn't all they were cooking up; it wasn't even the main reason they were meeting. Semple had been developing an idea called Mr. Zero , a possible action/adventure TV show that had nothing to do with the character who would come to be called "Mr. Freeze." This time, we take a look at a 40-page present...

In 2009, Batman wasn't yet available on home video, with the rights issue still unresolved, and there was no certainty that would ever change. Adam West , 80, feared that it wouldn't change in his lifetime. So he set out to release a sort of standalone commentary track, setting up cameras at his home in Idaho to capture his memories of each episode of the show. It's fun to see him talk about Batma...

In the mid-1970s, Power Records (a division of Peter Pan records) released audio stories of a number of popular properties, including Batman . Two volumes were released of four stories each, and some of the stories were then released as 7" "singles" complete with a comics version of the same story. Occasional elements in the stories were echos of the '66 show. While the Power Records superhero dis...

Mr. Zero ? Dr. Schimmel ? No, Mr. Freeze ! In Max Hodge 's first draft of Instant Freeze , the comics villain Mr. Zero, for reasons we discussed last episode, became Mr. Freeze. But the script contains many more references to his "real" name, Dr. Schimmel, than made it to what was broadcast. Why? Where'd this script's unexplained parade come from? What would the  Batman series have been like with...

In 1966, William Dozier's Greenway Production s was riding high, seemingly on the verge of building a TV empire built on superheroes: first Batman , then the Green Hornet . Why not keep going in that direction? An entire pilot episode of Dick Tracy was made, starring Ray MacDonnell , and all signs point to Dozier having confidence that the show would be bought by NBC - but it wasn't. Meanwhile, Gr...

The Wrong Earth , written by Tom Peyer , is a comics series in which the super-square Dragonflyman and grim & gritty Dragonfly find themselves on each other's versions of earth. In the second volume, recently concluded, the two meet each other on yet another earth. Peyer, editor-in-chief at Ahoy Comics , is an industry veteran with many writing credits under his belt, including for the Batman '66...

Batman and Robin (1997) is notorious as one of the worst Batman films, panned by both audiences and critics. But wait a minute. All four of the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher Batman films have their problems. Doesn't B&R 's story hold together relatively well? Isn't it kind of .... entertaining? Could it actually be the best of the four? Of course it's far from perfect, and we discuss some of its prob...

As any Batman '66 fan knows, three different actors played the villain Mr. Freeze on the show: George Sanders , Otto Preminger , and Eli Wallach . Any discussion of Mr. Freeze on the show prompts the question: Which Freeze do you like best? And, which Freeze script do you like best? In this episode, we give our answers to those questions, as well as exploring how the show set the course for the ch...