BATMAN HISTORY
!!
The first episode of Batman
aired on Wednesday January 12, 1966.
This would be the
first time a hero from comic book origins would make it big on the boob tube.
This series was a first rate class act with a TON of money being put into the
production. The Batcave set alone cost $800,000 in 1966 dollars. ( Holy Big
Bucks!)
The series aired
for three seasons, the first two seasons, twice a week, then in 1968 cut back to
once a week.
Starting as far back as 1965,
ABC was last place in the ratings and something was needed to give them a boost.
The idea of a superhero appealed to the network. A hero with comic book origins
would make sense due to the fact that most adults in the 60's had some kind of
recollection of their youth spent reading comic books. Batman as far as
popularity was third behind Superman and Dick Tracy. The first two were not
available so ABC went with the concept of bringing Batman to the tube. Thus they
bought the rights to the comic hero.
The mastermind behind bringing
the Caped Crusader to the Screen was William Dozier. He had been involved in
many popular TV programs in the early 60's such as Dennis the Menace and
Bewitched and ABC felt this project would be perfect for this veteran producer,
before being at ABC, he was the president of Screen Gems. The project was in
capable hands, at this point just an idea. He read comic books to get an idea of
the character and developed some of the basic concepts that made the show such a
success such as; The show needed to appeal to an adult audience as well as
children. This was done with the concept of doing the show very serious, which
with the crazy plots and gimmicks would make it funny to the adults and the kids
would still be excited by the super hero aspect of the
show.
William Dozier Appeared in The
Last Episode in a Cameo Role with Zsa Zsa Gabor.
This was a time for
family shows, no skin, no sex. There was a war going on and Batman gave America
a release. There were many new shows created at this
time.
* Get Smart *
F-Troop * The Monkeys * Andy Griffith * I Dream of Jennie * Mission Impossible
*plus many other "classic shows". Another notable show that started in the same
year as Batman was The Captain Kirk Show ( or something like that ) and the
number one show in the country was Bonanza !
Lost in Space,
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants
were all filmed at
the same studio as Batman !
Bringing The Show To Life
!!
Thus the concept of
Batman was born. Now to bring it to life. The pilot episode was written by
Lorenzo Semple Jr, a friend of Dozier's. They tied in the Pop Art Craze with the
show, incorporating new and fresh ideas especially for television at that time.
Color programs were new 
to TV at that point, as recent as 1965
shows were converting to color. Batman used colors to the fullest extent, weird
camera angles, titles such as BAM, POP, ZLOP were added and a first, the show
was broadcast on two consecutive nights with a cliffhanger ending between. It
was similar to the old movie serials. These effects are the reason when you
watch the show today it doesn't come across as dated, it was really radical for
that time.
They picked the
cast, an ensemble of unknowns for the heroes and started the cameras rolling.
Due to ABC wanting a new show to boost their ratings, the original air date was
moved up from a fall preview to January. They didn't give the go ahead until
November . The usual time to get ready for a new show would be three or four
months, but with the tight deadlines, everyone had to work overtime . Saturdays,
Sundays, around the clock , trying to get the series ready for airing. Holy
Tight Schedule !!!
Would people tune
in and watch the show ??
Well ABC did a test
audience and the results were poor. The results came to the set during the
filming of the second episode and depressed everyone. Still having faith Dozier
and his crew continued on. The network decided to keep the results a secret and
go on as before.
ABC did a marketing
blitz, everyone who watched TV was bombarded by ads for the
show,
they even went as
far as to purchase a skywriter to add the slogan " Batman Is Coming " above the
Rose Bowl game. Was it not for the efforts of ABC to make sure everyone knew
that the caped crusader was on his way, the show might have not have attracted
such a huge amount of initial viewers.
And It Was A Hit
!
During the first season, Batman
was rated the number 10
program
on Wednesdays and # 5 on
Thursdays !
Rare
William Dozier Interview
A
big file but really cool behind the scenes Batman stuff - took a while to
obtain this one :) 24 minutes of awesome bat info ( 7MB) wma
Click Here to Read An Article From The Saturday Evening
Post
Has TV Gasp !! Gone Batty
??- May 7th
1966
" He is so square that he is cubical, and viewers older
than 12 tend to chuckle or sneer, but the Caped Crusader is creating classic
junk. "
Batman was filmed
at four different studios during the production of the
series
The filming was
done on a break-neck pace with the completion of a two episodes ( one which
aired on Wednesday night the second that aired on Thursday night) completed in
Only about two weeks !!!!
During the whole
production of the series, everything was on a tight schedule. Long shots and
driving scenes were done with stunt doubles Hubie
Kerns (Batman) and Victor
Paul (Robin) in many of
the stock shots to free up Adam West and Burt Ward to do the close ups
.
In this photo the
two stunt men are seen on the batcycle.
Batman The
Movie
In addition to the
TV. show a feature film was also made between the first and second season. Due
to a much larger budget that the television show, they added a Batcycle, Batboat
and Batcopter to the caped crusaders inventory !
The producers wanted a medium to sell the series to the overseas
market.
The movie wasn't
heavily promoted in the US because the TV show was already a
hit.
The movie was
released August 03, 1966. It was originally planned to come out before the TV
series but due to some shows having a hard time, ABC decided to introduce the
world to Batman early so the movie was put off until after the first season. The
special Bat vehicles were then used in the TV. show, due to the production costs
of refilming the scenes,they just reused the scenes from the
movie.
The series gave us many
memorable locations in addition to the Batcave. Wayne Manor and Commissioner
Gordons office were just two of the few regular
locations.
The
Super Guest Villains !!
One Of the biggest
draws was aimed at the adults watching the programs !! The producers decided to
get a large following of older Batfans to tune in a large name star should be
used as the guest villain. William Dozier, Executive Producer on the topic of
Villains: "
These people (actors) would call up, or
send their agents around, saying, can't so and so 
be on? Gloria
Swanson, I remember, called me from New York, but we couldn't find the right
part for her. But everybody came out of the woodwork; we never had to go after
those people. Alot of them I had known personally, and they would call and say
that they would love to do one of those because ' my kids want me to do it' I
don't think anyone had more fun with it than Buzz
Meredith.
" This fact added
to the appeal of the show, who could resist tuning in to see Uncle Miltie as
Louie the Lilac or Cliff Robertson as Shame.
There was a number
of todays stars that had their first TV appearances on the Batman set, Teri
Garr, James Brolin, and Rob Reiner, just to name a few . Also the show had a ton
of guest cameo appearances, such as , Joe Besser, Paul Revere And The Raiders
and many more.
To See The Guest Stars- Click Here !!
The Famous Batclimb
Everyone who was
anyone wanted to be on this show and the famous " Bat Climb " was one way to fit
in a few extra celeb's.
The Beginning of the
End.......
Off
starts the second season with more gadgets and more guest stars but somehow this
probably started to hurt the popularity of the show. It got into a rut, the
plots became very similar, heres a breakdown of the
plot,
1) Villain enters
town
2)
Gordon calls Batman
3) Batman and Robin go to the Commissioner's
office
4)
The duo go after the criminal
5) They get caught and put in a
trap
6)
By some incredible means they escape
7) They chase the
villain
8) A fight with the bad guys
9) Justice prevails and off to prison
the villains go
In the first
season, everything was fresh and new but after a while, it became too
predictable. They added a ton of huge guest stars the second season which did
keep viewers coming back to a certain extent. Another reason the show slipped in
the ratings had nothing to do with the actual show ! Other networks deciding
that since Batman, a superhero, was a great hit, why not introduce their own
version of a character in the new fall line up of 1966 ( remember, Batman came
on in January before the regular fall release in September ). These shows
included, Mr Terrific, Captain Nice, then the cartoons followed suit with no
less than 6 super hero cartoons.
The American public
was overloaded with Superpowers.
Dozier wanted to do another season, try and revive his creation and came
up with some ideas to breathe life into the show, Hey, lets add a new Hero !!
Great ! Batgirl was added for the third season. The two night showing was
dropped, people would just tune in for the Thursday night episode because of the
recap at the beginning of the show would keep them caught up. So, the show was
cut back to a half hour once a week. How do you add Batgirl and reduce your show
by a half hour every week? In one word, CUT
The series got into
problems with cost and the sets were cut back to save money, look at a show from
the third season, and you can see how the set quality went from outstanding to
rather something that looked closer to what a local playhouse would use. A
relationship between Batman and Batgirl was never explored and the time given to
the show didn't allow for a good plot to develop.
An Expensive Bat !!!
The end of the
caped crusaders did not come at the hand of a super villain but by the same
network that brought them to life.
It was due not for
lack of popularity but rather the show became too costly to
produce.
Money,
it's what makes the world go round, The show cost over $75,000 for one half hour
episode yet ABC only paid about $65,000 per show to broadcast it. Props, sets,
cars, new bat items, these all cost big bucks. The show was going over budget by
a million dollars a year. If you do the math, that would mean that while the
show was in it's original production, it would make no money until it was in
syndication.
The network then
decided to pull the plug and end production of the show to then be put into
syndication so they could realize a profit.
* Click Here to read
an interview with William Dozier from
1968 about the
ending of the show *
The show
produced a total of 120 episodes with which was unusual for a show that only ran
three seasons, but remember, it was showed twice a
week..
the last
episode aired on March 14,1968 .
A bit of sad Bat
Trivia... after the show was canceled by The ABC Network, NBC showed a great
interest in purchasing the show !!! GREAT !!! not so great... some network exec.
at ABC in a effort to get valuable space on the studio lot had the whole set
torn down. Due to the great cost to rebuild the sets, NBC declined on the deal,
shoot.
The series
popularity is proven by 30 years of syndication and still going strong. Still
you have to wonder...what if those sets had not been destroyed
.......
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