Adam West was our forever Batman
I will begin this appreciation of the actor Adam West, who died last week at 88, with an apology. What follows will largely be about “Batman,” the role that half a century ago defined and to some extent constrained West’s career and will now follow him into the hereafter.
Still, for what it’s worth, he remains — for me, and many - the best of all possible Batmans, the only Batman that matters. That he is permanently associated with the part in a way that Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Ben Affleck and Christian Bale are not is as much or more a matter of his owning the role than of the role owning him.
In the mid-1960s, comic books — or to be specific, movies and television series featuring comic book characters — were not the world-dominating, industrial big business they have become.
“Batman,” which premiered on ABC in 1966, was the most successful expression of a cultural wave that also produced the CBS sitcom “Mr. Terrific,” NBC’s “Captain Nice” and the Broadway musical “It’s a Bird . It’s a Plane . It’s Superman.”
It’s a comedy that presents itself as a drama — indeed, it may be the first television comedy to come without a laugh track, and it has a visual formality unusual for the time. There are winks and nods and jokes aplenty, but they are played straight. West, especially, underplays his part — this approach did set a template for his successors — pitching his voice low, rarely breaking a sweat. He is not uncomplicated; he has regrets, and his attraction to Catwoman (played variously by Julie Newmar, Eartha Kitt and Lee Meriwether) crossed some line. But like most contemporary superheroes, there was nothing pathological in his goodness.
West was nearing 40 when he took on the role, and that he is a little worn and seasoned is all to the good. He played Batman with authority and commitment without ever trying to signal that he was in any way better than his material. His material, in fact, was very good —smart, literate, alliterative, rhythmic — and he handled it comfortably and with some evident relish. It’s a surprisingly subtle performance and a delightful one — a quality notably absent from the franchise after the Caped Crusader was recast as a Dark Knight.
“Batman” lasted a little more than two years, logging 120 episodes and producing a theatrical feature. The wave it rode in on receded as the culture moved on, the swinging ‘60s grew psychedelic and desperate, and television made its way toward “All in the Family” and “MASH.”
I don’t know if it’s fair to say that West’s career never recovered from “Batman.” He had enjoyed what most actors would consider an enviably healthy career; still, that he was not exactly a household name before then suggests that he might have achieved his high-water mark. For whatever reason — typecasting is real — he was never able to parlay that success into another hit.
