Obituary - Adam West, actor and star of Batman

Died: June 9, 2017

ADAM West, who has died aged 88, was an actor who knew more than most the curse of playing a superhero. From 1966 until 1968, he played Batman in a television version of the comic strip that became a cult in the 1960s but was reviled by many Batman fans who preferred their superhero to be taken seriously.

The problem for some fans was that West and the makers of the series appeared to be sending the whole concept up. West was hardly in super-hero shape for a start, but the tone of the series was also high camp. A succession of glamorous guest stars such as Joan Collins and Zsa Zsa Gabor were eager to guest-star in the show and appear with the giant Pows and Kablams. And at the end of the every episode, the narrator would tell viewers to “tune in tomorrow… same Bat time… same Bat channel.”

West always defended the programme, saying that it was no sillier than the original comic strip, but he did take some time to come to terms with the fact that he would forever be associated with it. He had his doubts about taking on the part in the first place because he wanted to be a serious actor, and his career suffered for years afterwards, although in later years he came to love Batman. “For better or worse, richer or poorer,” he said, “I am married to the cape.”

West had been a fan of the character as a child when he found a cache of Batman comic books in an old barn on the family farm. He had grown up on the farm in Walla Walla in Washington, but it was not a happy childhood – his mother Audrey was an alcoholic and manic depressive. She had wanted to be an actress herself but gave up the ambition to live on the farm and West always thought that, in some way, the reason he wanted to become an actor was to pursue the dream that his mother had never had.

However, it took him a while to realise the ambition. At first, he studied literature and psychology at college and worked in radio for a number of years, including some time in Hawaii where he met his first wife. He was also drafted into the Army where he ran their TV station.

In 1959, he was given an audition by Warners after he sent them pictures of himself posing heroically on a horse and started to work in TV westerns. He also had several guest spots on some of the biggest television series of the 1950s and 60s including 77 Sunset Strip, Perry Mason and Bonanza and in 1959 made a promising pilot called The Frontier World of Doc Holliday, which, in many ways, was the story of Breaking Bad more than 40 years before Breaking Bad. The premise was that Holliday, the famous gun slinger and dentist, had just been told that he had six months to live, but the series was considered too downbeat and was never made.

By the late 1950s, West was also making appearances in film. His first was The Young Philadelphians starring Paul Newman as an ambitious lawyer; in 1964, he also appeared in the science fiction epic Robinson Crusoe on Mars (although he was billed fourth, after Mona the monkey). He also worked on spaghetti westerns in Italy.

He was then offered the part of Batman by the producer William Dozier (who did the “same Bat time… same Bat channel” voiceovers) and was initially reluctant. West knew the conventional wisdom was that playing a superhero was career suicide – or worse, that there might even be a curse on doing it. George Reeves, who played Superman in the 1950s, committed suicide and the Lone Ranger star Clayton Moore struggled to find work. Should West take the part?

“As a child, I’d loved the comic books,” he said, “but I felt that playing Batman would be a dumb move for someone who aspired to a career as a serious actor, and that an athlete would be better suited for the part, someone with buns of steel.”

Eventually, he decided to go for it and in preparing for the role, talked to the comic book writer Bob Kane, who invented the character. From the start, Dozier and the series writer Lorenzo Semple Jr wanted to do it as spoof or comedy rather than straight drama, although ABC, who were making the show, were unsure it was going to work. In particular, they had serious doubts about Dozier’s idea of putting giant POWs and ZAPs on screen during the fight sequences. But Dozier stuck to his guns, the audience got it and the show became the biggest in ABC’s 23-year history.

The series was never to everyone’s taste, but it did use some genuinely experimental ideas (tilted camerawork was always used for the bad guys for example) and West always defended it against accusations that it was camp. “We were farce. We were a lampoon,” he said. “We were the movie serials of the 1930s and 40s done against a fun-house backdrop.”

He also believed that a silly, colourful show like Batman was exactly what was needed in the 1960s. A dark, film noir Batman might have been right for the 1980s, but with so much anxiety in the news in the 60s, he believed audiences wanted fun and escapism and Batman provided it.

In all West made three series of Batman and a film, which was released in 1966, but by the third year he was unhappy with the show’s direction. The producers added Batgirl, played by the late Yvonne Craig, but it was not enough to save the show and it was cancelled in 1968.

As many had predicted, and West had feared, he struggled to find work after Batman and in fact did not work for a year. He also found himself in a trap: resenting the role for what it had done to his career but forced to make personal appearances as the character to earn money.

“The transition was tough – money-wise and emotionally,” he said. “I had to do things that I wasn’t comfortable doing.” The struggle to adjust also put a strain on his marriage, he had to borrow money from his father to survive and he started to drink too much. “I felt like I was a failure,” he said.

However, slowly, his career started to recover. Throughout the 70s, he made some guest appearances on television shows such as The Love Boat and Fantasy Island, and made some low-budget movies including Young Lady Chatterley Part II and Zombie Nightmare, but it was not until the 1980s that his career began to truly pick up again. He became a popular figure on the chat show circuit and from 2000 made regular appearances on the animated series Family Guy, on which he played the eccentric mayor of Quahog, Rhode Island.

Adam West had been suffering from leukaemia and is survived by his wife Marcelle, six children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.