By Lee Weinstein: The column heading “The Return of Batman.” leapt out at me. It was accompanied by a movie still; a blurry photo of an actor in a Batman costume crashing through a window. It was fall of 1965, I was 17, and I was looking through the November 26 issue of Time magazine at the home of a relative. I had always liked Batman comics, almost as much as Superman, and this was news to me. I’d had no idea such a film existed.

I had grown up watching the Adventures of Superman on TV, and I had seen Fleischer’s animated Superman cartoons many times, but Batman I knew only from comic books. A Batman movie!

I began to read. It was a World War II era movie serial in 15 chapters, produced by Columbia Pictures. I had grown up with movie serials, mainly on television, presented on children’s shows along with the cartoons and other features. They starred such heroes as Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and Commando Cody, but I had never seen a serial about Batman. Was Robin in it? Alfred?

I read further. It was about a revival of an all-but-forgotten serial made in 1943. Robin was in it, and as I found out much later, Alfred the butler as well. As described in the article, all the serial chapters had been strung together end to end, and had just been shown near the University of Illinois as a 4 ½ hour presentation. But the article made clear that the serial had been revived for the purpose of ridicule. The journalist described how the audience howled at the actors and their “puffy unathletic leaps,” and “oversized suits with cantilevered shoulders.” He compared them to Laurel and Hardy.

As I was to realize later, these criticisms were inaccurate and unfair. The leaps and fights of the actors were actually performed by trained stunt doubles, and the “oversized suits” were standard dress for the period.

Nonetheless, as I read, I was intrigued. Regardless of what the audience or the writer may have thought of it, I wanted to see it. The presentation in question had been in Illinois, but the article went on to say it would be traveling to other cities. Sadly, as I eventually discovered, Philadelphia was not among them.

Scarcely over a month later, in January, 1966, ABC premiered the Batman TV series amid much ballyhoo. Obviously this was no coincidence, although I didn’t know how the series could have been created so quickly.  Possibly the Time article came at the end of a previous series of showings? But whereas the serial was treated as being unintentionally funny, the TV series was quite intentionally so. It was obviously modeled on serials, complete with obligatory fist-fights and cliffhanger endings but was played strictly for laughs. There was an off-screen announcer accompanying the cliffhangers with such melodramatic commentary as, “Is this the end? How will Batman and the Boy Wonder survive?” and the fight scenes were embellished with comic book-type sound balloons: (Crunch!, Pow! Etc.).

But as for the 1943 serial, I didn’t actually get to see any of it until the late 1970’s. In the meantime, I had to satisfy my curiosity with books on the subject that came out in the early 1970’s, such as The Great Movie Serials and To Be Continued... They outlined the plot in more detail and told how Batman and Robin were working for the government to fight the Japanese saboteur, Dr. Daka. The main actors, as noted in the Time article, were Lewis Wilson as Bruce Wayne as Batman, Douglas Croft as Robin and J. Carroll Naish as Daka, and from the books I found out Shirley Patterson was Linda Page, Bruce Wayne’s girlfriend, and the director was Lambert Hillyer. I also learned there had also been a sequel in 1949, Batman and Robin, starring Robert Lowery as Batman and Johnny Duncan as Robin.

It wasn’t until 1978 or 1979 that I actually had the opportunity to see a few of the chapters. The Theater of the Living Arts on South St. in Philadelphia, then a venue for classic and foreign films, was screening a chapter a week of Batman along with the feature film of the week. I brought along a date and eagerly watched. Aside from the racist anti-Japanese propaganda, as described in the Time article, it was a typical Columbia serial. Columbia’s short subject department was noted for its low-budget and cost-cutting measures. Batman’s costume didn’t look bad, but I remember my date whispering to me, “His horns are crooked.” “Those aren’t horns’” I chuckled, “They’re ears! He’s supposed to look like a bat.” The costume, although cheaply made, actually conformed to the one depicted in the comic books of the period. Robin’s mask looked like the plastic Halloween masks common in five and dime stores.

The plot concerned Daka’s attempt to infiltrate America with people who have been converted into electronically controlled zombies and compelled to follow the commands he speaks into a microphone. He did this by strapping an electronic helmet to the head of his victims. His first victim, as fate would have it, was Linda Page’s uncle (Gus Glassmire). As I’ve discovered recently, the producer had originally intended the villain to be the Joker, but that changed when World War II broke out and the serial became a tool for war propaganda.

I would have liked to have seen the entire serial, but it would have been an expensive proposition to go every week. I did get to see two or three chapters and get the flavor of it. I remember J. Carroll Naish’s over-the-top performance as Daka and a scene in the “Bat’s Cave” in which an imprisoned henchman is tricked into making a telephone call from the cave. As he dials, a large dial on a wall in a different room duplicates the number as Batman writes it down. What passed for the Batmobile was an ordinary dark-colored convertible, and although Batman wore a utility belt like in the comic books, he never used it in the chapters I saw. There were no Batarangs and no Bat-signal in evidence, nor even a Commissioner Gordon.

I remained fascinated with the 1943 serial, despite its limitations, and I finally got to see it in its entirety a year or two later when I invested in a new BetaMax machine and began to frequent a large video rental store in my neighborhood. What struck me while watching it was that Batman had no special weapons. Or any weapons for that matter. Not even so much as a pistol. He never did use his utility belt for anything. He was simply a guy in a costume who thwarted his enemies by surprising them in their lairs and getting into fist fights with them. He also seemed to be somehow invulnerable. In one cliffhanger ending, he was in a fistfight in a plane that was going into a dive. In the following chapter, the plane crashes, the henchmen are presumably killed, but Batman emerges unharmed. I couldn’t help but chuckle. In another chapter, Daka receives a message from his homeland in the form of a Japanese soldier in suspended animation secretly shipped to him. Daka revives him, and after hearing the message, throws the soldier into his alligator pit. Surely an encoded telegraph message would have been more efficient!

Some years later, as a result of further research, I found out that when it had been shown around the country in the mid-Sixties, in college towns, it was billed as “An Evening with Batman and Robin.” The Time article had specifically described a screening in an art theater in Champagne, Illinois, in October of 1965, which followed soon after a similar showing in Cleveland.

According to various sources, the revival of this serial was triggered by none other than Hugh Hefner, who began to screen the chapters in July of 1965 at the Playboy mansion in Chicago. There were, and possibly still are, rumors that an ABC executive had been to the mansion, saw the serial, and was inspired to initiate the television series. It almost sounded plausible, except that July, 1965 to January, 1966 did not allow much time for the development of a TV series, especially an expensively produced one like Batman.

I’ve discovered more recently that the serial chapters were revived even slightly earlier than Hugh Hefner’s screenings. It’s been reported that they were being shown in Boston in April of 1965. But still not enough time to create a TV series.

As I’ve now found out, the TV series had actually been in development long before that, possibly as early as 1963. But the pseudo-serial format of the series with its weekly cliffhangers and the campy style in its final development is unlikely to be coincidental.

It appears that plans for a Batman TV series were already underway when the serial was rediscovered in 1965 and its subsequent popularity evidently exerted an influence on the creation process.

So this cheaply done, often unintentionally humorous serial, had its impact. It gave Columbia the impetus to produce a sequel in 1949 and was an influence on the 1966 TV series. But it even influenced the comic books it was based on.

According to several sources, it was responsible for the Batcave, which was prominently featured afterward in the comics. Chapter two of the serial was titled “The Bat’s Cave.” and is shown as Batman’s secret underground crime laboratory. Previously, in the comic books, Batman stored the Batmobile underground beneath a barn near the Wayne mansion. After the serial, the Batcave as Batman’s headquarters entered the comic books. However in the film, the car was parked, unhidden, at street level.

Alfred was introduced in the comic books as a short, somewhat rotund, clean-shaven gentleman. After the serial he metamorphosed to a slim mature-looking butler with a trim mustache, to resemble the British actor (William Austin) who played the role in 1943.

As previously noted, it inspired a sequel in 1949, which also enjoyed a revival in the mid-1960’s. It was even more cheaply done, and Lowery’s mask was quite visibly ill-fitting. But the war propaganda was gone. Now there was a Bat-Signal and a Commissioner Gordon (Lyle Talbot), who used it to summon Batman and Robin. Bruce Wayne’s girlfriend was now Vicki Vale (Jane Adams) as in the comic books instead of Linda Page. The hooded villain, The Wizard, who isn’t unmasked until the end, had electronic equipment that somehow enabled him to control all mechanical devices, including cars and planes. There are humorous moments, whether intentional or not. At one point someone asks Batman, “Does Bruce Wayne know you’re driving his car?” And in a later deathtrap scene, Batman, who doesn’t wear a utility belt in this serial, pulls a lit blowtorch seemingly out of nowhere to burn through the wall!

Lewis Wilson, the first screen Batman, later had a roundabout connection with none other than James Bond. Wilson’s son, Michael, by his first wife, Dana Natol, became the stepson of Albert Broccoli when Natol remarried. Broccoli, of course, was to become the producer of the enormously popular James Bond films. Michael Wilson became step-brother to Broccoli’s daughter, Barbara. Michael and Barbara eventually became co-executive producers of the James Bond film series, starting in 1979 with Moonraker.

Back in 1943, and even in 1965, Batman on film was quite a rarity. But since William Dozier’s 1966 Batman feature film, based on the TV series, darker and more serious films eventually followed, made by such luminaries as Tim Burton, Christopher Nolan, and Matt Reeves. Batman films have become almost commonplace. 

In 1989 a book called Serial Adventures Presents the Serial Adventures of The Complete Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder by James Van Hise was published by Pioneer Books, Inc. It contains chapter by chapter synopses and commentary for both serials, and numerous stills.  

And today, both serials can easily be accessed in their entirety on YouTube. 

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[Lee Weinstein’s website is: https://leestein2003.wordpress.com/]