Adam West, now 86, spoke to the LA Times to promote the Warner Home Video release of the entire 1960s Batman series on Blu-ray and DVD.
As a young actor in Hollywood, West got a call about playing the DC Comics’ superhero in a new TVseries. He was hesitant. At least initially. “I thought, ‘I’m trying to have a serious career,'” he recalled.
But he read Lorenzo Semple Jr.’s script for the first two episodes. “I fell down laughing,” said West. “I said, ‘I have got to do that.’ It was easy. Your sense memory comes back to when you were a kid playing Batman.”
…It wasn’t until about 18 months after he got the part that he found out why. “They had seen a commercial I had done. I was doing a spoof on James Bond. I did a character called Captain Q for Nestle’s Quik. Those commercials were kind of funny.”
The entire series of 120 episodes has been digitally remastered. Bonus material includes three hours of cast interviews and screen-test footage.