Holy Villages, Batman!!!
The Villages TV Nostalgia Club will honor and remember Adam West during its monthly meeting Tuesday, June 20 at 7 p.m. in the Eisenhower Recreation Center.
West, star of the wildly popular “Batman” TV series of the 1960s, died earlier this month at 88.
“It was a campy show and very popular,” said Stu Sachs, leader of the Villages TV Nostalgia Club. “Adam West became a star after Batman.” One of the scenes the club will show is Adam West dancing as Batman, doing the “Batusi.”
Here’s a clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exhNT2_bHs8
West had been in television and movies for nearly a decade before landing the Batman role in 1966. It soon became a pop culture landmark, and the whole country was consumed by the Batman craze.
The series ran for three years but has lived on ever since in reruns. It took a comic book look at Batman, Robin (Burt Ward) and such adversaries as the Joker (Cesar Romero), the Penguin (Burgess Meredith) and the Riddler (Frank Gorshin).
West, though, was the star and the straight-laced Batman who turned the series into a megahit.
“My Batman has endured because it had something for everyone,” West told the Daily Express in 2015. “When you were a kid you could enjoy all the adventure, the color, the crazy costumes, the wonderful villains. Then as you got a little bit older you saw the satirical elements, the bizarre stuff.”
Over the years, such stars as Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale and Ben Affleck have worn the Batman tights. But West holds a special place in the hearts of Batman fans. He had a different take than the “Dark Knight” Batman of recent years.
“Our dad always saw himself as The Bright Knight and aspired to make a positive impact on his fans’ lives. He was and always will be our hero,” his family said in a statement after his death.
After “Batman,” West struggled to find work in movies or TV. But he reached popularity with a new generation as mayor of Quahog — named Adam West — on Seth MacFarlane’s long-running Fox animated hit “Family Guy.”
West proved that Batman could survive anything – even cancellation of his TV show.
“The only thing I thought is that it would be the end of me, and it was for a bit,” West said at a 2014 Comic-Con. “But then I realized that what we created in the show … we created this zany, lovable world.”
“I look around and I see the adults — I see you grew up with me, and you believe in the adventure. I never believed this would happen, that I would be up here with illustrious people like yourselves. I’m so grateful! I’m the luckiest actor in the world, folks, to have you still hanging around.”
