India Ink writes:I don't know why Adam West was given this aura of celebrity. As far as I can tell he hadn't really established himself as a big screen presence before that. Maybe the producers thought if they advertised West as a big star people would believe them.
Well, as I wasn't quite 3 when the show went off the air, I only "met" Adam's Batman in syndication, so this is interesting news to me; that he was hyped as a big star in '66. Perhaps this was at his insistence, having seen what happened to George Reeves as Superman (among other examples): maybe Adam was trying to head off typecasting before it could take hold. At any rate, making a big deal of his name seems a fair enough trade considering how often -- and how much of -- his face is covered in the average episode. (Certainly it's a better deal than Kirk Alyn got; the publicity around his serials was along the lines of "...and starring Superman as himself.")
Anyway, the idea was always that this big star was playing the character. Not that he was the character. Burt Ward was a little more acceptable as Robin (not realizing at the time that he was somewhat older than the character).
I didn't have that hurdle to jump, but I did have issues with Adam's Batman as a kid. His hair was too blond and should have been swept back, and his utility belt was different from the one in the books. HaHa! Little did I know that no future screen version of Batman would even come 1/10th as close to being "comic-accurate."
Burt Ward I never did warm to, nor apparently did most people who worked with him.
The ideal Batman would have been Guy Williams or Rock Hudson. I realize if Hudson had played him this would produce a lot of odious gay-jokes in the present day--but Rock was a great actor and had the exact look for Bruce Wayne. At least he got to be the commissioner eventually (although in this part he was much Ralph Dibny to Susan Saint James's Sue Dibny).
MacMillans = Dibnys. That's neat, I never thought of that.
I've seen some lettercols from the 60s where readers were asked to cast a theoretical JLA movie and Rock Hudson got far and away the most votes to play Superman. I agree Guy Williams would've been a great Batman, not only because he looks spot-on to how the character was drawn, but also because he could've nailed the bored playboy bit, and as a former Zorro and Errol Flynn lookalike he was part of the swashbuckler lineage that began with Fairbanks, Sr...incidentally an early inspiration for the character himself. Still, having already spent years in a mask, I don't know if he'd have gone for it again. In fact, he probably would've seen it as typecasting.
Legend has it cowboy star Ty Hardin was the first choice to play Batman in '66, and though I've never seen his work there's no denying he had the look:

For my birthday I just got season one of Wonder Woman on DVD. Lynda Carter was the perfect Wonder Woman. But I'd forgotten how seriously she took the role.
Well, there's serious and then there's serious. What was so endearing about Lynda (aside from the obvious!

) was that she played Diana with absolute conviction and earnestness. Diana was smart, principled and mentally strong but she was also naive and a little child-like, at least in that first season. I'm reminded of the scene in Superman: THe Movie where Chris Reeve's Supes says he's here to fight for "Truth, Justice and the American Way," and Lois thinks he's joking, then realizes he's not. It would have been so easy for Reeve to take the easy way out here and deliver the line either jokingly or in a way that made Superman an out-of-it square like Adam's Batman, but he nailed it -- and defined Donner's vision -- by playing it with utter, straight-faced sincerity, and made it "cool" to be a good guy again.
This, for me, is what Lynda did for Wonder Woman (and before Chris Reeve ever put on the tights!); she played Diana as a genuinely sweet person with a clear-cut view of right and wrong and a basic faith in human nature that was so pure and endearing it made even the cynics among us say, "why not?" I think all of us have met a couple of real people like this in our lives; people so idealistic that even though we "know" they're being unrealistic, they make us stop and wonder why things
couldn't be better if we all just believed as strongly as they did. Or at least they make us wish the world was more simple and pure just for their sake, because we like them so much.
The other thing Lynda did that was great was to wear that costume so well. And I don't just mean filling it out; she came off as absolutely comfortable in it, and not at all trampy or campy. It's hard to imagine a modern star, like those idiots in the Charlie's Angels films, wearing that outfit without disgracing it, but when I watch Lynda in the suit, I can honestly say I am not lusting after her or staring at her bust (though I don't blame those who do). She walked around outside in what amounted to a swimsuit with boots and made it seem perfectly natural. And paradoxically, that made her sexier than any 10 hoochie girls wiggling their thonged derrieres at us in a music video.