Wednesday, February 20, 2013

The Benefits – and Sadness – of Hindsight

 
When you watch a television show that is 20, 30 or 40 years old, you cannot help but think about the fates that would befall some of the actors and personalities who had no idea then what their futures held. Sometimes, it can impact how you watch the show.

For every early glimpse of a great talent, there was sadly a reminder of later trials. Often you’ll get both within the same show – watch Happy Days and there’s Ron Howard before he became an Academy Award winning director, and his on-screen sister, Erin Moran, before she became a homeless alcoholic. Television freezes those moments in time. I wonder if some, like Moran, wish those frozen moments were permanent. 



Recently I received a bootleg tape of Challenge of the Network Stars from 1977, the second in those semi-annual Battle of the Network Stars competitions that pitted stars from ABC, CBS and NBC series in various athletic events. In this installment, host Howard Cosell had two co-hosts – O.J. Simpson and Bruce Jenner, both revered at the time as heroes and astounding athletes. One is now a pariah who sits in jail; the other is a punch line on a bad reality series.

But there’s also Gidget, starring a perky, impossibly cute teenage Sally Field. You wonder if she dreamed of winning an Oscar, much less two, or that she’d still be in demand as a movie star some 45 years after her surfing days.  And then you watch Family Affair, and think about how Anissa Jones (Buffy) would not live to see her 19th birthday. 



Did George Clooney ever think his mullet-sporting time on The Facts of Life would be a career highlight? Did that qualify as “making it” for a struggling actor? There was no such thing as reality shows back then, so if you told his costar Lisa Whelchel that, 30 years after Blair Warner, she would be on TV as herself, marooned with a bunch of strangers on an island in the Philippines, she would think you needed counseling. 

Actors in the sci-fi and fantasy genres experience both the blessings and curses of a particularly devoted fan base. Richard Hatch became a big star in the original Battlestar: Galactica series; Erin Gray was heralded as one of the most beautiful women on television in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Today, both are often found signing 30 year-old photos of themselves at conventions. Is that sad? I don’t know, maybe. Even if better roles never followed, they still get paid to spend their weekends meeting people who love them, and tell them how much they enjoy their work. I could get used to that. 


 When revisiting these shows, it can also be interesting to think back on what you were doing the first time you saw them, and how your life has changed. If someone had told my 13 year-old self, while I was watching Charlie’s Angels, that one day Jaclyn Smith would serve me lunch in her kitchen, I'd have thought the very idea was incomprehensible. Back then it seemed as if the stars who appeared on television lived in a completely different world than the rest of us. Now, we’re all Facebook friends.

Friday, February 1, 2013

The Dark Knight Lightens Up: Batman (1966-1968)

  
A few nights ago I stumbled upon the first Michael Keaton Batman movie on some cable network. I was in the minority in thinking it was lousy back in 1989, when it was a huge success and earned mostly positive reviews. I haven’t changed my opinion, and watching it again only confirmed my belief that Keaton was miscast and Jack Nicholson was a lousy Joker.

More recently we’ve had the three Christopher Nolan ‘Dark Knight’ films starring Christian Bale. They’re impressive, no doubt, and they have bestowed a gravitas on the superhero film genre that had not taken hold even after the successes of the X-Men and Spider-Man franchises. But as the end credits rolled on The Dark Knight Rises, I was more exhausted than entertained. 

Shouldn’t watching Batman make you happy? If not, what’s the point?

Watching the Batman series (1966-1968) always makes me happy. Sixty-some years into the TV medium and it’s still hard to find another show as unique as this unapologetically camp take on one of the comics’ most dour superheroes. It’s like someone put The Lone Ranger, Rocky & Bullwinkle and Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In into a blender and hit the puree button. That "someone" was actually executive producer William Dozier, who masterminded this eccentric superhero serial and also provided the breathless narration for each episode (“Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!”)



Adam West rarely receives sufficient acclaim for his ability to don blue tights and deliver lines like “Riddler, you can’t buy friends with money,” in a monotone that rivaled Joe Friday’s. His underplaying was perfectly balanced by Burt Ward’s high-spirited enthusiasm and the flamboyant antics of Gotham City’s assorted evildoers. 



It’s a series with enduring appeal to all ages, though not for the same reasons. Kids love the action-packed fight scenes punctuated by comic book panel POWs and BAMs, the brass-driven theme song and the rogues gallery. Older fans will appreciate Adam West’s aforementioned deadpan line readings (“Let's go, Robin. We've set another youth on the road to a brighter tomorrow”) and the satiric references to everything from politics to pop culture.

When I recall the show now, my first memory is of bright, bright colors. The animated opening credits sequence, the silky midnight blues of Batman’s cape, the reds and yellows in Robin’s costume, The Riddler’s bright green tights and The Joker’s hot pink suit, Batgirl’s red hair and the rich hues of the library at stately Wayne Manor – they all seemed to pop off the screen so much more vividly than other color TV shows of that era.

What are the five best Batman episodes? Here are my picks.

1. “Hi Diddle Diddle/Smack in the Middle”
The pilot introduced the series’ most popular villain, The Riddler. Frank Gorshin earned an Emmy nomination for his inspired portrayal, which was inspired by Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death and the staccato tough-guy moves of James Cagney. This episode also featured the famous “Bat-dance” sequence at the What a Way to Go-Go discotheque.  



2. “True or False Face/Holy Rat Race”
Probably the series’ best episode, and the only one to give an indication of whether this cast could have played the material straight and still make it work. The camp content is dialed back in favor of action and a particularly slippery villain (played by veteran TV heavy Malachi Throne). 

3. “Hot Off the Griddle/The Cat and the Fiddle”
My favorite of the many outstanding Catwoman stories written by Stanley Ralph Ross and featuring the wonderfully droll Julie Newmar. Eartha Kitt could purr all she wants, but Newmar was the preeminent Catwoman and for me remains so to this day. The cliffhanger finds the Dynamic Duo covered in margarine and tied to griddles under giant magnifying glasses, where they are to be cooked by the sun. “Holy oleo!” exclaims Robin, to which Catwoman replies, “I didn’t know you could yodel.” 


4. “A Piece of the Action/Batman’s Satisfaction”
Not a great story, but it’s a must-see for the showdown between Batman and Robin and visiting heroes the Green Hornet (Van Williams) and Kato (Bruce Lee). The story goes that Lee refused to lose the fight, script or no script, and there’s no question the intensity of the dueling masked heroes is amplified during their standoff. 



5. “The Sport of Penguins/A Horse of Another Color”
The Batgirl shows of season three were a mixed blessing. Usually they meant a dumber-than-usual story or a lame villain like Milton Berle’s Louie the Lilac. But there was also the unforgettable vision of former Ballet Russe dancer Yvonne Craig poured into a skintight batsuit, high-kicking her way through a fight until she is inevitably captured by the evildoer of the week. This was arguably the best of her adventures, as The Penguin (Burgess Meredith) concocts a horse racing hoax assisted by heiress Lola Lasagna (Ethel Merman). Sadly, however, we never do get the answer to that immortal question, "Whose baby are you, Batgirl?"