 This is the SF Productions Podcast Network. And so did 24 Hours. The 60s and the 70s, dwelling place of a lost generation. We who grew up in this era had no real heroes. Our role models came from the imaginations of others. Our meager lives were formed by and revolved around weekly installments of our favorite TV programs. Welcome to a place that your parents didn't understand. A place that exists somewhere between the forefront of recollectible memory and the edge of everyday thought. Welcome to the vast wasteland. Welcome home. To the first of what we hope are a lot of exciting shows here on ACTV, welcome to vast wasteland. I'm your host, Mark Schmidbar, and along with my other hosts, Wilbert Neal and Marty Wiley. This is going to kind of be an informal show. It's a kind of show for people who think that 30-something is just a little bit too old for them. It's for people who were brought up in the 60s and 70s and who were interested in only one thing. Television. Television. Well, on this edition, we're going to be discussing something that's certainly big in the news right now, but not in the way you would expect it. The big Batman movie, of course, is just zapping box office records all over the place. But we're not going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the TV show, the fine television show in the 1960s. I thought we'd first go through a real quick history of the character just to get you up to date on what's going on with him. Batman, created by Bob Kane, appeared in the number 27 issue of Detective Comics. That was in 1939. He was also seen in, of course, his own Batman comics and all-star comics and Justice League of America and Bravenbold and World's Finest. He was all over the place. He's pretty much number two over at DC. And there's also the big movie serial in the 1940s. And I don't know. Do you have any idea who did that? Well, actually there were a couple of serials. There was one in 43 and then one about in 45. And they had different sets of actors for each of them. So they were actually two different. Okay. I don't remember what they were. Well, we don't know. We don't know. We weren't there. We weren't there. That's not TV. That's right. This is about TV. So let's see. And then after the series, there was the, if you remember this, the live action, the Batman stuff in the late 70s. It was like super friends or something, but it was live action. And it did have Adam West. What was that? I was trying to remember. Gosh. It was more of a parody than it was. Yeah, it was. It was a series. It was hard to more heroes. And it was on any case. That gives you a basic idea. Anyways, we just wanted to have a little discussion on exactly the impact of the series and just basically discuss the thing. So I'm going to stop rambling and turn it over to Wilbert. This is the first point for the evening. Okay. One of the things that I always found interesting about the Batman show was the fact that he had, well, he was prepared for just about every occasion in his bat gear that he had. And bat gear changed from, well, he had basic bat gear with the utility belt and the Batarang. And of course there were the vehicles, the Batmobile, which you saw more than anything, any of the other vehicles. But there was the Batbow, the Bat Cycle, the Bat Copter, and then there's the Bat Cave. But just his gear, basically, that he carried around with him, the utility belt, which held... The whole rib. Everything. Everything for every gas ever made. Right. There were only like ten pockets on there, but yet he was prepared for every darn situation. Probably the Batarang was probably his best known and most used, oh, that's true, the Batarang was attached to the Bat rope. And so that was probably his best known and most used set of things. Well, one disadvantage I've noticed is he always had to attach that bat rope to that Batarang before he gave it a throw. Yeah, that's true. It wasn't a whole deal. When you have that together... And actually the Batarang just went up and round around something so they could climb up the side of a building. Yeah, just anything. He'd just toss it up there and it would whip around whatever was up there, a flagpole. The side of the big umbrella there on the penguin setting one day. Yeah, just anything that was overhanging that they could attach that onto. And then they'd climb that Bat rope, which was always interesting, just climbing there. And they'd never shunied up the rope. Oh, no, they had their feet on the thing and they were walking. Which is a really tough way to go up a building, I would think. Yes, indeed it is. You know, there were never any knots tied in the Bat rope. They were just climbing, and they had on gloves. They had on gloves, but they never slid down. It's like their gloves had velcro. This was before velcro was well known or anything, but they're just holding on there and they're just climbing up there. Well, actually there were a couple of times where Batman did throw the rope up onto a catwalk or whatnot and he sort of climbed as the rope swung and he climbed as he swung. That's an interesting one. The physics was just like, wait, how did he do that? Well, you know, along with everything else Batman probably could also defy gravity. And in 1967 we didn't take physics classes. That's true. That's true. You're based at God. So hey, it was believable for us. That wasn't very correct. It was fine. I mean, we watched this show as kids, so it was, we didn't catch the campy. I didn't catch the campiness as a five, six-year-old. It was real action. It was real true, real hero. My parents laughed. I hated them for it, but they thought it was hilarious. I didn't see anything funny about it. It was a serious show. Right. Serious stuff. Yeah, now the characters that were in the comic book as opposed to the ones that were in the series, they were two that as far as I remember were never in the comics, which was Chief O'Hara and Ann Harriet, which I had a real problem with Ann Harriet to begin with, because there's a whole bunch of things you could ask about how to Ann Harriet. Why didn't she ever notice there was this blinking red phone in the study? What was the deal with that? I don't think she was allowed in. She never got to go into the study. I thought there was some point she was in the study. Maybe I'm wrong, but in any case. And why she never wondered where were Bruce and Dick all the time? Oh, they always had good excuses. Deep Sea fishing, board meetings. They were busy men. They were very busy. But they were gone all the time. And it is a big house, so it's like she couldn't cover anything. She may not be somewhere else that were in the house, but she usually followed Alfred around with a tray or something. Alfred, he was their other cover. So, you know, I think he hit little ties to Ann Harriet or something. There you go. They're not here, but they're here, but you don't see them. They're often the East Wing, the West Wing. Who knows? Now, why didn't she miss Alfred when he's down like cleaning the Batcave, which he seemed to be doing a lot? You know, it's like he appears to be the only servant in this place. She was at her lady's club meeting. Ah, I see. He was always cleaning somewhere, and so it's not like she's going to try to track him down. She's just going to go in. But, you know, it's like she's probably waiting for him like, you know. Yeah. Possibility was they could have her just knocked out in drugs most of the time so that she didn't notice that anyone was there. It's just valley on the whole show, maybe. That was the whole thing. I had a lot of stress problems. She only noticed things when they were pointed out to her anyway. Right. She was pretty dizzy. I found out in looking at the Batman book there that they just threw Ann Harriet in to kind of offset the idea that, well, Bruce and Dector, two guys, you know. Well, so let's throw Ann Harriet in. You've got to have a woman in the house. Right. Just not to make it look like her. It doesn't matter that she doesn't know. Too friendly. Right. Let's see. Oh, another question I had. It just bugs me. Who put the line? Who put the phone line in for the bat phone? Now, the phone company did not do this because if they did, they know where the bat cave was. Right. Did Batman personally put this thing in like some night when nobody was looking? Well, I want to know where they got a lot of this stuff. Right. Well, a lot of this stuff. Did they have their own manufacturing plant? I mean, Bruce probably has some, Bruce Wayne's got some manufacturing plants in Brazil or something that are like. So he's got this Brazilian people stamping out the bat stuff. Stamping out bat stuff. With little bats on it and they don't know where it's going. They don't know. They just figured they were going to sell it to the kids. Yeah. They're making millions of them. Only one of them is really working. They're just making millions of them. There you go. I think Bruce, in those years between the time when he decided that he was going to fight against crime and when he decided what he was going to do in there, he became like a jack of all trades. He went to different schools. He learned a lot. So he probably put in that phone line himself. He probably knew how to do it. I mean, Bruce knew how to do everything. He did have a basic chemistry set there. Right. And that computer, which just did everything. Did it do everything? I mean, it was a programming. Especially in that era of batch processing and all that stuff just bam, you know, really fast. Well, let's see. Well, I want to know if Bruce Wayne and commissioner Gordon were such good friends as the commission says they were. Right. How come he couldn't tell the voice? The voice. I mean, that's one of the most distinctive voices in TV, radio, anything is the Bruce Wayne Batman voice. Right. And it was like, I just thought, you know, all these people are stupid or what? Yeah. With most of your heroes, like, change their voice a little bit. Superman, like, zoom, the voice went down like an octave every time. Police department. Everybody doesn't know that. Yeah. No wonder they needed Batman and Gotham because it's obvious. These guys are not rocket scientists. There's no way. Yeah. Let's see. The character of Batgirl. Now, was Batgirl really needed? Yes. You think so? Yes. Those little girls needed somebody. We didn't have anybody at all. This was pre-Wonder Woman. This was pre-everything. Yeah. Batgirl was definitely fine. Was needed. I got to dress up like that for Halloween. So, yeah, it was definitely needed. You got the spandex suit with the glitter stuff on it and all that. Mine was more like a sweatshirt, a pair of tights, a cape and a cow. Okay. Oh, my boots. My boots. Yeah, because it just, you know, I mean, it appealed to the male teenagers and then pretty much appealed to the girls. So, that was pretty much your dual thing. Yeah, plus on the playground, it gave you something, it kind of worked out the who was going to be Catwoman, who was going to be Batgirl. I mean, before Batgirl, it was everybody wanted to be Catwoman because Catwoman got close to Batman, you know. Right. And there weren't other, you know, nobody wanted to play Aunt Harriet, you know. They carried on the playground. It was stupid. So, it was like, yeah, Batgirl gave you somebody to work this out with. It was like, okay, I'll be Catwoman. You can be Batgirl. I'll be Batgirl. You be Catwoman. And that kind of, by the way, you know, groups of kids that had more than one girl in them, didn't have to fight anymore. Okay. I stand corrected on that. Well, do we have any other points? Besides, you know, it got to set off that Aunt Harriet is so dumb we needed somebody. A smart female in the show. Yeah. Besides the criminals. And that brings up the point of, well, let's look at Catwoman. That's about all you guys did was look at Catwoman. I'll admit, I looked at Catwoman a lot. Especially, well, since Catwoman did the amazing thing on there of let's change the actresses that play Catwoman kind of like, oh, they've done this in another series, The Witch where they changed Darren and they changed... No explanation. They changed the neighbor. They did that. And, well, Doctor Who, I thought was the best one because he would just regenerate it and become somebody new. But here, they never explained really. It's like, what happened? Did this one Catwoman decide, oh, I'm only Catwoman anymore and some other criminal there in prison said, well, I'll be Catwoman now. But they got, okay, they had Julie Numar. They had Lee Merrow-Weather. And they had Eartha Kitt. I don't know. I like Julie Numar a whole lot more than the other two for just the... Well, at least with Lee Merrow-Weather, they did try to match hair, basic physical, but I think Julie Numar kind of had everybody beat back then in the days of Twiggy as far as physique and form and everything. Eartha Kitt was just the pits. The only thing she could do good was hiss. Yeah, she had the voice. She had the voice. Had the voice and all that. Too short and stoned. She did have the Cat Car too, the one episode where they had the Cat Car where she sprang the Joker from prison. They showed the Kitty Car, the Cat Car, whatever it was. Eartha Kitt did get to drive that, but I don't know. I like Julie Numar a lot. I just figured Lee Merrow-Weather, she was in a movie. It was a real disappointment for me. I was waiting to see Julie Numar in a movie, but here's Lee Merrow-Weather in the movie. I figured they just threw her in there because she must have done something before that. She was already famous. And then she's like, oh, nobody knows who Julie Numar is. Let's put in Lee Merrow-Weather. She'll get to be Catwoman for a while. The last second executive decision at the studio. Well, Lee Merrow is a little kid. I can definitely tell a difference between Julie Numar and Lee Merrow-Weather. Julie Numar could act for one thing. Right. Wasn't Lee Merrow-Weather, was she like a Miss America or something? Was this like one of her prizes? Yeah. And you get to play Catwoman in the next movie. Oh, hey. It's like, we haven't seen enough of Lee Merrow-Weather. Let's make her Catwoman. That's a lot of exposure there for her. Now, another, what I can consider to do is kind of like a dichotomy here. The most powerful villain in, I mean, not the best villain, but the most powerful villain had to be, in my opinion, Mr. Freeze. Because all the rest of them were basically just either deranged people or they had some sort of psychotic thing where they had to, you know, Riddler. I had to give them a riddle. They had to do different things, but they weren't really big on really powerful gadgets. Mr. Freeze could also be your most vulnerable because he had to have that sight. Right. So he was the most vulnerable and he was the most unlikely, you know, because it was like, of all the other villains, it's like they could have, they could be somebody like that. You know, the guy goes insane and he puts on the makeup, he's a big joker, but Mr. Freeze, ooh, some chemicals hit him and he can now only live in 50 below zero. Yeah. That's pretty darn implausible. You know? But to get around, he did have to have the suit and I mean, if that, this is another thing, Batman, if he wanted to defeat Mr. Freeze, why didn't you just take his helmet off and let him die, you know? Pop there, Mr. Freeze, mess with that. Well, he wasn't in humane. Right. He was just fighting crime. He also felt a bit guilty because he was responsible, sort of responsible for Mr. Freeze's condition. He like made him fall into the... Yeah, I made him fall into the stuff he was messing with. Whatever, yeah. The chemical, the insta-freeze. The insta-freeze, there you go. The insta-freeze. Whatever insta-freeze was. Day before Freon. Right, we had insta-freeze. Okay, whatever the stuff was. So I guess that's why Batman just didn't go over there and pop that helmet off and say, die, sucker. Well, the same thing. Well, that's something that I couldn't understand was the obvious thing was to defeat these people and lock them up. How did they keep getting out? Why did they keep getting out? I know Penguin got a parole there. I mean, we're talking really lenient judges here. Really? Well, you just about killed everybody in Gotham City. It wasn't those days when they did have capital punishment. Yeah. You could have fried these guys. But no, well, we'll put you a year. There we go. Or it seemed more like not a year, but like two or three months because like two or three months they're back for another episode. A couple episodes, at least. Yeah, beginning a shock probation or something. There you go. In and out. There you go. Did they go into a special prison too because I'm sure that you're going to put these people in these costumes in prison or did they have to wear the regular... Well, there's a good question. In the comic book, they had a thing called Arkham Asylum. And they also had... that was for the insane ones and then it was like a super villain prison. All the various super villains were put in this one prison. Which I thought, well, that's a pretty darn dangerous thing to do. But they were like special design for every cage that was specially designed to stop the person get out. Of course on TV show we never actually knew where they went. They just went off to prison. Prison. Up the river. Up the river. Up the river. Yes, they just, you know... We didn't really know what happened. It just was funny to me. It just was funny to me. At one time or another. The only time you got to see it was when somebody was coming out. You never got to see them in there. Or rarely did you get to see them in there. Because you did get to see some of them in there. All these villains all in one place. Yeah, that just... They put them on opposite sides. Put the Joker over here. And the Riddler way over on the other side of the prison. So they don't meet each other. They can't meet in the exercise yard. Or the library. At dinner. You know, in the mess hall. The guards like sitting around going, hey, wait a minute. Look at that penguins over there with Catwoman. We better break them up. Break that up right now. Yeah, they're probably plotting to get out of here. You know, do something. Where did they get all their goons? Was there a rena-goon place? Did guys stand down on the corner and just like drove up? Yeah, you. You got a day's work. You got them sitting. I'm sure some guy ran something called rena-goon. It's like a temp service. Where you just like... Okay, we need you five. Go over, you know, meet them at the abandoned warehouse and the waterfront. Qualifications gotta be able to fight. We're not very well. We're not well. We're somehow. Just gotta be able to fight. And why the heck didn't Gotham City just go and knock down all those abandoned warehouses? Because that always was where the bad guys were like, hide out. Abandoned warehouses. Just tear a little down. Why did Bruce buy all that land and then tear the whole thing down? Put up a parking lot. Put up a parking lot. There you go. Some place to keep his batman. He could build a museum to himself. A Batman museum. A great Bruce Wayne museum. And something I wanted to know now. Robin was a teenager, right? When did he go to school? Good question. Did he just have private tutors because he was so rich? He was probably so rich that he had private tutors. They didn't seem to care when he was there. Right. He just... And he knew a lot. He knew a lot for a guy. I really can't do the tutoring today. I got to... I've got to go fishing. Go fishing with Bruce. All right. Bruce and I are going... I always thought that Bruce and Alfred kind of handled his tutoring. Although they never really mentioned that. I just kind of thought that they did. I can see Alfred doing that. Yeah, no question. Super Butler here. Yeah. Not only can he disguise himself as Batman and pass himself off in certain circumstances. He can keep the Batcave clean. He could tutor a young master dick there and just... Gee. He would need a mom. Speaking of disguises, what was the deal with almost every time you saw a villain when they're in their lair or whatever? You know, they just be wearing their normal outfit. But when they went on a crime spree, they would wear their normal outfit and this little dinky mask. Yeah, like we'd never know who that was. Who is it? Oh, no. No. Who could that person be? He's got pink with his clothes on. He's got pants on. But it can't be them. He's got this little mask on. So I can't... Who could it be? It's just shortening waddles. Who could it be? Anybody? Oh, look. He's wearing these green clothes when he's got on that lavender mask. Yeah, it's just... Who could it be? And that last little... Yes, a road demonic... Who could it be? Who could it be? Yeah, it just... Makes no sense. Yeah, totally amazing. Another thing going back to how they had three cat womens. They had two riddlers. Two riddlers. Yeah. The John Aston and... And the totally superior Frank Gorson. Yeah, Frank Gorson. He was much better. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was just... I couldn't understand. I mean, he didn't shave as much after anything. My first impression when I was a little kid was Gomez is on the show. Right. What is Gomez doing on here? Where's Morticia? Of course, Lurch. Gomez is on the show. Did he forget that he's Gomez? That he's a little damn niche of things. Yeah. Is that... Is he... Well, Gomez was real rich too. Maybe he just decided to play for a while. Yeah. He was going on Nido Adventures anyway. Yeah, I was... Now, wasn't there two Mr. Freezes? Yes, there were. There was George Sanders. And... And you have your bat book. I could look it up. Mr. Freezes. Mr. Freezes. We're going to look it up in one of our... By the way, if you're... If you're still with us, I don't know. If you're hard, full well. But if you're still with us, we... We'd welcome any questions about the 60s and 70s television in general. If you're... We're not trying to say we're the ultimate experts in it. We got a lot of reference material and we'll certainly try to find out anything we can possibly find out. So, right to... Where are we going to have them right to? We haven't figured that out yet. It's a very prototypical show here. Just the station. The station? ACTV? What's our 394 Oak Street? Yeah, it's care of the vast wasteland. Well, the vast wasteland care of ACTV. Right. We're sure the ACTV is going to be bummed now. It's going to be like... Torrents of letters are going to be pouring in. Yeah, they'll have to hire extra staff. Yeah. Oh well. Okay, Otto Preminger. Was it the second Mr. Freeze? Otto Preminger. Okay. There you go. Mr. Freeze. As you can see here. And George Sanders was the first Mr. Freeze. He was not one of the best actors, but I thought he did a fairly good job. Had that accent, buddy. Yeah. Well, I think he was more of a Shakespearean actor. Yeah. Well, of course. You can almost say that about anybody. Right. They're getting into TV. Oh, weren't they a Shakespearean actor first? Yeah, they did that playhouse. They were Shakespearean actors in Canada. Right. Or in England. Yeah, that's where all Shakespearean actors come from. Well, let's see. Do I have anything else here? Really, well, one thing I noticed about the whole series was that a lot of people wonder whether the comic book inspired the campiness of the show or vice versa. And what I've seen, they kind of cross-pollinated each other, because the comic book was kind of campy before that. But once you see the stuff that was, the comic books that were running out during the show were like really campy. They were like worse than the show, which is hard to believe. But I was kind of thinking that the campiness came from an idea that they might have been doing a parody of the serials. Yeah, they were. And when you parody something that's older, you look at how it, well, just time itself makes things like that antiquated. And so they looked at that and said, whoa, look at the things that we're doing then. Let's do a series and let's just kind of poke fun at the idea. Well, do you have any other points? I think we're zipping toward the end of the show at a tremendous rate. I was just thinking about the movie. Was the Batman movie not the new movie? Not the new one. We're looking at the movie that came off of the series here. Was it fun or was it a flop? Well, I think they went overboard with we have to show everything. We have to show the Batmobile. We have to show the Bat Cycle. We have to show the Bat Copter. We have to show the Bat Boat. We have to show everything. And they spent too much time on that. Oh, but the shark on Batman's leg was great. He had the Bat Shark repellent right there. No, Robin had to lower it. Yeah, that's true. But they did have it. But they did have it. In most helicopters, you're going to have various fish repellents. In case your helicopter is attacked by a fish. Of course, I hadn't thought of that. You never know. Well, it's true. But hey, Batman always knew. That's who I did. He was always Batman, the ultimate Boy Scout. I'm always prepared. I'll always have something for whichever situation. I wanted to real quick, before we get out of here, I wanted to show this. Here we go. This is not an original. By the way, if it was, I'd have it in a vault somewhere. This is the first issue of Batman, which is worth something like $20,000 now. Some enormous amount of money. So that's Batman then. And here's Batman about now. You can even see that. That's not one of the most graphic covers, but that's an annual from this year. This should give you an idea of how Batman has gone from here to there. But he's not smiling anymore. He doesn't smile. The man does not smile now. He's not a happy guy anymore. He's pretty vigilante-wise. Well, I'm being given that signal to get out of here. So for Robert Neal and Marty Wiley, we hope you enjoyed this fine show today. Next time, what are we going to do next time? We don't know. Who knows what we'll do. Who knows if there's even going to be a next time. We're doing another show. We'll go get a pizza and talk about it. After the show, we'll go talk about the next show. We'll be delving again into the wonderful world of 60s and 70s television. So for all of us here at Bass Wasteland, we'll see you later.