Adam West, the ardent actor who managed to keep his tongue in cheek while wearing the iconic cowl of the Caped Crusader on the classic 1960s series Batman, has died. He was 88.
West, who was at the pinnacle of pop culture after Batman debuted in January 1966, only to see his career fall victim to typecasting after the ABC show flamed out, died Friday night in Los Angeles after a short battle with leukemia, a family spokesperson said.
West died peacefully surrounded by his family and is survived by his wife Marcelle, six children, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Adam West was the Batman of my youth, and even though I fully appreciated Keaton and Bale, I always had a soft spot for the campy 1960's television show.
That was back in the days when television violence could be somewhat censored by an image like this flashing on the screen.
Good times.
Lately the Adam West Batman meme has popped up in all kinds of places including anti-Trump rallies.
Well I for one am sad to see the passing of an icon.
He will be missed.
However fear not because there is a new generation of heroes to take his place.
After all children do need heroes, perhaps today more than ever.A picture, worth a thousand words. #WonderWoman pic.twitter.com/w76cYZNG3y— IBatman (@BotmunTweets) May 29, 2017
I have a memory of being in first grade and not being able to spell a word, so Sister called my mother and said I obviously hadn't done my work. So I get home and am told that I couldn't watch Batman and I cried and said it was unfair, so in the morning, I bugged my brother about what happened on the episode. That was over fifty years ago and I still remember it. Another piece of my childhood gone. Gonna go vertically climb a horizontal building, do the batusi and find the 1966 Batman movie and watch it. RIP Caped Crusader.
ReplyDeleteYeah that old Batman movies is cheesy as shit, but still a lot of damn fun.
DeleteI'm saddened to lose Batman. My adult children are saddened to lose Batman.
ReplyDeleteI have many fond Batman memories, particularly one child's struggles to pronounce 'utility belt'... and his frustration when I'd always get the words to Batman's theme song wrong... and call him Catman, or Flatman, or Splatman...
RIP Mr West
Never missed Batman as a kid but catch it once in a while on cable. Soooo cheesy....I laugh that I used to be enthralled. Same goes for The Monkees. :)
ReplyDeleteRIP Batman. You were, and always will be, the original.
West was great as batman. I didn't watch the show, but boy, it was perfect for entertaining the little hellions I babysat!
DeleteBut West was not the original Batman. My mother took us to a movie theater for several weekends to see a collection of old Batman serials from the 1940s. They were black and white and hokey as could be, but my brothers liked them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_(serial)
I want to see this new generation of heroes take a stand.
ReplyDeleteLook at the marches against Trump it is the older generation or middle age that mostly shows up.
I am an old fart that frankly is sick and tired of seeing the 30 somethings with no interest about much else but themeselves.
Example. When my stepson got married her parents said " We need to make their like easy as possible" and they have catered to them from then on, from mowing their lawn to paying for toys and vacations.
Obviously my philosophy differs. You take away the pride of going through hardship and being able to say " I did that and i bought that all on my own" This is what you get, an uninvolved generation.
I wouldn't wish any kind of 'hardship' on my kids. Life is hard enough for young families these days.
DeleteThe point is we as parents will die hopefully long before our kids and then they will have to go on without us.No parent would not help out if it is a matter of food or basic things, it's the matter of paying for vacations and toys.
DeleteWhat is considered a hardship now? Cant afford the new cell phone or a second fifty inch tv?Obviously no parent would let their kids go without food or be homeless. It's the excess, the thinking that they have and demand a right to go to that concert or that vacation and god forbid they have to save money for it.
I agree with 8:16pm and I firmly believe that if one has the means then help should be given to a person's offspring.
DeleteA car when they get their permit, paid college tuition and down payment for a car and home, those sorts of things are all what I consider part of a parent's responsibility, if the parent has the means.
Even though I knew my parents would provide these things it wasn't as if I expected it, it was just part of what they considered their "contractual obligation" to their children.
We still learned how to work and how to be adults. I never believed that any level of suffering on any front makes a person stronger or more capable. We have this one life and I feel that you should make it as comfortable for you and your loved ones as you can; life is way to short to spend time on unnecessary suffering.
I am 30 years old, and I take offense at your sweeping generalization of the "younger generation".
DeleteLet me tell you about my parents. My mother grew up with relatively wealthy parents. My grandfather owned a hardware store which was started by his father in 1912. It is successful and still owned and run by my aunt today. My grandfather also acquired a lot of land. Some he sold as commercial lots in town, most was kept in a trust to be passed down to family members.
My mother received a free ride to the private college of her choice, from her father. She had no interest in the family business and never worked there. She married my father after college and had my brother and I.
My father never went to college, he was able to get a great job right out of high school at a local factory. He stayed for 35 years, retired at 55. His pension is more than double what I make working full-time. I have a two year college degree.
My parents were horribly abusive to both my brother and I. There were no hugs, no praise. My mother called me fat, despite my normal weight. My brother and I both developed depression and anxiety issues, but got no help from our parents.
I had to put myself through college, despite my parents' upper middle class status. I had to seek and pay for my own mental health treatment, while being mocked for doing so by my parents. I learned in 2011 that my parents were given $100,000 by my grandfather when he transferred the business to my aunt. Neither parent has ever worked there. They were entitled to nothing, but they are still jealous. Before my grandfather died, my parents tried to get him to change his will. In a hospital room. A family friend intervened and threw them out. My parents are greedy, mean, entitled, and self-absorbed. And their lives have been much easier than the lives of their children. We learned long ago we could not go to them for help.
My brother and I both love our parents and would never treat them the way they have treated us. Bad people are in each generation. There's no particular generation that has more than others.
If I had been able to help my only child and his wife buy a house I'd have been a grandmother ten years earlier- when I still had my health.
DeleteNo amount of cell phones and TVs will make up for the dirty, dangerous and all around shitty world we have created for our children and grandchildren.
Delete
ReplyDeleteI am surprised the GOP hasn’t complained or try to ban the original batman for corrupting our young people:)
Two guys living in a cave, running around in tights, aren’t they gay?
They went after the Teletubbies for wearing purple and carrying a purse.
I wish i had as much faith in the younger generation as you do Grypth. I have seen to many "helicopter" parents. I have seen too many younger parents let their kids act up in restaurants, libraries and other social settings.
ReplyDeleteThat old joke of "Get off of my lawn" is actually right. We were raised with boundaries. We were raised with respect of other peoples property and how to conduct yourself in public.
OT:
ReplyDeleteTOLD YOU SO!
Trump is going to keep everything. The yacht, the medal, everything.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trumps-justice-department-memo-may-be-bigger-than_us_593bf207e4b014ae8c69e0be?section=us_politics
It's his way of heading off using the emoluments clause to impeach him. And even if he is impeached, he intends to keep everything given to him. The $4,000 Japanese golf club, the gold medal, the yacht, the watches. EVERYTHING. He'll be grifting every foreign head of state from now on. He'll make it clear if they want anything they better grease his palm but good.
"Yesterday, as the news cycles were dying down, the Trump Justice Department (DOJ) dropped a bombshell brief which Bloomberg reported. Citing George Washington as precedent, the DOJ is saying that it is AOK for President Trump to take foreign governments’ and state-controlled banks’ money for goods and services without congressional approval, that it is not a violation of the Emoluments Clause of the United States Constitution.
The Citizens United decision opened the floodgates of money from America’s wealthiest, and potentially anyone else funding SuperPacs to buy an election.
This Trump DOJ Brief, if accepted by Judge Ronnie Abrams, hearing the case brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, will open the floodgates of influence peddling for any president who can do business with entities attached to a foreign power.
The brief states:
Neither the text nor the history of the clauses shows that they were intended to reach benefits arising from a president’s private business pursuits having nothing to do with his office or personal service to a foreign power... Were plaintiffs’ interpretation correct, presidents from the very beginning of the Republic, including George Washington, would have received prohibited ‘emoluments.’ "
"Trump has directly benefitted economically from foreign powers, and continues to do so. Foreign government employees book stays at Trump’s D.C. hotel and other hotels and golf courses, by the admission of many, to curry favor. He was granted dozens of trademarks by the Chinese. His organization receives payments from Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority. Eric Trump bragged, years before Trump took office, that his dad’s golf courses were backstopped by $100M from Russian banks during the Great Recession. Those banks not like ones in the U.S. and are heavily state-controlled.
No other president in history, including Washington, has had the hubris, gaul, chutzpah, to demolish the emoluments clause.
If this memo is given any standing by Judge Abrams in the CREW case, any future presidential candidate could set up investments that would allow foreign governments to funnel money to a then president through their personal business dealings.
It is bad enough that Citizens United allows for so many slush funds of dark money that state actors from other countries could contribute to the myriad fly-by-night legal entities used to the influence of an American election without detection.
If the Judge allows this, the taint of the Trump Compromise of Emoluments would forever question who ”owns” the White House. The office of the President will lose stature and power, both here and abroad, and another pillar of the U.S. Constitution will be ground into the dust of history by greedy men long on ambition, and short on patriotism and honor."
Batman rilly liked pot in his elder yrs. I have the last Ketchum/Sun Valley phone book he was listed in as a resident. You look up Batman,it says -see Crimefighters- you look up Crimefighters-it says see Adam West... RIP BATMAN!!!!!
ReplyDeleteIt may have been cheesy but they had the best guest stars ever.
ReplyDeleteCaesar Romero, Julie Newmar, Eartha Kitt. Maybe the kids didn't know who they were and maybe many of them were in the twilight of their careers but *I* knew who they were and I enjoyed watching them having a lot of fun with those caricature villains.
Adam West was the personification of Batman like Johnny Weissmiller was Tarzan. And he did it only in tights, not all that padding and special foam and plastic designed to make him seem more fit than he really was (like all of the recent movie batmen.)
He also had a great sense of humor and instead of being bitter he embraced his link to the character and even made fun of it. He did get a few other guest shots and roles but mostly he was batman. While I never met the man I never heard a bad word about him. He seemed like he was gracious with his fans and reconciled with his fame.