Adam West


William West Anderson, known professionally as Adam West, was an American actor. He portrayed Batman in the 1960s ABC series of the same name and its 1966 theatrical feature film, reprising the role in various media until 2017. Having made his film debut in the 1950s, West starred opposite Chuck Connors in Geronimo and The Three Stooges in The Outlaws Is Coming. He also appeared in the science fiction film Robinson Crusoe on Mars.
He voiced parodied versions of himself in the animated television sitcoms Johnny Bravo, The Fairly OddParents, The Simpsons, and Family Guy. In the latter, he played Mayor Adam West between the second and seventeenth seasons. He received a television star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2012.

Early life

Adam West was born William West Anderson on September 19, 1928, in Walla Walla, Washington. His father, Otto Anderson was a farmer descending from Scania in southern Sweden; and his mother, Audrey Volenne was an opera singer and concert pianist who left her Hollywood dreams to care for her family. Following her example, as a young man West told his father that he intended to go to Hollywood after completing school. He moved to Seattle with his mother when he was 15, following his parents' divorce.
West attended Walla Walla High School during his freshman and sophomore years and later enrolled in Lakeside School in Seattle. He attended Whitman College but studied at the University of Puget Sound during the fall semester of 1949. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in literature and a minor in psychology from Whitman College, where he was a member of the Gamma Zeta chapter of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He also participated in the speech and debate team.
Drafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he served as an announcer on American Forces Network television. After his discharge, he worked as a milkman before moving to Hawaii to pursue a television career.

Career

Early roles

While in Hawaii, West was picked for a role as the sidekick on a local TV program, The Kini Popo Show, which also featured a chimp named Peaches. West later took over as host of the show. In 1959, West moved with his wife and two children to Hollywood, where he took the stage name Adam West.
He appeared in the film The Young Philadelphians, which starred Paul Newman. He had guest-starring roles in a number of television Westerns. On three Warner Bros. Television westerns which aired on ABC—Sugarfoot, Colt.45, and Lawman—West played the role of Doc Holliday, the frontier dentist and gunfighter. West also appeared playing different characters in two episodes of Maverick opposite James Garner: "Two Tickets to Ten Strike" and "A Fellow's Brother" in 1958. He guest starred in Warner Bros. detective series Hawaiian Eye and Bourbon Street Beat.

1960s–1980s

On January 10, 1961, West appeared as a young, ambitious deputy who foolishly confronts a gunfighter named Clay Jackson, portrayed by Jock Mahoney, in the episode "The Man from Kansas" of the NBC Western series Laramie. He played Christopher Rolf in the episode "Stopover" of ABC's The Rifleman, which aired on April 25, 1961.
West made two guest appearances on Perry Mason in 1961 and 1962. His first role was as small-town journalist Dan Southern in "The Case of the Barefaced Witness". His other role was as folk singer Pete Norland in "The Case of the Bogus Books".
In 1959-1962, he became a regular on the American television series Robert Taylor's Detectives in its third season.
He made a brief appearance in the 1963 film Soldier in the Rain starring Jackie Gleason and Steve McQueen, and starred as Colonel Dan McCready, the ill-fated mission commander of Mars Gravity Probe 1 in the 1964 film Robinson Crusoe on Mars. That same year he was cast alongside William Shatner in the pilot for the proposed series Alexander the Great, playing Cleander to Shatner's Alexander. The series was not picked up, and the pilot was not broadcast until 1968 when it was repackaged as a TV film to capitalize on West and Shatner's later fame. West was apparently unsurprised by the rejection, later noting that "It turned out to be one of the worst scripts I have ever read and it was one of the worst things I've ever done."
In 1964, West played Dr. Clayton Harris, a handsome young physician, in two episodes of the sitcom Petticoat Junction. In the same year West starred in an episode of the ABC Outer Limits series titled "The Invisible Enemy". December 10, 1964, an episode of Bewitched titled “Love is Blind” was released, in which West played Kermit, an artist who marries Gertrude.
In 1965, he was cast in the comedy Western The Outlaws Is Coming, starring The Three Stooges. In the same year he starred in Mara of the Wilderness and in the Spaghetti Western The Relentless Four.

Batman

Producer William Dozier cast West as Batman/Bruce Wayne in the television series Batman, in part after seeing him perform as the James Bond-like spy Captain Q in a Nestlé Quik commercial. West was in competition with Lyle Waggoner for the Batman role.
The popular campy show ran on ABC from 1966 to 1968; a feature-length film version directed by Leslie H. Martinson was released in 1966.
In 1966, West released a novelty song Miranda as his Batman character.
Also in character, West appeared in a public service announcement in which he encouraged schoolchildren to heed then-President Lyndon B. Johnson's call for them to buy U.S. savings stamps, a children's version of U.S. savings bonds, to support the Vietnam War.
In 1970, West was considered for the role of James Bond by producer Albert Broccoli for the film Diamonds Are Forever.

Post-''Batman'' career

After his high-profile role, West, along with Burt Ward and Yvonne Craig, was typecast; all three found it difficult to find other roles. West's first post-Caped Crusader role was in the film The Girl Who Knew Too Much. His lead performance against type as cynical tough guy Johnny Cain did not erode his Batman image; the film was a box office disappointment.
For a time, West made a living from personal appearances as Batman. In 1974, when Ward and Craig reprised their Batman roles for a TV public-service announcement about equal pay for women, West did not participate; instead, Dick Gautier appeared as Batman. After the series had ended, he appeared as Batman in a skit for the Memphis-based United States Wrestling Association, where he engaged in a war of words with Jerry "The King" Lawler while wearing the cowl and a tracksuit, and even name-dropping Spider-Man.
West subsequently appeared in the theatrical films The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker, The Specialist, Hooper, The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood, One Dark Night and Young Lady Chatterley II. West also appeared in such television films as The Eyes of Charles Sand, Poor Devil, Nevada Smith, For the Love of It and I Take These Men.
West split his time between residences in Palm Springs, California, and Ketchum, Idaho.
He did guest shots on the television series Maverick; Diagnosis: Murder; Love, American Style; Bonanza; The Big Valley; Night Gallery; Alias Smith and Jones; Mannix, Emergency!; Alice; Police Woman; Operation Petticoat; The American Girls; Vega$; Big Shamus, Little Shamus; Laverne & Shirley; Bewitched; Fantasy Island; The Love Boat; Hart to Hart; Zorro; The King of Queens; and George Lopez. West was also in an episode of Bonanza that supposedly never aired until reruns were shown, and he made several guest appearances as himself on Family Feud. In 1986, he starred in the comedy police series titled The Last Precinct.

Return to Batman

West often reprised his role as Batman/Bruce Wayne, first in the short-lived animated series The New Adventures of Batman, and in other shows such as The Batman/Tarzan Adventure Hour, Tarzan and the Super 7, Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show and The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians. In 1979, West once again donned the Batsuit for the live-action TV special Legends of the Superheroes. In 1985, DC Comics named West as one of the honorees in the company's 50th-anniversary publication Fifty Who Made DC Great for his work on the Batman series.
West was considered to play Thomas Wayne, Bruce Wayne's father, in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film, but West rejected the role wanting to play Batman again. He was also a voice actor in various Batman-related animated series and films in addition to other projects connected to the TV series. West also guest starred in the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Beware the Gray Ghost" as Simon Trent, a washed-up actor who used to play a superhero in a TV series called The Gray Ghost and who now has difficulty finding work. He reprised his role of Batman in the Animaniacs episode "Boo Wonder" Season 5, Episode 3 of Animaniacs.
West suited up one final time in the full Batman outfit in 1997 for a photo session for TV Treasures magazine #1 titled "Adam West Remembers 30 Years of Batman". He had a recurring role as the voice of Marion Grange in the 2004-2008 WB animated series The Batman. West was the voice of Batman in the 2005 animated short film Batman: New Times. He co-starred with Mark Hamill, who voiced The Joker and had originally played the role on Batman: The Animated Series. West also voiced Thomas Wayne in a 2010 episode, "Chill of the Night!", of the animated series Batman: The Brave and the Bold.
In 2015, Adam West and Burt Ward announced that they would be reprising their roles as Batman and Robin for two animated features to celebrate the upcoming 50th anniversary of the TV series. The first, Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders, was released in theaters for one day on October 10, 2016, before being released on DVD and Blu-ray. The second, Batman vs. Two-Face co-starring William Shatner as Two-Face, was released on October 10, 2017, four months after West's death.