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Adam West

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For the Washington D.C area band , see Adam West.
For the Family Guy character, see Adam West.

Adam West (born William West Anderson on September 19, 1928) is an American actor who is best known for playing the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne on the 1960s TV series Batman (which also had a film adaptation).

Biography

Adam West was born in Walla Walla, Washington to Otto West Anderson and Audrey V. Speer. He has a younger brother named John. He attended Walla Walla High School during his freshman and sophomore years, and later enrolled in Lakeside School in Seattle. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature and a minor in Psychology from Whitman College in Walla Walla.

Acting career

Early roles

In Hawaii, West landed a role as the sidekick on a children's show called The Kini Popo Show, which featured a chimp. West later took over as the star of the show.

In 1959, West moved to Hollywood and took the stage name, "Adam West." He co-starred in the film, The Young Philadelphians, with Paul Newman, and guest starred in a number of television Westerns. He soon snagged a supporting role as Sgt. Steve Nelson in the cop show The Detectives. He also starred in an episode of the original television series The Outer Limits titled The Invisible Enemy. He also made a brief appearance in the 1964 film Robinson Crusoe on Mars. In 1965, he starred in the comedy western The Outlaws is Coming, the last feature film starring The Three Stooges.

Batman

Producer William Dozier cast West as Batman and his alter ego, Bruce Wayne (in part, after seeing West perform as the James Bond-like spy Captain Q in a Nestlé Quik television ad), in Batman, the hit television series. West beat out Lyle Waggoner for the Batman role.

West was at one point offered the role of James Bond by Cubby Broccoli in 1970 for the film Diamonds Are Forever. West declined, later stating in his autobiography that he believed the role should always be played by someone British, referencing Australian George Lazenby's unpopular time in the role.

West enjoys the status of being almost a majority of the three big B's of the 1960s: Bond, Batman, and The Beatles. The popular, campy show ran on ABC from 1966 to 1968; a film version was released in 1966.

Post-Batman career

Typecasting
After his high profile role in Batman, West, Burt Ward and Yvonne Craig (who played crimefighting sidekicks Robin and Batgirl respectively) were badly typecast in their roles. West's first post-Caped Crusader role was in the 1969 release The Girl Who Knew Too Much. He played against type as a tough, hard-boiled assassin. The movie was a failure and has almost become a lost film.

For a time, West was forced to make a living entirely doing personal appearances as Batman. In 1972 however, when Burt Ward and Yvonne Craig reprised their Batman roles for a TV public service announcement about equal pay for women, West was absent. Instead, Dick Gautier filled-in for West as Batman.

West subsequently appeared in the theatrical films The Marriage of a Young Stockbrocker (1971), The Curse of the Moon Child (1972), Partizani/Hell River (1974), The Specialist (1975), Hardcore (1977), Hooper (as himself; 1978), The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood (1980) and One Dark Night (1983). (Incidentally, "the Dark Knight" is the nickname of Batman, the character with whom West has become so inextricably associated.) West also appeared in such television films as The Eyes of Charles Sand (1972), Poor Devil (1973), Nevada Smith (1975), For the Love of It (1980) and I Take These Men (1983).

He also did guest shots on the popular TV shows Love, American Style, The Big Valley, Night Gallery, Alias Smith and Jones, Mannix, Emergency!, Alice, Police Woman, Operation Petticoat, The American Girls, Vegas, Big Shamus Little Shamus, Laverne & Shirley, Bewitched, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, Hart to Hart and King of Queens.

His typecasting, however, always brought these to naught. In recent years, however, West has exploited his typecasting to receive a number of roles that are either self-parody or otherwise poke fun at his status as a pop-culture icon.

Return to the Batman role
During this period, West often played the voice of Batman, first in the short-lived animated series, The New Adventures of Batman, and in other shows like Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show, The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians. In 1979, West once again put on the Batsuit for the live-action TV special, Legends of the Superheroes.

West continued to maintain an association with the character that made him famous. He had a cameo appearance in a 1992 episode of Batman: The Animated Series on FOX, but not as Batman. Instead, West voiced the part of Simon Trent, a washed-up actor who used to play a superhero in a TV series called "The Gray Ghost" and who, now typecast as the Gray Ghost, has difficulty finding work. West later had a recurring role as the voice of Mayor Grange in the WB animated series The Batman.

Adam West once again provided the voice of Batman, in the CGI animated brickfilm, Batman: New Times. In that movie, he starred alongside Mark Hamill, who provided the voice of The Joker and had originally played the role on Batman: The Animated Series.

Recent years
During the 1990s, West's status as a pop culture icon led to appearances as himself in the film Drop Dead Gorgeous and in several television series, including NewsRadio, Murphy Brown, The Adventures of Pete and Pete, The Ben Stiller Show and The Drew Carey Show. In 1991, he starred in the pilot episode of Lookwell, in which he portrayed a has-been TV action hero who falsely believes he can solve crimes in real life. The pilot, written by Conan O'Brien and Robert Smigel, aired on NBC that summer but was not picked up as a series. It was later broadcast on the Trio channel, under the "Brilliant But Cancelled" imprint.

Noticeably, he played a washed up superhero in the Goosebumps television series episode "Attack of the Mutant." The boy hero is a comic book geek whose favorite superhero, Galloping Gazelle (West's character), is portrayed as fading and on the verge of retirement. Towards the end, the boy is shocked to learn that the Gazelle is real, though he must save the day by himself.

In 1994, West, with Jeff Rovin, wrote his autobiography, Back to the Batcave published by Berkeley Books (ISBN 0-425-14370-8). He also appeared as a guest in the animated talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast in an episode titled "Batmantis," where he displayed his book.

In 2005, West appeared in the CBS show The King of Queens. In the episode, Spence first asks Lou Ferrigno to go to a sci-fi convention. But when Spence meets West (playing himself), he leaves Ferrigno and asks West to come with him.

West appears prominently in the 2006 video for California band STEFY's song "Chelsea" as "Judge Adam West", presiding over the courtroom scene.

In 2007, Adam West portrayed a defense attorney for Benny on the show George Lopez.

Voice-over work

West has built a career doing voice-over work on a number of animated series (often as himself), including appearances on The Simpsons, The Critic, The Boondocks, Histeria!, Kim Possible, and Johnny Bravo. He also appeared in five episodes of Nickelodeon's cartoon, The Fairly OddParents, as a cat-obsessed version of himself who is famous for playing a superhero called Catman, and who actually believes he is Catman. A later appearance of Adam West in The Fairly OddParents world was a parody of himself, hired to play the role of the Crimson Chin in the movie of the same name. West also voices many characters related to his famous Batman character, as mentioned above in the typecasting section.

Since 2000, West has made semi-regular appearances on the animated series Family Guy, on which he plays Mayor Adam West, a parody of West himself, the lunatic mayor of fictional Quahog, Rhode Island. He also voiced over as a man in an office with Ted Turner on Robot Chicken's spoof of Captain Planet. His latest voice-over performance was playing the role of Uncle Art in the Disney film Meet the Robinsons.

West also played the voice of General Carrington in the video game XIII, and has voiced other video games like Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure, Chicken Little: Ace in Action and Scooby Doo! Unmasked.

Filmography

Features:

Short Subjects:

Television work

Footnotes

Other sources

  • West, Adam (1994). Back to the Batcave. Berkeley. ISBN 0-425-14370-8.
  • Press kit notes for The Girl Who Knew Too Much

External links



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Last updated on Thursday July 24, 2008 at 14:28:38 PDT (GMT -0700)
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