From Camp to Cool: How West Won

The Batusi...Who did it better? Adam West on "Batman" or John Travolta in "Pulp Fiction"?

Friends, readers, movie lovers, lend me your eyes. I come to bury Adam West, not praise "Batman." Okay, one cannot really talk about Adam West - who succumbed to leukemia on June 9, 2017, at the age of 88 - without some passing mention of how a workaday actor - a former kiddie show cohost and onetime studio contract ham-and-egger - became a cultural icon of a decade.

The son of a Walla Walla, Washington farmer and a concert pianist/vocalist who abandoned her dreams of opera stardom to raise a family, William West Anderson took advantage of the dulcet tones of his sonorous voice on the college debate teams before becoming a disc jockey for the U.S. Army on the American Forces Network. He worked as a milkman before moving to Hawaii, where he was hired as the host's sidekick on a local children's program called "The Kini Popo Show." He eventually took over as the host, performing alongside a chimpanzee named Peaches.

While living in Hawaii, West made his film debut in 1957 - in an uncredited bit part as a weather station radio operator (pictured above) - in a low-budget but modestly effective chiller called "Voodoo Island," starring Boris Karloff, who, at 70, in the twilight of his career, was still game for a handful of scares.

Director Reginald Le Borg had worked with the Bowery Boys prior
to "Voodoo Island." It looks like Boris gets to wear Satch's old hat.

The fledgling actor moved to Hollywood in the late 1950s, where he successfully screen-tested for a contract with Warner Bros. and adopted the stage name Adam West. He appeared in several TV series, mostly westerns, including multiple portrayals of legendary gambler and gunfighter Doc Holliday (pictured below) on three programs: "Lawman," "Sugarfoot," and "Colt .45."

In 1959, Adam West had a supporting role in "The Young Philadelphians," starring Paul Newman, Robert Vaughn, and Brian Keith. A few years later, West acted in the 1963 comedy-drama "Soldier in the Rain," featuring Jackie Gleason, Steve McQueen, and Tuesday Weld.

(Left) Fifteen years after costarring in "The Young Philadelphians,"
Paul Newman and Robert Vaughn were reunited in "The Towering
Inferno." (Right) The script for "Soldier in the Rain" was co-written
by Blake Edwards, based on a novel by future Oscar-winning
screenwriter William Goldman ("Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid," "All the President's Men").

Another early film role for West was a U.S. Cavalry officer in 1962's "Geronimo," a low-budget western starring blue-eyed former Chicago Cubs first baseman Chuck Connors (who was finishing up his five-year run as TV's "The Rifleman") as the Chiricahua Apache medicine elder. Connors married his leading lady, Bombay, India-born actress Kamala Devi, who became his frequent costar until their divorce in 1972.

(Top) Adam West's role as sympathetic Lt. Delahay
in "Geronimo" strangely foreshadowed Matt Damon's
similar part as baby-faced Lt. Davis (bottom) in 1993's
"Geronimo: An American Legend."

Adam West had a small but memorable role as an ill-fated astronaut in the 1964 cult sci-fi favorite "Robinson Crusoe on Mars," an imaginative update of Daniel Defoe's 18th-century novel directed by Byron Haskin, who was best known for collaborating with producer George Pal on the classic 1953 screen version of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds.

Paul Mantee (left) starred as the rocket-age castaway in "Robinson
Crusoe on Mars." Born Paul Marianetti, the Korean War veteran
changed his last name to emulate Humphrey Bogart's gangster
character Duke Mantee in 1936's "The Petrified Forest." Perhaps
as an homage to the "Mars" picture, director Ron Howard cast
Mantee as a reporter in 1995's "Apollo 13."

For the sixth (and final) theatrical feature starring the fourth incarnation of The Three Stooges (Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe DeRita), 1965's "The Outlaws Is Coming," Adam West was cast as a timid, fish-out-of-water newspaper editor transferred from Boston to Casper, Wyoming
.

Written, produced, and directed by Moe Howard's son-in-law, Norman Maurer, the comedy featured future "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" poet laureate Henry Gibson as a beatnik Indian named Charlie Horse. The most interesting aspect of the production was the fact that the titular outlaws were all portrayed by hosts of kiddie shows from across the country that broadcast Stooges shorts (pictured below).

From a Three Stooges western to a spaghetti western, Adam West, like several of his Hollywood contemporaries underworked by homeland filmmakers, went to Europe to star in the 1965 Italian western, "The Relentless Four."

"I 4 Inesorabili" translates from Italian as
"The Four Inexorables."

For whatever reason, producers of spaghetti westerns during their heyday in the mid-1960s became obsessed with numbers in the title. Actually, we blame the success of the 1960 American western "The Magnificent Seven."

The numerical fixation by Italian filmmakers became something of a fetish: "One Dollar Too Many," "Two Sons of Trinity," "Three Bullets for Ringo," "Four Dollars for Vengeance," "Five Dollars for Ringo," "Seven Pistols for a Gringo," "Ten Killers Came from Afar," "Twenty Paces to Death," "A Pistol for a Hundred Coffins," and "Twenty Thousand Dollars for Seven," to name just ten.

Perhaps not at all coincidentally, "seven" became a favorite number for producers of spaghetti western, including "Seven Guns for the MacGregors," as well as "The Seven from Texas," "Seven Hours of Gunfire," "Seven Dollars in the Red," "Seven Vengeful Women," "Seven for Pancho Villa," "Seven Nuns in Kansas City" (don't ask), and yes, "Seven Magnificent Guns."

Anyway, the old-timey plot of "The Relentless Four," which could have been borrowed from any of a number of Hollywood horse operas from the '40s and '50s, finds Adam West as a stoic (in other words, boring as hell) Texas Ranger forced to clear his name after being framed for murder by four outlaw bounty hunters. Like his Italian and Spanish cast mates, West 's voice was dubbed by another actor for the English language release of the picture.

American actors such as Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and Tony
Anthony didn't hesitate in going grungy for the Italian slant on
frontier realism in spaghetti westerns...We guess this look was
enough grunge for Adam West.

On the small screen, Adam West joined the cast of the crime series "The Detectives" during its third and final season in 1961. The series featured former Hollywood leading man Robert Taylor ("Quo Vadis," "Ivanhoe"), Tige Andrews ("The Mod Squad"), Mark Goddard ("Lost in Space"), and West (pictured below) as investigators in an elite police unit.

After the mid-1960s, Adam West was appearing in TV commercials to pay the bills. He did a number of ads for Nestle's Quick chocolate powder as a character called Captain Q (pictured below) that caught the attention of television producer William Dozier.

Twentieth Century Fox originally envisioned a "Batman" series as a rival of MGM's hip, loose "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." program, but Dozier, who admittedly had never previously seen a Batman comic book, decided the only way to produce the show would be as a campy, pop-art comedy.

Lyle Waggoner played second fiddle to another
TV superhero on three seasons of "Wonder Woman,"
starring Lynda Carter, from 1975 to 1979.

Lyle Waggoner (who would become a handsome foil for Carol Burnett's comedy in a number of sketches on her variety program) performed a screen test for the starring role, but Dozier ultimately went with West due to the actor's ability to deliver the corny dialogue with a straight face. And the rest is history.

The New York Times noted that Adam West had "the jaw,
height and sternness for the part. West himself declare,
"My goal is to become America's biggest put-on."

Looking back, Adam West recalled, "Goodbye, anonymity." According to West, in the mid-1960s, "there were three B's: Batman, Bond, and the Beatles." "Batman" was on the air for merely two-and-a-half seasons, during which time major celebrities - including Shakespearean and classically trained thespians, as well as a number of Oscar winners - clambered for the opportunity to portray guest villains.

On a lucky 13 episodes of "Batman," arch-nemesis Catwoman was purr-trayed by Julie Newmar, the statuesque stunner who personally modified her skintight bodysuit by moving the belt down to hug the hips and highlight her hourglass figure.

In a memorably steamy story, Catwoman finally broke through the
long held sexual tension between her and the Caped Crusader,
and they were inches away from the much anticipated lip-lock
when Burt Ward as Robin the Boy Wonder declared, "Holy mush!"

Mickey Rooney wanted to play The Penguin, while, according to Julie Newmar, Frank Sinatra was willing to pay to portray Joker. Frank had better luck with his desire to be on "The Soupy Sales Show" because he wanted to get hit in the face with one of Soupy's trademark pies (pictured below).

Soupy Sales (left), with Frank Sinatra (center), and Sammy Davis Jr.
(far right), once figured that during his career, at least 20,000 pies
had been hurled at him and his guests on his TV shows. 

A recurring gag on "Batman" would find Adam West and Burt Ward scaling the outside of a skyscraper on ropes. The scenes, obviously filmed with a titled camera as the two actors performed the "ascent" in upright positions (their capes stiffened behind them to give a vertical illusion), always included cameos by celebrities who poked their heads out a window to chat with the Dynamic Duo.

Not unlike guest villains, big names got in line for the "Bat Climb" cameos, including Jerry Lewis (pictured above), Sammy Davis Jr., Edward G. Robinson, and Dick Clark.

This is what the Bat Climb really looks like
(with Sammy Davis Jr.)

By the third season of "Batman," ratings steadily fell. Not even the addition of Yvonne Craig as the curvaceous Batgirl (pictured below) could salvage the series, and ABC-TV cancelled the show in March of 1968.

NBC readily agreed to pick up the series, until it was learned that the "Batman" sets, which had originally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, had been promptly destroyed.

"Hey, Adam, is that a batarang on your utility belt,
or are you just happy to see me?"

Adam West and "Batgirl" Yvonne Craig pose in a series of bizarre,
kinky publicity photos. This is how Craig always dresses for a casual
afternoon around the home.

Early in his tenure as Batman, Adam West commented, "What I've got to feel is that if I can make a success of this characterization, I can make a success of other characterizations." Heaven knows, the man tried, but the kitschy cape and cowl were difficult trappings to shed. Here are some glimpses at West's sporadic attempts to avoid the dreaded shroud of typecasting.

On the heels of "Batman's" cancellation, West essayed the hardboiled role of a nightclub owner and soldier of fortune in 1969's "The Girl Who Knew Too Much," costarring Nancy Kwan (best known for roles in "The World of Suzie Wong" and "Flower Drum Song"), veteran character actor Nehemiah Persoff, and "Hee Haw's" Lisa Todd as Sugar Sweet.

Even the movie's publicity department wouldn't let the public forget
that Adam West was Batman.

In the late 1960s and early '70s, quirky leading man Richard Benjamin pretty much had a lock on the character of what Roger Ebert called "the sexually inept, introverted Jewish schlemiel in so many movies," including "Goodbye, Columbus," "Diary of a Mad Housewife," "Portnoy's Complaint," and 1971's "The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker," a comedy-drama not dissimilar to "The Graduate" (both screenplays were based on novels by the same author, Charles Webb, and both films were produced by the same man).

This time, Benjamin portrayed the title character whose beleaguered wife, played by Joanna Shimkus (better known as the wife of Sidney Poitier since 1976), leaves him due to his proclivity for voyeurism. Adam West landed a supporting role as the much-abused husband of catty Elizabeth Ashley, who played Joanna's manipulative sister (pictured below).

In 1978, at the pinnacle of his box-office popularity between "Smokey and the Bandit" and "The Cannonball Run," good ol' boy Burt Reynolds played the title role in "Hooper," a raucous but affectionately nostalgic homage to Hollywood stunt performers directed by former stuntman Hal Needham, who worked regularly on early episodes of "Gunsmoke" when Reynolds portrayed Quint the blacksmith and went on to direct Burt in the "Smokey and the Bandit" and "Cannonball Run" movies, as well as "Stroker Ace."

Sally Field and Jan-Michael Vincent costar with Burt Reynolds in
"Hooper," along with Brian Keith and John Marley. Comedian
Robert Klein (in the background) plays pretentious director Roger
Deal as a parody of Peter Bogdanovich, who directed Burt
in the box-office flops "At Long Last Love" and "Nickelodeon."

Contending with physical wear-and-tear after years of stunt work, a girlfriend who wants him to retire, an up-and-coming rival stunt man, and a pompous director, Sonny Hooper (Reynolds) is the harried stunt coordinator on a silly James Bond-type action flick called "The Spy Who Laughed at Danger," starring Adam West as the pseudo-007. It was a brief but memorable cameo by West, who seemed to be enjoying himself.

Burt Reynolds is the stunt double for Adam West (left) in the movie-
within-a-movie "The Spy Who Laughed at Danger" in "Hooper."
James Best (right) portrays Hooper's buddy, Cully.

To make a long story short, Dutch East Indies-born Xaviera Hollander quit her Manhattan job as a secretary for the Dutch consulate to work as a call girl, becoming New York City's leading madam and the author of the 1971 best-selling memoir The Happy Hooker: My Own Story. Hollywood B-moviemakers cranked out three nudge-nudge wink-wink comedies loosely based on her exploits that were sillier than sexy, starring, respectively, a miscast Lynn Redgrave, an appropriate Joey Heatherton, and an out-of-place Martine Beswick, the latter in 1980's "The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood."

Born in Jamaica to a Portuguese mother and British father, Martine Beswick is best known for two famous cinematic catfights: a gypsy camp tussle with Miss Israel Aliza Gur in "From Russia with Love" and an animal skin-bikini grapple with Raquel Welch in "One Million Years B.C." (pictured below). Just two years after her screen debut in "From Russia with Love," Martine played doomed Bond Girl Paula Caplan in "Thunderball." Cult horror movie fans remember her as the distaff half of 1971's "Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde."

Beswick's leading man in "The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood" was Jack Lemmon's son, Chris Lemmon, whose talent rarely transcended his physical resemblance to his dad; remember, this is the guy who costarred with Hulk Hogan in the "Baywatch" ripoff "Thunder in Paradise" and whose most recent movie roles included 2014's "My Dog the Space Traveler." Vaudeville and burlesque old-timer Phil Silvers played a sleazy studio mogul while Adam West was third-billed as a sleazy movie producer named Lionel Lamely in a cast that included Richard Deacon (best known as Mel Cooley on "The Dick Van Dyke Show"), Edie Adans, the "B.J. and the Bear" twins Randi and Candi Brough, Playboy magazine Playmate Susan Kiger, Roger Corman stock company player Dick Miller, and Variety columnist Army Archerd.

Not their proudest moment as thespians: Richard Deacon and
Adam West do drag in "The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood."
Twenty-one years earlier, West and Deacon shared the screen
in "The Young Philadelphians."

"The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood" was directed by Alan Roberts, who made the softcore dramas "Young Lady Chatterley" and "Young Lady Chatterley II," both films starring Harlee McBride, a former Disneyland secretary who has been married to actor-comedian Richard Belzer since 1985 (she regularly appeared as Dr. Alyssa Dyer on Belzer's NBC series "Homicide: Life on the Streets" in the '90s). Coincidentally, "Young Lady Chatterly II" featured Adam West hamming it up as a professor researching the medieval legend of Lady Godiva's naked ride on horseback (again, don't ask).

Adam West had a throwaway role in the 1983 release "One Dark Night." Predating "Mean Girls" by a couple of decades and a few years before "Heathers," the horror film starred Meg Tilly as a timid high schooler who wants to be initiated into a cliquey club called The Sisters, which consists of all of three snobby girls in lavender jackets.

The Sisters in "One Dark Night" are played by Robin Evans (you
know she's the nastiest because she's a blonde), Leslie Speights (who
constantly sucks on a toothbrush like it's Kojak's lollipop), and
Elizabeth Daily as the sympathetic one in the gang. Also known as
E.G. Daily, the actress (Dottie in Pee-wee's Big Adventure") is
also a successful pop vocalist and a busy voice artist,  known for
Tommy Pickles of "Rugrats," Buttercup in "The Powerpuff Girls,"
and Babe in "Babe: Pig in the City."

The Sisters haze Tilly by forcing her to spend the night in a mausoleum, where, coincidentally, the remains of the occultist Raymar, a "psychic vampire" with telekinetic powers, have just been interred.

Two mausoleums were used in the film, one for exterior shots, one
for interiors, both located at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Director McLoughlin recalled, "In all those mausoleum scenes,
Meg really got freaked out. She did not want to be there, and she
allowed all that fear to work...She raised the bar in the film."

Raymar's estranged daughter (Melissa S. Newman), who has some psychic abilities of her own, senses that he is planning a comeback, and he's bringing reanimated corpses from the mausoleum vaults with him. Adam West has a more or less walk-on part as her disbelieving husband who scoffs over a snifter of brandy before going upstairs to bed and out of the picture.

Some accounts say Adam West was not the first choice for the role,
but when informed that the actor was being ignored by producers
because he was Batman, McLoughlin sympathized with the actor
and put him in the movie.

Actually, the life of writer-director Tom McLoughlin is itself an interesting tale. The son of a magician, he played in various rock bands in the early 1970s. He went to Paris and studied mime with the masterful Marcel Marceau. Returning to the U.S., he founded the LA Mime Company. Dick Van Dyke recruited him for his variety series "Van Dyke and Company," during which tenure McLoughlin shared a 1977 writing Emmy Award nomination with, among others, Van Dyke, Bob Einstein, Don Novello, and Pat Proft.

With his background in mime, McLoughlin was cast in a number of "creature" roles that required physical interpretation, such as a robot in Disney's "The Black Hole," Katahdin the mutant bear in director John Frankenheimer's eco-horror show "Prophecy," and the Jabberwocky in producer Irwin Allen's TV movie "Alice in Wonderland." He even choreographed the robots for Woody Allen's "Sleeper" and performed as one of them.

Feeling limited as a performer, McLoughlin aspired to write and direct his own creative works, like his idol, Charlie Chaplin. Driven by a desire to make people laugh, he struggled as a comedy scriptwriter, but nobody was buying. "In the late '70s and early '80s," according to Denver-based writer Tom Murphy, "comedy was mainly on television and to make a break in film you had to make a horror picture. But McLoughlin felt that the popular slasher films of the day weren't to his taste."

Instead, Tom McLoughlin and his friend, Michael Hawes, devised a gothic horror story similar to the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. McLoughlin was inspired by his experience touring the famed Catacombs of Paris when he was 19 and studying mime with Marcel Marceau. The catacombs, a portion of the subterranean mines beneath the city, hold the skeletal remains of more than six million Parisians.

The Catacombs of Paris have inspired writers from Victor Hugo to
Gaston Leroux, whose Phantom of the Opera hid in "that infernal
underground maze." The 2014 horror movie "As Above, So Below"
was the first Hollywood production allowed to film on-location in
the actual catacombs.

"It was the first time that I ever felt psychological or supernatural fear," McLoughlin later recalled of the catacombs. "There was nothing there...nobody coming after me, but there was just something about knowing where I was and what I was surrounded by that gave me a chill that was unforgettable." Which is why "One Dark Night" succeeds by preying on subliminal terror without relying on a high body count or gallons of gore.

Grisly special effects makeup for "One Dark Night" were supervised
by Thomas R. Burman. Best known for his work on "Grey's Anatomy"
and "Nip/Tuck," Burman and his wife, Bari, were nominated for an
Oscar for Makeup for 1988's "Scrooged."

Although it was released a year after "Poltergeist" - prompting some moviegoers to accuse McLoughlin of imitating Steven Spielberg's production, particularly in the depiction of disinterred caskets giving up their decaying contents - "One Dark Night" was actually written and filmed a year or two before "Poltergeist" but was held up by post-production problems. Incidentally, the late actress Dominique Dunne, who played the teenage daughter in "Poltergeist," auditioned for Meg Tilly's role in "One Dark Night."

McLoughlin was subsequently offered the sixth "Friday the 13th" outing, "Jason Lives," which he at first turned down, saying, "That's not what I want to do." He wanted to make a horror comedy. His agent told him, "This is going to open in eighteen hundred theaters. You can write it, so you can write whatever." Promising the studio that he had no intention of spoofing the deathless juggernaut Jason, McLoughlin managed to squeeze in some tongue-in-cheek references. "I still wanted it to be scary, but I wanted people to like the characters...I tried to show a sense of humor."

In 1986, Adam West starred as the beleaguered captain in the short-lived series "The Last Precinct," a blatant ripoff of the "Police Academy" films and the only comedy program created by TV mastermind Stephen J. Cannell (whose voluminous résumé included "The Rockford Files," "The A-Team," "Hunter," "21 Jump Street," "The Commish"). The show was a rare misfire for Cannell, and despite the melange of bullpen oddballs such as a transsexual and an Elvis impersonator, was canceled after eight episodes.

Four cast members of "The Last Precinct" pose for
a publicity photo: Ernie Hudson (best known as Winston
in the original "Ghostbusters"), veteran character actor
Keenan Wynn, Adam West, and Randi Brooks (a popular
sexpot in '80s cinema, including "The Man with Two
Brains" and "Hamburger: The Motion Picture").

When "Batman" was revived as a motion picture franchise in 1989, starring Michael Keaton as a complex, brooding, borderline neurotic superhero, director Tim Burton eschewed the kitschy, colorful, and comedic approach of the TV series in favor of a grim and oppressive atmosphere, inspired by comic book writer Frank Miller's gloomy "The Dark Knight Returns" series of comic books that appeared in 1986.

Nobody seems to have paid their light bill in Timothy Burton's
Gotham City.

In interviews following the release of 1989's "Batman," Adam West feigned disappointment in being overlooked for the starring role. "I cried for an hour," the then-60-year-old actor said. "I wanted it. Do you want Classic Coke or do you want the new stuff? Maybe both." Or maybe he was serious. "I do know I'm disappointed not having the opportunity to play Batman," he admitted, "but they have their vision, and I have mine."

The cinematic reboot of Batman, with Val Kilmer and George Clooney succeeding Michael Keaton in the starring role, ultimately benefitted West, as he enjoyed a resurgence not only in popularity but in employment, as he was hired as the voice actor for the Caped Crusader in a variety of animated incarnations (often with Burt Ward reprising his role of Robin). This, in turn, opened the door to a number of other opportunities as a voice actor in animated series. as well as self-deprecating cameos as himself in several sitcoms.

Finally learning to embrace the bat, West enjoyed personal appearances at fan conventions and graciously participated in cast reunions on talk shows. "I would hate to be a bitter aging actor," he confessed.

West Ward ho! Burt Ward and Adam West rub elbows at
the 2006 TV Land Awards.

However, he remained nonplussed when director Christopher Nolan and actor Christian Bale worked together on the 21st century "Dark Knight" trilogy. "They are grim," West observed, "gothic, full of explosions, mayhem. It's the way of things, I suppose. The whole world seems darker."

One of Adam West's last screen appearances was a cameo in a gem of cinema obscura from 2005 titled "Angels with Angles." Actor and impressionist Frank Gorshin, who famously portrayed The Riddler on the '60s "Batman" series, played a "Level 1" angel named George Burns whose desire to be  reunited with long lost love Gracie Allen rests on a heavenly assignment by God (Rodney Dangerfield) to save big-time loser Shoomie Shoomer. Not at all coincidentally, Gorshin had starred as George Burns in a 2002 one-man Broadway show called "Say Goodnight, Gracie," which was nominated for a Tony Award.

Amy Wieczorek plays Gracie Allen to Frank Gorshin's George Burns.

Very little background is available on the writer-producer-director-star of "Angels with Angles," Scott Edmund Lane, other than he portrayed the pathetic schlemiel Shoomie. Otherwise a negligible bit player, his role here was seemingly a solitary bid at presenting himself as a Woody Allen knockoff. His mysterious obscurity was compounded by his unheralded demise at the age of 61 in 2011.

In director Otto Preminger's 1968 comedy "Skidoo," Groucho Marx
played "God," the real George Burns starred in Carl Reiner's 1977
comedy "Oh, God!" and in "Angels with Angles," Rodney Dangerfield
completes the comedic trifecta as God.

Among the heavenly figures drifting through the film are actors impersonating W.C. Fields, Mae West, the Marx Brothers, Jack Benny, Albert Einstein, and Fidel Castro. In the midst of an eclectic cast that included David Proval (Tony DeVienazo in Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets" and Richie Aprile in "The Sopranos"), Henry Darrow (Manolitio on TV's "The High Chaparral"), Jerry Mathers ("Leave it to Beaver"), Richard Moll (Bull from the series "Night Court"), Dwayne Hickman ("The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis"), Zelda Rubinstein ("Poltergeist's" pint-sized paranormal medium), and Frank Stallone as Elvis, Adam West portrayed a character called Alfred the Butler.

"Angels with Angels" gave Rodney Dangerfield, Frank Gorshin, and Soupy Sales their last big screen roles. Gorshin's final dramatic role was on TV as himself in an episode of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" titled "Grave Danger" (pictured below), directed by Quentin Tarantino, which aired two days before the actor's death on May 17, 2005.

Essentially, it became cool to dig Adam West again. He voiced himself on a 1992 episode of "The Simpsons" (pictured below).

Writer Jon Vitti confessed that he squeezed Adam West into an
episode of "The Simpsons" so that he could finally meet the actor.

In 1997, future "Family Guy" creator Seth McFarlane was working as a writer on the Cartoon Network series "Johnny Bravo" when he first met Adam West, who was doing a guest shot on an episode appropriately titled "Johnny Bravo Meets Adam West" (pictured below).

West and McFarlane got along so well that the two discussed collaborating on an animated series called "The Adam West Show." "He was so funny," McFarlane recalled in an interview. "He's just hilarious as himself." West remembered making a pilot for the program that McFarlane wrote, saying, "It turned out we had the same kind of comic sensibilities." He said, "We crack each other up."

Ultimately, of course, West was cast as the voice of Quahog's Mayor Adam West on Fox's "Family Guy." In a 2005 interview with the AV Club, Seth McFarlane said that the character was intended as an "alternate-universe Adam West," explaining, "We deliberately have not made any references to Batman...It's the obvious place to go...He's the mayor, but he's this guy who clearly does not have it all together."

Variously described as surreal and sometimes homicidal, the mayor was noted for thinking his name was "Adam We" after bulbs were missing from his desktop Lite-Brite, marrying his right hand, threatening a pizza delivery boy with a live cat-launcher, and getting high with Springfield's Mayor Quimby in the crossover plot with "The Simpsons."

According to McFarlane, "We've built a funny character around him that doesn't just play off the fact that he's a celebrity. He's playing himself, but he's not playing himself." "It's really an exaggeration of my own personality," Adam West once remarked. "I certainly don't mind making fun of myself."

"It's a wonderful way to work, because you can come in and do your thing and make it as big or as contained as you care to," West said about voice-over jobs. "No makeup and no wardrobe and no ego problems. Especially as you get older you don't want to put up with all the other stuff, and it's easier to just go in and do your thing."

In total, Adam West provided the voice of Mayor West for 111 episodes of "Family Guy," the final episode airing less than a month before he died. McFarlane admitted, "He's one of the characters we get the most requests for more of."

After Adam West passed, Seth McFarlane posted on Twitter, "'Family Guy' has lost its mayor, and I have lost a friend. Adam West was a joy to work with and the kind of guy you always wanted to be around. His positivity, good nature, and sense of fun were undeniable, and it was always a big jolt of the best kind of energy when he walked in to record the show. He knew comedy, and he knew humanity. I am beyond fortunate to have the privilege of working with him, and he will be profoundly missed...Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all that you have given, Mr. Mayor. You're irreplaceable."