Celebrity Watch!: 06/10/17

Adam West, the gray-stockinged star of the 1960s Batman TV show, has died at the age of 88.

"Our dad always saw himself as The Bright Knight and aspired to make a positive impact on his fans' lives. He was and always will be our hero," his family said in a statement. West died peacefully in his home Friday night after a battle with leukemia, and is survived by his wife Marcelle, six children, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

West first caught the eye of the Batman show's producer after he appeared as a different kind of caped crusader in a series of commercials for Nestle's Quik.

"You can't play Batman in a serious, square-jawed, straight-ahead way without giving the audience the sense that there's something behind that mask waiting to get out, that he's a little crazed, he's strange," West later told the Archive of American Television. He and his co-star Burt Ward added a manic, hilarious energy to the Batman and Robin characters on Batman, which ran for three seasons from 1966 to 1968. The show championed such noble causes as drinking milk, eating your vegetables, and always wearing a seatbelt.
After Batman was cancelled, West struggled to find more onscreen work, making several guest appearances on television but never finding another role as high-profile as the one that had made him famous. Reportedly, he was disappointed when Tim Burton did not tap him to reprise the character in 1989's Batman. He eventually settled comfortably into a second career as a voice actor after accepting a job to voice the mayer of Quahog on Family Guy—a character also named Adam West.
"The only thing I thought is that it would be the end of me, and it was for a bit," he said during an appearance at Comic-Con in 2014, where he discussed the end of Batman. "But then I realized that what we created in the show. . . we created this zany, lovable world.

"I look around and I see the adults—I see you grew up with me, and you believe in the adventure. I never believed this would happen, that I would be up here with illustrious people like yourselves. I'm so grateful! I'm the luckiest actor in the world, folks, to have you still hanging around."

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Adam West, star of the popular and campy 1960's "Batman" TV show, has died, his agent said. West was 88.

The part was a signature role, for West, who played Bruce Wayne and his alter ego, the crime-fighting, costumed Batman, a popular comics character who came to life on the ABC-TV series. The show, with a catchy -- some might say aggravating -- theme song, earned a cult following.

The series, which lasted three seasons and enjoyed an afterlife in syndication, made West internationally famous.

Later in life, West made appearances on the animated series "Family Guy" as Mayor Adam West, the oddball leader of Quahog, Rhode Island.

West was born William West Anderson in Walla Walla, Washington, where he later earned a degree in literature and psychology from Whitman College.

West worked as a disc jockey and developed a dramatic and memorable voice, which he bestowed upon the Caped Crusader.

"If I pick up a telephone and make an international call, the operator knows my voice immediately, as does everybody else," he told CNN in an interview two years ago.

West also pulled off a wacky intellectual shtick on the show, demonstrating his strong command of vocabulary.

"Catwoman, I find you to be odious, abhorrent and insegrevious," he told one memorable villain.

The list of entertaining thugs who played opposite West was long and illustrious: actresses Julie Newmar, Lee Meriwether and Eartha Kitt played Catwoman; Cesar Romero played the Joker; Burgess Meredith played the Penguin; and Frank Gorshin and John Astin played the Riddler.

Batman's sidekick was Boy Wonder Robin, who as Dick Grayson was Bruce Wayne's ward -- played by Burt Ward.

The Batman character "has to be mature enough to have a ward, he's a mentor or he has adopted a son, so to speak," West once said.

West earned his share of acting parts over the years. To no one's surprise, he got typecast, but he wasn't at all bitter.

"When you wear a mask and funny tights, ... it gets a little frustrating from time to time," West said. "I was turned down for a number of parts over the years, I feel, because of that."

"Wherever I go in the world, there's such a wonderful rapport with our Batman that it's neat," he said. "People come up and play entire scenes for me unsolicited, but I got to laugh. ... How lucky can a person get to be part of something that is a classic."

Cartoons revived his career, and West fit right in with "Family Guy."

"We get asked all the time at 'Family Guy,' do we have a lot of drugs lying around the office? No, we have Adam West," the show's creator Seth McFarlane said.

A few years ago, West was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

"I think I have the record as the actor who has waited the longest to get his star on the sidewalk," he said.

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