Adam West, the Batman Television Star, of the straight line, died at 88

 Adam West, the Batman Television Star, of the straight line, died at 88

The actor struggled to find work after the camp superhero series was canceled, but he resumed with voice-over concerts, including a mayor of Quahog on 'Family Guy'.
Adam West, the ardent actor who managed to keep his tongue in the cheek while wearing Caped Crusader's emblematic hood on the classic 1960s Batman series, died. He was 88 years old.

West, who was at the height of pop culture after Batman made his debut in January 1966, to see his career fall victim to a piracy after the ABC show exploded, died Friday night in Los Angeles after a short battle Against leukemia, said a family spokesperson.

The West died peacefully surrounded by his family and came by his wife Marcelle, six children, five grandchildren and two great great-grandchildren.

"Our father always saw himself as The Bright Knight and aspired to have a positive impact on the lives of his fans. He was and will always be our hero," his family said in a statement.

After struggling for years without regular work, the actor of happiness reached a new level of glory when he accepted an offer to express the mayor of Quahog - named Adam West; How is it for a coincidence! - on Seth MacFarlane's long-running Fox animated hit Family Guy.

On the big screen, West played a rich Main Line husband who meets an early ending in Paul Newman's The Young Philadelphians (1959), was one of the first two humans on the red planet to Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964). ) And contributed his velvety Voice to the animated Redux Riding Hood (1997), who received an Oscar nomination for best short film.

Raised on a ranch outside Walla Walla, Wash., West caught the attention of Batman producer William Dozier when he played Captain Quik, a James Bond-type character with a sailor's hood in Advertisements for Nestlé's Quik.

West, who had appeared in many Warner Bros. television series. As a studio contract player, was spaghetti Western The Relentless Four (1965) in Europe at the time. He returned to the states to meet Dozier, "read the pilot script and knew after 20 pages that it was the kind of comedy I wanted to do," he said in a 2006 interview with Archive Of American Television.

He signed a contract on the spot, only asking that he have the opportunity to approve who would play his boyfriend, Robin, the Boy Wonder. (It would be the cast of Burt Ward, who had a brown belt in karate but an experiment at zero).

"The tone of our first show, by Lorenzo Semple Jr., was an absurdity and a tongue in the cheek to the point that I found it irresistible," West said. "I think they recognized that in me of what they had done to me before. I understood the material and brought something.

"You can not play Batman seriously, square jaw, straight without giving the public the impression that there is something behind this mask waiting to go out, that it is a bit fake, he is strange".

The Hunky Lyle Wagoner (later The Carol Burnett Show) and Peter Deyell also tested to play the Gotham City crime fighters, but West and Ward were clearly superior, and Batman made his debut at 7:30. On January 12, 1966, on a Wednesday.

The episode of the cliffhanger would be resolved the next night, same time of Bat-Time! The same Bat-channel! The show was originally intended to last an hour, but ABC separated it when it had two slots available on its prime time schedule.

West said he played Batman "for laughing, but to do that, you never thought it was funny. You just had to pull that hood off and believe no one would recognize you."

The series, filmed in bright colors in a black and white era and featuring a band of bad guys like Riddler (Frank Gorshin), Joker (Cesar Romero), Penguin (Burgess Meredith) and Catwoman (Julie Newmar), was an immediate blow; Thursday's deadline was No. 5 in the Nielsen ratings for the 1965-66 season and Wednesday's edition was No. 10.

"Stellar, exemplary, a king to the end," said Newmar of West in a statement: "He was brilliant, witty and fun to work, I will miss him in the physical world and savor him always in the world of Imagination and creativity. "He wanted to tell people so much."

Batman was nominated for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in his first year, losing the show Dick Van Dyke of CBS. A 20th Century Fox film was launched in production and played in theaters during the summer before Season 2 was launched in September 1966.

However, the popularity of the show quickly dropped, and Batman - despite the addition of Yvonne Craig as a Batgirl - was canceled in March 1968 after his third season.

West quickly struggled to find work, forced to make appearances in his cloak and hood at car shows and carnivals and in films as obscure as The Marriage of Young Paperbroker (1971), written by Semple, and The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood (1980). He and his family have decreased, leaving their home in the palaces of Pacific Pacific for Ketchum, Idaho.

"The people who hired, the people who run the studios, the shows, were dinosaurs," said the actor in the 2013 documentary Adam West. "They thought Batman was a big accident, that there was no real creative thinking, expertise or art behind it." They were wrong.

He returned to express his iconic character in cartoons such as The New Adventures of Batman, Legends of the Superheroes, SuperFriends: The Legendary Super Powers Show and The Simpsons, and Warner Bros. The long version of DVD of Batman in 2014 In the projectors of Bat Signal.

William West Anderson was born in Seattle on September 19, 1928, the second of two sons. His father, Otto, was a farmer of wheat; His mother, Audrey, was a pianist and opera singer.

West attended an all-boy high school, and then earned a degree in English literature from Whitman College. During his last year, he worked for a local radio station, while doing Sunday morning religion shows at the news.

He also participated in a few plays at the local theater. "I found that I could move an audience and I was appreciated," he said.

In the military, West served as an advertiser on the American Forces network television, and then worked as station manager at Stanford while he was a graduate student.

He got a job at a McClatchy station in Sacramento, California, and then moved to Hawaii, where he staged a two-hour show a week in the late 1950s with a chimpanzee wearing diapers like Peaches. (West said he had interviewed William Holden while the actor was passing).

West has been awarded a contract with Warner Bros. At $ 150 a week and was placed in one of the studio's television series - Colt .45, Maverick, Hawaiian Eye, 77 Sunset Strip, Cheyenne, and so on. - about every week.

He had his first regular television role when he played Det. Sgt. Steve Nelson under the command of Robert Taylor on the 1959-62 ABC / NBC series, The Detectives, to come aboard when this show grew to an hour of color.

After splitting with Warner Bros., West appeared in such forgettable films as Geronimo (1962) with Chuck Connors, Tammy and the Doctor (1963) with Sandra Dee and The Outlaws Is Coming (1965), The Three Stooges, before Batman Does not change His life forever.

He then played in a 1991 rejected pilot episode of NBC called Lookwell - written by Conan O'Brien and Robert Smigel - in which he portrayed a former television detective who thinks he can solve crimes in real life.

Then the concert on MacFarlane's Family Guy.

"I had made a pilot with Seth that he had written for me. It turned out that we had the same kind of comic sensitivities and got on well, "he said in an interview in 2012." When Family Guy came and Seth became brilliantly successful, he decided to Call me and see what I was doing. He asked me if I would like to come on board as mayor, and I thought it would be wise to do something absurd and fun.

The documentary featuring Adam West culminates with him receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2012.

He married Marcelle in 1970; They met when she was the wife of the founder of Lear Jet and they posed for an advertising photo at Santa Monica Airport, with him in his Batman costume. (They each have two children from their previous marriages, and then added a few to themselves).

When Batman was canceled, "The only thing I thought was that it would be the end of me, and it was a bit," he told Comic-Con in 2014. "But then I I realized what we created in The Show ... we created this shy and lovable world.

"I look around and I see adults - I see you grow up with me, and you believe in the adventure, I never thought it was happening, that I would be here with illustrious people like you. I'm so thankful I'm the luckiest actor in the world, people, so you're always there. "