Billion Dollar Batman

by Bruce Scivally

  Initially, Columbia hired independent producers to make their serials, with the studio handling the distribution. Their first entry, Jungle Menace, starring Frank “Bring ‘em Back Alive” Buck, a big-game hunter turned action star, was produced by Adventures Serials, Incorporated, a company established by the Weiss Brothers, who produced a number of low-budget serials the previous decade. The Weiss Brothers produced two more serials for the studio, The Mysterious Pilot and The Secret of Treasure Island, before Columbia appointed Jack Fier to oversee serial production. Fier’s first two serials were the Western The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickock starring Gordon Elliott (who would soon change his name to Wild Bill Elliott) and The Spider’s Web, starring Warren Hull. The latter, the first serial ever produced using a character from the pulp magazines, became the most popular serial of 1938. The following year, the studio brought Lee Falk and Phil Davis’s comic strip hero Mandrake the Magician to serial audiences, with Warren Hull again playing the lead.

  Despite Fier’s success, in 1940 Columbia turned serial production over to Larry Darmour, who had his own small studio nearby on Santa Monica Boulevard, across from the Hollywood Cemetery. Darmour delegated the job to his right-hand man, production manager Rudolph C. Flothow. Born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1895, Flothow came to Hollywood in the 1920s, where he worked as a dialogue director and production manager for Tiffany-Stahl Productions. By 1934, he had moved to Liberty Pictures, where he was production manager for a year before doing the same duties for Republic’s Ellery Queen feature, The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935). Then, in August of 1936, he went to work for Larry Darmour Productions, primarily on B-movies starring Jack Holt that were made for Columbia Pictures to release.10 Darmour and Flothow turned to pulp and comic strip characters as inspirations for Columbia serials, including The Shadow (1940) and Terry and the Pirates (1940), and made The Spider Returns (1941), a sequel to the studio’s earlier hit.

  As 1942 began, Darmour, feeling unwell, turned more of the production responsibilities over to Flothow. Harry Cohn, to protect Columbia’s interests in the company, installed his nephew, screenwriter Ralph Cohn, as the head producer of the unit. During this time, the rights to their Ellery Queen mystery series lapsed, so Columbia went after the film rights to the popular radio series The Crime Doctor, as a new series for actor Warner Baxter. In March, after a three-month illness said to be a heart condition, Darmour died at the young age of 47.11 His death left Larry Darmour Productions and the low-budget pictures they were working on in jeopardy. Acting quickly, Harry Cohn brought the company under the Columbia roof. Both Flothow and Ralph Cohn jockeyed to take over the Darmour projects, and after a couple of weeks, Harry Cohn decided to bet his fortunes on the more experienced Flothow rather than his nephew. Ralph Cohn was ousted. Exiting the company, he told Daily Variety that he resigned his post. When pressed to make a comment, he said any statement would have to come from Harry Cohn, who was out of town.12

  Though still working out of the Darmour Studios, Flothow now reported directly to Harry Cohn. As the man in charge of Columbia’s B-movie and serial units, Flothow became responsible for the studio’s Crime Doctor, Boston Blackie, Lone Wolf and The Whistler series, as well as the cliffhangers. To kick off his serial program, he optioned one newspaper comic strip hero, Lee Falk’s The Phantom, and one comic book hero, Batman.

  The idea of doing a Batman serial originated at Republic Pictures. In 1940, Republic began negotiations with National Comics to bring their number one character, Superman, to the screen. Four weeks before shooting was to commence, the deal fell through when National insisted on creative control and more money for the rights than the serial’s meager budget would allow. Republic then went to National’s rival, Fawcett Publications, and made a deal for their Superman-like character Captain Marvel. The end result was one of the most popular serials ever produced, 1941’s The Adventures of Captain Marvel, starring Tom Tyler. Republic also showed interest in Batman, but National was skittish, afraid the studio would not be faithful to their character. Instead, they made a deal with Columbia Pictures. On June 16, 1942, the studio announced its 1942-1943 production slate. Among the titles listed were four serials, including The Batman.13

  The script for Batman was written by Victor McLeod, Leslie Swabacker and Harry Fraser. McLeod was a veteran of the Walter Lantz studios, where he wrote numerous Oswald Rabbit and Andy Panda cartoons. In 1940, he graduated to scripting features with the Johnny Mack Brown Western, Boss of Bullion City. He subsequently scripted several other Westerns for Brown, as well as a couple of action films for Richard Arlen. His first serial assignment came in 1942, with Universal’s Gangbusters, co-authored with Morgan Cox, Al Martin and George H. Plympton. The story featured a police detective, Lt. Bill Bannister, who is assigned to stop Professor Mortis and his League of Murdered Men, criminals who are presumed dead after seemingly committing suicide on death row. Leslie Swabacker had a much slimmer resume, having earned his first credit as one of the writers of 1936’s The Vigilantes are Coming!, one of the initial serials released by Republic. The Zorro-inspired tale revolved around the exploits of The Eagle, who leads a group of ranchers fighting against Cossacks who are trying to turn California into a Russian colony. Yes, you read that correctly—Cossacks trying to turn California into a Russian colony (I did mention these were for kids, right?). He next contributed to the script of Universal’s Secret Agent X-9, a serial based on a Dashiell Hammett character. The veteran among the Batman scriptwriters was Harry Fraser, who entered films as an actor in 1916 and by the 1920s had become an amazingly prolific writer and director of low-budget Westerns, which he continued to churn out into the 1930s and ‘40s.

  As with many serial adaptations, the final script turned in by McLeod, Swabacker and Fraser took liberties with the source material. Whereas in the comics Batman became a duly deputized police officer in 1941, in the serial he is still considered an outlaw by the police. Unknown to them, however, he is an agent of the federal government, who presumably know his secret identity of Bruce Wayne. Robin still fights by his side, but there is no Batmobile, Batboat or Batplane, due to budgetary considerations. Instead, Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson are chauffeured around by their butler, Alfred, in a 1939 Cadillac Series 61 Convertible (the first car called a “Batmobile” in the comic books was a red 1936 Cord convertible that appeared in Detective Comics # 48 in February 1941, so the serial version isn’t really that far off the mark; for more info on the various Batmobiles, visit www.batmobilehistory.com).

  The plot begins with the kidnapping of Linda Page’s Uncle Warren. Linda Page became Bruce Wayne’s girlfriend in the comic books beginning with Batman # 5 (Spring 1941). In the comic books, Linda was a society girl whose father was an oil magnate; she eventually left high society and became a war nurse. She made her final appearance in Detective Comics # 73 (March 1943), but in Batman # 32 (Dec 1945/Jan 1946), Bruce Wayne mentioned that he had purchased a sapphire for her birthday. After that, she was never mentioned again. In the serial, Linda was a nurse who worked in Dr. Borden’s office at the Gotham City Foundation. Just as in the comic books, the serial’s scriptwriters had Linda scold Bruce for being a wastrel. Also, as often happened in the comic books, she was eventually captured by the villains, necessitating a rescue by Batman.

  The writers borrowed a couple of ideas from an earlier Columbia serial, The Spider’s Web. In Chapter 1, when Batman leaves a couple of crooks handcuffed to a light pole for pick-up by the police, there’s a little bat symbol stamped in ink on their foreheads, similar to the spider silhouette tattoos of the earlier film. Later, in Chapter 9, Bruce Wayne disguises himself as hoodlum “Chuck White” to infiltrate the villain’s gang, just as Richard Wentworth—a/k/a the Spider—disguises himself as underworld lowlife Blinky McQuade. As Chuck White, a Damon Runyon-esque character with “dese,” “dem” and “dose” delivery and a slouching walk, the change in Bruce’s demeanor, plus a cigarette in his mouth and a liberal use of nose putty, is enough to fool Linda Page
and the members of the villain’s gang.

  Since serials were basically comprised of lots of good old-fashioned fisticuffs, the live- action Batman wasn’t nearly as formidable a fighter as his comic book counterpart. He gets beaten up, knocked about, and—at the conclusion of the first chapter—shoved off a rooftop (Chapter 2 begins with him landing on a window washer’s scaffold). And though he wears a big, thick metallic belt that appears to have secret compartments, he never pulls out any exploding gas capsules or other gadgets from it as he did with his utility belt in the comics. Stranger still is that aside from Batman, Robin, Alfred and Linda, there are no other characters from the comic books. Instead of Commissioner Gordon, Batman turns the crooks over to Captain Arnold. The colorful villains from the comic book are woefully absent, replaced by the inscrutably evil Japanese agent, Dr. Tito Daka, occasionally referred to as Prince Daka.

  Part of Daka’s plan involves turning men into living zombies by way of a brainwashing machine and special headgear with a wire that is attached to their spine. Daka, who has a prototype ray gun powered by radium capable of causing a concrete block to crumble into rubble, plans to steal enough radium to build a much larger-scale ray gun capable of toppling buildings. Over the course of 15 chapters, his plans are continually interrupted by Batman and Robin, so often, in fact, that at one point Daka speculates that maybe there is more than one Batman (an idea that comic book writer Grant Morrison would use nearly seventy years later in his “Batman, Inc.” stories in which Bruce Wayne franchises Batman).

  With a phone-book sized script in hand, Flothow hired Lambert Hillyer to direct Batman. Hillyer had been writing and directing since 1917, when he worked on a couple of William S. Hart Westerns. By the time he picked up the script to Batman, the South Bend, Indiana native had over 100 films under his belt, including two moody horror thrillers for Universal, Dracula’s Daughter and The Invisible Ray, both made in 1936. Those were the exceptions, however; most of his films were Westerns.

  When Flothow and Hillyer turned their attention to casting, the first role they filled was that of Linda Page, the female lead. On May 8, 1943, The Los Angeles Times announced that Shirley Patterson, formerly a star of Westerns, had been selected to play Bruce Wayne’s fiancée.14 Born Shirley Bodette in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada on December 26, 1922, Patterson was the winner of the 1939 Southern California archery championship and was chosen as Miss California 1940 at the Venice Beach Mardi Gras in August 1940, in a competition whose judges included Sir Cedric Hardwicke.15 She entered films immediately after graduating from high school in Eagle Rock, California in 1940. Columbia placed her under contract and co-starred her opposite Wild Bill Elliott and Tex Ritter in North of the Rockies, directed by Lambert Hillyer. The studio continued to give her featured roles in Westerns, as well as smaller bits in their A-list films such as the Joan Crawford romantic comedy They All Kissed the Bride (1942) and the Jean Arthur-Joel McCrae comedy The More the Merrier (1943). She also played a small part in the Three Stooges short Spook Louder.

  On May 29, 1943, The Los Angeles Times announced “Serial Called ‘Bat Man‘ Projected at Columbia.” The newspaper noted that Lewis Wilson has been chosen to play the lead, “and will have a sort of dual role, concealing his more or less classic features under the camouflage much of the time.”16 Wilson, like Patterson, was a new arrival at the studio. The New Hampshire-born son of a Boston minister, Lewis Gilbert Wilson was born January 28, 1920; he was only 23 years old when he was tapped to play the Caped Crusader, making him the youngest actor ever to take on the role.

  Wilson was a graduate of Worcester Academy, where he distinguished himself as a long- distance swimmer. He next attended Cecil Clovelly’s Academy of Dramatic Arts at Carnegie Hall. While there, he met another young actress named Dana Natol who would soon become his wife. The couple had a son, Michael, born January 21, 1942. In November of 1942, Wilson was cast in a revival of Karel Capek’s R.U.R., a play about robots, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York. Directed by Lee Strassberg, the play began its run on December 3, 1942.17 Though it closed soon afterwards, Wilson was spotted by a talent scout from Columbia, who encouraged the young actor to go to Hollywood. Wilson took his advice, and upon arriving in Los Angeles was placed under contract by the studio. On December 16, gossip columnist Hedda Hopper reported that Wilson would make his screen debut opposite Merle Oberon at Columbia under Dorothy Arzner’s direction.18 The eventual film, First Comes Courage, starred Oberon and Brian Aherne.19 Along with another New York actor, Jess Barker, Wilson was next tapped to appear in Our Friend Curley with Humphrey Bogart and Rita Hayworth. The two leads eventually dropped out of the film, which was made as Good Luck, Mr. Yates with Claire Trevor and Edgar Buchanan in the leading roles. On December 29, Wilson was once again mentioned in Hedda Hopper’s column. “Lupe Velez will move her bits and pieces over to Columbia for Redhead from Rio,” wrote Hopper, “with newcomer from Broadway, Lewis Wilson, as leading man.”20 Filming began on January 18, 1943. Again, the film underwent a title change before its release, to Redhead From Manhattan. The Chicago Tribune called it “a story of a shipwreck, comedy and music. The stars find themselves in many funny and harrowing experiences, as they get mixed up with some Nazi-cached funds and FBI agents.”21

  In February 1943, Wilson was cast in Columbia’s Right Guy, which was released as Klondike Kate with Ann Savage and Tom Neal.22 For an actor who had been in Hollywood less than a year, his career seemed on the upswing. Then came Batman. By the end of May, the promising young actor with the handsome features and upper-crust accent was being fitted for Batman’s cape and cowl; Daily Variety announced his hiring on June 1, 1943.23 Wilson was happy to take the role, as his long-time friend Frank Hunt told Boyd Magers of Serial Report. “Lew had read the comics,” said Hunt. “In fact, he was interested in cartooning as a young man. He enjoyed working on the serial but felt the production was greatly under-funded.”24

  To portray Robin, the Boy Wonder, the studio hired a young actor who made a career of playing the younger versions of other actors on-screen. Douglas Malcolm Wheatcroft was born in Seattle on August 12, 1925 and brought to Los Angeles when he was only two weeks old. According to studio publicity, which may very well be apocryphal, he was discovered while trying to crash a Knox Manning radio broadcast at Los Angeles Radio City. A man with an extra ticket noticed him and invited him to be his guest. Conversing with Wheatcroft, the man learned that the boy liked hunting, fishing, archery, basketball and miniature golf, and that his hobby was building model boats and airplanes. In private school, his favorite subjects were history and science, and he hoped to make the baseball team. The man, it turned out, was talent agent Lew Kramer, who saw Wheatcroft as the ideal American boy. He asked the young man to come and see him the next morning, and bring his mother. Though he didn’t have any immediate work for the youngster, he signed him to a contract, and shortened his last name to Croft. What probably appealed to Kramer was that Croft was a slightly-built teenager who could convincingly play characters years younger than his actual age; publicity notices said that he signed his contract on his 12th birthday, but in fact, Croft was 16.

  A few days later, Kramer was contacted by 20th Century-Fox, who were calling 46 boys to test for a role in Remember the Day with Claudette Colbert and John Payne. Kramer sent Croft to the audition. He was sixth in line for a screen test, and after seeing him, the studio sent the other boys home.25 In the film, Colbert played a schoolteacher in a small Midwest community. Croft was the schoolboy whose appreciation for his teacher lasted through the years, so that when he grew up and became a presidential candidate (and was played by John Shepherd), he turned to her for counsel when he was faced with a critical decision.26

  In his next film, 1942’s Kings Row, Croft played Drake McHugh, who grows up to become Ronald Reagan. It was a pattern he continued in Yankee Doodle Dandy, where he played the 13-year-old George M. Cohan (James Cagney played the adult entertainer), Flight Lieutenant, where his character, Danny Doyle,
grows up to be Glenn Ford, and Pride of the Yankees, where he was the young Lou Gehrig (Gary Cooper played the older baseball legend). In October 1942, he was quoted as saying, “I’ve been in only four pictures, but in every one I grow up and become someone played by a movie star. Then everyone forgets me and remembers the fellow I grew up to be. I’d like just to be in a picture—and that’s all.”27 This quote was probably a publicist’s concoction, given that he had a plum role in 1942’s Not a Ladies’ Man as a young boy who is embarrassed when his divorced father (Paul Kelly) begins to fall for his schoolteacher (Fay Wray). Croft was also featured in 1942’s George Washington Slept Here, a Jack Benny comedy adapted from a stage play by Moss Hart and George S. Kauffman. According to poet Sharmagne Leland-St. John, Croft and her father, actor Jerry St. John, used to sit on the porch of the Andy Hardy set at MGM and chat. A couple of writers would sometimes join them and make notes on the slang terms the boys used, working it into the dialogue of the Andy Hardy films as typical teenage jargon.28

  Batman’s nemesis, Dr. Daka, was played by veteran character actor J. Carroll Naish, in yellowface make-up with heavy-lidded eyes and dark lipstick. A master of dialects, Naish was Hollywood’s all-purpose ethnic. The swarthy, dark-haired actor played Latinos, Italians, Arabs, American Indians and Asians on-screen. Naish was born into an Irish family in New York City on January 21, 1896. As a young boy, he ran away from home to join a vaudeville troupe, but was sent home. The young man kept trying, however, and at age 12 he worked as a song plugger for Irving Berlin. Though he was only 16 as World War I began, he dropped out of school and enlisted in the Navy. Serving as a naval aviator in France, he still found time to form a song-and-dance team to entertain the soldiers. After the war, he remained in Europe, acquiring a knowledge of languages and dialects that would serve him well in his later career. In 1926, he was taking a trip to Shanghai when the ship he was on developed engine trouble. It docked in San Diego, and Naish debarked and made his way to Hollywood, where he played a Japanese prince for the first time in The Shanghai Gesture. He developed a relationship with the actress playing opposite him, Gladys Heaney. They married two years later.29