Billion Dollar Batman

by Bruce Scivally

  Bette Davis and Bruce Wayne? Gary Merrill, one of several actors who played Batman on radio, strikes a pose with Bette Davis, his All About Eve co-star, who later became his wife. (20th Century Fox/Photofest, © 20th Century Fox).

  Merrill returned as Batman on January 29, 1946, in the first of a 13-part adventure called “Is There Another Superman?” that concluded on February 14. The plot involved an Eastern European strongman who had been duped into impersonating Superman by a gang of resourceful robbers. When Superman, who was having blackouts after being bombarded by Kryptonite radiation in the previous adventure, feared that he was, in fact, robbing banks, he turned to Batman to help him solve the case. During the adventure, Robin disappeared while chasing the villains. Batman, fearing that he had been killed, was beside himself. As episode 10 began, Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne paid a visit to Inspector Henderson, asking for his help in finding Dick Grayson. Bruce, his “eyes red-rimmed and his cheeks etched with deep lines of fatigue,” made an impassioned plea, saying, “That kid means everything to me...Oh, you can’t know how I feel about him.” This was a much more emotional Bruce Wayne/Batman than was ever seen in the comics. While it is easy, in this post-Frederic Wertham world of cynicism, to listen to the broadcast and chuckle at what appear to be homosexual undertones, one must remember that at the time, such emotionality would have been considered the appropriate reaction of a parent who had lost a child, which is no doubt how the radio writers saw the Bruce Wayne/ Dick Grayson relationship, and how they expected it to be interpreted by the show’s young listeners.

  A few months later, on April 5, Batman returned in part 6 of “The Story of the Century,” a trifling bit of nonsense that had Batman cooperating with Lois Lane, Perry White and Jimmy Olsen to create an unsolvable April Fool’s puzzle to trick Clark Kent. When Kent eventually figured out what was going on, he turned the tables on them, pulling some pranks of his own. As Superman, he made Perry White’s house disappear and convinced the Daily Planet staffers that they were about to be killed by pirates. He meant to teach his coworkers that practical jokes aren’t funny, but basically ended up teaching them that the Big Blue Boy Scout couldn’t take a joke.

  Batman also came in near the end of a 22-episode adventure called “Horatio F. Horn, Detective.” During the course of the adventure, an ex-Scotland Yard detective named Herbert Caulkins suspected that Clark Kent was Superman, and began setting traps to prove it. In the 19th episode, Superman was scheduled to speak at the World Peace Federation. Caulkins was determined to accompany Kent to the rally, because even Superman couldn’t be in two places at once. He didn’t count on Bruce Wayne, in a Superman uniform and rubber mask, masquerading as the Man of Steel. In these episodes, Batman/Bruce Wayne was played by a new actor—Dan McCullough, the commercial announcer for The Adventures of Superman who usually spent the episode’s commercial breaks hawking Kellogg’s Pep cereal.

  The origin of Robin was presented—after a fashion—in the final episode of the adventure called “George Lattimer, Crooked Political Boss” that aired on September 25, 1946. It began with Clark Kent being called to Bruce Wayne’s home, where Wayne told him how Dick Grayson became Robin. In the radio version of the story, Bruce Wayne was a good friend of John Grayson, patriarch of the Flying Graysons. When John Grayson and his wife Mary were performing their wire-walking act, the wire snapped. Mary was killed instantly, but John Grayson lived long enough to ask Bruce to take care of his son, Dick. Grayson also tells Bruce that he and his wife are not the victims of an accident, but of murder. Wayne immediately investigated the steel wire and saw that it had been weakened by being partly sawn through. Wayne knew who the murderer was—a man named George Larson, the circus ringmaster. At the beginning of the war, he had found out that Mrs. Grayson was French, and had a sister and brother living in Paris who were members of the French underground. He threatened to report them to the Nazis unless he was paid off. For five months, he blackmailed the Graysons until they had no more money. Then, they told him they were going to the District Attorney to have him arrested for extortion and blackmail. The following night, the wire broke. This was the beginning of “The Dead Voice,” an adventure that ran for fifteen episodes, ending October 16, with Batman/Bruce Wayne once again played by Matt Crowley.

  During the adventure, Robin once again goes missing and Batman, fearing that he’s dead, bemoans the loss of his young aide. Superman says, “This isn’t at all like you, Batman.” In fact, it’s exactly like Batman was several episodes previously; in these later radio shows, Batman is not only emotional, he’s also prone to bouts of extreme worry and hysteria.

  Crowley played the Caped Crusader again in an adventure called “The Secret Letter” that began broadcasting on November 25, 1946. The plot involved Batman helping Superman track down a letter which revealed Superman’s secret identity that had fallen into the hands of two small-time crooks.

  Batman next appeared in “The Monkey Burglar,” which ran for 10 episodes beginning February 25, 1947. The title referred to an acrobatic burglar who scaled up the sides of buildings to rob luxury apartments. Inspector Henderson shocked Clark Kent and Batman by revealing the identity of the burglar as Robin, the Boy Wonder. He believed the burglar was Robin based on descriptions by some of the victims, who described him as a youngster about five feet tall, weighing about a hundred and ten pounds, wearing a skin-tight costume and red jacket with a bat-like hood and half-mask. Robin was unable to give the police an alibi without revealing his secret identity, so Batman asked Superman to help him find the real culprit. With this adventure, Gary Merrill returned as the Caped Crusader.

  Merrill was back in “Superman Versus Kryptonite,” broadcast from May 14 to June 27, 1947, in which crooked political boss and unrepentant bigot Big George Lattimer, released from prison, poisoned Superman with kryptonite, causing Superman to lose his memory. Superman—dressed in overalls—escaped from Lattimer in his men, but still had amnesia. He ended up joining a minor-league baseball team, becoming their star pitcher under the name Bud Smith. After breaking numerous pitching and hitting records, he was traded to the big-league Metropolis Titans. With Batman’s help, Superman eventually recovered his memory and defeated Lattimer.

  With the conclusion of “Superman Versus Kryptonite,” the Superman radio program went on summer break, returning to the air three months later. On November 27, 1947, an adventure began which again featured Gary Merrill as the Caped Crusader, helping Superman and Perry White defeat Joe Solitaire’s “vicious pinboard racket,” which preyed on school kids.

  At the end of an episode broadcast on February 2, 1948, Dick Grayson summoned Clark Kent to Wayne Manor and announced that Batman was gone, and he was afraid they’d never see him again. Thus began “Batman’s Great Mystery,” in which Batman was kidnapped and replaced by an imposter. It took the Man of Steel to set things right, which he had done by the broadcast of February 17, 1948. In this adventure, Batman was again played by Merrill, with Liss as Robin.

  “The Mystery of the Stolen Costume,” broadcast from March 10 to April 1, 1948, began with Clark Kent returning to his apartment to find that someone has opened the secret panel where he kept a spare Superman outfit and stolen it. He immediately sought help from the only person who knew his secret identity—Batman. These programs were later adapted into an episode of the Adventures of Superman television show starring George Reeves, but the story was heavily rewritten and condensed, with Batman and Robin being written out completely.

  In the final episode of “The Crossword Puzzle Mystery,” broadcast May 3, 1948, after Superman rounded up gold hijackers out West, Clark Kent went to Inspector Henderson’s office to tell him the identity of the brains of the outfit—a crook who ran a small time syndicate out of Metropolis, tipping off his accomplices with clues in crossword puzzles. But instead of Henderson, Kent found Batman (again voiced by Gary Merrill) in Henderson’s office. Batman told Kent that he and Robin were working the case from another end, and had put the man in the cit
y jail, thus bringing the case to a conclusion.

  “The Secret of Meteor Island,” broadcast from June 14 to July 6, 1948, began with Jimmy Olsen being slipped a package by a man named the Count. Jimmy was later kidnapped by gangsters who saw the Count slip Jimmy the package, which they expected to contain diamonds. In Episode 4, Batman and Robin arrived and attempted to rescue Jimmy. They found themselves outnumbered, but Superman showed up and lent a hand.

  On an episode broadcast July 7, 1948, Clark Kent was awakened by a phone call from Bruce Wayne, who whisked him off in the Batmobile to a sonic laboratory where experiments were being conducted with high-speed sound waves, beginning an adventure titled “The Voice of Doom.” Superman helped Batman defeat Butcher Stark, a criminal accidentally bombarded by a sonic ray gun, which gave him the ability to project a sound with his voice that could cripple those nearby and even collapse walls.

  In 1950, there was another attempt to bring Batman to radio in his own series. A pilot was produced called The Batman Mystery Club. The show had a peculiar premise—each week, Robin would call a meeting of the Batman Mystery Club to order, presenting Batman, who would regale the assembled group of young kids with a ghost story designed to debunk the supernatural—a precursor, of sorts, to Scooby-Doo. A pilot episode, “The Monster of Dumphrey’s Hall,” basically a locked-room mystery, was produced in September 1950, with Liss again playing Robin and John Emery, radio’s Philo Vance, as Batman. As Les Daniels notes in his book Batman: The Complete History, the pilot was penned by comic book writer Don Cameron, who was authoring a book on the occult when he died, age 48, in 1954.6 The pilot never aired.

  Emery was born into show business, the son of actors Edward Emery and Isabel Waldron, though some believed that he was the illegitimate son of John Barrymore, since the two bore a strong resemblance to each other. Born May 20, 1905, Emery attended Long Island’s LaSalle Military Academy. His first film role came in 1937, in director James Whale’s The Road Back. That same year, he married Tallulah Bankhead in Jasper, Alabama, only to divorce her four years later in Reno, Nevada. Throughout the 1940s, he continued to appear in films, including Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), George Washington Slept Here (1942), and Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945).

  After his one Batman pilot, John Emery remained very active in films and television, appearing on episodes of I Love Lucy, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Wagon Train, among many others, though science fiction fans will remember him for his role as Dr. Karl Eckstrom in 1950’s Rocketship X-M. He died in New York on December 16, 1964.

  Ronald Liss appears not to have had an acting career beyond the demise of radio dramas. He became a production manager of TV’s The Jimmy Dean Show in 1958, then turned to writing. He was a writer on the ABC children’s series Director ‘62, which began broadcast in October 1962,7 and later wrote and performed voices on MGM/Leo the Lion records featuring characters such as Flash Gordon, Superman, the Flash, Aquaman, the Green Hornet, the Green Lantern and, of course, Batman. Liss died at the young age of 39, during the first week of October, 1969.

  The actors who played Batman fared much better. Stacy Harris had a steady role on radio from 1948 to 1953, as agent Jim Taylor on ABC Radio’s This is Your FBI. He became a close friend of Jack Webb, who cast him in numerous episodes of TV’s Dragnet and named his eldest daughter, Stacy, after him. One of his last roles was as Leslie Harrington on the 1972 TV series Return to Peyton Place. Harris died of a heart attack in Los Angeles on March 13, 1973, at the age of 54.8

  Matt Crowley played Dr. Brent on radio’s Road of Life for several years until one day when he left for a two-week vacation. Since his character did not appear in every episode, he waited until the last few days of his rest in the country to call his agent for the next week’s schedule. He learned that the network was holding auditions, but was told they were for another series. When he returned to New York on a Friday, he was informed that Don McLaughlin had been assigned Crowley’s role of Dr. Brent.9 Despite a barrage of letters from angry listeners, Crowley was not invited back and was never told why the change was made.10 Not that he needed to worry about work—the much in-demand radio performer became radio’s Dick Tracy, adding to his résumé of comic book heroes. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Crowley became a busy character actor in movies and TV, including a recurring role as the Lakeview Chief of Police on the daytime TV serial The Edge of Night. He died March 10, 1983.

  As for Gary Merrill, when he returned to Hollywood in the early 1950s, he had high-profile roles in Twelve O‘Clock High (1949) and All About Eve (1950), among other films. On the set of All About Eve, he met Bette Davis, with whom he began an affair. He and Davis soon divorced their respective spouses and were married, a union that lasted a decade, ending in 1960. He had a starring role in the short-lived TV series The Reporter in 1964, then settled into a long career of guest starring roles. With his distinctively rich voice, he also worked regularly doing voice- overs for radio and TV commercials until his death from lung cancer at age 74, on March 5, 1990.

  RADIO REBORN

  Though the Golden Age of radio serials faded out in the 1950s as television became the dominant entertainment medium in American homes, there have nonetheless been more recent audio adaptations of Batman. In 1988, BBC-4 producer Dirk Maggs, best known for his radio adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, produced a 50th anniversary Superman radio drama, Superman on Trial. The response to the program was so positive that the following year, he produced a 50th anniversary tribute to Batman, Batman: The Lazarus Syndrome. Written by Maggs and Simon Bullivant, the radio drama drew inspiration from the comic book stories The Killing Joke, A Death in the Family, Batman: Year Three and Batman: Son of the Demon. The storyline featured Ra’s al Ghul, having made himself look like Bruce Wayne through plastic surgery, imprisoning Batman and taking Wayne’s place.

  The 45-minute production featured Michael Gough, who had just been seen as Alfred the butler in a Batman motion picture, reprising his role for the radio drama. Batman/Bruce Wayne was played by Bob Sessions, an actor who had been performing on British television since 1968, when he appeared in an episode of Sexton Blake. Over the years, he popped up in episodes of Journey to the Unknown, The Protectors, Rumpole of the Bailey and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes. His deep voice, with just the slightest hint of a British accent, sounded convincingly authentic. “Funnily enough casting Batman was a no-brainer,” said Dirk Maggs. “Back in 1988 Bob Sessions had come in to audition for the part of Superman when we made the 50th birthday Supes docudrama Superman on Trial. As soon as he walked in and said hello the voice was obviously Batman. Not the gravelly pseudo-tough guy Michael Keaton thing, but a rich deep Cary Grant with a bit of gravel. And he had the integrity too. As Batman was also in the docudrama—called upon to give ‘evidence‘ at the trial (rather ambiguous evidence that nearly had Supes dispatched to the Phantom Zone!)—he was cast as Batman then and there. The following year we made the Batman 50th birthday tribute, Batman: The Lazarus Syndrome, and Bob really got his teeth into the part.”11

  A second Batman radio drama followed. In 1993, Matthew Bannister took over BBC Radio 1 and approached Dirk Maggs for a daytime serial. Maggs decided to do a more long-form Batman serial, and produced 65 three-minute episodes called Batman: Knightfall, which were aired as part of The Mark Goodier Show. Once again, Michael Gough appeared as Alfred, and Bob Sessions took on the role of the Dark Knight. As in the comic book arc that inspired it, the plot involved Batman taking on a villain named Bane, who escaped from Arkham Asylum, releasing numerous other villains in the process. Batman tracks down the villains one-by-one, exhausting himself in the process, until he eventually faces Bane. His confrontation with the steroid-enhanced giant ends with Bane breaking Batman’s back. Another hero, Azrael, takes over as the new Batman while Bruce Wayne recovers. When Azrael/Batman becomes increasingly reckless and violent in his pursuit of criminals, a rejuvenated Batman eventually has to subdue him. In 1997, BBC Audiobooks edited the pro
grams together and released them as a three-hour and forty minute CD set, which shot to the top of the Spoken Word charts in the U.K.12

  “With 65 episodes of action featuring a lot of the big Batman criminals, it was necessary to use a lot of actors on Knightfall,” said Maggs. “It helped that this was Radio 1’s first daily drama and they were prepared to make the budget available! In fact there was still quite a bit of ’doubling‘, I could have wished for more but it worked very well. The feedback was very positive from both the industry and fans, thank goodness. DC Comics were very pleased with the result. Batman chief writer Denny O‘Neil sent me a signed copy of the Knightfall novel which I still treasure, and generally speaking the press were very supportive. The Daily Telegraph said it ’struck just the right balance between Gothic horror, gung-ho heroism and camp humor, and maintained it‘, which is a fair enough comment on what we were trying to achieve. Favorable comparisons were made to the Tim Burton movies, which I was pleased about. Fans on the whole seem to think it is an accurate portrait of the Batman existing in the comics of the early 90s.” Sessions died after the release of Knightfall. “I cannot imagine who I’d get to play Batman now,” said Maggs. “Funny thing about Bob, he had the matinee idol dark good looks, and he was actually a song and dance man! He’d come to the UK years before from the USA and played in all the big West End musicals. A lovely person, a true gentleman, I miss him to this day. We always wanted to try and do Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns together, but sadly it wasn’t to be.”13

  After the turn of the century, Batman surfaced in original audio productions created for free internet download. Pendant Productions, an internet-based audio theater group founded by Jeffrey Bridges, got its start when it created a Star Trek fan show in 2004. In January 2005, it began producing Superman: The Last Son of Krypton as a monthly 15-minute show. Given the popularity of the Superman broadcast, Pendant produced other shows based on DC Comics characters, Batman: The Ace of Detectives, Wonder Woman: Champion of Themyscira and Supergirl: Lost Daughter of Krypton. Batman: The Ace of Detectives began podcasting February 7, 2006, with Batman helping Superman stop a Bizarro clone who appears in Gotham. In the ongoing monthly series, Seth Adam Sher starred as Batman/Bruce Wayne and Scott Vinnacombe as Robin/Tim Drake. Dick Grayson, the previous Robin, now called Nightwing, was played by Mike Winters. As of this writing, the Pendant Productions series is still ongoing.