FAREWELL , CAPED CRUSADER
TV’S BATMAN DEFEATED HIS OWN DEMONS TO CHANGE LIVES AND LEAVE A HEROIC LEGACY
“After a lot of thought, I’d do it again in a minute. I’ve got the love of countless fans.”
— Adam, on playing Batman
Adam West played a dynamic superhero on TV, yet his greatest power may have been motivating generations of admirers to perform real-life acts of bravery. “Firefighters and police officers would come up and tearfully tell him he had inspired them when they were young and now they were watching Batman with their children,” daughter Nina Tooley shares with Closer. “Those were the stories that really impacted him.”
His 1966–’68 run as the Caped Crusader proved so indelible in the public mind that Adam — who died of leukemia on June 9 at 88 — found it tough to land more serious roles afterward. But he never regretted taking the part. “From day one, he looked at the Batman experience as if he had a glass that was full, and he could not put anything else in it,” Burt Ward, who played Robin, tells Closer. “He saw that people still love and find joy in watching this show.”
Adam’s life wasn’t always filled with happiness. “My mother was illmatched with my father,” he said of his folks, an alcoholic opera diva and a farmer who raised him in Walla Walla, Wash. “When I was 10, I walked home from school to find her in bed with a handsome local minister.” His parents soon split up.
As a young man, Adam joined the Army and helped start one of the military’s first TV stations, then was discovered by Batman’s producers as superhero Captain Q in a Nestlé commercial. The cowl was a perfect fit. “Adam is dashing, an American Errol Flynn,” raved Vincent Price, who played supervillain Egghead. “He can be funny, serious and romantic. And he does it all in tights.”
A REAL FAMILY GUY
During times of unemployment following Batman’s 1968 cancellation, Adam fought off depression by focusing on his family. After two failed marriages, he wed Marcelle Lear in 1970. “My mom always kept him very grounded,” says Nina, 41, the second-youngest of his six kids. “She’s French, and when she met him, she didn’t know Batman and thought it was strange that a grown man was wearing a cape. She was his rock, and she never let fame go to his head.”
Adam enjoyed a career renaissance starting in the ’90s, when the kids who grew up loving Batman started making their own TV shows and casting him. He landed the lead in an NBC sitcom pilot, Lookwell, cowritten by Conan O’Brien, but the series wasn’t picked up. Then Seth MacFarlane elected him to voice the mayor on Family Guy, introducing the actor’s stentorian tones to millions of new fans. “I have lost a friend,” the cartoon’s creator said after Adam’s death. “He knew comedy, and he knew humanity.”
Whether doting on his descendants at the Ketchum, Idaho, home he shared with Marcelle until his death or posing for photos with fans at conventions, Adam spread joy wherever he went. “He had a wonderful effect on people, including me,” co-star Julie Newmar (aka Catwoman) gushes to Closer. “It was like having champagne every day.”
And memories of Adam will intoxicate us for years to come. “Sometimes he had doubts about whether his work made any impact on people,” Nina says. “I just wish he could be around this outpouring of love and support. I think he’d be really happy.” — Bruce Fretts, with reporting by
Ilyssa Panitz and Jaclyn Roth