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(William West Anderson 1928– ).
Provided voice for animated films: The New
Adventures of Batman (tv series) (1977-78); Tarzan and the Super 7
(tv series) (1978); Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show (tv
series) (1984); Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians (tv series)
(1985); "Beware the Gray Ghost" (1992), episode of Batman: The Animated
Series; "Mr. Plow" (1992), episode of The Simpsons; "Eyes on the
Prize" (1994), episode of The Critic; Redux Riding Hood (short)
(Steve Moore 1997); "Super Writers!" (1998), episode of Histeria!; The
Secret Files of the Spy Dogs (tv series) (1998); The Family Guy (tv
series) (1999).
First handicapped by a resonant voice that kept him
working in radio for years, then handicapped by a handsome face that exiled him
to forgettable guest appearances in television westerns, Adam West was long
unappreciated by a Hollywood unprepared for his uniquely disquieting
ordinariness. And certainly, there was nothing particularly impressive about
his few genre appearances prior to 1966—small parts in Voodoo Island
and Robinson Crusoe on Mars and a routine leading role in the very worst
episode of the original The Outer Limits. But everything changed when
producer William DOZIER decided, with preternatural perceptiveness, that this
unknown actor would be the ideal star of his new series, Batman.
Despite its great success and endless afterlife in
reruns, DOZIER's Batman remains fundamentally misunderstood as a
irreverent spoof of comic-book superheroes, with jokes strategically subdued to
avoid alienating younger viewers. But something subtler was going on in that
series. Anticipating the later comedy series Hi Honey, I'm Home!—which
surrealistically examined what would happen if a standard sitcom family from
the innocent 1950s were transplanted into the real world of the 1980s—Batman
surrealistically examined what would happen if a standard comic-book superhero,
with accompanying paraphernalia and colorful supervillains, were transplanted
into the real world of New York City in the 1960s. And the series' surprising
answer, despite scores of comic incongruities, was that things would work out
just fine: armed with his commonsensical morality and strength of character,
Batman was able to successfully navigate through such complexities as urban
politics, television news reporters, devious lawyers, hippies, and the
counterculture; and despite their vastly different value systems, the diverse
citizens of Gotham City were compelled to respect and embrace Batman. Far from
satirizing comic-book superheroes, Batman spectacularly validated them;
and what made it all work, of course, was West's unnerving and brilliantly
monochromatic stoicism in the face of innumerable affronts to his dignity.
Yet there were at that time few roles that demanded
this sort of nuanced performance, and West's first two decades after Batman
were generally dismal: a lame return to his Bat-costume for a laughable
television movie, voice work for numerous television cartoons (often, again, as
Batman), a silly vignette for Night Gallery, scattered roles in minor
films (including two of the Happy Hooker films), and two appearances at
that noted rest home for has-been actors, Fantasy Island. But his career
came alive again in the remarkable Doin' Time on Planet Earth, where he
was perfectly cast as the leader of peculiar cultists who, believing themselves
to be exiled aliens, are looking for a messiah to take them back home to outer
space. Even though surrounded by eccentric people and bizarre behavior, and
even though obliged to explain his cult's idiotic doctrines at great length,
West remained impeccably cool and collected, as if everything going on around
him was perfectly normal, substantially contributing to that overlooked film's
singularly weird atmosphere.
Since that time, along with some continuing work of a
routine nature, West has regularly been sought out to add his own special strangeness
to some of the strangest film projects of recent years, including farces like Danger
Theatre and The Best Movie Ever Made and off-the-wall science
fiction series like Weird Science and Black Scorpion. To make the
most bizarre television series ever aired, The Adventures of Pete and Pete,
just a little bit more bizarre, it made perfect sense to cast West as the title
characters' malevolent principal; and I don't know why anyone in the year 2000
would want to make a film starring a computer-animated George Burns, but I
understand perfectly why the film included West, placidly interacting with a
dead actor just as he has placidly interacted with so many other oddities. Just
as Peter LORRE made every film he was in a horror film, the mature West now makes
every film he is in a science fiction film—charming us all with his sincere
efforts, and ultimate failure, to play the part that he has practiced so well.
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