Billion Dollar Batman Page 4

  Kane also earned licensing income from the Batman TV series, and in 1967, his ship came in again. There was a change in ownership at DC Comics, and since Kane now legally owned the rights to Batman, he was able to negotiate the sale of the character. He ended up with an even larger slice of subsidiary income, not to mention a million dollar fee.

  At the same time the Batman TV series went into production, Kane created another animated kids show. Inspired by the success of the James Bond films, he developed Cool McCool, a bumbling secret agent character, in 1965. The cartoon debuted on NBC in September 1966 and ran until August 1969, though only twenty shows featuring three 10-minute adventures each were produced.

  Bill Finger, meanwhile, was barely scraping by. Although he branched out into writing some scripts for the TV series 77 Sunset Strip with co-writer Charles Sinclair in 1961, his primary income still came from writing comic book stories. “When they did the Batman TV series, Bill was offered the position of going out to the coast and doing creative consultation on the initial pilot and the first season,” recalled his son, Fred Finger. “And he didn’t pick up on it. Which was his loss—for whatever reason, he was beating himself up.”33 Finger did co-write one two-part episode of the Batman TV series (“The Clock King’s Crazy Crimes” and “The Clock King Gets Crowned,” written with Sinclair), but otherwise work dried up for him. He and Sinclair penned the script for the English-Japanese co-production The Green Slime (1968), a sci-fi thriller, but the movie was a box-office dud. The year of its release, Finger joined other longtime DC comic book freelancers Gardner Fox, Otto Binder, and Arnold Drake in asking for health insurance and other benefits. The company’s response was to stop giving them assignments.34 Afterwards, the comic book writer who helped shape Batman’s world and who’d dreamed of becoming a great novelist was unable to find work. Only near the end of his life did he receive any credit for Batman. DC editor Julius Schwartz named Finger as a writer of Batman stories in a Letters column in the 1960s, and beginning in the early 1970s, when DC began reprinting the early Batman stories, they carefully researched and credited the original writers. But fame and fortune passed Bill Finger by, while Bob Kane was celebrated, perhaps recalling the words of Whitney Ellsworth—”I‘m not cold, are you?”

  For Finger, the end came on January 18, 1974. “Unfortunately Bill died unheralded, uncredited and broke,” said Jerry Robinson, “with a wife and child he didn’t provide for, so that’s one thing I never forgave Bob for, for not acknowledging Bill and including him in the rewards that came. I went on to other things and had other careers and it wasn’t as vital to me. Bill stayed in the comics, and it really destroyed him, the lack of self-esteem when he was so mistreated. It was tragic.”35

  After Finger’s death, Kane became more conciliatory about giving his former collaborator credit for the early Batman stories, but Kane’s own autobiography is filled with contradictions. On page 41, he gives an account of how he and Finger created Batman, including Finger’s suggestion of giving the hero a cowl instead of a domino mask and making the colors of his uniform black and gray instead of black and red. Then, a few pages later, he writes, “Now that my long-time friend and collaborator is gone, I must admit that Bill never received the fame and recognition he deserved. He was an unsung hero. Because he came into the strip after I had created Batman, he did not get a by-line.”36

  Speaking about Bill Finger, Kane was once quoted as saying, “I often tell my wife, if I could go back 13 or 14 years before he died, I would like to say, ‘I’ll put your name on it now. You deserve it.‘ I feel a slight sense of guilt that I didn’t do it. I really loved the guy...My editor felt that only the creator’s name should be on it.”37 Blaming the editors for Finger’s lack of a creator’s credit seems like a cop-out, especially given Kane’s statement to cartoonist Shel Dorf in a mid-1970s interview, “I basically feel that Batman is my alter-ego. I abhor injustice in the world. I abhor the big bureaucracy stepping on the little man. I feel that I am Batman, underneath it all. A champion for justice and against injustice. I’ve fought for my own rights, and I try to fight for the rights of the little man. Definitely, I feel like Batman is me.” Later in the same interview, Kane said, “You have to live with yourself and the only way you can sleep at night is to feel that you have done the right thing, that you fought for your own best interests; if you let people step all over you in life, you can’t sleep very well because it’s really a terrible shame to be exploited ruthlessly and not fight back.”38

  By 1975, Bob Kane was living in Las Vegas, where he partnered with Russ Gerstein to build a television center where they planned to produce TV shows and movies. Kane pursued the notion of doing an animated cartoon series based on the Marx Brothers, and had a meeting with Groucho Marx to discuss the idea, but dropped it when Erin Fleming, Marx’s girlfriend and business agent, asked for $100,000 upfront. Kane eventually gave up on the TV center and returned to New York.

  After a dozen years of doing Batman paintings as a hobby, Kane began exhibiting them around the globe. “Finally I decided to take them out of mothballs and sell them to the world,” he said. “Batman has now graduated from comic strips to the world of fine art.” Kane’s Batman paintings and drawings were exhibited at St. John’s University, Pace University and New York’s Museum of Art. On October 31, 1978, he held a charity fundraiser exhibit in New York to benefit the American Cancer Society, motivated by the death of his father from cancer. Prices for his Batman art ranged from $150 for an unframed lithograph to $30,000 for an acrylic painting on canvas. “I wanted to do some spiritual good for the world,” said Kane. “It’s my way of repaying society for all the good things they have given to me.”39

  In 1979, reflecting on his career, Kane said, “Every author has one great book that can’t be topped. I had figured in my mature years I could do better, something more artistic. It’ll never happen.” Still, Kane had no regrets about Batman, adding, “I‘m happy. I‘m satisfied. I’ll just get by on his mighty wings.”40 He didn’t have to get by alone. In 1980, he met an acting teacher named Elizabeth Sanders, and the two were soon wed. Batman was now in the works as a major motion picture, and Kane acted as a consultant, basking in the limelight once again.

  “Bob was a guy who really enjoyed being Bob Kane,” said screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz. “I remember he had some assistant, this babe, who was a lot younger than he was, and he would do promos for himself, where he was in a smoking jacket with a pipe and talking, and he would send me these things. He loved being Bob Kane. In fact, he very much enjoyed being a celebrity, of sorts.”41 As the 1989 Batman feature film spawned three sequels, Kane wrote his autobiography and continued touring the world with exhibitions of his Batman artwork—much of it rumored to have been painted by ghost artists. He died in Los Angeles on November 3, 1998.

  When Kane died, Jenette Kahn, the president and editor-in-chief of DC Comics, said in a statement, “Bob Kane is a giant in the field of pop culture, one of a handful of people who launched the comic book industry and who gave the world a group of characters so colorful and inventive they continue to captivate every new generation. Bob will be greatly missed, but he has left a legacy that will keep his memory alive.”42 Kane himself, in 1995, said, “All the ghostwriters are forgotten. My imprint is left on the sands of time, and I‘m very proud of that.”43

  ____________________

  1 Skow, John, “Has TV Gasp! Gone Batty??” The Saturday Evening Post, May 2, 1966

  2 Markoutsas, Elaine, “For 40 years, Kane has gone to bat for justice,” The Chicago Tribune, November 8, 1979, p. A1

  3 Ibid.

  4 Kane, Bob with Tom Andrae, Batman & Me, © 1989 Eclipse Books, Forestville, California, p. 24

  5 Steranko, Jim, The Steranko History of Comics, © 1972 Crown Publishing Group

  6 Interview with Bob Kane, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, © 1990 National Public Radio

  7 Steranko, Jim, The Steranko History of Comics, © 1972 Crown Publishing Group

&nbs
p; 8 Benton, Mike, Superhero Comics of the Golden Age, © 1992 Taylor Publishing Co., Dallas, TX, p. 69

  9 Steranko, Jim, The Steranko History of Comics, © 1972 Crown Publishing Group

  10 Interview with Bob Kane, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, © 1990 National Public Radio

  11 Barr, Mike W., “Bill Finger: The Man Way Behind The Batman,” Amazing Heroes # 167, June 15, 1989, p. 8

  12 Ibid.

  13 Grant, Joe and Frank Squillace, “An Interview With Dick Sprang,” Amazing Heroes # 167, June 15, 1989, p. 50

  14 Zimmerman, Dwight Jon, “Fred Finger,” Comics Interview Super Special: Batman, © 1989, Fictioneer Books, Ltd., New York, p. 22

  15 Boucher, Geoff, “Hero Complex: Breaking Comic Book News and the Offshoots They Inspire—For Your Inner Fanboy.” The Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2009

  16 Interview with Jerry Robinson, The Comic Zone, © 2005 World Talk Radio

  17 Ibid.

  18 Kane, Bob with Tom Andrae, Batman & Me, © 1989 Eclipse Books, Forestville, California, p. 46

  19 Ibid.

  20 Ibid., p. 108

  21 Thomas, Roy (editor), “My Years With Batman: An Interview With Sheldon Moldoff” conducted by Bill Schelly, transcribed by Sam Gafford, Alter Ego: The Comic Book Artist Collection, © 2001, TwoMorrows Publishing

  22 Interview with Jerry Robinson, The Comic Zone, © 2005 World Talk Radio

  23 Reed, Robby, “The Haunting of Robert Kane,” Dial B for Blog, http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/391/, accessed July 18, 2009

  24 Jones, Gerard, Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book, © 2004, Basic Books New York, pgs. 246-247

  25 Kane, Bob with Tom Andrae, Batman & Me, © 1989 Eclipse Books, Forestville, California, p. 123

  26 Thomas, Roy (editor), “My Years With Batman: An Interview With Sheldon Moldoff” conducted by Bill Schelly, transcribed by Sam Gafford, Alter Ego: The Comic Book Artist Collection, © 2001, TwoMorrows Publishing

  27 Ibid.

  28 Ibid.

  29 Ibid.

  30 Kane, Bob, “An Open Letter to All ‘Batmanian’s Everywhere,” Batmania, 1965, reprinted at http://twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/articles/03kane.html, accessed July 18, 2009

  31 Thomas, Roy (editor), “My Years With Batman: An Interview With Sheldon Moldoff” conducted by Bill Schelly, transcribed by Sam Gafford, Alter Ego: The Comic Book Artist Collection, © 2001, TwoMorrows Publishing

  32 Ibid.

  33 Zimmerman, Dwight Jon, “Fred Finger,” Comics Interview Super Special: Batman, © 1989, Fictioneer Books, Ltd., New York, p. 22

  34 Morrissey, Rich, “Gardner Fox: An Appreciation,” Amazing Heroes # 167, June 15, 1989, p. 12

  35 Interview with Jerry Robinson, The Comic Zone, © 2005 World Talk Radio

  36 Kane, Bob with Tom Andrae, Batman & Me, © 1989 Eclipse Books, Forestville, California, p. 44

  37 Barr, Mike W., “Bill Finger: The Man Way Behind The Batman,” Amazing Heroes # 167, June 15, 1989, p. 8

  38 Dorf, Shel, “Bob Kane: The Man Whose Name Means ‘Batman,’” Amazing Heroes # 167, June 15, 1989, p. 28

  39 Slavin, Stewart, “Batman Moves From Comics to Museums,” The Los Angeles Times, August 6, 1978, p. D7

  40 Markoutsas, Elaine, “For 40 years, Kane has gone to bat for justice,” The Chicago Tribune, November 8, 1979, p. A1

  41 Interview with Tom Mankiewicz, conducted July 26, 2009

  42 Radford, Bill, “Batman creator was unafraid to share credit,” The New Mexican, November 22, 1998, p. E-5

  43 Seiler, Andy, “Batman: Forever Bob Kane’s,” USA Today, Jul 6, 1995, p. 8

  Chapter Two: BATMAN COMES ALIVE

  “Batman kind of killed my chances for playing Hamlet.”

  —Lewis Wilson1

  Lewis Wilson always enjoyed a good joke. He didn’t just enjoy jokes, he collected and catalogued them, remembering them by writing down their punchlines. A recent arrival in Hollywood, he had been toiling away in bit parts at Columbia Pictures, waiting for his big break. And now, it had arrived—a starring role. But it wasn’t in a sophisticated, adult feature film; it was in a kid’s serial, playing a costumed vigilante named Batman. Wilson was familiar with the character; he’d read some of the comic books featuring the crime fighter. But now, dressed in a Batman costume with a cowl that severely restricted his vision, he wondered if the joke might be on him.

  The home of Frank Capra and the Three Stooges, Columbia was a minor studio in the 1930s. Whereas other studios like Paramount and Universal produced between 40 and 60 features per year, about a dozen of which were budgeted at $500,000 or more, Columbia only produced about two dozen annually, with most of them budgeted under $150,000. The studio was situated at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street, where the first movie set in California was built in 1911. Within months, as more independent producers from the east migrated west to escape Thomas Edison and his Motion Picture Patents Corporation, Sunset and Gower became the nexus of Hollywood. During the teens and early twenties, so many fly-by-night studios sprang up along Gower that it became known as Poverty Row, or—because of the large number of Westerns made there—Gower Gulch.2 Among the companies to locate there was Columbia Pictures, which arrived in 1926.3 The company was formed six years earlier by the brothers Harry and Jack Cohn and their partner, Harry Brandt.4 It was originally called CBC Studios after their initials, but the partners changed the name because they worried it could be an acronym for “corned beef and cabbage.”5 Brandt retired in 1931, leading to a power struggle between the two brothers; Harry, with backing from Bank of America, won.6 Over the years, Columbia gobbled up more and more of the surrounding studios, until their facilities covered an entire city block.7

  As the 1940s dawned, German dictator Adolph Hitler’s push through Europe effectively cut off many of the foreign territories that American film distributors relied upon for a great share of their profits. One of the ways the studios responded to this challenge was by an increased reliance on pre-sold properties to increase their domestic revenues, looking to hit stage plays, bestselling books, and the new medium of comic books for inspiration.8

  Comic books were particularly popular after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor resulted in America’s entry into the war. With so many men in uniform causing a labor shortage, three million schoolchildren became wage earners, and were spending their money on comic books and movies. In his book Superhero Comics of the Golden Age, Mike Benton reports that during the early 1940s, 95 percent of all eight- to eleven-year-olds and 84 percent of all teenagers were regular comic book readers. But kids weren’t the only comic book readers; 35 percent of all 18- to 30-year-olds also read them.

  The majority of the adult readers were servicemen. Forty-four percent of all the men in training camps read comics regularly. At the PXs, more comic books were sold than issues of The Saturday Evening Post, Life and Reader’s Digest combined. By 1944, one out of every four magazines that the government sent to troops overseas was a comic book, including a special overseas edition of Superman that shipped 35,000 copies every month. Newsweek reported that 25 million comic books were rolling off the presses each month, and retail sales in 1943 equaled nearly $30 million.9

  Many of those comic-book reading kids went to the movies on Saturday, where the entertainment generally consisted of a cartoon, a newsreel, a serial chapter, and a feature. The serials had been around since 1912, when Thomas Edison—a restless genius and master of marketing who had been producing short films in his New Jersey studio for two decades—hit upon a new idea. Popular magazines of the day regularly published book-length stories one chapter at a time so that readers who became involved in the story would be hooked into buying the next month’s issue to see how it progressed. Edison thought he could replicate this with films. In July of 1912, he released the first chapter of What Happened to Mary? Subsequent chapters were released one per month over the course of the next year. While each chapter was more or less a self-contained stor
y, the overall question of who would win the battle over the heroine’s inheritance was unanswered until the resolution of Chapter 12. As Edison hoped, once audiences were hooked, they kept coming back regularly month after month to see how the story resolved itself, providing him with a steady, predictable income stream.

  Other motion picture producers took notice and began making serialized stories, or serials, of their own. Within a couple of years, the serials became a distinct entertainment form, characterized by stories of intense action and melodrama, with chapters that ended with “cliffhangers”—the hero or heroine in dire peril, metaphorically if not literally dangling from a cliff. As more serials were produced, the time between the exhibitions of successive chapters decreased, dropping from one month to one week. Now, an audience could find out the resolution of a 12-chapter serial over the course of three months instead of having to wait a whole year.

  The movie serial survived the coming of sound, but by the mid-1930s, most serials were aimed at juvenile audiences. Consequently, the plotlines of serials became extremely simple. The characters were clearly defined as being either “good” or “evil.” Once the goals of the characters were set in the first chapter, the next ten or more kept the protagonists and antagonists at a virtual stalemate. The good guy would generally win some minor victory over the evil mastermind in the middle of each chapter, but by the end, the villain had placed the hero’s life in danger. How would he or she escape? Viewers had to come back the next week to find out. With each chapter lasting about 15 minutes, there was no time for deep character development or romantic subplots. Serials were all about action.

  Moreover, serials based on newspaper comic strip and comic book characters were big business. When Flash Gordon (1936), a Universal Pictures serial starring Olympic champion Larry “Buster” Crabbe as Alex Raymond’s intergalactic hero, became so popular that it began playing in the major movie houses on Broadway, Columbia took notice. At that time, only Universal and Republic Pictures were producing movie serials; beginning in 1937, they would have competition from Columbia.