Holy career suicide! As the dynamic duo, they set a high water mark for 1960s kitsch. Today, Batman's leaden shadow hangs dolorously over Adam West and Burt Ward, a 30-year curse that refuses to abate.
Sadly but inevitably, West has spent his later years eking out a living opening supermarkets and advertising used-car franchises.
Meanwhile, Ward earns pennies as a z-list skin-flick regular, ghoulishly adorning porn froth such as Virgin High and Assault of the Party Nerds II: Heavy Petting. Could the Joker himself have engineered so ignominious a fall from grace?
Born William West Anderson in Walla Walla, Washington, in 1928, West fell in love with comics as a child. His favourite was a masked vigilante who dispatched wrongdoers with psychotic fervor, created by Detective Comics doyen Bob Kane. Their paths would cross again.
Show business came knocking early for Billy Anderson. At college he found fame as a DJ. Drafted into the army, he established a string of military television stations across the US. He moved to Hawaii in the mid-1950s, fronting a popular children's programme, The Kini Popo Show. His co-host was a chimp named Peaches.
Relocating to Hollywood in 1959, he adopted the stage name, Adam West, and starred in a spate of forgotten Westerns. In 1966, he landed the lead in a new show about a spandex-clad crime fighter. Batman? The name struck a chord. Could this be the same fascistic anti-hero of his childhood, reborn as a Saturday morning pop icon? Playing the caped crusader's adolescent sidekick, Robin, was 19-year-old Burt Ward. An acting student at UCLA, Ward worked part-time in real estate and scored the Batman gig when he sold a house to a tinsel-town producer. He had never read a comic in his life - at his first audition he thought he was trying out for a porn movie. In retrospect, the irony proved devastating.
The dynamic duo gelled instantly and cult acclaim followed. Batman dominated the ratings, critics swooned and West garnered a "most promising new star" award in 1967.
But the show terminally typecast West and Ward. When the studio pulled the plug, West spent two years doing personal appearances as Batman. He has since enjoyed a patchy career in straight-to-video features and made a memorable cameo in an early Simpsons episode. Ward wasn't so lucky. His wildly camp Boy Wonder routine was, both figuratively and literally, a homo-erotic's wet dream (Robin's bulging codpiece had provoked the wrath of church groups). Jobless and penniless, he succumbed to the tawdry lure of the adult-entertainment industry.
Both actors have published engaging autobiographies. Ward's lurid Boy Wonder - My Life in Tights lifts the lid on backstage debauchery on the Batman set. West's Back to the Batcave fondly recalls his friendship with Bob Kane. Shortly before his death, Kane presented West with a Batman portrait. It was inscribed: "To my buddy, Adam, who breathed life into my pen and ink creation."
More on actors Adam West and Burt Ward at http://comicbooks.about.com/hobbies/ comicbooks/