Holy Raisin Bran, Batman, have we got some scoops for you!
Earlier this year, we had a long and lovely phone conversation with Burt Ward. You know him best as the Boy Wonder, Robin, a.k.a. Dick Grayson. For three seasons, from 1966–68, the California native portrayed the iconic DC sidekick on Batman.
Half a century later, Ward has returned to the role, voicing Robin in the 2016 animated reunion film Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders. A sequel is on the way. As a side note: Our chat occurred before the passing of Adam West. Ward told People magazine, “Adam and I had a special friendship for more than 50 years. We shared some of the most fun times of our lives together; our families have deep love and respect for each other. This is a terribly unexpected loss of my lifelong friend, I will forever miss him.”
Ward is filled with fascinating stories. Thus, we figured we’d let him tell his side of his story. To celebrate his birthday, here are some things you might not know about Burt Ward, as told to us by the man himself.
1. HE WAS JUST AS SURPRISED AND DAZZLED BY ‘BATMAN’ AS WE WERE WHEN IT FIRST PREMIERED.
“On the day Batman premiered, I worked all day at the studio. It was a weekday, Wednesday, January 12, 1966. Because the show was coming on, they let us off work to go home to be able to see the show. You gotta understand, when you’re working as an actor, you’re making little tiny pieces of things. You have no idea what it’s going to look like when it’s assembled. So, when I went home, I didn’t know what to expect. We would have a dialogue like, ‘Ok, Robin, let’s go!’… ‘Right, Batman!’ It would take 45 minutes to light that and shoot those two sentences. You don’t really know! When Batman came on, first of all, I had never heard the music. I had never seen the opening. And I was blown away. This is really good! Neal Hefti’s music! That theme! I saw my name and my caricature and I was blown away. And then the color. You have to understand, not everybody had a color TV. Color was pretty new. And here our color was bright and bold. And then of course, you had the dialogue and the costumes and the Batmobile and villains that were shot at an angle. I thought, ‘There must be something wrong with our camera crew. They can’t even keep the damn camera straight!’ I found out later, they did it on purpose. I asked, ‘Why would you turn the camera on an angle?’ They said, ‘Because the villains are crooked!’
2. HE BEAT OUT 1,100 ACTORS TO WIN THE ROLE OF ROBIN.
“There were 1,100 young actors that tried out for this role. That’s pretty big competition. When they selected me. They first asked me, ‘Would you like to know why we selected you out of 1,100 people?’ Yeah, I’d love to know. They said, ‘The reason we selected you, Burt, was in our minds, forgetting television for a minute, if there was really, in real life, a Robin, in our mind, you personally would be it. We don’t want you to go out and act. What you are is exactly what we want. The only things we want you to do is be yourself and be enthusiastic.’ Well, there’s no shortage of enthusiasm with me! Everything you saw that I did, whether it be hitting my fist into my palm, jumping over the car door into the Batmobile… all of these things were mine and nobody told me to do them. They were all concerned with the lighting. They basically left me alone. The direction was basically just, ‘Be here when you say that.'”
source ==> http://www.doyouremember.com/38206/12-things-didnt-know-burt-ward-told-burt-ward
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