Burt Ward Talks Coming Of Age With ‘Batman’ Co-Star Adam West


Burt Ward is paying tribute to his friend of 52 years, the late Adam West. Ward penned a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter in which he described his first meeting with the Batman star at a screen test for the show in 1966. Ward was just 20 years old at the time, while West was 37. The younger star credits his more experienced peer for teaching him the ropes.

“He was very debonair and suave, kind of almost British,” Burt wrote of his longtime friend and co-star, who died last week at age 88. “But he had a unique delivery… He would say, ‘Okaaay, Robin’ in a way that could throw you off balance. But I realized he was playing a game. He understood that this was a 30-minute show, so if he talked slowly the camera would have to be on him for 29 minutes.”

Burt Ward went on to say that sometimes West would walk right up to the camera and completely block him out of the scene because he wanted to be the center of attention.

“After a couple of times, I learned to just sneak up under his cape and get in front of him,” Burt wrote.

Ward also revealed that West loved being a star and was even offered the movie role of James Bond but he turned it down because he felt “Bond should be played by a Brit.”

[Featured Image by 20th Century Fox/Courtesy of Getty Images]

In his essay, Ward also dished that his Batman fame earned him huge offer— in a little movie called The Graduate — but 20th Century Fox wouldn’t let him sign on to the film that would later make Dustin Hoffman a household name.

Burt Ward’s posthumous tales of his time with Adam West are respectful, but in the past, he has dished on the duo’s dirty deeds at the height of their Batman fame. In a 1995 interview with late night host Conan O’Brien, Ward revealed that West opened up a whole new world for him that definitely wasn’t G-rated.

“I was a young kid, 20-years old, I came into Batman and I met Adam West, who immediately introduced me to the wildest sexual debauchery that you can imagine,” Burt dished.

Ward went on to explain that the duo’s caped sexcapades went on in the 1960s during a period of “free love.”

“We weren’t out chasing women, they came to us,” Ward explained. Burt went on to say it was something about the Batman and Robin costumes that “piqued women’s’ interest.” Ward also pointed out that every one of the 120 Batman TV episodes included sexual innuendos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNbIWC7WBYk

In a previous interview with Montreal’s CJAD, Burr Ward dished on some of the secrets he spilled in his tell-all book, Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights. In the interview, Ward revealed that together, he and West had a “wild time.”

“Of course, remember, then was the 60s,” Burt said.

“You know, it’s a different world now… only in the last five years did I find what I call holy maturity, finding the balance, finding the right person in my life so that I could live a normal life.”

Ward revealed that at the height of the Batman craze, women would start coming into his and West’s dressing rooms first thing in the morning and later during their lunch break. Ward said the weekend personal appearances at fan expos to promote the Batman series is where things really got wild.

“And I have to be honest with you, we became like sexual vampires,” Burt said. “[But] it wasn’t as though we were out soliciting or anything. We were the ones being chased.”

Ward explained that sometimes women were “banging on our windows while we were bedded down with other women!”

As for the form-fitting costumes the Batman stars wore, Ward revealed that they became role play accessories for real life couples. Burt said that back in the day there were thousands of Batman and Robin costumes sold and “these weren’t just for kids.”

Burt also revealed that sexy co-star Yvonne Craig, who played Batgirl during the third and final season of the show, had all of the Batman crew members “drooling,” but brought out the jokester in West.

[Image by Len Trievnor/Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images]

“Adam came over to me and he said to me just before the shot in that very deep voice of his. He says, ‘Burt, let’s make a bat sandwich,'” Ward dished. The actor explained that the trio got into a position called the Siamese Human Knot in which Batman, Robin, and Batgirl had their bodies were intertwined very closely.

“And I’ll never forget, just before the shot, I felt this unexpected groping,” Burt recalled. “And I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe it, first Adam West and now Yvonne Craig is going to be this wild!’ But it turned out, she wasn’t the one doing it, it was that Adam West! I slapped his hand and that’s when I nicknamed him ‘The Groper.'”

[Featured Image by Mark Elias/AP Images]

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