Holy Precursor! William Dozier and the First Organized Wave of Comic-Based TV Shows
The debate rages as to which production unit is doing the best job of bringing groups of comic-book properties to TV: on one hand, DC’s takeover of the CW with three shows on this season (with a spin-off from The Flash/Arrow announced for the fall) has its fans, while Marvel’s four series on Netflix (with Daredevil off to a flying start) has a lot of momentum out there. There’s a lot to say about both of them — lots of adjectives to describe the horse you’re betting on in this race.
The one adjective, however, that should be off the table is “pioneering,” as both outfits have a precursor some 50 years old that already dealt with many of the hurdles facing production outfits with multiple comic shows being looked at simultaneously. With any luck, the producers DC and Marvel have entrusted may avoid some of the same pitfalls and problems of Greenway Productions and its chief executive William Dozier, the man who gave us Bat-mania and Bruce Lee.
Holy origin story!
To best understand how Greenway Productions gave us the comics TV shows that, for good and ill, influenced us through today, we need to know the man behind it. William Dozier, born 1908 and a graduate of Jesuit-run Creighton University, had originally been on-track to become a lawyer before he met a Hollywood literary agent in 1935. Unlike other people getting the urge to go west, he ended up in that back office at Paramount, where during his time, he helped bring to the screen through back office work such films as Mae West’s Go West Young Man and the Cecil B. DeMille western The Plainsman. He worked his way up to head writer at the story section there by 1941, which helped him get positions at RKO and Universal-International. His time at Universal is of particular interest, where he came close to being head of the studio during a leadership fight; however, his production of Letter from an Unknown Woman in 1948, produced with and featuring his second wife Joan Fontaine, was a box office failure, and as receipts dried up so did his second marriage. When the studio went to rival William Goetz, Dozier went into television, producing for CBS such programs as Suspense and You Are There. (As an aside, a portrait of Dozier in the New York Times from 1953, discussing his work in television up to that point, came in at 580 words, over four times the length of the obituary the Times gave him at his death in 1991.)
This is all worth keeping in mind to better understand the producer in comparison to those who bring such stories to us today. Dozier was no fan who grew up on the material; he came from the business side of production during the studio system days and was there for the early days of television, as executives in New York during the early ’50s tried to go beyond the concept of “radio with pictures” when television was more a seat-of-the-pants operation (much like recent efforts at YouTube channel-branding). He approached his projects in terms of what the media could do with the content, so as a result, years of material back story was put aside if it got in the way of getting on the air. Which is why some of what he did involved choices based on personal connections he made with some of the most talented people introduced to television then.
One choice that isn’t easily explained, however, is a hallmark of his productions: him doing their narrations. Yes, it’s Dozier (under the pseudonym “Desmond Doomsday”) who gives the running narration on every episode of Batman, as well as the intro narration on episodes of The Green Hornet and on the other properties he offered. Whenever you hear “Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!” that’s the boss talking.
Holy business connections!
How Batman came to ABC is a story made up of interesting circumstances and connections. In 1965, audiences were being re-introduced to the serials made by Columbia Pictures back in 1943 under the program name “An Evening with Batman and Robin” where all 15 parts were run at different art houses in one four-hour stretch.
One of these screenings was held at the Chicago Playboy mansion, attended by ABC executive Yale Udoff. He was aware that the network had been running market research on the West Coast overseen by fellow network exec Harve Bennett, to see what comic-book heroes audiences wanted to see on TV. Bennett’s research indicated that there were a number of subjects who polled higher than Batman, including the Green Hornet and Dick Tracy; however, Batman was the highest on the list whose rights holder, National Publications (DC’s predecessor), was willing to talk to ABC.
When ABC starting farming out the project, it landed at Greenway Productions, which was formed by Dozier a few years earlier when he decided to get into the production side again, right after Dozier made his last buy for CBS, the anthology series The Twilight Zone. When ABC came calling, Dozier and Serling’s latest collaboration, The Loner, was about to ride off into the sunset after CBS cancelled the series after one season; one could only have imagined what might have happened had Serling not taken the cancellation so badly and decided to work on Batman with his friend.
In any event, Dozier was handed the project and commenced research by buying a few comics featuring the Caped Crusader — supposedly the first time he’d ever read any. Considering the state of Silver Age comics, this was probably a bit of a shock for a man in his 50s as far as introducing him to the genre. Needing a writer who could take on this property to develop the series, Dozier flew to Spain to call upon former collaborator Lorenzo Semple, Jr. The two worked before on a pitch to ABC for a series called Number One Son, which would have followed Charlie Chan’s son on his own adventures, but were turned away because of out and out racism the network didn’t want to air a show with an “ethnic hero.” (This fact becomes important later on, after Batman becomes a success.)
According to a piece Semple wrote for Variety in 2008, the direction and elements of Batman that were woven through the series, the high camp and pop-art sensibility, were there from the very beginning as he and Dozier looked over those comic books Dozier had picked up. They went with a concept that believed the kids would love the action, while the adults would be drawn to the goofiness of it all.
Which proved to be a winning formula that no one anticipated.
Holy Bat-surprise!
The series Batman showed more superpowers than the character ever displayed. The show was panned by ABC’s test audiences, supposedly getting one of the network’s lowest scores. The show’s arrival on ABC was due more to large holes opening in the mid-season schedule, including one created when Shindig! lost its Thursday night slot and ABC feared that an unaired show would be a bigger monetary loss than a half-season time-filler would be. When a desperate network aired the first episode on January 12, 1966, hopes were not high for it.
Dozier and Semple’s hunches, however, proved to be correct, and “Bat-mania” swept the country. The series was certainly a product of its time, in that a culture that was enmeshed in a “pop” sensibility found embraceable this version of the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder that were on two night a week on ABC.
What that says about American audiences back then has been debated (often angrily) for decades; it was such a tight connection between the show and the times that for years there were efforts to deny the fascination and Nielsens the show garnished. When the show left the air, National Comic’s Julius Schwartz brought Denny O’Neil and Neil Adams on the book to get Batman back to his pre-TV vibe. The TV series, during its run, brought back Alfred (who died in the comics before the show premiered) and Barbara Gordon, and these elements stayed in the comic canon well beyond the show’s last episode. The influence of the show could never be fully expunged.
Ironically, DC Comics, which had a rabid fan base that had problems with the ABC series back in the 1960s, recently started publishing the series Batman ’66, which continued the run of the TV show in print, and as of this writing, is one of DC’s more popular titles.
From obsession to artifact, whatever your feelings for the series, it has earned a place as a cultural touchstone of the Sixties and an un-ignorable piece of our common canon.
But, as the first season ended its run on ABC, for Dozier, it was an opportunity to address a prior slight.
Holy forward progress!
With Batman’s success, ABC was able to revisit Bennett’s prior market research and secure the rights to do a series based on one of the characters that scored higher than the Caped Crusader, the Green Hornet.
Premiering on September 16, 1966, The Green Hornet was a departure for Dozier and ABC; their hero was played straight, both the villains and the (anti-)hero avoiding any camp as they went through their adventures. It’s a program that lasted only one season on ABC, but aged a lot better than its companion series (with which there was one cross-over episode on Batman); indeed, the decision to play the Hornet straight was proven to be a good idea, which Seth Rogen discovered to his dismay in 2011.
The greatest legacy from the series, however, was Bruce Lee. Lee met Dozier after a martial arts competition in 1964 and was considered for the lead for Number One Son. When the series was brought to Greenway, Lee was Dozier’s first choice for Kato, the Hornet’s sidekick, and became one of the first Asian-descended actors Americans took seriously as a protagonist.
In addition to forcing ABC to eat their words and making audiences accept heroes other than white men, Lee brought martial arts to audiences that had never been exposed to it before. His work with Dozier allowed him to open doors for himself worldwide, as well; when Lee visited Hong Kong after The Green Hornet was cancelled and discovered the series was popular under the title The Kato Show, Lee was able to get meetings with Hong Kong producers that ultimately led to the film The Big Boss, aka Fists of Fury, and from there achieve cinematic immortality.
Holy decline and fall!
Batman was like a lot of other pop art: it was designed for mass consumption and was ultimately disposable. Ratings declined for the second season over the first, and come the fall of 1967, The Green Hornet was not renewed and Batman went from two nights a week to one.
Desperate to keep the series on the air and draw in more female viewers for season three, Dozier worked with National Comics to look for female characters that could be brought to the screen. As the only woman not yet used from the comics was Poison Ivy (a villainess that was considered for introduction had there been a fourth season), Dozier convinced the comics publisher to include a new version of Batgirl, who in the television version was Commissioner Gordon’s daughter Barbara.
The dynamic did indeed freshen up the formula somewhat, and gave TV another heroine at a time when Emma Peel, Honey West, and April Dancer were women looking to take on roles outside of stereotypical female television prototypes. Unfortunately, the audiences Dozier and ABC were looking for never showed up (supposedly, more men started watching for Yvonne Craig’s moves in her purple skin-tights).
Before the end came, however, Dozier tried to get two more shows up and running, which came awfully close to getting on air.
Holy yellow hat trick!
When Batman’s ratings were hot, and before The Green Hornet premiered, Dozier’s Greenway Productions was approached by NBC to do one of the other properties Bennett’s research group found audiences wanted; they secured the rights to do a new Dick Tracy show and asked him to turn in a pilot.
The show’s completed pilot suggests that, had this gone to series, we would have had a detective played straight, while the villains would themselves be very camp, much like many of the masterminds Chester Gould drew in the strip to go up against straight-up cop Tracy.
As noted above, by this time audiences’ tastes were changing; one could argue that Dozier’s formula of Keystone Kops-esque law-and-order were out of touch with an audience seeing increasing reports of civil unrest on the nightly news. For reasons that are not entirely clear, NBC deferred on scheduling the series, and by the time they passed on the show, ABC had swatted Green Hornet, and Batman was flapping its last wings.
Holy dodged bullet!
Before the end came, Dozier tried to place one more comic hero show on television: Wonder Woman.
His proposed treatment, Who’s Afraid of Diana Prince? (which is above in its entirety) went for full-on, flat-out camp humor, playing on some of the worst sexist stereotypes filling television throughout that decade. Audiences then might not have laughed had it aired; audiences today would probably burn the network down when it came on. Considering in only five years Gloria Steinem would publish Ms. magazine’s first issue with her hero Wonder Woman on the cover, the fires might have come a lot earlier. (About the only good from this was casting Linda Harrison as the “idealized” heroine, whose first gig was as an extra on Batman and from this was able to get the part of Nova in the first two Planet of the Apes films.)
Holy slow fade into the background!
Dozier would only work on one more production, the film The Big Bounce for which his son Robert Dozier wrote the screenplay (one of a large list of scripts he wrote throughout the ’60s and ’70s). The film was panned, and Dozier would go into semi-retirement; he was still working in Hollywood, but only as an actor on such TV shows as Marcus Welby MD and Police Story, and in films like American Gigolo.
Dozier’s approach to comic book adaptations, however, was a presence that sat between comics and other media for decades. His production of Batman made it impossible for people to associate the character with any portrayal outside of comics other than his version until 1989, when Tim Burton’s Batman helped new audiences see beyond the limiting images Dozier gave us. But with audiences starting to have reservations about the darker Dark Knight we got from Christopher Nolan and will soon get from Zack Snyder, there might be more interest in injecting more fun there.
As Greg Berlanti and Drew Goddard are doing fine so far, they may not have need to remember or study Dozier’s experiences. If things start to go south in good Bat-time, however, there may be value in Bat-channeling the past for lessons.
