#335 Inside the Batman ’66 TV Show with Author Joel Eisner

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Jeff Dwoskin 0:28

alright, Julie, thank you so much for that amazing introduction. You get the show going each and every week, and this week was no exception. Welcome everybody to episode 335 of classic conversations. As always, I am your host. Jeff Dwoskin, great to have you back for what sure to be the holiest of episodes. And by that I mean, holy Batman, we've got a show for you today. That's right. Joel Eisner is here author of the official Batman bat book, originally published in 1986 this book set the standard for what became books about TV shows. I had this book when it came out. I was in love a still am with the Batman 66 television show, and this was the Batman 66 Bible, and then we're diving deep, deep, deep, deep. So get ready to head into the Batcave with Joel and myself. And that's coming up in just a few seconds. And in these few seconds, last week, Mike Sachs was here, humor writer, such a great inspirational conversation on writing and self publishing and the cool, super cool novelizations that Mike sax has done. Do not miss that episode. It is a must for all creators and writers. But right now, I don't know I should have been a singer anyway, we're diving deep into Batman Joel sharing us some amazing stories of what it took to actually put this book together, and the history he uncovered while doing so you're gonna love it, and that's coming up right now. Everybody. I'm excited to introduce my next guest TV historian and author of one of my favorite books, the official Batman bat book. He's written a bunch of other cool pop culture books we'll touch on but welcome to the show. Joel Eisner, hey, Joel, hello. Good to be here. Great to have you here. All right, so as I was mentioning a second ago, I have the original 1986 Batman bat book. I've had it since. Since then, it's one of the greatest books ever written. Ever so good job.

Joel Eisner 2:47

I did the book a way that at that time, no other TV book had been done. I noticed that a lot of the people who were writing the books were I don't know they were setting themselves up as experts, or they just thought they knew a lot about everything, but they tended to give a lot of their own opinions concerning the subject matter they were writing. And unless the person actually happened to work on the program or had some real direct connection to it, their opinion was good as anybody else's. So I said I was going to set out to do it differently. I went out to go search out all the people I could get to had worked on the program to get their opinions of it. So if you don't like what they're saying, You can't blame me for that, because that's their opinion. They were there. So that's why the book lasted a lot longer than a lot of the film TV books, because there was nothing there to disagree with. I mean, I don't want to start naming names of authors, but I can tell you specifically, I was rather disillusioned with the Twilight Zone book, the guy who wrote it went on to he had written other things. He'd written the Star Trek cartoons and a few other stuff, but the closest he ever came to working on Twilight Zone was he went to school with Bill Mumy, who he did through episodes of the show. But he tended to give in the episodes that he liked. Six pages, seven pages of details, interview, mature, whatever he could do on the ones he didn't like. He basically wrote them off in a paragraph or two. And I got very disillusioned with that. And I've seen other books where they just give too much technical details. The Outer Limits. Book was nice, but it was too much technical stuff on budgets and everything else. So I figured we're writing this for the fans of the show someone. I actually did it for myself in a way. So I wanted to put in the stuff that I felt would be more entertaining, more informative, but not to cause anybody to be Oh, he hates this episode, so he's not going to cover it or or a very bad opinion about something. I mean, there are episodes of the show I didn't care for as much as others, certain villains I preferred more than others. I hadn't given a sort of an equal balance to everything, because it was something that everyone has a different opinion on. And I think that's why my book, there are a few others very similar, copied me, okay, afterwards, I have to say, but that it has survived as long as it has. It wasn't just a one sided diatribe on whatever the author themselves like, I

Jeff Dwoskin 4:56

guess it's, uh, it's an honor of sorts, right? It's an honor to. To have people copy you going forward, because that means you set a new standard, a new bar.

Joel Eisner 5:05

I mean, I knew a few of the people who'd written the other film, TV, books. I was friendly with the woman who wrote the book on the honeymooners, and she did get smart, and she did couple other things that doesn't come to mind, and it's funny because her editor on the book became the book editor at DC Comics, who helped to prove by getting my copy through DCS paperwork, so to speak, to get the book done. So it worked out that way. And I do a couple of people who've written other books. I had a friend the name Alan ashram, and did all the Star Trek books. So I know what people, you know what the general genre, but a lot of these other people have come and gone and they've written one book.

Jeff Dwoskin 5:38

Why do you think your book endured? It latched

Joel Eisner 5:41

on to a right mark at the right time, and there was nothing there for people to disagree with. That was my main goal for the whole thing, is to put out something that people are not going to say, hey, who cares if he doesn't like this episode? I like this episode of You know, but if the actor who started that part of the show says, Hey, I didn't like doing it, then that's their opinion. They were there. So that's what I did. It was a bit selfish on my part. Anyways, I wanted to get to meet as many people for the show as possible. So I got to hang out with a lot of them. I'm still friends with a few that are still with us, like Julie Newmark. Everyone else I basically met the show for most part, have passed away. It was a pleasure knowing that, I mean, someone in Musha had lasted longer friendship with they passed up. Actually, I had a few bride within the first year the book came out. I got to them in time.

Jeff Dwoskin 6:24

I was lucky. What about Adam and Bert?

Joel Eisner 6:27

I mean, I wish I could have gotten Adam and Bert for the book, but there was a long, evolved process with them demanding money. I don't know if everyone knows my story. It's not in the book. I mean, I didn't really put this in there. I mean, but at the time I was doing the book, which was I started in September of 85 right after Neil Hamilton, Commissioner Gordon passed away, I said, I'm going to get this book done before we lose the rest of the cast, because a lot of the other people were already up there in the 60s and 70s and even older. So I told I tracked everything down and the permissions I needed, everything else it got out there to various agents, Adam and Burt for there was about 13 people claiming they were doing the official book on the show. They were contacting Adam and other people. And I, Bill Dozier, the producer of the show, who was also the series narrator, told me he said there was about 13 people canceled. I got the number, came to him and said, they want to do book on the show. And he said, When I finally got to see him in person, he said that I was the only one he agreed to to meet with to do little do the book because I went through the proper channels and how to run this thing completely, because everyone else was just doing the speculation stuff I had known. He was a network executive. He was a producer of studios. He ran the film this. You ran what the script. Department of Columbia did all kind of stuff. He was a real network suit, you might say. So I knew I had to do things properly. So I had all the written documents. And it was a long, involved story to find out that nobody owned it was a very, very strange situation. Since then, the like, the legal stuff has been straightened out. But back in 85 I said, Okay, I'm going to do this. So I first I wrote to I had got a holy Bill doses address. I wrote to him, and he said he no longer had any rights to the program as far as licensing. So then I contacted 20th Century Fox, and I heard back from the legal department, and they said they don't have it rights to it anymore as far as licensed in the book is concerned. Said, Okay, now I've gone past the two small things that he would now my next step is to go to DC commerce, because that's the next step, and hopefully now that's owned by Warner Brothers, and that's a problem. Fortunately, that time, they were in New York, I'm in New York, so they, I wrote them a letter, and directly, I wrote them a letter, and I heard back from this woman, who was, turns out, was the editor for the honeymooners companion book at the other publishing company. And she said that she thought they thought it was a wonderful idea to do the do the book on the TV show that they thought there was a small market for it. Well, small market to accommodate companies 100,000 copies. So which is exactly what we did. Wind up doing originally. They said, Well, you know, I came down in person, I sat down, I talked with them. They said, Well, here's the problem. We don't know if we own the rights of the Batman TV show or anything to do with the TV show. At that time, DC was not owned by Warner Brothers. It was still called National periodical publications. They weren't sold out to Warner Brothers to about four or five years after Batman show went off the air. So they said, We're going to have to go through our records. We've done we're talking this is 1985 oh, round, I see this, but at the end of 85 but November, December, we're going to have to go through our records, which is all in storage boxes in some storage warehouse, and they'll have to get back to me on it. I said, okay, but they're going to look I said, you know, let me ask you a question. Now, this is when they were promoting the Michael Keaton Batman movie, four years earlier than before they made it. They were just floating a script around by Sam ham and and I had no idea what was going on. And I said, you know, you're planning on doing this big movie, and this before anybody was cast. And I said, you don't even know if you own the rights to do Batman as a movie, because they had the Batman movie too back in the 60s. And and I said, you know, they could turn around. And, you know, come back and say, you know, they thought the paper would say, hey, we on the right list, and give us the money for the movie. And then they get dozer or somebody else who, along the line, could take them, and they said, Yeah, that's true. They had no idea. And I think that's the reason why they agreed to research this for me, because there was no computers, was all papers, and they had to go through all these old documents going back 20 years or more and to find out who owns it. Because they were doing this backwards, they had no clue. So they took them. It didn't take them that long, which was fine, which was fine for me. It took them a couple of weeks or so. They got back to me and they said, turns out our contracts were with the ABC TV network. We don't own the rights to the TV show, so if you can get permission from ABC to do the book, we will give you permission to use the Batman character for nothing. Otherwise, they wanted 50% of the royalties in return for doing the book. But since they had no vested stake in the TV show, they couldn't get me for anything. So they said, Fine, just get us something from ABC and you can do as long as you tell you know, we gave you permission to do it in the book. And that, you know, it's copyrighted by DC Comics. I said, Fine. I said, Now, what am I going to do now? I got to deal with entire network, which is a lot more difficult than dealing with everyone else so far. But I said, What am I going to lose? I called the ABC. I went through six different offices, between the legal department, the book licensing department, the all kind of I remember the apartments I went through halfway through it. They said, When should call 20th Century Fox? I said, I did. They did. They don't have the rights to it, because I'll give you somebody else. Finally, they gave me a phone number. They said, You got to call this one in California. And they said, well, let's you know, it's a Friday afternoon. I remember it was three o'clock in the afternoon, but the three hour time dip has been New York and California. I said, What have I got to lose? It was called, I don't even know if it's still in business anymore. It's called the ABC video enterprises. They were in charge of all the licensing for all their video stuff. Said, Okay, I called him up. I spoke to this very lovely woman on the phone who was the secretary to the paid attorney. And she said, you finally reached the right office, and we will relate all this stuff to his name was Tom. Emma was his name. We're related to him, and we'll get back to you. And I get phone call. What was it? Was a few days later, they say, We don't own it. I said, Now, what am I going to do? They don't own it? And they said, so I went back to DC Comics. I spoke to her, the woman, whose name was Judy fireman, and I said to Judy, I said, Well, ABC says they don't own it. They said, well, we want it in writing. Said, Okay. I went back. I called back the office. I spoke to the girl again. I explained the situation. They wanted writing. They said, Well, I'll put you on the phone with this guy, Tom, and he talked to me, and he said, here's the problem. ABC had a big fire back in the early 1970s and all of their records were burned. And that's the time they had the big fire that destroyed a lot of their thumbprints too, supposing some of the original negatives of the fugitive went with it also, although I think they found some other ones with the DVD came out, but they just, they lost everything, and they said, We don't know whether we own it or not, so we can't really put something in writing directly, saying you have permission, but we'll give you a general letter permission, saying, if we own it, if it turns out we own it, you got our permission. If we don't own it, there's nothing we can do about you know. Okay, fine, in return, just give us two copies of the book, one for him and one for his secretary. I said, Fine, so I'm waiting. I'm waiting for this letter. I haven't gotten the letters. I called him back and he said, Well, it has to be written in such a special way that we don't get into legal trouble. And now, along this time period, I actually lined up a publisher I had done prior to that, a reference book on television situation comedy shows from McFarland publishing, which was a reference publisher. It was my first epic. I was 22 when I wrote it. It was 880 pages long. It came out with 11,000 episode synopsis for situation comedy shows. I weighed three and a half pounds. It was that hardcover book, and I had this book, and I said, I want to do something that's a little bit more commercial, something that wouldn't go to a reference book publisher. I made the money off it, but not that much. So I started shopping around to different publishers. I said, let me do a book. At that time, very popular stuff on spy shows. So I said, let me do a compilation book on spy shows. I'll cover different programs. This particular publisher, which was contemporary books, the editor wrote back to me. She said, Well, we're not interested in compilation book. We would like to do individual books and individual shows. So give me a call. So I called her up and I spoke to what we were doing, and she sent you this thing. And I said, that thing? I said, Well, yeah, you know. I said, By the way, I'm tracking on the rights for Batman. We go Batman. We want it. They said they tried to do a Batman book years before, whatever kind I don't know, but they couldn't get rights to it. So they said, We're going to take the book. I had a publisher before I even had rights to even do the book, yet, I never shopped it around. I mean, I maybe I would have gotten a better deal, I don't know, but

Jeff Dwoskin 14:25

that's amazing.

Joel Eisner 14:26

Yeah. I mean, it was, there was a decent sized publisher. I found out later on from other from people in publishing, it was a medium sized company. It's now owned by McGraw Hill, but back then it was based on Chicago, and they were decent sized company, and the only book they had done at that time was some book on the Three Stooges, which wasn't all that great, some other pop culture book they did on something, nothing really spectacular that I remember offhand. But so I had to publish a line, though. So I had to tell the guy at ABC. So look, I gotta publish a line that we have a publishing deadline. We want to get this thing out by certainly. Oh, that case, you'll handle it by Monday. Okay, you tell someone in the business, least back then to. You had a you had a deadline, and they do it. They don't want to get involved with someone else's deadline. They don't want to get in trouble, because I'll get this. It happened again. So I got the letters. I sent them over to Judy at comics. She says, Fine, I'm turning over to the legal department. They'll get your letter of permission, and then you're all set. And this went on for weeks. I didn't think anything bad. I called. She said, I'm having problems with the guy who's the attorney in the office. Maybe you can get through I said, What have I got to lose? So she connected me to his office, and he explained to me the same problem. He said, because we don't own the property, we've got to be careful how we write this letter. Just so special. Do we don't get into legal trouble? Should anyone turn the same thing turn up down the line? I said, I have a deadline coming up. You'll have it Monday. It was on the weekend thing. I said I had the letter. Came in a couple days later. You tell them you have a deadline, they jump. Nice. Now we're talking. Now this is I started in September of 85 and now this is talking. This was like February, March of 85 so now I'm lining up this whole thing to set this whole thing with the publisher. And of course, now the publisher wants to start doing their own legal search on their copyright. They found that their coffee was with ABC, so they double checked to make sure nobody comes out of the woodwork. So now we're talking spring of 85 and I still didn't have a contract. I didn't get a contract after I had gone to California do my interviews. That's how late this thing was going. I started setting up my interviews in advance. I said, Okay, fine, I'm doing the book now. I got all as a permission. I sent it all. I told Dozier about it. He said, Fine, you come to California. We'll do the interview. Then I started setting up all the interviews with other people. That's when Adam and Burke started to become a problem, because at that time, this was prior to his appearances on The Family Guy Show as the mayor. So what I found, long found out, years later, was Adam was having a great deal of financial difficulty, which is why he moved from Los Angeles to Idaho, because he couldn't afford to live in the expensive area where he was in. He couldn't get work. He was having a lot of trouble, because people still remembered him as Batman, and nobody would hire him. Finally, people who grew up watching the show are now in show business. They became directors and producers, and they started hiring him. He got work, but at that time, he was he wanted money. I didn't have an agent, so I did it all myself. Back then you could do this without the agent. So I said, Okay, we'll work out something. I'll give you, each of you, and Bert, 5% of my royalties. You know, I don't know what I was going to make, making my money on the book. I didn't have a contract at that point yet. Biggest problem I had was dealing with Bert, manager at the time, who I don't know what would happen to him. I don't know what their relationship was. His last name was Wolf. I don't want to give his whole name, but he was about his name. Was about his equal to his, to his reputation. I couldn't reach through the burden. It was burden of an agent. Went to a commercial agent, and they got in touch as manager, and they said it wasn't so much the money that they wanted. For me, this is the part I found fascinating, is they wanted creative control over what's in the book,

Jeff Dwoskin 17:37

which is kind of like the opposite of the intent of the book. And in the

Joel Eisner 17:41

interim, all this was going on, I lined up Dozier. I lined up Yvonne Craig, who was Batgirl, I lined up Alan Napier, who was Alfred the butler. The rest of the cast supported. Casts were dead, so I didn't have to play with them. But I lined up a lot of other members of the guest villains. And we were setting things up for, you know, I booked a trip to California for the last three weeks of August, 385 I figured, give me enough time to go around. You know, it wouldn't schedule, rearrange things. There's still some people were not available, so I had to do, eventually, my phone when I got back home, or things. We met for lunch on the restaurant. It was fun, but I even went to Adam's House. He wasn't there. Turns out, he was in England, he said at the time. So I left him a note in his mailbox. I want he never got back to me. And then finally, after I came back and I got the contract lined up with the publisher, and I hadn't even done bird's manager got involved, got Bert and Adam and me and all of us on a conference call. I worked out some sort of like, I'll give you 5% each other thing, and they didn't mention anything about the creative control. Yet, I found that out afterwards. I never got back. They never got back to me. I never thought that. What happened? I mean, I had told Adam in the letter I sent him, I said, Look, Burt's manager is not answering me. I'll give you, not only your 5% of the thing, I'll give you his 5% view do the interview for the book, and he never responded. And I'm saying, you know, what can I do? I mean, I've got to do the book without them. I wasn't going to use old interview material that, you know, that they're still alive, if they're dead, I would use it, but, you know, but I didn't want to do that. There's a lot, a lot of stuff going on, but I found out from Finally, when the book came out, Adam got

Jeff Dwoskin 19:03

in touch with me. Finally, he

Joel Eisner 19:05

told me, he said that Burt's manager got too greedy, and they would have been happy with the 5% each of the offers my royalties. But since he had to appear with Bert at car shows, conventions, supermarket opening still to that day, he had to work with the guy, so he couldn't accept the offer of what I did. So he got his own throat cut by not wanting to cooperate. Years later, well, not years I was about. That was a year. Oh, that was a funny story. That was a year. I got Julie Newmark to come to the big comic book convention in New York for Thanksgiving weekend, and Bert was there too. They got Bert. And I talked to Bert for a few minutes. I asked him. I said, what happened? We never met, we never spoken outside that one phone call. And he said it had nothing to do with the money. It had to do what they wanted, creative control over the content. And they never asked me about creative control of the content. He was making it up see. What it came down to was the fact that nobody got along with Bert on the show. He was an egotistical romaniac Because it was his first acting job. He had no idea how to deal. Anybody. I mean, they were paying him a pittance compared to everybody else, because they figured they had a, you know, a novice actor there, and he had to do most of his own stunts, because, unlike Adam bird's face was was visible most of the time. So you really didn't see that. When you saw the stuntman, it was completely different. You could tell. So he really got, he got his accents. He had things happen him on the show, but he had this attitude that he was married the time. He was married to his first wife, who was the daughter of Mort Lindsay, who was MERV Griffin's band leader on his TV show, Bonnie Lindsay. And as soon as they got married, I should say, Susie got the part as Robin. Almost immediately afterwards, he divorced her, he dumped his wife, and he married one of the guest stars on the second season, named Kathy Kirsch, who was Vince Edwards Ben Casey's ex wife who, according to Bill Dozier, she was a gold digger who took him for whatever money he had, and then she got rid of him. But that, those are the stories that went on with that. But he became sort of this. None of the crew could stand him. I mean, there's a whole story. I'll go into a little bit about the egg fight with Egghead, about the crew getting revenge and but everyone, he was always acting up. And they was always, I mean, he had his own things going on, I suppose, with the, you know, not being treated as well as the other actors were, but it became part of this whole thing. So what he wanted to do, I'm so was drifting. There was they wanted. He wanted control over the book, not so much to keep I said, Look, you could, you could have, you know, corrected and changed and put in anything you wanted to say what you said, but I'm not going to let you correct. Have corrected anybody else's stories, and that's what he wanted. He didn't want any that negative stuff about him coming out that eventually they had to incorporate in their back to the Batcave movie that they did several years ago when they were doing those TV recreations of the old stories about the egg fight and all that other stuff. Because it came out, they couldn't stop it because it was in the book. They couldn't cover it. They couldn't hide it anymore. But Adam, Adam came to me after the book came out. Adam, we met finally. We were always talking by phone, my letters. Met him at a convention, came to New York, very nice. And he was a nice guy. I mean, you know, he's a little, I would say, ditzy or naive kind of thing, but he was sort of someone innocent at times. He was just sort of, I liked him in all but he wasn't such a great businessman, I suppose, and we handled stuff, but, but he called me up after the book come out. And I don't know where I mean, he won't be out of a sound sleep. I was he called me early in the morning, I guess he was up, and he called me up. And I love that. I love the phone call. I still remember it to this day. This must have been about a year or so, if the book came out less than that, and he goes, doesn't say hello, doesn't he goes, he asked for me. I said yes. And he said, I'm sick and tired of having to sign your book and not make any money on it. Holy dilemma Batman. I said, because it's me. It's Adam West. Okay, so he came to this before he wrote his book. He said he wanted to do a book, but he had problems with the licensing with DC Comics, as far as anything he put on his photographs or anything else, because he would have paid him a lot of licensing stuff, because he has to pay licensing when he wore his customer conventions. So he knew that I got around it. I had the person. I said, Look, we can do it as a part two of the back book. I can put all the photographs I want another project. All I want you to do, in a sense, would be, you know, you put your part of the story into the whole thing. We can annotate the old book, or we can do whatever we want to do with it. And I think it really would work. Well, we have a follow up to the whole thing. He said, Fine. He said, there's one condition. He said he wants $100,000 advance on the royalties. Holy

Jeff Dwoskin 23:14

demands Batman. Now all

Joel Eisner 23:16

these years, going back to the 1986 when the book came out, I made a grand total of royalties, about $40,000 overall. They only would have made about a couple of $1,000 off the deal I made them originally, because the book came out. It was originally 895 for the first 10,000 prints, copies, everything after was 995 cover price. That's how you can tell the first edition on that book. And they never put it in the book. We did about 1315, printings, but they never put the print number inside, but only the first edition is 895, there's a lot of things that were omitted in the holy section and the typos and a few things which we corrected because they rushed it through. But we did that. I said, $100,000 is not this crazy. I was friends at the time with one of the executive vice presidents at the Lyle Stewart Publishing Company, which was releasing all the Doctor Who novels. Now I just do I used to go to conventions. I saw what kind of movie, TV, photos and merchandise and stuff, and I get, like, used to carry the Doctor Who not paperback novels that would come out every month. So I used to go over to Jersey and pick up the books from the publisher and talk to my friend there. I dimensioned him. He said, You know, this was after my contract contemporary was basically over. But I he said that Adam wants to do a book. And he said he said he wants $100,000 advance if we do it together. He said, we'd love to do the book, he said, but he's not worth $100,000 we don't even give that kind of money to any big name stars, he said, but they did a lot of celebrity books, so I couldn't do anything with it. Eventually, Adam made some deal with he got himself a sort of a ghost writer. It was so full of errors and stuff, even the episode guide that they used for his book was out of the old fox press kit, which was a lot of errors, a lot of typos. I mean, this one misspelled the things that the names, the episodes were wrong, all kind of stuff. I could have done a better job with him, but if I had done the book with him, I would have been able to pull out a book which he couldn't do. I would have done a book on Adam. He had a very interesting career in the sense he went from basically a. Nobody to an overnight star to a has been in less than three years. And that's the way the book would have been written this whole career up until that point. What it did to him, and then was also with everything afterwards. This was even before Family Guy. So that's the only way I think I would have pulled that book off. But it didn't work out with him, as much as I like to I told it to Bill Dozier. I said they know they bought Adam and Berg both want money to do interviews. He goes The nerve of some people. He said they made so much money for all the appearances they made doing car shows and everything else. I mean, not so much from the TV show, but they made money, but they didn't do it. Everyone else was fine. I mean, I hit it off with so many other people.

Jeff Dwoskin 25:34

So how did the whole rights thing work out? So I went

Joel Eisner 25:37

through this whole thing to find out that nobody owned the rights to the book. As far as licensing, it's a little more complicated than that, because you see what happened was, one is, didn't know the comic book company, so everyone was using a company called the licensing Corporation of America, LCA, and they licensed all kind of TV products and film products and stuff. And they were a licensing organization to send their license to sell products. So what they did for Batman, if people will remember, they had very little merchandising having to do with the with the TV show or the movie. You had a novelization of the movie itself. You had the trading cards, and you had the View Master reels. There was a couple of novels. They put pictures on the novel things. And that was about three or four different trading card sets. And most of the trading card sets were also from the comic strip pictures. Adam didn't have. There's no money. There's no merchandising, really, for the show, everybody had DC. There was that time national was using the LCA, and everybody had license the comic book character on it. Adam had a contract where he would make part of the royalties of the of the merchants as they sold. But they got out of it by saying, You're not on the picture, on the box, you're not on the board games, you're not on the T shirts, you're not on the capes and cast costumes we're selling. It's our comic book character. You don't own this stuff. Eventually sued them over it, and they got some sort of settlement out of it. A few years later, I guess I could think of they got conned or something, but they paid them off a bit. But LCA, when the show was live on the air, LCA had licensed all the Batman stuff, except for the TV stuff. But that stuff came out. It's whatever the producers did when the show was canceled. Everything flew out the window, because you can't license a canceled program. So you can't go back and relicense it. And then there was no copyright as far as the licensing was concerned on the program. So there was nothing left in the do. 20 years later, nobody anticipated. This is the key thing to most merchandising things back in the stuff in the 60s is that most people did not anticipate. They're able to anticipate that maybe 20 years later, or 10 years later, there's going to be a resurgence of interest in the program or or a movie, or whatever it is, and want to do something on it, whether it be a book or bring out new merchandise. That's what happened with Star Trek. People don't remember. Don't realize that most studios back then either did or they didn't, copyright their episodes officially with the US government Copyright Office, like they do when we would films, their little copyright thing, Columbia Pictures, they copyrighted everything. MGM copyrighted everything. Fox and Paramount did nothing. They did the feature film of the TV shows. They never did. It was only after the fact that sometimes they would put these things through to digressing for Star Trek, they never bothered. So for years, all that homemade merchandise who were turning up in the Star Trek conventions, they couldn't stop anybody from doing it because they had no licensing left on it. They eventually, when they decided to make the first movie, they had to go back and do something. So they went back to the film prints and they recut them. That's why you'll see, sometimes at the end of the episode, you will still see the older Prince. It says, copyright 1970 77 or 79 I think 77 at the eight at the end of this is paramount, at the end of the logo, because they read back and they recoperate. They cut out the scenes the next week. They cut out the brought you by copy pieces. They cut out a little piece of the middle for the station break, and they retooled a little bit of it. So it's a slightly different version of the episode, because it was and that's what they used, because they were planning to make the movie out of it. So that's why they all the new starchester came out. Had to use the new version of the logo and everything. So the same thing happened with Batman. There was no licensing on nothing they could do. It wasn't until the 1980s when DC Comics finally realized they don't own the rights to everything. The names of this the Batcave, this did. They started copywriting everything for me. It didn't bother me because they couldn't do it after the fact that we showed they didn't know they didn't really own I got around it. All of it took me longer to find out that nobody owned it. They took me the six weeks it took to write the book. So all that licensing stuff was just sort of like nobody expected anything to happen with this thing. So that's when they had to go do all the research on this stuff. Now, years later, what we had, they found that what they want to do to DVDs, then they had the problem. Who owned what? I don't understand why he did it this way, but Bill Dozier, turns out, actually he had the rights to the Batman TV show. He didn't even know he owned it. As far as the licensing was concerned, which way he would have gave it to me. Anyways, we still have friends after the book was done, but according to his estate, it was broken up among three parties, his son Robert, who wrote the first, the first Joker episode of the series. His daughter Deborah, from his set of another marriage, and she was like the executor of his will. And for some reason, his two attorneys, I don't know why his legal staff wound up with I don't know at that part of the story. I don't understand. I never found out, but they had a rights to certain amount of the money, I guess you. Paid them off in residual money, as opposed to giving them a salary. I don't know how he worked it, but so they were fighting over for years, trying to get this thing straightened out. And Deborah wasn't interested. She was busy working on some other project or on the Sun state, other picture. He was happy just getting the royalty, the residual money from Batman as extra money, so he didn't want to sell off his rights to it. They eventually made some sort of deal. They were threatening to take it to sell to other companies. She's going to put up to highest bidder. They actually try to bring in Lorne Michaels Broadway. Broadway video, they said that live to police the whole show, they needed to get it was some kind of deal. They had to get an offer by another company to make an offer for over a certain amount of money before they could get the lawyers and the brother to get involved, to sell the whole thing off to the rights and Fox was involved too. Fox owned the physical prints, but they're on the rights of the program. So they eventually made some big deal. They sold over the rights to Warner Brothers, and they finally released the DVDs, and they were full of mistakes. There were certain episodes were missing scenes, the the scenes next week were missing with the little clips of the villains. Whole epilogs Were missing for a couple of episodes. So what did they do? They came out with you right away. You get the bonus disc with the extra material. Now I think they fixed it, but I don't know. I got screwed out of the whole thing altogether.

Jeff Dwoskin 31:06

Holy cliffhanger. Sorry to interrupt, but have take a quick break. I do want to thank everyone for their support of the sponsors. When you support our sponsors, you supporting us here at Classic conversations, and that's how we keep the lights on. And now back to my amazing conversation with Joel Eisner, back to the Bat Cave, if you will. It's

Joel Eisner 31:27

very strange. You see, many years after the fact, I decided I wanted to do another version of the Batman book, and I wanted to get Adam involved. So I said, you know, let Adam come back and just annotate the entire book, because the one thing he had never done was talk about the other villains. I mean, he talked about Julie Nomar and the Catwoman and Jew, but he never discussed all the other villains or the people he worked with on the program, because he never had anybody sort of prompting him in the right direction. So I said, if I could get him to do another version of the book with me, we rerelease it, and annotate every little character in the book and talk about this villain and that character, this actor, whatever you want to do. I wrote to him. I heard back from his then agent. Now, he left his original agency to go with this guy, who's now since passed away. I'll call him Fred, because that was his name. I understand. He wrote one of the he was one of the co authors on TV game shows. He was a game show fanatic. He was so lovely to talk to a beginning said, no problem. He thinks it's a great idea for a book. We'll discuss it with Adam and this and this, and we'll discuss everything fine, and then nothing. Never heard a thing from him. Wouldn't answer my calls. I don't know why. So I wrote a letter to Adam. I said, this his agent for representing him at conventions, public appearances. Even he wasn't his theatrical agent, he was in charge with some public appearances. I said, you know, this guy is not doing good service here. We've got an idea making some money over doing another book to do some publicity stuff. Out of it, we'll make all things money. I said, I normally that I'm going to give you 50% of the royalties. No nickery, no haggling back. It's going to do a 5050, split. And the next thing I know is that that agent is bad mouthing me all over the all over the place, because I went behind his back, apparently, and I made it trying to make a deal. And Adam, of course, opened his big mouth and told him

Jeff Dwoskin 32:54

what I was doing, holy backstabbing Batman.

Joel Eisner 32:56

So when it came time to do the DVDs, usually the guy who writes the book on the TV show is included as an expert on the audio track. Never heard from them. Eventually, I found the right person to contact at the Warner Brothers company, and they said Adam's agent had exclusive. They knew about me and my book, but he had an exclusive only Adam's gonna be on the DVDs. Nobody else that eliminated me. It cut out. Yvonne, Craig Bert and Julie had, like, little bit to something they threw on there, but everyone got cut out. They want anybody else on those DVDs because they were getting paid for it. I wouldn't have got paid. They would have they paid me off at a box set. You know, there's nothing to do, but they didn't want me on there. And that Fred got what he deserved, I guess eventually, because, you know, he's not around anymore. But that was the problem. Said, Adam always had such a bad business sense. He always went around with the wrong people, as far as giving him direction. But I found out this Fred scoot over a lot of other people, that we'd be nice to have a lot of things, and then backstore people behind their back and screwed them over. Adam was supposed to make a deal to do. They were bringing back Captain action, those action dolls from the 60s, and they wanted to do it as an animated series. And they wanted to do with bring back the action because somebody bought the rights to it. And I met them at a convention, and they were there. Adam was there, and I said, Good luck. Be careful of his Asian, because at that time he's going to screw you all. We promise you everything, and then he just doesn't do a damn thing, which is what he did. My publisher had no idea what we were working with, as far as Batman was concerned. I knew it, but they didn't. I finished the book. I had a deadline, November 1 of 85 and the book was coming out in July of 86 That's how fast we brushed this thing out. I was still doing interviews until that point, come February, I was I was doing a convention at a few blocks away from the publisher's office in Chicago, and I had my editor come down in person. So finally, meet in person. So they do phone calls, and we have that color section of the book. It runs like eight pages. That's what causes the book to fall apart, because when they glued it together, it sort of splits the spine when it's right out. She was actually going to cut the photographs down from four pages. It was only four pages down to two pages of color, because she said it was expensive. But then I showed you the photograph. She said, don't want to double it now make it eight. We were doing the photographs and the final editing, you know, maybe five months before it came out. The guy who designed the book for me, for us, and she hired him, he was living in New York, so I got a chance. I. I work with him in person that way, so it was easier. He used to be the set designer for Madonna, and he never lived to see the book. Unfortunately, he died of AIDS. Very nice guy. They knew Him because they were going to do a Madonna book. It didn't work out. So we had this guy who worked, you know, celebrity stuff, on the thing. And when the book came out, I remember they sent me my free copies, and then I put in an order for 50 or 60 or 100, whatever books that I want to sell at the convention in New York, we sold out the 10,000 book print run in three weeks. Wow, that's how far in advance. Yeah, 10,000 copies in three weeks. They never expected it. They didn't do a reprint for four months, and then it was only 6000 copies for the reorders. They had no clue what they were doing. As far as the shipping was thing was concerned, it wasn't until that the Batman movie came out in 89 that the book had another resurgence. We wound up doing, let me think, in the first things, he said, maybe three and a half years the book came out, we wound up doing about 40,000 copies of the book when the movie came out in 89 we did the same amount of sales in six months because we latched onto the Batman thing, and DC, for one I heard wasn't exactly happy. I mean, this, I should say Warner Brothers, because every comic book shop, every regular bookstore, was pushing my book as well, because they were looking for any kind of Batman material they could get, and they weren't making a dime on my book. It was done all in spite of everybody who wanted a piece of the thing never got it. I mean, there wasn't a big enough volume to share, even for myself, but everyone else involved with the book. I have a letter from Adam tell me how much he loved the book. And he was telling me how he wanted, how he would have played Batman in the movie in his home. We still phrased friends. I mean, you know, I saw him at other conventions. Still friends, I said, with Julie Nomar, um, I haven't seen her in a while, but with friends on Facebook, I kept in touch with Alan API until he passed away. I never did the chance to go back with it when he was still alive. He invited me to come back and we had tea in the afternoon tea what we were doing in his house. And he wanted me to come back some next time, and we'll have more talks. But I stayed friend with some of the writers and the producer. I did a show in September of 87 I had opened the science fiction and horror Emporium in Greenwich Village, New York. It was a comic book and sci fi horror video store, pop culture stuff back then. And this guy comes into the store and he says he runs a show and but was public access cable at the time, that such a thing still exists, but he was shooting at the HBO studios. It was called the trivia show. It was mostly sports trivia, but he was a huge Batman fan. He found out I wrote the book, and he invited me on to do the show. So I remember doing this on a Sunday night we were taping. It was on live they had a live call in show. People would ask questions and they'd win the prizes. Okay, well, I managed to get them some more things they never had before. I got William don't William Dozier, not all the was still friendly. He generated the program for them by phone. That's awesome. I had Alan Napier call. He called in with the do a question for them so the audience could answer. And Julie Newmar did one for me. And I still have the video. I still, I still have the VHS. I transferred the DVD, but I still have the videos as long since, you know, nobody's ever seen that, but that's how much these people stayed in touch with they loved how much I have a letter I love I got from Bill Dozier saying how much I captured the flavor of the Batman TV show. And they loved it so much. And I wish I did that million. We did 100,000 copies. I had a British edition. I have a people send me pictures of German edition, I knew I did some foreign copies. I thought they just reprinting it. The British one had different cover. And then I saw something. Somebody said, the book is we can reach Japan. I've had people letters from people around the world have got copies of that book as far as what it was doing. And then when the resurgence of the movie came out in 89 it now they just revived the careers of some of the guest stars, cease Romero Burgess, were doing interviews. Everyone's doing interviews. I started doing interviews. I mean, I did a lot of radio interviews when I did the book and, you know, call in shows they, you know, do me my telephone. I was up all hours in the night because they were three halfway across the country in middle of the night. So I was doing that kind of stuff. One of the things I liked doing was I wound up being a guest on Super sales radio show in New York. At that time, Sue B was doing the show on NBC Radio, which was six hours long. Love soupy sales. He was doing a three hour show, and then the afternoon host, for some reason, the thing collapsed, and he'd want to do six hours. I had sent out my old little press kits. I had copies of the cover, and I put them in little folders, and I sent everything out, and I just was I remember sending him out like a Thursday or Friday over a weekend, Monday morning, I get a phone call from his producer. He had a cancelation. Could I come in the next day and do an interview for the book? I said I'd love to so he get on. I think he went off a nine to three. I was on about 1130 so I was able to listen to him introducing me on the program, saying, I'm coming on later today. I have somebody recorded the copy of the show that I was on, and I got home in time, by three o'clock to hear him say thank you for being on the show, saying, but I had a lot of fun dealing with super sales. That was a lot of fun with him. I was a little reluctant, though there's people saying he was always sort of like a little more scary and a little more not as nice as it turns out to be. He was lovely to deal with. Took pictures with him. We signed my I bought my super sales record album. So he signed that for me. I've done things. I did the Joe Franklin show, which is was big in New York. I was on his show twice. At my sitcom book with him too. I got it was getting screwed over. I was that close to doing the Sally Jeffrey Jesse Raphael show, but she was still in St Louis. These things. I got a call one day from the producer, one of the producers, saying that we want to do something on the on Batman, and we're having, I don't. List and Bert waters guests on the program. I'm in New York. They're St Louis. They said We'll fly you out duty for the day you'll spend them to give you a hotel room. You go back the next day. So fine. I said, Good. We're trying to set this thing up. Then I never heard from them, so I called them back, and the producer was out of the office. She wasn't getting back to me, but I said, you know, I'm supposed to be doing this in particular, we had a date set up. I was supposed to be there doing the show with Adam West, because he was just here the other day. I said, What do you mean? Just sit there. The other day? I said, Yeah, they did the show on Batman the other day. I said, they did it without me. She never got back to me when the show was on a pre tape on a month basis ahead. This is when the show was still running in New York at about one or two o'clock in the morning. No, it's after one o'clock in the morning. I remember it was like two three in the morning for they gave her a morning slut. So I taped it and I saw what they did. They had Alan Bert on, and for some unknown reason, they decided to book as a second guest, instead of me, Alan Young for Mr. Ed. He was in town doing some play or something, and they said, let's get Mr. Ed on the show. And I got Connie Hines to Come on do it by phone. I wouldn't mind it. I know Alan Young. I interviewed for the I went out to California before that to do an interview for a friend, or a friend who was the head of the Mr. Red train club. So I had met him, he would have no problem being on the show with him. But they didn't know it. They didn't tell me. And the worst part of it was, is they were so cheap, they never bothered to get their own photographs. They took photographs out of my book. I just put post them up on the program throughout the show. I know it was mine because we published in some color photos in black and white, which is the way they showed it.

So they lived it out of my book. I got no credit for it. I mean, I mean, I've had stuff that happened to me in a long time, but the movie came out, I was getting calls all over the place. I had, still had my store at the time. I got a call from what was the big paper in that time. Now, it's not so big of a New York news day, and they said they would do a big feature on Batman, and they wanted to come down interview me and take pictures. They took. I said, Fine, come on down to the store. We'll do something in the store. And they came down with a photographer and lights. And what kind of photography shoot they took pictures of me with the book. I said, Okay. And then the reporter and I went down to the corner. We sat in the big pizzeria. We were doing an interview, and then he told me, he said I was not what he expected. I said, Well, you know, I have an idea what you expected, but you see, I have a master's degree in business, in marketing, and I've got an MBA in media arts. So I'm not your typical Batman geek. Who's, you know, this little fanboys who sit at home and, you know, pretend they're Batman or, you know, couch potato characters. This whole thing, to me, was a my main goal was to preserve the stories of what went on around these shows. I've done it for other shows. I've done it for movie stuff. So when the article came out, it was two page spread on all the Batman stuff. I was reduced to about one paragraph at the end of the article, talking about me in the store and how I was selling about 35 copies of the book at that time in the store, just based on the movie the picture of the people they had in the article, which they did the big feature on was this married couple who ran some sort of 60s style antique toy store thing in Manhattan, and they had thrown all kind of Batman geeky stuff and toys and holding all this stuff. They look like real geeks, and it's like, this is what they wanted to think the Batman fans were like, not some educated person who was doing this for a whole other reason. I mean, Adam told me this one story. I did Adam and I we did it. I used to do a lot of comic book conventions, the Star Trek convention for creation convention company. I used to run their film programs for them, so I used to go and I used to sell. So I used to sell sweatshirts and T shirts and Batman stuff and all kind of other sitcom movie stuff and everything. Anyway, this is before Adam got Fred as the agent. He was still in his other agency, and Adam was the sole guest of the show, and he was in the same dealers from selling his autographs and things, and he came up to me, he said, Would you mind staying with me before I go up on stage to talk to the fan, to sort of keep them away from me, because he's got to go, you know, just prepare himself to get on. He said, his agent has the local aid. The agent had an agent to show up for him. He said, didn't show up. And I said, I'd be happy to pronounce it on my table. I said, Okay, so I'm hanging out with him off the stage, and he's preparing to go on stage and stuff and all these crazy fanatic fans. Because, you know, why I asked you to do this for me? I said, why? He said, Because you don't take this crap seriously. You know, to me, it was the animal saying that this was, this was an acting job. It was part of my career, you know, I did it for the money. I had fun with it, but that's it. These fanatical fans are like, you know, you don't take this stuff seriously. I said, No, I don't. I'm a big fan of character actors. That was always my big favorite thing. You see, I have two showbiz people in my family. I wish to God I had met them when they were alive. But one side of my family, my cousin, was Edward G Robinson, Oh, wow. And the other side of the family, and the other side of the family was zero, most still, Oh, wow. So I've got two extremes. And I grew up watching a lot of character people. My idol was Vincent Price. So I grew up watching all the horror films and TV shows and all that, but he never took himself seriously. Vincent. Well, get to Vincent in a moment, but it was I know. Who were they on. I talked to you about their own credits and things. I had a way of ingratiating myself with people. I mean, I there are people who I'll tell you one thing I did, the book I lost in space, which at the moment, I am presently revising for a new edition. I'm making a lot of changes and things. It's been out, came out in 91 but it needs to be redone. I sat down with Jonathan Harris, who played Dr Smith when we had a big it was a big, good loss of space meet Star Trek convention in Atlantic City. And almost the whole loss of space cast was there. And I was there pushing my book. And I sat down with Jonathan Harris, with my publisher was there, and a couple of people, and we're sitting there having so he went in a late night dinner snack. He was having that hotel restaurant. And I'm sitting there. I'm sitting right next to him in the booth, and he's, like I said. I started talking about certain shows he did and working with Lou Costello, and one of the last things Costello did back in the 50s. And then we're talking about, I mean, the story, almost I can go into, but I talking about doing the episode The Monster Squad. He plays the astrologer. This crazy, another Batman that was produced by Stanley Ralph Ross and people did Batman. And he turns and he looks at me. And I knew Jonathan well enough to know him, because he was such a character that the whole voice was all fake. He could drop it when he wanted to. He came from the Bronx. He developed it to kill his Bronx accent. But when he wanted to, he went back to his Bronx works, and he looked at me and goes, How do you remember this stuff? I don't remember doing this stuff. I said, I'm a fan of character. I know people's credits. And then I remind myself, Oh yes, I remember the thing with the Monster Squad I had with this funny headpiece, and gave me a headache. And I started getting I dragged the stories out of people, because I know what most people who do interviews with celebrities, they're all superficial. They're going about their current product. But if I go into someone who's been in character people for long time, I know him from everything they've done. Now I sat down, I keep digressing, but one of the conventions I did once years ago was a Comic Con and another creation. Eventually, New York was an eclectic group of guest stars, Dawn Wells from Gilligan's Island, Michael Dawn, who was making his first appearance without his his wolf makeup at the was a spotly starchy convention. Nobody knew what he looked like, let alone they knew he was black. I mean by good looking guy, but I saw him and people coming. Where is he? They didn't know what they but he comes up on stage, but he was there, nice guy. Talk to him. And then, as against so many, cancel out the last minute, they brought in Richard Keele Jaws from the James Bond pictures. Now, I've been a fan of keel for years, when he used to do all the horror movies. He was the candidate on Twilight zones to serve man. He was Voltaire. He was Dr loveless as a sidekick for three episodes a while Wild West. And he would did the monkeys and he did the ghost on Gilligan's Island.

Jeff Dwoskin 46:48

He was the original Incredible Hulk. He

Joel Eisner 46:49

was, he's actually still in the opening credits. He's still in the opening credits. They wanted a giant for the part, but he, unfortunately, he was blind in one eye, and he had his vision wasn't great in the other to where the content learns. It was too much for him, and they wanted someone a little more muscular. They went with Ted. Went to go with Ted Cassidy, and that didn't work out. CASS became the narrator, and he dubbed in all the grunts and groans for Lou Ferrigno. I interviewed Ted Cassidy six months before he died. I got the last interview with Ted Cassidy. That's where he admitted he was thing from the Adams family, all that stuff originally with my original interview. So I got all the firsts and things.

Jeff Dwoskin 47:19

Oh, I didn't, I didn't know that. That's cool.

Joel Eisner 47:21

Oh no, no. Very long ago, six months ago, because he was on Lost in Space. I used to run the international fan club for Lost in Space, and everyone Allen's TV shows. So a lot of people were on Batman. They were on Star Trek. I got all the stories Cassidy at the time. I'll get back to Cassidy in a second. So go back to keel for a moment, because they didn't tell later. They did see I go all over the place because I got so many stories. But keel was the guest star, and I knew the people running the convention. I did stuff for them, and the head of security that she said the security guard didn't show up. We need someone to stand guard at Richard keels autograph table before he goes up on stage. I said, Wait, I get my lobby card signed by him and we'll talk. So he's sitting at a table. The guy is seven foot two, seven foot three. I'm five nine, and he's sitting at the table. I'm standing right next to his autograph table. It was a lineup. There was a line of people waiting to get his autograph, and I started talking to him. We started talking about what he did for how he got Wild West, his character didn't speak. And said, until the third episode, when Robert Conrad had him speak up, let him do the talking, how he got screwed out of the voice thing on twilight zone, because they dubbed in someone else's voice. Same thing with Gilligan. I said, what happened? He said, he said he had a bad agent who didn't stand up for him. So he got screwed out of a lot of different things, too. And then we talked. I said he's one of his first movies, a picture called EGAPP. It's an arch Hall picture. We played this caveman in EGAPP. And I said, was just coming out on VHS at that time. And he then, you know, because I had my video store, and I said, you know? And he looked surprised. They said he and they started talking about human duplicates, and I sort of talked about how we did this, and he did that, and again, he turned and looked at me like Jonathan Harris did. It's like, am I supposed to psycho fan? Or do I said, Look, I love character actors. I know people's credits. I know what people have done. I appreciate to what they are, not for just getting an autograph or pursuing these kind of things. Now, Ted Cassidy, very embedded man, very embedded. When he died, he was 46 years old of open heart surgery. He was but most big guys have heart problems, so I'm not surprised. When he died, he was six nine, but I caught him at the right place at the right time. At that time, I wasn't long distance. Rates were not what they are. Now, when you can do the internet, doesn't cost you anything. So we did it by mail. I sent him a whole list of questions, and he answered me on cassette, which runs about 45 minutes. I still have it. It turns out he had gone through a period. He was offered the part of Dragos on Jason of Star Command on Saturday morning. Eventually went to St Hague. That was a speed of a Space Academy with Jonathan Harris. That was what Johnny that was what John Jimmy do. And after he discarded he couldn't get work, he became the host of that and then he made the first movie. And then he left. They brought in John Russell, but he was supposed to have the part of racos, which he saw, is this big new Darth Vader character that's going to help him kill the lurch image. He hated lurch with a passion. Lurch was his first acting job. He was a disc jockey in Dallas, Texas, before they came from Pittsburgh, but he was in Dallas, Texas. Is great voice. And he wanted he did the thing that he came up, the idea crushing the hats he was, he told me, I said, who played things that he said, did most people don't know what he was thing. He had a separate contract for it. He had a separate contract where they did the Halloween with the answer to reunion film. He came back and did it again. It was never really brought out. But once I published my interview, I did my fan coverage division. I sold the Starlog magazine that came out. Forget it. It was all over the place. Everyone copied, after all, because, you know he was thing. I said, I know. I'm the one to talk to. I'm one who got it out of him. Nobody knew it until that point. No one's ever got credit except the scenes where he wasn't in. That was the assistant director, art Vogel, who was doing the part the hand didn't match with smaller he was talking about he wanted to kill lurch, because the first season, he said, was a lot of fun crushing hats you rang the whole thing. Second season, he said it became monotonous and people didn't know he could talk. People thought he was a big, dumb brute. I mean, he did Star Trek. He did Lost in Space. He played all these big characters. But he said it was his biggest pet peeve was because he said that he had done his I said, What was your favorite thing to do? He said it was an episode he did, like, two or three days on a banner check episode with George papad. He ran a junkyard. He was one of these. He was one of the killers on the show. Came on, did this scene with George pod, did the whole thing. And then the cast and crew, the person of the stuntman and stuff, were applauding him, and said, Wow, we've never seen you do that before. He goes, what? He goes, talk and act. He was in a junkyard. You know? They were supposed to play this one little junket. He said, I'm going to put your head on to say, and close the hood on you. What do you mean I can't do? He says, Well, you're always playing these guys who can't, you know, can't put two words together. And he did, like he thought. They said, You know, you're right. They you think these big men don't have their big, dumb guys who don't have any brains, they're all like Lenny from, you know, rice and men. So that was his big thing. So then what happens is, I interviewed when this was the July of 79 No, 78 he died in 79 in January. Well, at that point, Richard keel made a name for himself playing jaws in the first James Bond picture. He did the spiral of me never spoke again. Of course, he always hear the great voice. But the problem was, Cassidy was more well known than Kiel was. Keel was always playing monsters on colcheck That night stalker. He was, you know, he's a big Indian or a swamp monster, or playing other crazy parts. And everybody, according to Cassidy, was confusing the two and congratulating him for having such a great job in the James Bond picture. And he said, That guy's an actor, I'm a bricklayer, because that guy's not acting. That's the big, dumb brute, because he couldn't stand for the life of him. It's funny. And at this point, he told me all this stuff because he was up for the spotters ragos. He had a couple of first refusals on a couple other pilots that he was assigned to, until they were turned down by the network. He couldn't accept it. So when it came time to him now the refusals came through, he could accept the part. And he said it was too late. They had to cast the part because they had to shoot. So he was pissed. He wanted to do his characters. He figured his lieutenant, he said the Adams family at that time was running on UHF channels across the country and, you know, rerun things. And he said, this would be a current thing, that would be an old thing, and it would confuse people. You're creating another character. So these ought to be a good part to him, to kill off the character. I hardly think that show on Saturday morning would have done it for him. He just would have came off his lurch, wearing a different makeup, right, right, right. Doing another cartoon voiceover, Frankenstein Jr. And he was doing he had done recently, at that time, that voice of the Fantastic Four, the thing in the new version of the show he had done in the 80s when Owen would hurt me the robot, which actually was forgettable. He was all pissed about this. He was threatening his manager. This tape that he did this interview with became his therapy, his complete therapy from he just vented everything we talked about him doing the taking over the part of Android the Giants Bigfoot on The $6 million Man. He hated that one altogether too. He did it for the money. He said he almost passed out from the heat in that suit, because they shot in the summertime looks like a heavy suit. So between the hair suit, the wig, the content lenses, the teeth, they put on, the heavy makeup, he said, in his words, there wasn't one orifice that wasn't blocked off. They were shot it in like 100 and something degree heat. He said he fell to his knee several times from the from the heat that built up on the costume, from it. I mean, literally, he was just but he said he had to do it. He said because he needed the money. He joked about working on the man from Atlantis, or the stupid thing he did with the two headed vinyl seahorse episode. He hated keel. He said every time he'd walk into a an audition for a party, see keel sitting there, he'd get up and walk out because he knew the part was gonna be another dumb brute. He wanted nothing part of it. I mean, so I'd say it this way, but he's good thing. He passed away before the Moonraker came out and saw kill become a really big star, because he was a secondary one, and they knew him bigger star in that movie. And that really would put him over the edge. So in fact, when I met keel, I was I was careful not to mention how much Cassidy haters guts. I wasn't going to do that. But you have

Jeff Dwoskin 54:18

all these secrets, all these secrets. I have all this stuff. I know we could. I appreciate you spending all this time with me. And we used to come back. We can dive into loss in space, or Vincent Price, anything like that.

Joel Eisner 54:29

Yeah, because I really wanted to write all this loss in space, because it was a big episode guide, I don't need to do it that way anymore, but I have that. And of course, I did the book on Vincent Price, and I have a lot of funny stuff. Vincent Price Toby, we work on it together until he passed away, and I finished it myself several years after the fact. One

Jeff Dwoskin 54:44

last Batman question, so not aside from anything Burt Ward or Adam West. What's the juiciest thing that you learned?

Joel Eisner 54:53

Juiciest thing? Oh, I'm going to go very quickly. My favorite thing is it wasn't so much juicy. It was the fact that it's the cast. It's the. True getting even with Bert. There was a big story. I found out after what I was talking about, sort of, I went to go see Howard Schwartz, who was the kid cameraman for the show in some of the episodes. And it turns out he was a cameraman actually on the old George V Superman show as well. And he told me about there was a big egg fight during the Vincent Price egg first Egghead episode at the end at old Mcdonald's chicken farm, they were throwing eggs around like crazy. They said they gave him a great opportunity to to get even with Bert. What he explained to me was, is that Bert had been, in his words, a pain in the ass to everybody, and they said the crew couldn't take it anymore, so they set this whole thing up with the director and with Vincent. They didn't tell Vince exactly what was going on, but what happened was they were having this big egg fight at the end. It was tossing real eggs. This wasn't fake stuff. And they said, Well, we're going to shoot this on a Friday afternoon, and tell everybody we have only one take to do it, because I take us a half a day to clean the studio up after the egg fight. They had put the camera crew behind Plexiglas so that the cameras wouldn't get covered with eggs. And then they told Vincent. They said, We want to get in with this kid, because he's been a pain to us for the last year and a half. And then we really want to do something. And Vincent, of course, would love to get along with another joke. He said, Okay, now there's a scene where, among other things, Vincent is supposed to said, Bert over the head to one or two eggs. Instead, he picks up a couple of cartons of eggs and grinds them into his head. And Bert, knowing the fact they're doing this in one take, had to stand there and take it. Now, if you go back and watch him, you'll see the eggs just dripping off of him, and he's steaming because he can't do anything about it, and they're tossing eggs back and forth. Now, Bert claims that he managed to get some shots and throw some eggs over to the cameraman, but I don't believe that would happen, because Burt's had a lot of stories that we disputed over the years, and he's exaggerated and lied about and changed. One day, I'll tell me about the how Julie Newmar embarrassed him with that convention we were at together, because he was telling all these lies, and Julie not on the loudspeaker and said, You're lying to people. Bert, this never happened. That never happened. What kind of story about him hanging over this pit of tigers, but, but that was my thing with because, and then Vincent told me, said they did this. The crew cast invention to do it, because Howard Schwartz knew Vincent from another project, and they said, We're going to do this whole thing with the egg thing. So it was like the crew finally got even with him, and everybody was happy. And they had to include that. That back to the Batcave movie, although their own version of it. But that was the one thing I liked with it was the other. I mean, there was another couple of crazy things, and that was really the biggest thing about that show I liked. I mean, they certain people they didn't get along with, like ano Preminger. You know, he was Arnold. Preminger got into a fight with a director, the director of the it was Mr. Fries. Episode was a guy named George Wagner, old time guy. He directed the Wolfman. He directed the bottom pictures back in the 30s. Big old time director. And Preminger was like, basically telling him how to do this. He goes, I'm a director. And he goes, I tell you how we done. He goes, I've been a director longer than you have. I'm the director. I'm running the show. And he basically put Preminger in this place, you know? But yeah, all kind of egos, different things with people. I mean, I mean, I love Yvonne, Craig, I mean, I mean, I'm sorry she's gone. And of course, Alan Napier was a lot of fun to hang out with, telling me all his little stories about how he got hired for Batman. He never even heard of the show. Actually, he got the job by accident. I think Dozier said that he hired him because he thought he was the epitome of the typical British Butler. The problem was, Napier had never played a butler in his life, and anything he'd done. And I spoke to the guy who wrote released that Napier's daughter had his, they found her father's memoirs and released and I talked to the guy, and he agreed with me. He said that Dozier had confused him with John Williams, who was the police inspector and I live for murder, and turned up a lot on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and he had played Sebastian cabbage brother for like, nine episodes of family affair when Sebastian got sick. So he'd always played butlers and things. They were told the British mustache, the whole thing, they got confused. I think he that's how he got to part by accident, little bits and pieces of stuff. There was no real stories about anything. I mean, Neil Hamilton resented the fact that Alan Apia, his name came above his in the credits, because he was a big silent screen movie star. Everyone else really got along. Some of the guest villains were a bit painful. They said they hated working with Rudy Valley because he was a real pain in the ass for three the three episodes they did, Yvonne Craig says, You'll have Vincent Price. There's a lot of fun. Was the head problems and Shelly winters was a pain in the ass too. She was like, demanding everything, but everyone else was a lot of fun to work with. They love him. Cesar Romero wasn't what they loved. I love I love talking to him the problem. He didn't remember much about the show there, but she said they all ran together, all the same things, over and over. He said that the biggest problem he had was his wig. It was the same wig every time, but it would photograph under the color gels. One week it was red, one week it was green, next week it was yellow, and it would give him a headache. It was on too tight. No, everyone was sort of like, you know, gauche, and complained that the height the tights ripped all the time. Julie. I mean, I loved hanging out with Julian. I spent the whole day with Julian, and one of that day, it was her birthday. In fact, that day my birthday was two days later, so she invited me back to her birthday party. So I spent the whole day with her, and we had a lot of fun talking about different things. Let's see what I was talking about. Running Mattel and I made friends with Molokai throne. It was Oh false face. Molokai was a lovely guy. Lived in New York at the time. He did every show you could think of. He was on Lost in Space. He was on time tunnel. Voice of on the Sea Star Trek. Landed a giant everything you think of Batman was the only one he had a problem with, because he was the one who played the character. They had the question mark at the end. That was his doing because he didn't want his name on the program. False face was supposed to be done with different makeups, but they run into a time frame problem. So they started using that cheap plastic mask they use, which you said, looks like a burn victim. They still make up their Halloween masks. So he arranges to take my name off the. You might as well just phone this thing. And he said, I don't want credit for he said, Look, we'll do it as long as you put your name at the end of the last place is okay. He did a lot of work on that show, but he wasn't satisfied with what, you know, the way they treated him with the makeup, what he the ones he actually did with makeup, but the rest of didn't. And I got Molokai involved with doing the comic book convention, the Star Trek conventions, because he's on Star Trek, and he came to a show. They booked him into New York for one day to see if it would go over how well he did. And for the next 25 years or so before he died, he made so many appearances at conventions because of the one, the appearance I got him to show up at, they booked him into that he loved it. He made so much money, but he kept well, they kept asking to sign false face photos, false face haunted until the day he died, and he just something. He just, he had fun with doing it, but he just, he was just, he was just, it was a minimal experience as far as the makeup of the mask. And here's something that, of all the, all the things he did that that was with people coming to see him at the Batman conventions for but, I mean, you talk for loss in space and Star Trek. I mean, he was the original voice of the keeper and the cage pilot and the Star Trek. And then he coming on Mondays, they had to redub him with somebody else, because otherwise the voices were the same, all kind of stuff. I mean, I befriended people. I mean, I mean, that was the thing about how I operate. Did that with Roger C Carmel, Harry Mudd from Star Trek. He was Colonel gum on the green horned Batman crossover. Roger came from New York. When I knew him, I was only about 20. He was, like, 20 something years older than me. I met him in California, and he was putting on his big Harry mud personality for me, this big, blustery character. Then he found out that I'm Jewish, like him. He both came from Brooklyn. He grew up in Flatbush. I grew up in other parts of Coney Island and stuff. And we started talking about New York and Brooklyn. He dropped the whole crap. And I'd give him some photographs and some old I found some theater reviews, and we hit it off so much like, like, two friends, you know, we he died less than a year later, but he dropped the whole act.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:01:42

That's very funny.

Joel Eisner 1:01:43

I did that. I did I did that with everybody. I managed to. It's funny. It's an ability. I discovered how I do. I just, I don't go in with the idea who these people. I go into at the idea that I'm being friendly with them. And I used to give them stuff too. I mean, Monica, I gave a whole bunch of what was episodes of VHS at the time. He loved it. But I went and talked to everybody. Some people want to be friends. Some people I hung out with the years. I kept with the years I got, kept in touch with Joey tater, the henchman and friendly one of the writers, l St Joseph with the same man stories. Oh, sorry about the Sandman that that claimed. There's a whole bunch of stuff I did that with the Lost in Space people I was friends with. I'm still friends with a few of them when they left, and the directors, because I treat them, you know, everything they do, I don't, I don't put them on this pedestal that all these people do with these places and stuff. I'm always friends with some of the social people too. I can tell you, sorry, something to do with Vincent Price too. I got so much I can go over.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:02:31

We'll do Vincent well, we'll have you back. We'll do Vincent Price. Well, then maybe

Joel Eisner 1:02:35

other time, we can go into the the alternate casting they had for all the villains, like Caesar Romero was not the first Joker. Jose Ferre was the first Joker that that didn't go through because they because of the schedule they went they had to bump the show six months earlier for the ABC and they pushed the movie out so he couldn't make it. They wouldn't give it the Gig Young, and that didn't work out. Mickey Rooney was supposed to be the penguin, and he was set to do it until they moved the shooting date, and he couldn't do it. So they found Burgess. They wanted Suzanne plachette, but a Catwoman, you know, bits and pieces, actually, I believe be Davis was set for Shelly winter's part of my Parker. Now, I just found somebody online. It turns out they were actually offering the part to Joan Crawford first, a different part, and that didn't work out. But, you know, other things that the parts were written for certain Ville people. It was really written for him. So it was all done with him in mind. But all these weird castings, you know, people don't lie. A Wagner was over the part of Batman as a secondary choice. Odd things. People change the care, the credits casting. I mean, there's all, there's

Jeff Dwoskin 1:03:27

so much. There

Joel Eisner 1:03:28

is so much to cover. I haven't talked about this in years. I truthfully, I haven't done a podcast interview with somebody a number of years. I think the last time I did it was on a guy thing called Stu show stud. I did him. I did him a few years ago. I haven't talked to him since, but that's it. Was when the time the Batman DVDs were coming out, he wanted someone to talk about it, so I did it. Very cool. I'm a storyteller. I can go on Awesome.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:03:48

Well, we'll do it again, and we'll dive deep into another topic. Joel, thank you so much. My pleasure. My pleasure. Holy bat history, Batman. How amazing was. Joel Eisner, I know the official Batman bat book is one of my favorite books, and that is so true. I have it. I have one of the original ones. I have had it since the early whenever it came out. Just always had it. It's one of my favorite books. So decades later, when I get to talk to Joel Eisner, wow, wow, wow. So that was super fun. Love diving into Batman 66 love it. Hope you loved it as well. Hope you learned something. So much new information I learned as well, just on the whole series and putting together that type of book. Amazing. Thank you, Joel Eisner, and thank you to all of you for coming back week after week. Means the world to me, and I'll see you next time, same bat time, same bat channel.

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