Screen Tests
March 26, 2024
Dog-1
This is AWESOME!
Burt Ward auditioning for Robin in 1965
Burt Ward's 1995 biography, "My Life In Tights" is really one extended sexual romp through mid-60s Hollywood and it's every bit as delicious as you'd imagine. Think if you were a famous teenager who looked like that and you had women literally throwing themselves at you every place you went. You'd be a whore-dog, too, and apparently Ward was; his conquests with co-star Adam West are the stuff of Hollywood legend. Ward and West were immensely famous and eligible and sampled, it seems, nearly all the maidens.
"Batman" had an absolute avalanche of merchandising to support its meteoric (and brief) 2-year run. I'm old enough to have been there perched in front of the TV with my brother in our costumes for first-run "Batman" episodes. Everybody wanted to be a guest villain on that show. I remember them all. Tallulah Bankhead as Black Widow was one such guest and you can't get much campier than Adam West sharing a glass of milk with the notoriously alcoholic Tallulah.
This rare Marlon Brando screen test was, oddly enough, for an early version of "Rebel Without a Cause" which was shelved for eight years before re-emerging as James Dean's signature vehicle in the mid-50s. It's hard to imagine from this very green Brando here displayed that he would revolutionize film acting with his searing performance of Stanley in "A Streetcar Named Desire" a few years later.
THE FULL AUDITION
ARCHIVE
- 1st Publication: February 12, 2020
- 2nd Publication: March 26, 2024 [with updates/additions]
