Trivia: Whitman College graduate Adam West began getting his first acting breaks in 1959. That was the year that West, newly signed to a Warner Bros. contract, was cast in the small but pivotal role of Diane Brewster's impotent husband in The Young Philadelphians. After two years' worth of guest-star assignments in Warners' TV product (he was hung by his heels and humiliated by James Garner in a memorable Maverick episode), West accepted the role of Sergeant Steve Nelson on the weekly TVer Robert Taylor's Detectives. In 1962, the series was cancelled, compelling West to free-lance in such films as Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964, as the astronaut who doesn't make it back) and Island of the Blue Dolphins (1964). In 1965, he landed his biggest and best role to date: Millionaire Bruce Wayne, aka the "Caped Crusader", on the smash TV series Batman. Approaching the role with the seriousness and sobriety usually afforded MacBeth or Hamlet, West struck the happy medium between "camp" and conviction. Though in recent years West has apparently basked in the adulation he has received for his two-year stint as Batman, at the time the series was cancelled in 1968, he vowed to distance himself as far from the character as possible, accepting villainous TV and film roles and even fitfully pursuing a singing career. His movie projects ranged from sublime (Marriage of a Young Stockbroker, Hooper) to ridiculous (The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington); no matter what the role, however, West's performance was invariably compared to his Batman work. Finally adopting an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" stance, West began making appearances at nostalgia conventions, supplied his vocal talents to the 1977 animated series The New Adventures of Batman, and publicly expressed disappointment that he was not offered a cameo role in the 1989 big-screen blockbuster Batman (he did however, provide a voice-over for the 1992 Fox TV series Batman: The New Adventures, not as Batman but as a washed-up superhero called the Gray Ghost). Adam West's most recent TV projects have included the weekly series The Last Precinct (1986) and Danger Theatre (1993); he also served as a spokesperson for the Nickelodeon cable network, a service specializing in nostalgia-inducing reruns.He continued to work steadily, often trading in on his own history as a caped crusader. He appeared in the comedy The New Age and Drop Dead Gorgeous. At the dawn of the 21st century he took a regular gig voicing the role of Mayor Adam West on the animated series The Family Guy., a gig that led to more animated work in projects such as Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons. He spoofed his superhero history yet again in 2008's Super Capers and appeared as himself on an episode of The Big Bang Theory. West died in 2017, at age 88.

Trivia: Burt Ward is best remembered as Adam West's diminutive cohort, Robin, on the '60s television series Batman (1966-1968). He was born Bert Gervis. Following the demise of the series, Ward disappeared until the late '80s when he started showing up in such movies as Robo Chick (1989), Virgin High (1990), and Beach Babes From Beyond (1993). In 1995, Ward created a minor scandal when he published Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights, a tell-all book describing the many alleged sexcapades of himself and West (who strongly denies Ward's claims). Ward owns a publishing company, Logical Figments as well as Boy Wonder Visual Effects, Inc., which provides visual effects and 3-D animation for movies and TV shows. In addition to his film and television work, Ward left his mark on the music industry bt recording two songs with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

Trivia: Classically handsome film leading man Neil Hamilton was trained in stock companies before making his 1918 film bow. He rose to stardom under the guidance of D. W. Griffith, who cast Hamilton in leading roles in The Great Romance (1919), The White Rose (1923), America (1924) and Isn't Life Wonderful? (1924). In an era when sturdy dependability was one of the prerequisites of male stardom, Hamilton was one of the silent screen's most popular personalities, as well suited to the role of faithful Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby (1925) as he was to the Foreign Legion derring-do of Beau Geste (1927). His pleasant voice and excellent diction enabled Hamilton to make the transition to sound with ease. Unfortunately, he always seemed a bit of a stick in his talkie portrayals, and it wasn't long before he found himself shunted off to "other man" assignments (Tarzan and His Mate) and villainous characterizations (The Saint Strikes Back). By the early 1940s, he had lost both fame and fortune -- and, as he'd ruefully observe later, most of his so-called industry friends. Only the love of his wife and his rock-solid religious convictions saw him through his darkest days. Hamilton made a comeback as a character actor, playing brusque, businesslike types in TV series like Perry Mason and Fireside Theatre. From 1966 through 1968, Neil Hamilton co-starred as poker-faced Commissioner Gordon on the TV series Batman.

Trivia: Though no one in his family had ever pursued a theatrical career (one of his more illustrious relatives was British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain), Alan Napier was stagestruck from childhood. After graduating from Clifton College, the tall, booming-voiced Napier studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, then was engaged by the Oxford Players, where he worked with such raw young talent as John Gielgud and Robert Morley. He continued working with the cream of Britain's acting crop during his ten years (1929-1939) on the West End stages. Napier came to New York in 1940 to co-star with Gladys George in Lady in Waiting. Though his film career had begun in England in the 1930s, Napier had very little success before the cameras until he arrived in Hollywood in 1941. He essayed dignified, sometimes waspish roles of all sizes in such films as Cat People (1942), The Uninvited (1943), and House of Horror (1946); among his off-the-beaten-track assignments were the bizarre High Priest in Orson Welles' Macbeth (1948) and a most elegant Captain Kidd in the 1950 Donald O'Connor vehicle Double Crossbones. In 1966, Alan Napier was cast as Bruce Wayne's faithful butler, Alfred, on the smash-hit TV series Batman, a role he played until the series' cancellation in 1968. Alan Napier's career extended into the 1980s, with TV roles in such miniseries as QB VII and such weeklies as The Paper Chase.

Trivia: Handlebar-mustached character actor Roger C. Carmel was seen in quite a few stage productions of the 1950s and 1960s, including the original Broadway production of Purlie Victorious. On TV from 1963 on, Carmel is best known to TV fans for his role as villainous Colonel Gumm on Batman and his portrayal of the petulant title character in the "I Mudd" episode of Star Trek. During the first season of the 1967-68 sitcom Mothers-in-Law, Carmel played Kaye Ballard's husband; when he demanded more money for his services, he was promptly replaced by Richard Deacon. Busy in the cartoon voiceover field in the 1970s, Carmel was heard as the voice of Smokey the Bear. After several years' inactivity, Roger C. Carmel was found dead in his Hollywood home, the victim of an apparent drug overdose.

Trivia: Van Williams is best remembered for having played the title role in the 20th Century Fox television series The Green Hornet (1966-1967). At the end of the 1950s, he was one of the more promising leading men signed by Warner Bros.' television division. In a group that included Troy Donahue, Edd "Kookie" Byrnes, and Roger Smith, Williams probably had the strangest route to being discovered. Born in Fort Worth, TX, to a cattle-ranching family, he graduated from Texas Christian University and became a professional diver based in Hawaii. He was earning extra money working at industrialist Henry J. Kaiser's Hawaiian Village, and happened to be teaching two of Kaiser's guests -- producer Mike Todd and his wife, actress Elizabeth Taylor -- how to dive, when Todd suggested that the 23-year-old Williams go for a screen test. The producer was killed in a plane crash before the screen test could be done, but Williams still managed to get his shot at an acting career, on the small screen, with help from actress Lurene Tuttle after he arrived in Hollywood. At her urging, he took speech and drama lessons and was ready when a spot opened up in a television production starring Ronald Reagan. A small role followed, and then a contract with Warner Bros. television -- after playing a guest role in an episode of the series Lawman, Williams was cast in the detective series Bourbon Street Beat, set in New Orleans, which wasn't successful. This was followed, however, by Surfside 6, a similar series about private investigators set in Miami, FL, which ended up running for four seasons and took full advantage of Williams' good looks and muscular build. Williams followed it up with a supporting role in The Tycoon, a comedy series starring Walter Brennan and Jerome Cowan, which lasted for only one season -- he had little to do in that program, alas, except play it straight to Brennan's cantankerous multi-millionaire senior citizen, for whom his character worked. Following the cancellation of The Tycoon, Williams was up for the role of a submarine commander in a proposed World War II action series, Pursuit and Destroy, that never made it into production. Instead, he took the role with which he has been most identified for more than 30 years, Britt Reid (aka the Green Hornet) in the 1966-1967 ABC series The Green Hornet. The program ran for only one season, but developed a strong cult following, largely due to the presence of Williams' co-star, Bruce Lee, who dazzled audiences every week with his exhibitions of martial arts skills. Williams had the bad fortune to be caught playing a dual role that didn't really constitute a complete character between them. His portrayal of Britt Reid suffered from the limited time that the character was on the screen, while he was, in turn, limited in what he could do as an actor playing the Green Hornet, who had to remain a man of mystery to those around him. One actually knew more, in terms of background and interior emotional life, about Lee's Kato than one did about Williams' Britt Reid/the Green Hornet. Following the cancellation of the series, Williams made some guest appearances on shows such as Mannix and The Big Valley, and sitcoms like Nanny & The Professor. The best performance of his whole career, however, was probably in the 1974 Gunsmoke episode "Thirty a Month and Found," which garnered strong critical praise on its original airing. Williams obviously found some favor with Gunsmoke star James Arness, because he played in three episodes of Arness' later series How the West Was Won. His last attempt at a series of his own came in 1975 with Westwind, but during the 1980s, as his acting career slowed, he took on numerous outside business interests, including cattle ranches in Texas, Idaho, and Hawaii. He still made a rare foray or two back into television, most notably in "Love Is the Word," a 1979 episode of The Rockford Files, starring his old Warner Bros. stablemate James Garner. He has also served as an auxiliary volunteer for the Los Angeles County Sheriffs' Department. Because of the association of The Green Hornet with Lee's memory, and the reissue of several episodes of the show in edited form on DVD, Williams remains a fondly remembered leading man from 1960s television. Williams died in 2016, at age 82.

Trivia: Born in San Francisco to Eurasian parents, Bruce Lee moved to Hong Kong when he was three. There, the young actor played tough juvenile roles in several films, using the professional name Li Siu-Lung (Little Dragon). As scrappy offscreen as on, Lee learned to channel his pugnaciousness into the rigidly disciplined field of martial arts while attending St. Francis Xavier College. Returning to the U.S., Lee majored in Philosophy at the University of Washington and supported himself as a kung fu instructor. While participating in a martial arts competition in Long Beach, CA, Lee was selected to play the role of faithful valet Kato on the 1966 TV series The Green Hornet. (After his death, several episodes of the series were cobbled together into a "feature film," with Lee afforded top billing over nominal Green Hornet star Van Williams.) He received his first American film role in Marlowe (1969) on the recommendation of screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, who attended Lee's kung fu classes. Having lost the leading role in the TV series Kung Fu to David Carradine, Lee decided to prove his box-office value by starring in several low-budget martial arts efforts financed by Hong Kong producer Raymond Chow. On the strength of these efforts, Warner Bros. signed Lee to star in his signature film, Enter the Dragon (1973), which made money by the truckload. He made his directorial debut in what many consider his best film, 1973's Return of the Dragon. It would be the last film that the actor would complete. While in Hong Kong filming The Game of Death, Lee collapsed on the set, apparently suffering an epileptic seizure. After taking a pain killer, he fell asleep -- and never woke up. Rumors still persist that Lee was killed by a group of kung fu experts who resented the actor for exposing their "trade secrets" to the world. Whatever the circumstances of his death, Lee's legend did not die with him. For several years thereafter, "new" films appeared composed of outtakes and stock footage from previous Lee films; in addition, audiences were subjected to scores of imitators, most of them with soundalike names (Bruce Li, Bruce Le, et al.) In a grimly ironic twist, Bruce Lee's son, actor Brandon Lee, also died under mysterious circumstances while making a film in 1993.

Trivia: American actress Diane McBain was first presented to the paying public as a Warner Bros. contract starlet. Evidently built up as Warner's answer to Carroll Baker, the young blonde actress appeared in such films as Ice Palace (1960), Parrish (1961) and Claudelle Inglish (1963) (in the title role), and also spent two years in the role of "girl Friday" Daphne Dutton on the Warners TV private-eye series Surfside Six (1960-62). McBain also did box-office duty with Elvis Presley in Spinout (1966). Her career petered out towards the late '60s, with such negligible roles as the head of a biker gang in The Miniskirt Mob (1968), but Diane McBain managed to survive into the '80s, when she played the recurring role of Claire Howard on General Hospital.

Trivia: Fair-haired and often mustached character actor Seymour Cassel began making film and TV appearances as scruffy hippie types in the 1960s. He studied at the American Theatre Wing and the Actor's Studio before making his film debut in John Cassavetes' first film, Shadows (1959), for which he also served as associate producer. He then co-starred with Cassavetes in Too Late Blues (1961) and The Killers (1964). When Cassavetes turned to directing full-time, he utilized Cassel's talents as often as possible. The actor was Oscar-nominated for his portrayal of an aging hippie in Faces (1968) and later played Moskowitz in Minnie and Moskowitz (1971). A somewhat heavier Seymour Cassel continued as a character actor over the next few decades with roles in Tin Men, Colors, and the made-for-TV movie Blood Feud. In the '90s, he played Sam Catchem in Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy, dog-sled adventurer Skunker in the Disney classic White Fang, and a chauffeur in Indecent Proposal. His role as the shyster Joe in the black comedy In the Soup also earned special recognition at Sundance. Cassel then appeared in two romantic comedies with director Andrew Bergman: It Could Happen to You and Honeymoon in Vegas. For the rest of the '90s, his career prospered with small, but memorable, roles in such independent comedies and dramas as Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, Trees Lounge, and Dream for an Insomniac. During this period, he developed a rapport with filmmaker Wes Anderson, who would cast him in many of his projects. Cassel would play Max Fisher's barber father in Rushmore, Royal's friend Dusty in The Royal Tenenbaums, and Steve's late friend Esteban in The Life Aquatic, Cassel would also continue to work consistently in all areas of film, appearing notably in comedies like Stealing Harvard, Stuck on You, Beer League, and L!fe Happens.

Trivia: In films from 1965, American actor Alex Rocco specialized in tough-guy roles, sometimes leavening his hard-bitten portrayals with a dash of roguish humor. Rocco's film assignments included such parts as gangster Legs Diamond in St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967) and Moe Greene in The Godfather (1974). He has been a regular or semi-regular on a number of television shows, beginning with 1975's Three for the Road, in which he starred as free-lance photographer (and full-time family man) Pete Karras. Alex Rocco has since been seen in such TVers as The Facts of Life as Mr. Polniaczek, Sibs as Howie Roscio, The Famous Teddy Z as Al Floss, and The George Carlin Show as Harry Rossetti. He played the father of Jennifer Lopez's character in The Wedding Planner (2001) and was a recurring character on the short-lived series Magic City (2012-13). Rocco died in 2015, at age 79.

Trivia: Lead actress and dancer, onscreen from the '60s.