Dark Night RANK on December 30, 2008

Aftermarket Casket Accessories, Cadillac, Eartha Kitt and Heath Ledger
by Pat Darnell

January 2008 an actor died. It is an actor who one-upped, and transshipped a role Jack Nicholson had pegged before -- as Australian Heath Ledger took it over the ledge. But in the end Heath Ledger will have paid the freight in total.

Heathwick Ledger was buried, allegedly, in a Cadillac of a mahogany casket, loaded with appurtenances. Why is this still relevant in December 2008, twelve months later? I don't know either, but if you ask someone who does, Dark Knight recently came out on DVD , and everyone is getting a second look at the numbing performance of Heath Ledger in role of villain, Joker, nemesis of the Batman.

Batman kid stuff has amassed a long history in film, so that it's not kid stuff anymore.. in fact it is almost more famous than Waco and the Branch Davidian. Furthermore, "In fact dozens of actors portrayed villains and henchmen on Batman, four criminals appeared frequently although they were sometimes played by different people." For instance original television bandits list these heavy's:

* Burgess Meredith as the Penguin
* Cesar Romero as the Joker
* Julie Newmar, Eartha Kitt, and Lee Meriwether (in Batman: The Movie) as the Catwoman
* Frank Gorshin and John Astin as the Riddler

How did that one end? Demolition, of course:

At the end of the third season, ABC planned to cut the budget by eliminating Chief O'Hara and Robin. Batgirl would become Batman's full time partner. Both Dozier and West opposed this idea, and ABC canceled the show a short time later. Weeks later, NBC offered to pick the show up for a fourth season and even restore it to its twice a week format, if the sets were still available for use. However, NBC's offer came too late: Fox had already demolished the sets a week before. NBC didn't want to pay the $800,000 to rebuild, so the offer was withdrawn. Batman was replaced on ABC by the sitcom The Second Hundred Years. (wkpda)

Other popular villains included George Sanders, Otto Preminger, and Eli Wallach as Mr. Freeze, Victor Buono as King Tut, and Vincent Price as Egghead. (ibid: note -- a modest Aside from portraying super-criminals, another coveted spot was the Batclimb Cameo)

She also dies in 2008 -- Eartha Kitt Sexy and sultry Eartha Kitt died on Christmas Day in her Connecticut home at the age of 81... "was known as a fighter and many fans loved the famous -- growl and purr -- she became synonymous with in the “Batman” series decades ago. Kitt was among the first set of African American sex symbols in Hollywood that was able to transcend race across America. Along with her, actresses Lena Horne, Diahnn Carroll and Dorothy Dandridge were mavericks."

...she [Eartha] was sure that picking cotton in the fields of South Carolina, where she called home, would not be her future. By 1953, Kitt had taken movie audiences by storm and had her first hit song, “Santa Baby,” for which she finally received a gold record just before she died. (SOURCE)

Her most popular hit song was “C'est Si Bon,” which Kitt was often performing at cabaret shows and on stage whenever she performed... One of the liveliest performers ever on the stage.
Forty years ago, America's cultural icons expressed the frustration of the American people with the failure of President Lyndon Johnson to end this country's undeclared war in Vietnam by boldly demanding peace.

"The nation's most respected newsman, CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, explained to a national television audience after the Tet Offensive that the war had gone horribly awry.

"Singer Johnny Cash, whose music and style had made him a hero of blue-collar Americans, described himself as "a dove with claws" and began singing the anti-war song "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream." (Nichols, John; December 29, 2008 Eartha Kitt: The patriot who was right all along)

Kitt moved abroad in the late sixties after a spat with then-First Lady, Lady Byrd Johnson, complaining about the treatment of troops during the Vietnam War.

But the most direct and powerful anti-war statement of the period was delivered by singer Eartha Kitt at the height of her celebrity. [Eartha] was invited to a White House luncheon hosted by Lady Bird Johnson. But the first lady was surprised when she asked Kitt about the Vietnam War. "You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed," the singer told the first lady and the 50 other women at the luncheon. "They rebel in the street. They don't want to go to school because they're going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam."

The first lady reportedly burst into tears. The president was furious. Kitt was blacklisted. She was investigated by the FBI and the CIA and ended up on the "enemies list" of Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon. (ibid)

Then where does that RANK all this in the end of 1968? The Dark Knight is considered the best film of year 2008, forty years later, that's what. And MooPig "Movie Critiques Department" has agreed on that little absolutism. It turns out Batman is not a favorite of post-World War II veterans, no matter how one packages it. And it turns out not too many of those WW II guys are still around. That makes this story even more indicative of driftwood story lines: as our WWII veteran numbers wane, Batman popularity waxes. So what was changing, one asks in 1968?

Whereas ABC and Fox were expecting a hip and fun, yet still serious, adventure show, Dozier, who loathed comic books, concluded the only way to make the show work was to do it as a pop art camp comedy. Originally, espionage novelist Eric Ambler [Eric Clifford Ambler OBE (28 June 1909 - 22 October 1998) ]was to write the motion picture that would launch the TV series, but he dropped out after learning of Dozier's camp comedy approach.

The same pattern was repeated in the following episode until the villain was defeated in a major brawl where the action was punctuated by superimposed onomatopoeic words, as in comic book fight scenes "POW!", "BAM!", "ZOKK!"

The series utilized a narrator -- producer William Dozier, uncredited -- who parodied the breathless narration style of the 1940s serials. He would end many of the cliffhanger episodes by intoning, "Tune in tomorrow — same bat-time, same bat-channel!", or, just "... same time, same channel!".

In the 1960's parody had taken hold of almost every TV show. JFK is elected from the ranks of WW II veterans of foreign wars, and catches what would be conveyed on RCA TV's nationwide: Charisma. Our 60's decade was the height of the WW II veterans' return to normalcy.

Charisma with exciting new technology uniquely threatened status-quo, and a new era had been born from war trashed and interrupted lives.

Adam West enjoys the story that he was part of two of the three Big B's of the 1960s: Batman, The Beatles and Bond. West says he was actually invited to play Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service based on his popularity as Batman, but declined the role as he felt it should be played by a British actor -- ironically, the role went to an Australian, George Lazenby.

Synopsis First Place RANK 2008? Bat Man 1946 or so -- is portrayed as a depressed heir that will improve crime-fighting technology to a high degree. He has subverted pulp industry to pick up his story. He makes it through to post-war parody, as he then peaks and his story hits the big screen.

The Bat Man is crime fighter tech master, and he remains ahead of reality; precedes any new episode; and out maneuvers all imitators and villains. Several performers bring the tale to broader audiences, including Eartha Kitt. The good Samaritan portrayal of Bat Man has achieved techno materialism to a higher degree than can be found in reality; as his inheritance would have provided if it were true.

It ends worse in reality, as Joker the Saga's own creation of an indigestible villain, evaporates from himself and his self-inflicted rancor, as an unworthy son might; as Heath Ledger has.

This would complete a fifty year cycle of festering hero worship that ends in techno barbarism akin to Mad Max style cinema of the Australian influx -- such as: Plenty of space; no where to run -- if it did not also have a death of a bona-fide rebel also attached to its history.

The best years of the cycle clearly would have been the early and mid term years of parody, and campy TV, with Eartha Kitt, and BatClimb Cameo blindside climber drop ins. I would have put Heath Ledger in a Cadillac casket too, but if I were in charge, I would have kept the mahogany out of the ground... and stow it for after market auctions, if you know what I mean?

Heath Ledger: "His face chalk-white, his hair green and his mouth a sliced red grimace, the handsome 28-year-old Australian actor looked frighteningly true to the character in the Alan Moore graphic novel, "Batman: The Killing Joke."