More Than The Riddler

Who was your favourite Bat-villain? (No, I will not accept Bob Kane as an answer).

I’m talking about the TV Batman show here, the one that never explained how a direct phone line could be installed in a secret cave without some Ma Bell cable layer knowing it was there and spilling the beans.

Especially toward the end of the series, some arch-criminals were more hammy than threatening. The original major villains were the best. To my young viewing sensibilities in 1966, the most unhinged was Frank Gorshin. His Riddler had that odd cadence to his voice that left you with the impression he wasn’t all there.

Naturally, way back then as a nine-year-old, I didn’t know anything about Frank Gorshin. Fortunately, TV Guide and other magazines came along that let people know about the background behind some of the actors on the show. It was then I discovered Gorshin was an impressionist, a skill which he never got to exhibit against the Caped Crusader. And, unfortunately, being the Riddler overshadowed all his other many talents.

I’ve found a pile of newspaper clippings about Gorshin from his time on Batman, but let me post a couple which pre-date the show so you can learn a bit about him and his attempts to make his career grow. This first one is unbylined, and comes from the Binghamton Press, November 10, 1962.

Gets Chance to 'Go Straight'
Frank Gorshin, one of the country's best known impressionists, began his career as a singer.
However, it is neither as a singer nor an impressionist that Frank has received his highest praise, but as an actor.
That talent will be most apparent to viewers of "The Fire Dancer" episode of Empire, in which Frank guest stars with regulars Richard Egan, Terry Moore, Anne Seymour and Ryan O'Neal, airing in color Tuesday on NBC-TV and Channel 40 at 8:30 p. m.
He doesn't remember a time when he was not entertaining somebody somewhere. While still in high school in his home town, Pittsburgh, Pa., he earned his living singing on weekends at special functions in Pittsburgh and the surrounding area for various civic and private organization functions.
It was while serving in the Special Services unit of the Army, when he was 20, that Frank first began to do impressions. It started when a fellow GI commented that he bore a strong resemblance to actor Richard Widmark.

For some years Frank had been "fooling around" with impressions of James Cagney and Al Jolson but never thought of doing anything about it professionally. However, with a little encouragement from his army buddies, Frank began to work on them.
Many people have commented on the fact that Frank seems to look like the people he is impersonating. For someone with as distinctive an appearance as Frank Gorshin it is not easy to "look like" some of the people he mimics. And Frank does not think he does.
He says "I once looked at a group of pictures of me doing impressions of people like Jolson, Rod Steiger, Charles Laughton and so on, and you know something? I though every picture looked like me."
He attributes his ability to "assume the attitude" of the person he portrays, in addition to perfect mimicry of the voice, with the reception he receives. Just before Frank was to be discharged from the Army, he got a pass to go to New York City for a weekend. Making the most of the opportunity, Frank walked into an agent's office, convinced him it would be worth while watching him perform, and for almost an hour did his complete "act," as he had been performing before GI's in Europe with his Special Services unit.
The agent was so impressed he signed him immediately, and before Frank's leave was over, he was cast In a motion picture, "The Proud and the Profane," in which he played a small role.
However, it was not until he was cast as the beatnik motorcyclist in the film "The Bells Are Ringing" that Frank really began to be noticed. In the few years since that time he has appeared in 15 major motion pictures; performed his act in some of the top night clubs in the country as well as on the Ed Sullivan Show and the Steve Allen Show on television, and was the recipient of critical acclaim for his guest star role on The Defenders last season.
It is as Billy Roy Fix, in Empire, that Frank has an opportunity to show what he can do as an actor. He will neither sing nor do impersonations. It is a straight dramatic role, and Frank feels it is the best show he has ever done.

This story is undated as well. It’s from the Gloverstown Leader Herald, March 30, 1964.

Talented Mimic Hopes or More Acting Roles NEW YORK—Frank Gorshin who stars in next Sunday's "Show of of the Week" on NBC entitled "Jeremy Rabbit, the Secret Avenger," told me four years ago when he was guesting on a Perry Como Show that a he wanted out of life was stardom and he wouldn't settle for anything less.
Four years have not dimmed. his ambition, but Frank now understands that one can make a pretty good buck in show business without the name in lights bit and all the anxieties which generally accompany it. "But I still want the top," he explained, "because you can't go on in this business if you settle for what you have."

Gorshin shares top billing with George Kirby as the two best mimics currently doing variety acts. The difference is that Kirby does not want to be an actor while Gorshin has had a modicum of success as a dramatic actor and finds the "mimic" tag a stumbling block in his quest for roles.
"As soon as I walk in a lot of directors say something like, 'oh . . . he's the mimic' . . . and I'm eliminated before I read," says Frank. "If they'd stop and think, they'd realize that mimics have to be exceptional actors before they can possibly create the illusion of mimicry."
Frank, who can do about 100 impressions, does a facial imitation of all his stars which have the audience applauding even before he does the voice. But this, according to Frank, is a complete fraud and only works because Gorshin is an accomplished actor.
"People say I look exactly like Kirk Douglas or Burt Lancaster when I imitate them," he explained, "but if I did those faces without an introduction the audience would think they were looking at Frank Gorshin contorting his face. It's a stage trick."
From Out of Nowhere
When Frank decides to honor a star by adding him to the Gorshin collection, he studies the performer's work and sees if the voice comes to him. Sometimes, it comes out of nowhere, as it did with Marlon Brando.
"I tried to do Brando for years," he said, "and I couldn't get it. Then, one day, when I wasn't even trying I was suddenly talking like Brando and here it was. I have enough voices to do a TV show like Sullivan's five or six times a season without repeating a voice. I'm doing less and less of Cagney," concluded Gorshin, because anybody at a party can do a Cagney simply by saying, 'You dirty rat.' This hurts me because it's my best imitation.

The Riddler was the debut villain when Batman began airing in January 1966. A story in the Saratogian on the 8th of that month quoted Gorshin as saying “I’m playing the guy straight down the middle, as seriously as possible. I visualize the Batman villains as Shakespeare did his badmen.” (The story also revealed he had turned down the lead in The Double Life of Henry Pfyfe. It didn’t have quite the impact of Batman).

Gorshin was quickly brought back to appear in another two-parter. But I recall reading during the run of the show that he was tired of the role and wanted to do something else. Whatever the reason, John Astin was completely miscast as the Riddler for one, two-part episode in season two before Gorshin returned in season three. A story in the Binghamton Press, July 9, 1966 talks a bit about it.

Gorshin Emerges From the Unknown
By MIMI MEAD
Special Press Writer
New York—A nasty rumor has been going around the country, smiting the hearts of the little ones with sorrow and confounding the high hopes of the campy set. The rumor was to the effect that Frank Gorshin had decided to give up being The Riddler on Batman and turn his attentions exclusively to impersonations and singing on the night-club curcuit.
All may now rest easy: Frank has no intention of leaving the show or the role. He is a thoroughly accomplished entertainer and a superb impersonator, bat it was the Riddler that pushed him over the top.
"I'd been around for a long while," he commented the other day while in New York for a gala Bat show at Shea Stadium. "Over ten years people get to know the face and they sort of think, 'oh yeah' when you appear, but the Riddler was the final catalyst that made me known everywhere, and by name. It's been quite a whirl, and I'll stay with the show as often as they want me — if I have the time," he added in an off-hand way, striking a Bat lover's heart with the icy fingers of doubt.
* * *
BY HAVING the time, he means that he is now involved in a hectic and pressured schedule. He is currently taping guest appearances for a television series next season, and starring in "What Makes Sammy Run" in Los Angeles for two weeks.
"That's a funny one," Gorshin remarked with the lopside smile for which he has become famous. "I play a 65-year-old man in the first episode of the new show, T. H. E. Cat, and then in the beginning of 'Sammy' I'm 19 years old. It's great: when we were taping, I was 19 in the morning and 65 at night." Frank was "discovered," originally, by Steve Allen, who found him working for peanuts in a small Los Angeles nightclub. He was doing some of his incredible impressions of celebrities, and within two weeks he was doing them on television before millions of people.
From then on, it has been upwards all the way until at this point he has done more than 70 guest shots, both dramatic and variety, including The Defenders, Show of the Week, Combat, Alfred Hitchcock, Andy Williams, Jack Parr [sic], Sammy Davis, Jr., and on and on and on.
* * *
"I'VE BEEN offered several TV series," he said, punctuating his conversation with the pointing finger-jabs used by the Riddler, "but I'm not interested. I've been offered two Broadway shows, but I don't want to constrict my endeavours, if ya know what I mean. I am not 'planning' anything in my career. I want to enjoy the fruits of my labors."

His impressions are among his labors, and he is unable to explain how they come about. Unlike many impersonators, he doesn't sit down study his subject, looking for particular gestures or tricks of the face.
"I don't look for things. It all started a long time ago, when I was a kid, and I used to spend all my time in the movies. Well, when I used to come out of the theater, for a short time I WAS whatever person I had just seen: James Cagney, George Raft, anybody. I still do it. For instance, I think of Cary Grant or Burt Lancaster and right away I've just assumed their personality. I can't tell you how I do it, because I don't know.
* * *
"BUT I'LL tell you one thing," he went on, in the nasal, staccato voice that can change so quickly to any timbre, "everybody is an individual in this world. There's nobody you can't imitate if you really want to. Even if you have a plain face, or a face with no special characteristics at all, you stand out because you are so unexceptional compared to other people. There's nobody that can't be impersonated."
Frank and the rest of the Batman gang have just finished shooting a Batman feature movie, which will have the usual gaggle of villains: the Penguin, the Joker, the Riddler and Catwoman.
"It's going to be a funny, funny show," Frank said with glee. "It's got all the same Bat stuff in it. but they've added a few things, like a Batcopter and a Batboat. It's premiering in Austin, Tex. Aug. 1, and they're hoping President Johnson will come.
"You know," he mused, "it's a funny thing about this whole Batman series. You don't need a frame of reference to enjoy it. It's the No. 1 show in Japan,for instance, and they never grew up on the comic book or saw the terrible old movies.
"It's funny. Out of all my appearances on TV, I did three—one for Naked City, one for The Defenders and one for The Doctors and the Nurses—and everybody said, 'Oh gee, you ought to get an award for that performance' and well, I sort of thought and sort of hope. But this Batman thing came along and it was the last thing in my mind, but I got an Emmy nomination. It sure is funny."