The Dashing Joker

The main villains on the Batman TV show were all quite different from each other, and I think the variety helped the series.

Burgess Meredith’s Penguin was snarky. Frank Gorshin’s Riddler was unhinged. Cesar Romero’s was happy, even gleeful, in committing crime.

Of the three, Romero was the biggest name at the time, having appeared in all kinds of movies in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Over the years, Romero was interviewed many, many times, especially by local entertainment columnists whenever he appeared in dinner theatre in a city.

For a good summary of Romero’s career, here’s a wire service story published on June 23, 1984 (depending on the newspaper). You’d never know he worked in television or on a Batman movie (1966) reading this.

Romero celebrates 50 years in film
By BOB THOMAS
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Fifty years ago, a young Broadway dancer came to Hollywood to appear with William Powell and Myrna Loy in "The Thin Man." Unlike most of his contemporaries, Cesar Romero is still here. Not only is he here but he's working, as he has done since 1934, minus service in the Coast Guard during World War II.
He recently was feted on his 50th anniversary in show business with a party on the Santa Fe, N.M., location of "Lust in the Dust," his 134th movie. Or is it 152nd? He's lost count.
"The New Mexico Film Commission presented me with a trophy for my 50 years in films," Romero said in an interview. "I said I was happy to get it — considering the alternative."
He has played almost every kind of role, but “Lust in the Dust” is a first. “I play a priest who used to be a rabbi. No explanation is given. I think it's going to be a very funny picture — not campy but funny.
"The cast is great: Tab Hunter, Lanie Kazan, Henry Silva and Divine, who happens to be a female impersonator. The director, Paul Bartel ('Eating Raoul’) is a charming guy. I had a great time."
Through great films and duds, Romero has brought the same brand of enthusiasm to his work. Still classically handsome at 77, he'll get another award for his career achievement this month from Nosotros, the organization that has sought more work for Latino actors.
"I guess I was lucky; I was never typecast in films," he remarked. "I played a wide variety in most of my career. It has only been in later years that I seemed to be thought of as an Hispanic. That surprised me. I was born in New York City, my mother was born in Brooklyn. I never considered myself a part of the Latin group."
Still, he is proud of his Latin heritage:
"My grandfather, Jose Marti, was the liberator of Cuba," Romero said. "The Cuban war of independence was planned in my grandmother's house. In 1965, I attended the ceremonies when a statue of my grandfather was unveiled at 69th and Avenue of the Americas in New York. It was quite a day. The pro-Castro Cubans lined up on one side of the statue, and the anti-Castro Cubans on the other, and it ended in a riot.”

Romero's yen to act started in boarding school when he played four roles in "The Merchant of Venice." His father, who lost his fortune when the sugar market collapsed, found his son a job in a Wall Street bank. He spent his evenings at debutante dances and met an ink heiress, Elizabeth Higgins, who suggested they form a dance team.
After a career in nightclubs and in musicals, Romero won a contract at MGM. Summarily dropped, he landed at Universal, then caught the eye of Darryl Zanuck. When Zanuck's 20th Century merged with Fox, Romero was added to the contract list. He stayed 18 years.
He said his best three movies were "Show Them No Mercy," "Captain From Castille" and "any one of the musicals — 'Weekend in Havana,' 'Springtime in the Rockies,' 'The Great American Broadcast,' etc." The three worst? "A couple I did at Universal: ‘Armored Car' and 'She's Dangerous,' with Tala Birell," he said, "also one for Sam Katzman at Columbia, 'Prisoners of the Casbah' with Gloria Grahame and Turhan Bey."
For 37 years Romero lived in a Brentwood, Calif., house he originally bought for $15,000 and sold for $400,000.
He's on the road much of the year playing dinner theaters, returning to the apartment he shares with his sister, Maria. He has never married.
"How could I, when I had so many family responsibilities?" he said. "I was living with my parents, two sisters, a niece and a nephew. Could I tell a girl, 'Let's get married and you can come and live with my mother, my father, two sisters, a niece and a nephew'?
"I have no regrets, no regrets. Right now I'm seeing a lady quite a bit younger, and we have a good relationship. It'll stay that way."
Romero said he would never retire. "What the hell would I do if I quit? I can take time off when I want, and work when I want," he said. "It's an ideal situation."

What did Romero think of working on Batman? Interviews he gave over the years are consistent. He thought of it as fun. Here’s the Associated Press again; the story was published starting May 8, 1966.

Long a Lover, Now ‘The Joker’
By GENE HANDSAKER
HOLLYWOOD (AP)— For years Cesar Romero played suave leading men. Handsome lovers in white tie and tails. And, as he puts it, "playboys, heavies, gigolos and lounge lizards."
Now he was hardly recognizable in pasty white makeup, a clown's painted grin and a wild thatch of green wig.
This was romantic Romero as, zounds, The Joker of "Batman!"
MOVIE VERSION—Cast and crew of that television hit are making a movie version. Over lunch the smooth Latin from Manhattan said of his new career as comic villain.
"I love it. It’s a kooky, way-out character, the easiest I ever played. I can be as hammy as I like and do all the things we were told not to do: mug, overact, accentuate. It's fun because you're not tied down, inhibited."
As Batman's fiendish but never quite successful adversary In the film, Romero has a grand time staging a kidnapping, flying by umbrella like Mary Poppins and wielding a disintegrator that turns humans to powder.

NEW YORK BORN—"And I don't have to worry about circles under the eyes or whether my hair is combed," he noted.
Romero, 59, a towering 6-foot-3 and 200 pounds, has been in pictures 32 years. “This town,” he said, “has been very good to me.”
He was born in New York City to a Cuban mother and Spanish father. As a boy vaudeville fan, hanging around stage doors, he knew that show business was for him. After a turn as a $17.30-a-week bank clerk he teamed up with a girl dancer and appeared in supper clubs.
STAGE DANCER — He became a stage dancer in musicals along with a youth named George Murphy, now U.S. senator from California, who later in Hollywood gave Romero his nickname—Butch.
Dancing led to stage acting—"Strictly Dishonorable," "Dinner at Eight," etc. M-G-M brought him to Hollywood in 1934 for a role in “The Thin Man.”
Romero became one of the town's most attractive bachelors, escorting Joan Crawford, Virginia Bruce, Loretta Young, Ann Sothern, Barbara Stanwyck. He still occasionally takes Jane Wyman to dinner parties at friends' homes.
NOT ELIGIBLE—In 1940 he built a house in Brentwood where he lives with a spinster sister. Marriage? "It just never happened," he said. "There's nothing very eligible about me now, and I have no intention of changing my status.
"In many ways I regret not marrying. I would have liked to have children."

I’ve gone through more than a dozen interviews made over the decades with Romero and in all of them, he’s asked why he’s single. He pulled his punches, but that’s not surprising given the era (and, perhaps, it probably hasn’t changed for really big names in Hollywood).

The stories also crow about his great physical condition. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the situation at the end. He was hospitalised with severe bronchitis and pneumonia and died from complications related to a blood clot on New Year’s Day 1994 at age 86.