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When the maitre d’ says: ‘Ringside table, Batman?’ he replies, ‘No thank you. In the first episode of the series, he recalled, “Batman goes into a nightclub in the cowl, cape and bat gloves. “He actually believed nobody could recognize him on the phone, when he was being Bruce Wayne, even though he made no attempt to disguise his voice.” “What I loved about Batman was his total lack of awareness when it came to his interaction with the outside world,” West told London’s Independent newspaper in 2005. “You pull on the mask and the utility belt and the gloves, and you must believe the moment that’s done that you really are Batman,” West said in a late 1980s interview on TV’s “Entertainment Tonight.”

West quickly learned the key to slipping into the Batman persona. It was high camp indeed, with fight scenes punctuated by comic book-style “POW!” “BOP!” and “WHAP!” exclamations flashing on the screen and an array of guest-star villains that included Frank Gorshin as the Riddler, Burgess Meredith as the Penguin, Cesar Romero as the Joker and Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt as Catwoman. “And my goal is to become American’s biggest put-on.” “This whole thing is an insane, mad fantasy world,” West said of the show in a Chicago Daily News interview shortly before its debut.

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With West as the strait-laced crime fighter who spoke with what has been described as ironic earnestness and Burt Ward as his youthfully exuberant sidekick, Robin, “Batman” was a pop culture phenomenon in a decade that was full of them.

The tongue-in-cheek series roared into public consciousness like the Batmobile out of the Batcave.