Batman And The Desilu Backlot

General goings on in the 1966 Batman World

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epaddon
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Re: Batman And The Desilu Backlot

Post by epaddon »

Ted Cassidy as Lurch I think was explained once as burning off his ABC contract following the cancellation of "Addams Family" (which also accounted for Carolyn Jones getting work on the series too).
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epaddon
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Re: Batman And The Desilu Backlot

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Another 1965 overhead photo, even better than the previous ones, and I think this one should bring in more clearly the layout and how one can ultimately track the different places of the entire False Face episode chase sequence.

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High C
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Re: Batman And The Desilu Backlot

Post by High C »

epaddon wrote:Ted Cassidy as Lurch I think was explained once as burning off his ABC contract following the cancellation of "Addams Family" (which also accounted for Carolyn Jones getting work on the series too).
And John Astin, for that matter. I always thought, considering how much they loved stunt casting anyway, they should have put Jones and Astin together in a teamup.
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Ben Bentley
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Re: Batman And The Desilu Backlot

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I'm totally digging this thread! I LOVE this kind of stuff behind the scenes/studio history stuff.

David Sutton documented "Batman" the TV Show's use of the 40 Acres lot. Its sad to drive by that site and to think of all the movie history that was flattened and sold for real estate.

The "Bat-Locations" section of Davids now defunct site was always my favorite. I will always be eternally grateful to Dave for the sheer hours of research and pure love he put into assembling the knowledge and insight he gained and subsequently sharing it with fans like you and I back in the dark-ages of online-fandom.

http://web.archive.org/web/200709280423 ... ations.htm
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epaddon
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Re: Batman And The Desilu Backlot

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Yes, there were a lot of great things about the site. Too bad the picture links are defunct on the web archive page.

Most people I think don't automatically realize Batman used this particular lot because they never had a credit "Filmed at Desilu Studios" which every other production invariably had in their end credits even if they weren't Desilu produced shows. I can only imagine there was some legal loophole whereby Fox didn't want to acknowledge the fact one of their own productions was using another studio in a screen credit.
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exm
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Re: Batman And The Desilu Backlot

Post by exm »

They had such a weird, disjointed business arrangement, maybe for all Greenway knew, the show was being filmed in Gotham City. Even David's site was calling it Culver Studios instead of Desilu. "A Greenway/20th Century Fox/Desilu" production - yeah, that could have created a delay on the DVD release:)
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exm
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Re: Batman And The Desilu Backlot

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David's site mentions the burning Riddler's car creating a hotel fire - I wonder if that behind-the-scenes footage that surfaced several months ago (mostly of traffic crawling by the pilot's filming site) is only still around due to worries that the hotel would come after Greenway with legal action
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epaddon
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Re: Batman And The Desilu Backlot

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Well Desilu (which was later bought out by Paramount) would never have had any legal claims on the series even if Desilu studios had been properly credited for where the show was filmed since they would have strictly operated on the basis of leasing space to Greenway/Fox, and not playing a role in actual production. I have to think Fox just wasn't anxious to telegraph the fact that one of their own in-house productions wasn't being done at their actual studio so who knows maybe they got Desilu to agree not to object to lack of screen credit so long as Desilu was getting paid.

The interesting thing is that had Batman continued into a fourth season, that would have concided with the sale of Desilu to Paramount and that could have conceivably changed the working relationship if a rival movie studio wouldn't have been anxious to let a Fox produced show keep working there.
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Ben Bentley
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Re: Batman And The Desilu Backlot

Post by Ben Bentley »

HONK wrote:Even David's site was calling it Culver Studios instead of Desilu.
I think people in the business (as well as the geographical vicinity) have always just referred to it as "Culver Studios" regardless of the current ownership, hence the way Dave referenced it in his writing, citing it the same way in which everyone he spoke to and the production documents he acquired did.
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