R.I.P. Batman ’66 Creator Lorenzo Semple, Jr.

Lorenzo Semple Jr., creator of the 1966 Batman TV series and the writer of films including Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor, died on Friday in his home in Los Angeles, according to Variety. He had turned 91 on Thursday.”I think ‘Batman’ was the best thing I ever wrote, including those big movies,” he told the Archive of American Television in 2011. “As a whole work, it came out the way that I wanted it to and I was excited by it. I once went down to a fancy wine tasting benefit in Princeton. When people found out I wrote ‘Batman’ they mobbed me! I was astounded, but that was the way it was.”Nevertheless, even he acknowledged that the show was always destined to be short-lived, calling it “a one-trick pony at heart. “In a piece he wrote for Variety, Semple remembered producer William Dozier’s pitch to the network, and how it immediately took off.”Bill eloquently pitched the script and its high-camp POW!! BLAM!! WHAMMO!! style, those onscreen graphics already written in,” he wrote. “The network was a bit flabbergasted, so different was this from their usual pilot, but they got it. For a time, Hollywood’s brightest stars vied for a chance to appear in the 30-second cameos Bill so shrewdly inserted,” he went on. “Despite efforts to juice it up with a Batgirl and a Batcycle and other ornaments, the series was a one-trick pony at heart, and barely staggered through a second season.”Three Days of the Condor, of course, was written for Captain America: The Winter Soldier‘s Robert Redford, and the film was a heavy influence on the way Joe and Anthony Russo filmed the superhero sequel. It’s been suggested that Redford was courted to play Alexander Pierce specifically because of his role in Three Days of the Condor.