TV URBAN LEGEND: A carpet salesman made a cameo on Batman in 1967 due to a deal he cut with a Batman producer over some rugs.
It is hard to quite describe just HOW big the 1960s Batman TV series was in the popular consciousness of 1966-1967, but the fact that it was described as "Bat-Mania" typically gives you a pretty good idea of just HOW big of a deal the TV series was to the public after it debuted in early 1966, airing two half hour episodes a week, with the first one ending in a cliffhanger that was resolved in the second one. It ended the season with literally two of the top ten rated TV series (the Wednesday episode was ranked #10 and the Thursday episode was ranked #5). By the end of the second season, though, after 60 weeks of the series, the show had lost almost all of its luster and was nearly canceled, but it was instead brought back for one more season with just one episode a week.
So March 29, 1967's second-to-last episode of Season 2, "Ice Spy," featuring Eli Wallach taking over from Otto Preminger as Mister Freeze, was a major milestone for the series. It was the last two-parter, for instance, to use the famous cliffhanger narration by the show's narrator (and producer), William Dozier:
WHAT FIENDISH FREEZING ISOMETIC EXERCISE IS THIS??
IS IT THE ISOLATED END OF THE DYNAMIC DUO??
HAVE THEY CONCLUDED THEIR REFRIGERATED CYCLE? TO BE VAPORIZED AND BECOME PART OF BRUCE WAYNE'S ICE RINK??
STAY FROZEN TO YOUR FURNITURE!
TOMORROW! SAME BAT-TIME, SAME BAT-CHANNEL!
The fame of the series was reflected in getting an actor of Wallach's stature as Mister Freeze. He later recalled, “When my kids were little, they’d always plead with me to appear on ‘Captain Kangaroo’ or ‘Batman’ or ‘Rawhide,’ ‘Howdy Doody,’ . . . Otto Preminger (the previous Mr. Freeze) was unavailable for one sequence, so I stepped into that character, with his German accent intact. I saw little of Batman and Robin since I was the heavy, but it was a fun experience for me. For years afterward, I was respected and honored by my kids. Later I did Trader Eli on ‘Captain Kangaroo,’ but received only half the kudos that I got for Mr. Freeze!”
That same concept is what led to the introduction of the famous "Batclimb celebrity cameo." A recurring gag during the show's first two seasons (including the Batman motion picture which was released between the two seasons) was that Batman (played by Adam West) and Robin (played by Burt Ward) would encounter celebrities during their "Batclimb." As Batman and Robin scale a building's outside wall, a celebrity would open a window and make a remark.
So many celebrities wanted to be on the show in the first season that Dozier came up with the idea of having them just pop up during the Batclimb. The very first "Batclimb" cameo occurred at the end of the first season, in Episode 29, "The Bookworm Turns," which aired in April 1966. Star comedian Jerry Lewis (of Martin and Lewis and The Nutty Professor fame) opens his window to ask Batman if he's really Batman, before noticing Robin and saying, "Oh, you must be, because that's Robin. Hi, Robin!"
Stanley Ralph Ross, one of the writers on the series, recalled to John Scoleri and Peter Enfantino, “When the producers requested another Bat-Climb guest star be added to an episode, I would have to come up with stuff that ran 22 seconds or so. They would call me up and say, ‘Stanley, we’ve got so-and-so coming in tomorrow,’ sometimes I wrote it on the set. More often than not, I had a day. That was all decided by Bill Dozier and Howie Horwitz and it was all personal friends. People were waiting in line to do it. Everyone wanted to be on the show.”
The strangest of all of the celebrity cameos was the final one, which definitely stretched the definition of the word "Celebrity." Cyril Lord was a successful British businessman who sold luxury carpets. His jingle, "This is luxury you can afford from Cyril Lord," was ubiquitous in the United Kingdom in the 1960s. It was so famous that it was frequently parodied, including this tune by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band in their song, "I'm Bored"...
(Fast forward to 1:54 for the Lord parody)
However, he was not especially popular in the Unite States, so his cameo was definitely a bit out of place, but he had worked out a deal with one of the producers of the show (either Williams Dozier or Howie Horwitz) on some Persian rugs and part of the deal was that they would give him a cameo (I wonder whether it was enough to give the rugs for free or if it was just a big discount).
Robin thinks he recognizes Lord as being a king from England, but Batman corrects him and points out that England doesn't have a King at the moment, they only have a Queen. Lord concurs, but notes that he IS known as a bit of a king in the carpeting department and Robin gives out a quick, "Holy floor covering!"
I guess it is not that surprising, then, that that would be it for the celebrity cameos. They sort of hit rock bottom with that one (but more seriously, it was probably more to do with having half the time to tell a story in Season 3, so there was no longer any room for celebrity cameos).
Lord actually retired from his carpet business the following year due to health concerns. He lived for quite a while after that, though, passing away in 1984, so I guess he retired at the right time.
The legend is...
STATUS: True
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