Camp or genuinely in earnest and the place of racism in World War Two entertainment: Batman, 1943 serial edited into a feature film
In 1966, Adam West and Burt Ward set the standard for
camp with the Batman TV show that ran for three seasons. A little over twenty
years before, Lewis Wilson and Douglas Croft donned the capes and fought a
Japanese master spy and his ring of domestic terrorists.
The WWII Columbia serial is earnest and despite its
racism, witty and no less of a hoot than it’s later, mid-twentieth century broadcast
successor. That said, it’s not camp because the stakes are higher
and the driving force behind the plot is more of the moment than the goofy,
winking tales of the televised version.
It's difficult to assess the general run of pop genre
works like serials and other B-movies without considering who they were made
for and who made them. The times dictated different approaches. There was "high art" like opera, theater, and the fine plastic arts of painting and sculpture by "the masters" and there were the "low arts" like the movies (particularly like the one under discussion) and comic books.
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| Okay. He's not Christian Bale |
However, “Batman” was a surprise. After Republic’s
success with “Captain Marvel” (a truly brilliant example of the genre),
Columbia went into production with DC Comics’ Batman, their other popular leader
(and budgetary considerations dictated that their big guy Supes wouldn’t show
up on screen until the post-war years). If “Batman” isn’t quite in the same
league with “Captain Marvel”, it’s close in terms of direction and performances.
Seven years prior, Lambert Hillyer directed one of the
most atmospheric horror movies ever with “Dracula’s Daughter” (which deserves
its own entry) and one of the most peculiar with “The Invisible Ray” (including
a great pairing of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi). The man has style to burn,
but he also knew how to let actors bring a bit more to the proceedings than these
types of film require. Consequently, Wilson and Croft are a bit better rounded
than their contemporaries and Shirley Page and J. Carrol Naish as love
interest/damsel in occasional distress and evil villain Dr. Daka respectively,
bring the zing, too.
Another aspect of looking at genre films from earlier
eras is the racism endemic to genre films that is only heightened by the events
of the time. If it’s understandable that the Japanese were stigmatized in
popular culture under the guise of patriotism, there’s still a chilling effect
cast immediately by the opening narration that informs that a wise government
has removed the “shifty-eyed Japs” from Gotham’s Tokyo Town. The spectre of
internment camps looms large and the displacement of first and second generation
Japanese American citizens is depressing.
That said, I’d suggest that’s one of the reasons why these
productions require study. In other times, racism and marginalization of people
of color and women are so casual that, even though I’ve studied American films
from all eras and am well aware of the jingoism, racism and misogyny, my jaw
still drops and goes slack.
This “featurization” of a fifteen chapter serial into
almost four hours is instructive of what young people enjoyed in the movie
houses of the period. You cold spend the entire day with a chapter of a serial, a couple of cartoons, a
short or two, a newsreel and a couple of short features or perhaps, one long
one.
The various entertainment components would feature
overwhelmingly white casts except where, say, someone like Mantan Moreland or
Stepinfetchit would be used for “comic” relief and a European might take on the
persona of an Asian or Latin American hero or heroin (with the exception of a
Keye Luke or Leo Carillo now and again). Otherwise, Latinx people were
caricatures of the lazy, or stupid stereotypes and Asians were seen as cunning
and scheming.
Drilling down into the current piece, there’s less
racism to deal with owing to the editing down of a ten hour plus epic into a
manageable piece that can be picked up and put down. You just wait for a big
action sequence and cut there. That’s often where the cliff-hanger would be.
In fact, this serial was rereleased in 1965 as “An
Evening with Batman and Robin”; it was popular enough that it’s reception led to
the development of the TV series. The serial was then compressed and edited
into this lengthy feature in the 80s with many of the racial slurs removed.
How many racial references were there? I don’t really
recall. I saw the entire serial at a comic convention almost fifty years ago and
as I recall, there were plenty. There still are. The response that we were at war
doesn’t mean that we passively accept the racial epithets and stereotypes, but
it does give us an idea of how and why racism still persists in the country
today. It’s always been part of the fabric of the culture; a very large part.
As it stands, the propaganda machine ensured that
there were no positive images of Japanese Americans during World War Two, even
though there certainly were patriotic Japanese Americans serving in the armed
forces. That’s the tragedy; no studio or any media outlet, for that matter,
deigned to put forth that idea that there were loyal Nisei serving their
country. Much less so, of course, no one was reporting on the camps unless it
was to promote the idea that it was better for their safety (the real subtext
being that Japanese people and their descendants are plotting and scheming to
overthrow the U.S.)
I’ll list a few websites following this entry that the
interested reader can research.
To return to the serial, what else is there aside from
racism and propaganda? A pretty decent B movie. As I alluded to, the principles
all seem to be in on the joke and Lewis Wilson’s Bruce Wayne is more like
Tyrone Power’s Diego or Douglas Fairbank’s Don Diego Vega in their respective Zorros
where the civilian alter ego is a vapid, anemic hiding their true identity.
There are interesting character touches, too, as when Croft’s
Dick Grayson mentions to Wilson’s Wayne that Bruce may want to ease up on the façade
lest he drive Linda Page away. It’s an interesting and well done exchange and
of course, you know that subplot will resolve as, indeed, everything else in
the film will.
The action sequences vary from hokey to well-executed.
There’s a ray-gun that’s capable of reducing brick to powder which is pulled
off pretty well. Other sequences like Batman rescuing an unconscious Linda on
telephone wires above and alleyway are – well, unintentionally funny; electricity
doesn’t work the way the hood is attempting to use it, but since this is a
serial, the laws of physics don’t apply. No matter, somehow, the Batman (he was
“The Batman” for the first few years of the forties) shimmies down his rope with
Linda unharmed (and oh, boy, is she plainly a mannequin!)
The fight sequences are good, though our caped
crusader is a rather large fellow in the stomach area. Not fat, necessarily,
but not Christian Bale, either.
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| Coulda been the Joker! (and Bats has had one too many) |
Interestingly, Naish’s Daka was originally supposed to
be the Joker and you can see vestiges in his make-up (particularly the little
string tie) and perhaps in his performance where he sounds like he’s trying to
imitate Peter Lorre’s Mr. Moto.
A number of critics haven’t found “Batman” as satisfying
as I; I agree that it’s clunky, and that Lewis Wilson isn’t exactly a specimen
of heroic fitness, but I find this part of the charm of the piece. It is better
acted than many of its peers at Columbia and it was well-received enough at the
time to warrant an execrable sequel in 1949’s “Batman and Robin” (I’ve never
been able to make it through it) with a different cast.
I was also tickled by Charles Middleton showing up
midway through. Middleton was a great character actor who had done a little bit
of everything, from “Duck Soup” as the prosecutor in the trial sequence to Ming
the Merciless in the Flash Gordon serials.
The serial is not without influence, as well. It’s characterization
of Alfred, Bruce’s butler, as a thin, moustachioed gent altered the character’s
portrayal in the comics and for much of the ensuing decades (Michael Caine and
Jeremy Irons are more robust takes on the character and Alan Napier’s was an
incredibly dapper interpretation).
In looking at pop cultural artifacts from our earlier periods,
it’s unrealistic to hold them accountable to our standards of civility or
greater understanding of the errors of our colonialism and racist narratives
pushed by a predominantly white ruling class. But it is not without use as
showing just how ingrained these elements are in the nation’s DNA.
No doubt, we’ll encounter this in other entries, but
it’s important to acknowledge the presence of our foibles in the historical
context and the bearing they still have on current discourse and for that
matter, behaviour.
Additional reading on Japanese Internment and racism during
World War Two:
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