Holy Dodged Bullets.

Occasionally I pay attention to my "YouTube Recommends" section, and today I'm kind of glad I did. On it was a video of the 1966 audition for "Batman" -- not for Adam West and Burt Ward, but for Lyle Waggoner and Peter Deyell. Waggoner (whose name means "He of Wagons With Extra Letters") may best be known for being the Attractive Man on "The Carol Burnette Show," but I've never heard of this Peter Deyell dude. After this audition he has two listed credits, one of which is "Delivery Boy" on "Santa Barbara;" probably not a recurring character.

I'm not here to just crap on non-superstar actors. They got a chance, and I'm sorry they didn't find more success. But when you watch this audition, you kind of see why they didn't find their fortunes here. You also have to hand it to the creators of the show (William Dozier in particular) for casting their show properly. When you think about it, this was an incredibly challenging show to cast for, seeing as how they had a high-profile guest character every single week. They solved this by (mostly) casting the greatest person possible for the role. Seriously, try picturing anyone else playing Penguin.

But the show also needed a solid center, and that was not the oddly-homosexual undertones brought to you by the audition seen here (though there's no "straight" way to read the line "when she finds out what you've been doing on our supposed fishing trips" and not sound... y'know). I love how it starts in the middle of a crisis, but Bruce Wayne is reading a book. Then he kind of looks to Dick like he's been caught napping in class. Magical.