According to Burt Ward, the man that portrayed the character of Robin in the original Batman TV show, the making of the program wasn’t all fun and games. In fact it got kind of dangerous to be honest as he describes it. Ward has opened up to a variety of people about his experiences during the show and has made it clear that he enjoyed his time there but he was made to pay for the enjoyment in many different ways. Plus the outfit wasn’t the most desirable thing in the world either. But despite it all he wouldn’t change anything, other than the beating he took.
This is what Ward had to say:
“It was a very dangerous show to make. I was in the emergency hospital the first four of the six days of filming. [I had] second-degree burns, my nose [got] broken by a two-by-four landing on it from explosions. Let me tell you something, it was a lot of fun, it’s really very simple. It was a fantastic show to do, everything was as great doing as you see it on television. The only two horrible things: It was very dangerous and [I had] a costume that was not a lot of fun to wear.”
The danger came from the obvious fact that today a lot of things either CGI or well-controlled stunts that don’t allow for a lot of errors. Back then the stunts were performed largely by the actors and pretty much anything could happen. Ward took more than his fair share of abuse on the set just from falling debris and unforeseeable accidents that put him in the hospital a time or two. But he kept coming back so obviously he was having a good enough time playing Batman’s sidekick. Imagine having to go into work though and wondering if you were going to get smashed in the face by falling debris or burned or bludgeoned by something you didn’t see coming. That would be a job you’d think would have automatic hazard pay, but it didn’t quite work like that back then. Plus after a few incidents Ward knew what he was walking into and he went right back to it, doing the job because he was the guy that had been selected.
That’s dedication to be certain, but’s also asking for a lot of hurt. It stand to reason now that he might look at the way things are today and think that he could get back out there in some capacity, but thankfully he’s retired. It seems fitting to say that he’s earned his reprieve from being the boy wonder and can sit back and relax as other young men go off and perform the role in ways that were never available to him. You can almost bet that he might even laugh at those that claim the role is hard to accomplish since back in his day ‘hard’ meant having to go back to the ER after another episode was in the books.
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