Lorenzo Semple Jr., a playwright and screenwriter who would probably be best known for his scripts for films like “Papillon” and “Pretty Poison” if he hadn’t put the Zap! and the Pow! in the original episodes of the arch, goofy 1960s television show “Batman,” died on Friday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 91.
His daughter Maria Semple confirmed the death.
Mr. Semple had written a couple of Broadway plays and episodes for a number of television series when he and the producer William Dozier were asked by ABC executives to adapt the Batman comic book into a television series.
This was 1965. Mr. Semple was living with his family in Spain, and though it seemed as if the network had a drama in mind, he immediately saw the absurdity in the character of a wealthy bachelor who enjoyed dressing up as a bat to fight crime.
“The TV show concept virtually exploded in my sangria-enhanced brain, full-blown,” Mr. Semple wrote in Variety in 2008.
The idea was high camp. Batman, played by Adam West, and his ward and fellow crime fighter, Robin (Burt Ward), were preposterously brave and goody-goody, unenhanced by superpowers but aided by the advanced technology — the Batmobile! — that only someone as privileged as Bruce Wayne (the man behind the Batman mask) could afford.
The villains, threats to civilization in Batman’s Gotham City, were cartoonish, many of them repeat offenders played by recognizable stars: Cesar Romero as the Joker, Frank Gorshin as the Riddler, Burgess Meredith as the Penguin and Julie Newmar as Catwoman, among others.
The dialogue was playfully jokey. But perhaps most emblematic, the show’s frequent fistfights were accompanied by graphics — expressive exclamations printed on the screen in comic-book style: Krunch! Kapow! Zowie!
The show had its premiere on Jan. 12, 1966, and was an instant hit, though not a long-lasting one. It ran for two years, originally twice a week, with the first episode ending in a cliffhanger — 120 episodes in all. Mr. Semple wrote the first four episodes and was a story consultant throughout the series.
“From the very beginning, Bill Dozier and I had seen millionaire Bruce Wayne and his Bat regalia as classy comedy, hopefully appealing to kids as an absurdly jolly action piece and to grown-ups for its deadpan satire, entirely nonfraught with psychological issues,” Mr. Semple wrote in the Variety piece. “I mean, golly gee, how else can one view a character who enters a nightclub in full Bat garb and mask, accompanied by a gorgeous chick, and when greeted by the maître d’ with an obsequious ‘Good evening, Batman! A table for two?’ gravely replies, ‘Yes, thank you. But please, not too near the music. I wouldn’t want to appear conspicuous.’ ”
He was born Lorenzo Semple III in New Rochelle, N.Y., on March 27, 1923. (His daughter Maria said the reason he downsized his lineage from III to Jr. is a mystery.) His father worked in New York City for a public utility company.
Lorenzo went to the Brooks School in North Andover, Mass., and then Yale, but he left school before graduation during World War II to join the American Field Service as an ambulance driver for the Free French fighting German and Italian forces in North Africa. Returning to the United States, he was drafted and served in the Army as an intelligence officer in Europe through the end of World War II.
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When he came home, he studied dramatic writing at Columbia, and in the 1950s two of his works appeared briefly on Broadway: “Tonight in Samarkand,” a melodrama set in a traveling circus in France, directed by Alan Schneider and starring Theodore Bikel and Louis Jourdan; and “Golden Fleecing,” a farce starring Tom Poston that was later made into a film, “The Honeymoon Machine,” starring Steve McQueen.
Mr. Semple’s first marriage ended in divorce. Besides his daughter Maria, a television writer and producer of comedies including “Mad About You” and “Suddenly Susan,” he is survived by his wife, the former Joyce Miller, whom he married in 1963; a brother, Churchill; a son, Lorenzo Semple III; another daughter, Johanna Herwitz; a stepson, Patrick Semple; and six grandchildren.
In addition to “Batman,” Mr. Semple’s television credits include a variety of other 1960s shows: the detective series “Burke’s Law,” starring Gene Barry; the war drama “The Rat Patrol,” set in the North African desert during World War II; and another series about a costumed crime-fighter, “The Green Hornet.”
Mr. Semple wrote the screenplay for the 1966 movie version of the “Batman” television series. He also wrote or collaborated on a number of well-received film dramas: “Papillon” (1973), the prison drama set on Devil’s Island with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman; “The Parallax View” (1974), a political conspiracy thriller starring Warren Beatty; “The Drowning Pool” (1975), a crime drama starring Paul Newman as the detective Lew Harper; and “Three Days of the Condor” (1976), about a researcher embroiled in a C.I.A. plot, starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway.
“Pretty Poison” (1968), a psychological thriller about a disturbed young man (Anthony Perkins) and a seemingly all-American girl (Tuesday Weld) on a crime spree, which Mr. Semple adapted from a novel by Stephen Geller, became a fixture on critics’ lists of overlooked films.
His screenplay, Joseph Morgenstern wrote in his review in Newsweek, “sustains a level of wit and tension that few modern films aspire to, let alone achieve.”
In an interview with the Archive of American Television in 2008, Mr. Semple assessed his career.
“I think ‘Batman’ was the best thing I ever wrote, including those big movies,” he said. “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.”
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