Shortly after I posted the second part of “The Fathers of Batman,” several of you wrote to tell me that YouTube has the opening titles of the TV Movie that served as a pilot for the TV show Bob Kane said he’d created…and which his bio said he wrote. It’s not the whole movie…just the opening. If you want to watch it, it’s right here but if you just want to see if Bob’s name is on it, I’ve spared you the trouble. It is and it looks like this..
As you can see, it says “From the Format by Bob Kane.” I have never seen that credit — “From the Format by…” — anywhere else and I’ll guess that there was some sort of legal battle (or threat) involved because “Television Story and Teleplay by Clyde Ware” is not a standard form either. It’s kind of a way of saying Mr. Ware did all the writing even though they had to give Bob some kind of credit.
Perhaps Mr. Kane lost a Writers Guild of America credit arbitration so he couldn’t get a WGA credit like “Story by” or “Created by” and had to settle for a form someone made up so as to be outside the Guild’s jurisdiction. But then I think the Guild would have to have okayed putting it on the same card as Mr. Ware’s…so I’m not sure what happened here other than that Kane didn’t contribute enough to merit a real writing credit.
Thanks to those of you who informed me this was on YouTube, the first of whom was Jim Newman.
0 Comments