He was best known as the star of the 1960s hit TV series Batman.
Adam West died peacefully in Los Angeles after a brief battle with leukemia, a family spokesperson said.
The actor’s tongue-in-cheek portrayal of Batman and the superhero’s alter ego Bruce Wayne won a cult following.
However, Adam West later struggled to find acting work. He most recently played a character in the animated comedy Family Guy.
Image source Wikipedia
“Our dad always saw himself as The Bright Knight, and aspired to make a positive impact on his fans’ lives. He was and always will be our hero,” Adam West’s family said in a statement, reported in Variety.
The Batman TV series, with its onscreen fight-scene graphics of Wham! and Pow! became an unexpected hit. Adam West and his co-star Burt Ward, who played Batman’s sidekick Robin, won widespread acclaim for their kitsch portrayal of the Dynamic Duo.
In a 2010 interview with the website Slice of SciFi, Adam West said the TV series had benefitted from very good writers.
“They saw the craziness, the comedy. You know, just as he’s about to put her in (jail), Batman says to Catwoman, <<You give me curious stirrings in my utility belt>>. That’s funny stuff.”
When the series ended, Adam West struggled to break free from the character, but over a long career appeared in nearly 50 movies including Drop Dead Gorgeous, An American Vampire Story and Nevada Smith.
She was best known for playing Batgirl in the 1960s Batman TV series.
A statement on Yvonne Craig’s official website said the star had suffered from breast cancer, which had spread to her liver.
“In the end, her mind still wanted to fight but her body had given up,” her family said in a statement.
A trained dancer, Yvonne Craig began her career at The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and used those skills to perform her own stunts alongside Adam West’s Batman.
She also played Martha, the green Orion Slave Girl who wanted to kill Captain Kirk, in the third season of Star Trek.
Yvonne Craig also starred in two movies opposite Elvis Presley – It Happened at the World’s Fair and Kissin’ Cousins.
It was her performance as librarian Barbara Gordon, who secretly moonlights as Batgirl, that defined her career.
Photo IMDb
Yvonne Craig joined the TV show in its third and final series in 1967, thwacking and kapow-ing Gotham’s bad guys alongside Batman and Robin.
The show is still seen around the world today, something which came as a surprise to the actress in her later years.
Later in life, Yvonne Craig worked as a estate agent before going into the prepaid phone card business. In 2000, she wrote a book called From Ballet to the Batcave and Beyond, which took stock of her career.
More recently, Yvonne Craig provided voices for the Nickelodeon cartoon series Olivia, and was the executive producer on the documentary film Birth.
In the statement on Yvonne Craig’s website, her family said: “Yvonne excelled in ballet, a film career, a business life, as well as in philanthropic and charity work over the years.
“She had been able to do this with joy and much laughter and she wouldn’t have changed a thing. Well, maybe one thing and that would have been not to get cancer.
“She had been in chemo almost continuously for the past two plus years since being diagnosed and that had weakened her immune system as well as her body.
“This didn’t dampen her sense of humor or her spirit, she intended to fight and win this battle. In the end, her mind still wanted to fight but her body had given up.”
The actress died on August 17 at her home in the Pacific Palisades, surrounded by her immediate family.
Yvonne Craig is survived by her husband, Kenneth Aldrich, sister Meridel Carson and nephews Christopher and Todd Carson.
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