Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

Adam West is the television icon of icons. After almost a decade of being a "that face is familiar" working, journeyman actor, in 1965, at the age of 37, he was cast as the title character in a new campy comic series on ABC called Batman.

Batman premiered as a mid-season replacement in January of 1966 and Adam almost instantly went from semi-anonymity to becoming the hottest actor in show business.

But the colossal success of Batman was a double-edged sword. Like a streaking comet, the show's huge success quickly fizzled out. After a brief two-and-a-half year run and 120 episodes, Batman was cancelled. Adam West quickly went from being red-hot to being a has-been, hopelessly typecast as the Caped Crusader. (He did nothing but personal appearances for two years.)

But time has a funny way of sometimes healing things, and now, over four decades after the demise of Batman, Adam West is a very successful actor and voice-over artist who earns small fortunes at signing shows in the U.S. and overseas. Adam's recurring guest role as “Mayor West" on the ultra-popular animated series Family Guy has gained him a whole new generation of avid fans.

Okay, let's take a look at a few things you may not have known about Adam West.

* Born William West Anderson, he changed his name to Adam early in his career (1959) because he liked the way it sounded with “West,” his mother's maiden name. Close friends still call him Bill.

* An avid comic book collector since he was ten, he was a huge fan of Batman comics as a young boy and always loved the character.

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

It was 1929 and the legendary comedians "the four Marx Brothers" were about to film their first movie. The boys were currently appearing in their third consecutive broadway hit play Animal Crackers. So, incredibly, Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo appeared in Animal Crackers onstage at night and, after minimal sleep, filmed their movie debut The Cocoanuts during the day.

It was the earliest days of "talkies" (remember, this was just two years after Al Jolson broke the ice with The Jazz Singer), and this presented a bit of a problem. The early movie stages were not yet geared to be quiet and sound-proof as they are today. So, to avoid the sound of ongoing New York traffic outside, the actors and actresses would have to film very early in the morning, before the early traffic rush in the Big Apple.

In a scene where Groucho and Chico talk while reading a map, the crinkling of the map paper sounded like a violent thunder storm. After a few "much too loud takes,” it was decided that the map paper would have to be "watered down" and the damp map proved a workable solution. All paper props for the film were similarly soaked in water to keep them quiet.

But these were minor problems compared to the craziness and unpredictability of the Marx Brothers themselves. According to director co-directer Robert Florey, it was near impossible to get all four brothers on the set at the same time.

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

Around the turn of the 20th century, in much less PC times, there was an excellent baseball player named William Ellsworth Hoy. Because of the social agreements of the times back then, William was nicknamed “Dummy.” Why? Dummy Hoy was a deaf mute.

In those less enlightened times, many deaf mutes were nicknamed Dummy. And, for the record, William Hoy never minded his nickname, instead embracing it. If anyone ever called him “William,” he would always correct them, asking that they call him “Dummy" instead.

William Ellsworth Hoy was born in Houcktown, Ohio, in 1862. At the age of three, he went deaf from meningitis. He graduated from the Ohio State School for the Deaf and was the class valedictorian.

Hoy opened a shoe repair shop in his hometown and started playing baseball on the weekends. His natural talent was spotted almost immediately and in 1888, Dummy broke into the big leagues with the Washington Nationals. He was to play 14 seasons in the major leagues, playing with several different teams in Washington, Cincinnati, Buffalo, St. Louis, Louisville and Chicago.

Dummy Hoy was a superior baseball player, with a .288 lifetime batting average, while stealing 596 bases (some sources credit him with over 600 stolen bases). Besides being a very good hitter, with over 2,000 hits, Dummy was a superb center fielder. At the time of his retirement in 1902, he had set and held several fielding records for outfielders.

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

Okay, we all, every one of us, have been raised on television and the movies. And while a truly original movie or TV show is very rare, the reverse is true: cliches abound. There are dozens and dozens of movie and television cliches we have all seen and all now come to expect.

Now, let's take a movie and TV cliches we are all familiar with: the bad (disastrous) first date which leads to a future great relationship. I think we have all actually seen this cliche happen: a couple go out on their first date, do not hit it off, but later go out again and find they really like each other. This leads to an actual relationship.

Sure, this one is real life material. But what about the ones that only seem to happen in the movies or on TV? Below is a list of nine all-too-familiar TV and movie cliches we've all seen a million times, a majority of which we never see in real life!!!
 

1) The bad guy with perfect teeth.

Am I the only one that notices this one? It usually occurs in Westerns, i.e. there is an outlaw or a desperado, he is unshaven, grizzled, has gnarly, dirty features and a mean personality. But his teeth are always pearly white, as if he had just flossed and double-brushed with a Colgate or Crest. You see this routinely on Bonanza and other Westerns (it is much easier to discern in color).

2) The surprised two-timing lover scene.

Have you seen this one- a couple has a fight or disagreement, then the guy or the girl feels bad and decides to make amends and goes to surprise his or her counterpart at their apartment. Either the girl will answer, wearing a man's shirt, or the guy will answer shirtless, or a strange girl or guy will answer. They see the startled former lover -with a new lover- and hear them mutter, “I really wish you'd called first.” The crushed ex-lover runs or stumbles off, with no more illusions.

How about this: you're having an illicit affair or rendezvous, don't just open the door, try saying “Who is it?"

3) The gun butt knockout.

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

Created in 1938, “Superman" was the first-ever superhero. Sometimes, in life, in sports, or in the arts, the "first" is succeeded by newcomers and it's popularity is eclipsed and surpassed. Not so with the Man of Steel. Superman remains, after three-quarters of a century, the most popular and beloved superhero the world over. (Superman placed #1 on IGN’s “Top 100 Comic Book Heroes" list in 2011.)

Superman’s #1 status remains intact and this indisputable fact remains true, despite the appearance over the intervening years of Batman, Robin, Iron Man, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Captains Marvel and America, the Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, and countless others. Okay, let's take a look at a few things you may not have known about Superman.

*Created in 1938 by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-American artist Joe Shuster, Superman is generally acknowledged to be the very first "superhero.”

In fact, the term is derived from Superman. Although we commonly refer to superheroes as "superheroes", before superman, heroes were ordinarily called "mystery men" or "masked heroes.”

* He was originally a villain.

(Image credit: Joe Shuster)

In 1933, Siegel and Shuster had initially created a bald, telepathic villain bent on dominating the world in a short story called “The Reign of the Super-Man.” This "bad guy" version of Superman appeared in science fiction #3, a fanzine Siegel published. Siegel re-envisioned the character later that year as a hero, bearing no resemblance to his villainous namesake.

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

Robert Osbourne David Denver was born in New Rochelle, New York, on January 9, 1935 (that is exactly one day after the birth of Elvis Presley). Just as his "distinguished-sounding" real name seems a bit incongruous for the actor who was to achieve worldwide fame playing a perennial goofball named "Gilligan", so the real-life Bob Denver was almost a direct dichotomy to the character too.

Shy, introverted, highly intelligent and well-read from his youth and on into adulthood, Bob, and his family, soon moved to Brownwood, Texas, where he was to grow up. His early jobs included working as a mailman and as a high school teacher of both math and physical education.

After high school, he moved to California, where he enrolled at Loyola-Marymount College in Los Angeles. Denver earned a degree in political science and was considering a career in law when he got bit by the acting bug.

He made his stage debut in a west coast stage production of The Caine Mutiny Court-martial in the late fifties. Soon thereafter, he made his movie debut in the 1959 film A Private's Affair with Sal Mineo (also in the cast was his later Gilligan's Island co-star Jim Backus). The year 1959 also brought the young actor his first big break when he was cast as beatnik Maynard G. Krebs on the TV series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.

Denver's portrayal of Krebs is legendary in television history. His catch phrases "You rang?" upon his entrance in every episode and his stimulus-response of "Work??" whenever the word came into the conversation became highly popular and Maynard became one of television's first icons and "breakout characters." Denver's character was so popular there was a huge backlash from fans when rumors of Maynard being drafted into the army cropped up during the show's run (in real life, Denver had broken his neck in 1956, saving him from actually being drafted into the military).

Although the "Gilligan" character is more well-known nowadays, Denver actually played Maynard in more episodes (142 to 98) and it was Maynard who was later voted one of TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Characters. After the Dobie Gillis run ended in 1963, Denver again played a beatnik-like character in the 1964 movie For Those Who Think Young (also featuring his soon-to-be co-star Tina Louise).