Ask any Batman fan who grew up in Britain in the 1960s what Robin's most
famous "Holy..." aphorism was, and he'd say "Holy Broken Bones!". Yet
this quip of Robin's is never found in the 120 episode series. Why is
this?
For those of us entranced by the series in Southsea, UK (myself aged 6), every
episode of Batman was prefaced by a short film of Batman and Robin
standing in front of some curtains, talking directly to camera about the
perils of thinking Batman could fly, and not jumping off of roofs in an
effort to emulate Batman.
The only photos of that safety film shoot are captured in card 27 of the
Bat Laffs set of photo cards of the Batman TV series, and card 41 from
the Belgium Monty Gum set, both shown below.
What happened to that intro film? Does it still exist?
[Update] As far as I can recall, the short announcement started to appear around the time that the children's education programme HOW debuted on Southern Television on 10th November 1966, some four months after the Batman show premiered on our local ITV region in July 1966.
The blog http://tothebatpoles.blogspot.com/2011/10/second-season.html contains the following explanation to the short intro being made.
With the release of the feature film and the series now airing overseas,
a new problem besides sagging ratings arose, as Executive Producer
William Dozier recalled, 'In England, kids started jumping out of
windows; they thought Batman could fly. They thought the cape was wings.
We had to do a special lead-in to the show, with an interview with
Batman saying, "Boys and girls, I do not fly. I can't fly any better
than you can. Don't think I can and don't think you can. And don't take
chances by trying to jump off the roof." They were doing it, but never
in this country. Thank heaven it never started in this country.'
Found among William Dozier's files, was the following note from the
executive in charge of Fox's overseas operations. It included the
actual intro aired in England:
TIGHT TWO SHOT
Into camera, seriously
BATMAN Robin and I want all you youngsters to understand we have no wings, and no superhuman powers, and we can not fly.
ROBIN And listen, kids, if either of us tried to fly, or jump off a high
place, we would be badly hurt. So would you so for gosh sakes, don?t
ever try it. Holy broken bones!
And then Robin punched one fist into the other gloved hand, in time-honored fashion.
Does anyone else remember this?
