Holy Harlan Ellison! Of all the brilliant Batman villains who made their way to the small screen during the run of the iconic 1960s Batman TV series that starred Adam West, Burt Ward, and a bevy of special guest batvillains, Two-Face was always noticeably absent. Strange, considering that his striking (if grotesque) look and very specific modus operandi would have fit perfectly into the world of the show. But it turns out that Two-Face did come close to trading brightly-colored punches with Adam West and Burt Ward...with a teleplay that was penned by none other than the legendary Harlan Ellison.
Brain Movies Volume 5, the latest in the series that focuses on Mr. Ellison's TV work, prominently includes "The Two-Way Crimes of Two-Face!" The official description of this segment of the book reads:
"Though Harlan’s written numerous comic book scripts for the Dark Knight, his first slide down the Bat-Pole was in 1966 when he pitched an episode to ABC’s Batman, starring Adam West and Burt Ward. Tragically—for reasons explained in the editor’s notes—“The Two-Way Crimes of Two-Face” was never produced, but now you can read what the Unrepentant Harlequin had in mind for the Dynamic Duo and their Bifurcated Foe."
Let's try and wrap our heads around this one more time. Harlan Ellison, one of the great figures in all of genre fiction, pitched an episode of Batman featuring Two-Face, and somehow it never got made. Sign us up for this ride! The title of the unproduced episode, "The Two-Way Crimes of Two-Face" is reminiscent of the story that first introduced Two-Face in 1942's Detective Comics #66, "The Crimes of Two-Face." While that could be a coincidence, plenty of episodes of Batman were inspired directly by their comic book counterparts, and to see what a writer like Ellison could do with two episodes of Two-Face would have been a dream come true.
You can order Brain Movies: The Original Teleplays of Harlan Ellison, Volume 5 (and plenty more) from HarlanEllisonBooks.Com. And we owe an additional tip of our cowls to the great Neil Gaiman for alerting us to this in the first place with this enthusiastic tweet:
So, what incredible celebrity could have played Two-Face? We don't know if it ever got that far, but we did have a suggestion of our own in this piece about the 10 Special Guest Batvillains We Wish We'd Seen! Now, if only they could hurry up with the official home video release of the show, we'd feel a whole lot better. More on this as it develops!
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