In a recent chat with The Hollywood Reporter, the actor who played the Caped Crusader’s sidekick Robin in the 1960s “Batman” TV series discloses that at one point he visited the emergency room four days in a row thanks to injuries from performing his own stunts.
“Each day I came back and it happened to be the same emergency room doctor,” Burt Ward told THR. “’Are you accident prone? Whatever you are doing, this is dangerous stuff. You need to be more careful!’” Mr. Ward remembers the physician saying.
Only 19 years of age at the time, Mr. Ward says he was told to do his own stunts because his body double wasn’t a very convincing doppelganger.
“[Y]our stuntman doesn’t look like you!” Mr. Ward recalls the associate director telling him when he asked why his stunt double couldn’t do the job.
After a string of roles in B-movies in the 1980s and early 1990s, Mr. Ward has more recently found work as a voice artist, coming full circle of sorts to reprise his role as Robin in a 2016 animated feature, “Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders.”
He is currently at work on “Batman vs. Two-Face,” according to the Internet Movie Database but otherwise keeps busy with the nonprofit he founded with his wife Tracey, Gentle Giants Rescue and Adoption, which touts itself on its website as the “largest giant breed dog rescue in the world.”
• Ken Shepherd can be reached at kshepherd@washingtontimes.com.
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