Would The Joker Have Worked in 1943?
With the huge success of The Dark Knight (2008) a topic has come up on the message boards about how Batman (1943) should have had The Joker as the main villain instead of a war time spy and wondering why he wasn’t used. Some have speculated that Columbia didn’t want to pay extra for a villainous character. I’m not sure I buy that idea, I think when you option a property you option all of the characters that are owned by the copyright holder on that particular property. Other comic book and strip characters fought their old nemesis’, Don Winslow faced The Scorpion, Spy Smasher fought The Mask, Superman battled Lex Luthor and Captain Silver was at odds against The Admiral. Some have speculated that the screenwriters just wanted to come up with original villains like Dr. Daka and The Wizard. Personally I think that the writers took a look at Batman’s rouge gallery and felt like they just couldn’t work with these characters, a homicidal maniac made up like a clown (The Joker’s mad killer personae didn’t morph into a master criminal who pulled robberies based on peculiar themes until after the war), a disfigured DA who uses a coin to decide whether to commit a crime or not, a fat gangster in a tuxedo who has a tricked up umbrella that shoots bullets, and a cat burglar who literally dresses like a cat. Bad enough that the hero goes around dressed like a bat, but to include one of the weird villains from the comics might have just been too much and they went with the old stand by of an Axis spy for the first serial and a standard mystery villain in a cloak for the second one. I admit I would have loved to have seen Batman face off against The Joker in his first serial, maybe even played by Charles Middleton (his trademarked “Heh!” would been perfect for the character), but I just have doubts that it could have worked given the time period in which the serial was made.
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