Holy Bat Bulge!
Burt Ward, who found fame as the trusty sidekick ‘Robin’ in the campy 1960s TV series Batman, recently shared that network executives advised him to take pills to shrink his tightly-costumed bulge back in the day.
Ward, who was recently honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, told Page Six that ABC execs were concerned about a complaint they had received from the Catholic League of Decency regarding the boy wonder’s ‘boy wonder.’
“They thought that Robin had a very large bulge for television,” said Ward adding that his co-star, Adam West, didn’t receive such scrutiny. “With Adam, they put Turkish towels in his undershorts.”
The issue swelled to such proportions that the young actor was sent to consult with a doctor who prescribed pills “to shrink me up.”
But Ward grew concerned that the medication might affect his future family planning, so “I stopped doing that and just used my cape to cover it.”
For a 20-year-old on a hit television show, it must have been quite the problem. It seems Ward, like his TV character, was a straight arrow when it came to getting wild.
“You must understand I never smoked, drank or did drugs so I never went to a bar in my entire life,” the former boy wonder explained. “It’s not to say I didn’t go out and have a good time but I never went out and did what you think Hollywood (celebrities) do.”
Ward didn’t find much success onscreen after his adventures in Bat Land, but primarily found work in Hollywood doing voiceover work for TV series like SpongeBob SquarePants and Futurama.
His most recent TV appearance was again as ‘Dick Grayson’ on The CW’s Supergirl during its superhero crossover event, “Crisis on Infinite Earths.”
Today, Ward spends most of his time running what he calls ‘the largest giant dog rescue in the world.’
He shared with Page Six, “At all times we have a minimum of fifty dogs at our house with us.”
He and his wife also make their own dog food called Gentle Giants that he insists can “double and triple the lifespan of dogs” and “we don’t take a penny from it.”
