Who among us hasn’t wondered what it would be like to pick up the Batphone and summon the Caped Crusader? For one long-ago Toledo resident, making that call was his full time job.
From 1966 to 1968, James Neil Hamilton played Commissioner Gordon on the hit television series Batman.
Born in Lynn, Mass., Hamilton was working as a Toledo brokerage clerk when he got his acting start playing juvenile roles with the stock company of the Toledo Theater, which later became the Palace.
When the stock season ended, he remained in Toledo to marry Elsie Whitmer, treasurer of the Saxon Theater. A few years later the couple decamped to New York, where famed director D.W. Griffith soon “discovered” the young actor and cast him opposite Lillian and Dorothy Gish in his 1923 silent film The White Rose. It was the first of more than 250 films and television shows in which Hamilton would appear.
Ever mindful of their romantic roots, Neil and Elsie made periodic visits to Toledo, including one in 1953 during which they were captured by a Blade photographer outside the Valentine Theatre, where they first met 33 years earlier.
Though little remembered today, Hamilton would go on to have a stellar Hollywood career. His credits include the original Beau Geste, Dawn Patrol, Strangers May Kiss, and the early Tarzan movies.
His 200-plus films found him acting opposite of constellation of Hollywood leading ladies, including Clara Bow, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Ann Southern, and Constance Bennett.
At the height of his fame, Hamilton claimed to receive 20,000 pieces of fan mail a month.
He’s best remembered by Baby Boomers, though, for his appearance as Commissioner Gordon on the campy Batman TV series. In a 1966 interview in The Blade, he said: “I spend most of my time on the screen calling Batman on the Batphone imploring his aid.”
He appeared in nearly every episode.
During that same interview he revealed that he’d once rented a house to Greta Garbo for two years during her tenure at MGM decades earlier. She always paid her rent on time.
“But I never got to meet her,” he said. “When she left, I found she had piled carpets up to a foot deep on the bedroom floor — I don’t know why. But she was the ideal tenant. If something went wrong with the plumbing or electricity, I suppose she repaired it because she never called on me.”
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First Published June 10, 2019, 10:00 a.m.
