Batman. Lord of the Night. Guardian of Gotham. Friend of Paris Hilton’s great-grandfather. Okay, no, wait a minute, what?! Just as you read it: the 42-year-old billionaire could, technically, stroll through the pages of the Batman at any time because it is more than stipulated that the two live together in the same universe. Don’t believe it? Fasten your bat-belt because this story is not to be believed.
Holy Hiltons, Batman!
Surely you remember some of the ridiculous ‘Batman’ covers from the 50s: Batman and Robin meet the three musketeers, fight against El Papagayo in South America, adopt the Bat-dog, become a mermaid… Every month, three absolutely bizarre adventures awaited children at a time when superhero comics were nothing more than a diversion for kids. The good thing is that the hero was not a universal icon, and these absurdities remained only in children’s playgrounds… Until 1966 came along.
A few years earlier, the arrival of ‘The Fantastic Four’ broke superhero comics in two: for the first time, Marvel showed that more or less mature stories could be made, even if they were aimed at children. Comic books crossed the borders of schools and reached universities: DC could not be left behind, and in 1964 Carmine Infantino reimagined Batman with a darker, more realistic tone and a new costume that could not show off enough. The culprit, William Dozier, an ABC producer tasked with making a series about a certain masked superhero I had never heard of.
It mattered little that Infantino and John Broome were changing the history of comics at the time: Dozier bought a dozen Batman comics, including a compilation of stories from the 1950s (the 1965 ‘Giant Batman Annual’), and assumed that the character had not evolved at all. Said and done: the 1966 series starring Adam West would be exactly that campy, absurd and unabashed. But that’s another story. For the moment let’s use it to understand the context.
Press that presses you
The TV series changed everything. Suddenly, Batman was born for many people who began to wear his logo on T-shirts, hats, cards, toys and every kind of merchandising imaginable. It was such a success that, as if it were ‘The Simpsons’ now, celebrities began to line up to have a part in the series. Bruce Lee, Otto Preminger, Jerry Lewis, Joan Collins, Zsa Zsa Gabor… Everyone who was anyone in the 60’s consciously made a fool of themselves in ‘Batman’.
The series was such a success that it managed to revive newspaper strips that had not appeared in American newspapers for a couple of decades. Only that, this time, they would be based on television episodes. Whitney Ellsworth and Joe Giella were in charge of it and, above all, of drawing the guest stars. If they were on TV, they had to be in the comics too, right?
January 1967. Batman and Robin encounter a man sitting in the Batmobile (“Strange! Who would do such a thing in Gotham City?” says our hero). His name would remain a mystery until the next day, but the more seasoned reader would get to see the realistic caricature of Conrad Hilton. Hilton was born in 1887 and at the age of twenty was already in the hotel business. In fact, the world’s first hotel chain was (and is) named after him: he was famous to everyone… even Batman!
Bat-hotel, sweet Bat-hotel
Hilton appeared in the strip to ask for help with the Batman Hotel he had designed (“Holy Taj Mahal!” says Robin) in which the waitresses wore Robin-inspired uniforms and the five-square-mile lake was designed with the Masked Crusader’s logo. It even had a golf bat-car that, as Batman notes, “It runs on BATs, surely.” This Batman, the things he has.
In reality, as you can see, it’s all a plan by Poison Ivy to rob the hotel guests, but that’s not what matters to us. What is certain is that Conrad Hilton’s appearance in the comic book caused an uproar in the hotel industry. After all, this was free publicity for his chain… And, apparently, advertising was denied in the press that brought out the daily strip. Don’t think that, after the controversy, he would say little: from January to March, Paris Hilton’s great-great-grandfather became a regular in the adventures of the Dynamic Duo.
Specifically, March 17 was the end of Conrad Hilton in the Batman strips, once Poison Ivy was caught. He never came out again and the role of guest star was taken by the comic Jack Benny. It’s clear, then: Paris Hilton and Batman could still team up in a crazy crossover – who knows? Stranger things have happened.
