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When fans think about the 1960s Batman TV show that made an icon out of Adam West — which celebrates its 60th anniversary today, January 12 2026, six decades after its debut on ABC with the episode ‘Hey Diddle Riddle’ — they often think about the cavalcade of classic villains who appeared on the show: the Joker, the Riddler, the Penguin, Catwoman, and even lesser-known names like Clock King, Mad Hatter, and Killer Moth. Producers had another comic book favorite intended to appear on the show, however — and a big name star they’d hoped would play him.

As early as the show’s first season, producers were interested in turning Two-Face into a TV star. I mean that in more ways than one; it wasn’t just that the Batman villain (who first appeared in 1942’s Detective Comics #66) was in line to appear on the show, but that producers had plans to change his origins to be more in tune with the show’s knowing camp tone. “Two-Face is a television commentator, you see, who unfortunately has a TV tube blow up in his face,” associate producer Charles FitzSimmons teased in a January 1966 newspaper interview. “Henceforth, one side of his face becomes contorted and gruesome, while the other side remains even-featured. Altho [sic] one half of him could have remained on TV, he decides instead to turn — naturally — to crime.”

FitzSimmons might have been speaking out of turn; although producers continued to explore the idea of bringing Two-Face into the show throughout its tun, the only extant plot involving the character — an un-produced screenplay for the show’s first season titled ‘The Two-Way Crimes of Two-Face’ that later was turned into the 2014 comic book Batman ’66: The Lost Episode — features a Harvey Dent that shares the villain’s comic book origins as being a District Attorney disfigured in court who turns to crime in the aftermath of his attack. The episode was never produced, per Ellison, because producers thought this character was “too scary” for the show’s target audience as he appeared in his screenplay.

Scary or not, producers didn’t forget the character, and indeed had a particular actor in mind to play him: pop culture historian Martin Grams has reported seeing production paperwork from the show that showed Clint Eastwood was in line to bring Two-Face to the screen decades before Tommy Lee Jones did so in the 1995 movie Batman Forever. In 1966, Eastwood was in the midst of transitioning to the big screen, having already appeared in A Fistful of Dollars and For A Few Dollars More. By the time Batman debuted on television, he was just a couple of months away from shooting The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly — but just imagine what might have been had he ditched the spaghetti west for the cardboard props of Gotham City’s small screen incarnation, even just for a couple of episodes.

The complicated rights situation of the Batman TV show — it was made by 20th Century Fox, which is now owned by Disney, under license from National Publications, which became DC Comics, which is now owned by Warner Bros. Discovery — mean that the show isn’t available on any streaming subscription service, but we can hope that changes as the show celebrates its Diamond Jubilee year.

He is vengeance, he is the night, he is... one of Popverse's favorite subjects. Learn how to do a Dark Knight movie marathon right with our Batman movie guide, and for the true World's Greatest Detectives out there, dive deep into the heart of Gotham City by getting to know Batman with Popverse. Here are some of our latest Batman stories:

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