CELEBRITY HOMES: Adam West and the Search for his “Batcave”

By Michael Oldham | Special to the Palisadian-Post

It all began with my ex-wife, Caryn. In May, she read my Walter Matthau piece (“Ocean Air Drew Walter Matthau to Pacific Palisades,” May 15), and it led us into some small talk about a television star mentioned in the article – Adam West, aka TV’s Batman. I told Caryn, the one fan of mine that I know of, “I’m going to write about Adam West and his home in Pacific Palisades.”

Growing up as a kid in the late 1960s, I was a big fan of the TV show that West had starred in called Batman. The actor played the lead character of Bruce Wayne, the wealthy businessman and philanthropist who frequently transforms into the superhero Batman.

The superhero protected the fictional Gotham City by fighting off villains who had an interesting array of names, such as the Joker. West played the lead for the full three-year run of the series, which began in 1966.

In the series, Batman lived in his Batcave. I was able to locate the actual Batcave entrance used in the series. It’s located in Bronson Canyon, a section of Griffith Park. Little did I know that my quest to find Adam West’s home in the Palisades would prove more difficult.

While West was playing Batman on TV, he was living in a Malibu apartment, at least a portion of the time.

“Half the time, I had to sleep on the lot,” the tall and sharp-looking actor told Motor Trend magazine in 2008. “I had a cottage on the lot. They were good to me.”

As to what years and how long he lived in the Palisades, however, I was left with only a few clues.

The earliest year I could trace Adam West’s Palisadian days to was 1975. That was the year he was named Honorary Mayor of the community.

“I was the Mayor of Pacific Palisades for two consecutive terms,” West was recently quoted as saying.

West would eventually depart the area, but I could not learn exactly when that occurred. The actor, who had his first credited film role in the 1959 film The Young Philadelphians, was living in Pacific Palisades as late as 1986, according to a People magazine article.

The article in People mentioned West having a 12-room house in Pacific Palisades. This was a clue in my search for West’s house and told me that it was a large property. Unfortunately, I still had no address or street name of where the house sat.

To find West’s “Batcave” in the Palisades, I began to send out emails, make phone calls, search telephone book listings and consult star maps.

My emails, asking if anyone knew where Adam West once lived, were sent to a couple of Palisadian real estate agents and to the Pacific Palisades Historical Society. None of my emails were answered. I went to email Alfred, Batman’s faithful butler, but then remembered he was just a fictional character in the TV series played by the late and fellow Palisadian Alan Napier.

Phone calling was a bit more productive. I had a nice chat with Arnie Wishnick, the executive director of the Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce. Though Wishnick told me he didn’t know where the Batman actor’s home had been in the community, he did say, “There have been sightings of Adam West in the town.”

This was encouraging to me, but I eventually ruled out using the Bat-Signal searchlight in the nighttime skies of the Palisades.

Next, I Googled and found a talent agent in Beverly Hills who said he handled some requests for West. But this agent nicely told me he could not help me in my quest to find where Adam West lived in the Palisades.

I searched online through some Los Angeles street address telephone directories. No listing for Adam West in Pacific Palisades was found in any of these books.

For any movie star home aficionados who might be wondering, yes, I did try using West’s birth name during this particular search, but to no luck.

I momentarily took on the character of Robin, Batman’s faithful sidekick, and said out loud, “Holy cow Batman!? Where did you live?”

Another trick I tried was opening up my vast collection of Movie Star Homes maps, which date back to the 1920s. I looked through several of the 1970s and 1980s published maps, which would cover a period of time when West would have been living in the Palisades.

I had hopes of seeing a red dot next to a number representing the location of an Adam West address on San Remo or Amalfi or some local street name. But alas, I didn’t find any map with an Adam West address listing.

At this point, I had only three words, taken from the Batman TV series, to describe my feelings – Wham! Bang! Pow!

And so, it was time to end my quest to find the Pacific Palisades house that Adam West had once lived in. The house is certainly not the only one that has eluded me during my decade-plus hobby of movie star home hunting. I try to keep in mind that the fun is in the hunt.

Perhaps a Palisadian can tell me where Batman lived in the Palisades.

(Please email frances@palipost.com if you have any information on Adam West’s Pacific Palisades home.)

Michael Oldham, co-author of Movie Star Homes: The Famous to the Forgotten and author of the novel The Valentino Formula, can be reached at HollywoodLandings@sbcglobal.net.