The year 1943 began as 1942 ended with a world war raging in both Europe and the Pacific. D Day, the event that would finally strike back against the Nazis on European soil with the biggest land invasion in world history was more than a year and a half away. In America factories would run 24 hours each and every day of 1943 to turn out the weapons of war needed as the US under the leadership of President Franklin Roosevelt fought to overcome the forces of totalitarian rule that had been imposed on much of Europe and Asia. For Americans this meant living with rationing of much of the items that people took for granted on a daily basis such as sugar, meat, news print and gasoline and some that a lot of people did not think of on a daily basis such as farm equipment.  

Still for American adults and kids in 1943 some pleasures were still allowed as the US government realized that Americans needed things to take their mind off the war. Commercial radio continued and the Lone Ranger, Superman, The Shadow and other radio heroes continued their fight against the bad guys. Comic books, read by adults (including thousands of GI’s who were provided with free copies of comics to read on the front lines during all too brief interludes from danger) continued to be published, albeit with the precious (and low quality) news print used to print them rationed and newspapers continued to publish their daily comic strips loved by both adults and children both. Hollywood continued to produce films and movie serials and baseball was allowed to continue.

For Batman 1943 was a big year because he was going to appear in both his first movie serial and the start of his own newspaper comic strip. Columbia Pictures released the first episode of its serial, called simply “Batman” on July 16, 1943. It starred Lewis Wilson as Batman and Douglas Croft as Robin. J. Carrol Naish played the villain, not one from the Batman comics but rather a character named Dr. Daka, a Japanese spy working in America. The film is the first time Batman appeared outside the comics and his first movie appearance. It introduced what was called "The Bat's Cave," and its secret entrance through a grandfather clock inside Wayne Manor. Both of these were to become standard parts of the Batman comics mythos. This serial also changed how Alfred Pennyworth's physical appearance would be shown in future Batman comics. Alfred first appeared as a somewhat overweight butler in Batman #16 on sale in February 1943 prior to the serial release. After William Austin's appearance as a slim Alfred with a mustache in the serial, National Comics redesigned their Alfred to look the same, starting with Detective Comics #83 January 1944.

As noted above, 1943 also saw the debut of Batman in his first newspaper comic strip, the first daily appearing on Monday, October 25, 1943. The strip was carried by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate. This strip represents the last and possibly largest solo body of work that Bob Kane penciled completely by himself. It featured stories by all the big Batman writers and artists of the time including writers Bill Finger and Jack Schiff and artists Dick Sprang and Jack Burnley. Most of Batman’s rogue gallery as it existed at the time appeared at some point during the run either in a daily story line or a Sunday one. According to Joe Desris in his wonderful Kitchen Sink reprint of the entire run of both the daily and Sunday strips, only 33 newspapers have been documented as having carried the strip and not all of them carried it all together at the same time. Editorial control remained with National/DC under the direction of editor Jack Schiff for the entire run of the strip. It must be noted that there was no mention of the coming appearance of the comic strip that appeared in any of the advertising for the serial according to Joe but he notes there was a “comic strip herald” produced in early 1943 that could have planted the seed for a possible strip by National/DC.

Despite that fact that there is no mention of a coming newspaper strip in the movie serial advertising, there is a good possibility that the “Batman” serial and the Batman newspaper strip could be linked together.  In the 1943 Batman serial press kit a promotional mask was advertised for movie theaters to give out to kids attending their showings of the serial during the summer of 1943. This same mask would show up again because in the fall of 1943, around the time that the newspaper comic strip made its first appearance and to promote the start of the Batman newspaper comic strip, a Batman mask was given out, according to Joe in his Kitchen Sink series, by the Philadelphia Record one of the bigger newspapers carrying the strip and it was the same mask shown in the serial press kit.  It measured 5 1/2" by 8 1/2" and according to Joe, the mask itself was designed and made to order by a Philadelphia costuming company to the tune of 250,000 copies of the mask. The back of the mask promotes the carrying of the strip by the Philadelphia Record and the art was most certainly done by the DC staff. Joe notes that the Record gave out the mask at a Halloween party in their office building in 1943 according to a press release by the paper. Joe says the mask was also given out by dealers and newspaper carriers.  Further increasing the possible tie-in to the movie serial concerns the fact that there are 2 versions of this mask, both the same but with one exception. One version of it has the name Batman across the top front and while the other has that same Batman logo but below it says “State Theatre new serial starts Monday 22 each Monday after plus Deanna Durbin in ‘Her’s To Hold’” which I discovered received one Oscar Nomination for the song: “Say a Pray’r for the Boys Over There” but did not win. Now according to IMDb the movie opened on July 16, 1943 the same date that the Batman movie serial was released but the mask also says a new serial was going to begin on Monday the 22nd and one could presume, by just reading the mask and knowing nothing else, in July, given the release date of both the Durbin movie and the serial.

I found several possible candidates for the theatre in question but I believe the most likely one is the State Theatre movie house that was located at 105 South 52nd Street in Philadelphia. Designed by architect Ralph Bencker with Thomas W. Lamb as consultant, the State Theatre was one of the most magnificent Art Deco style movie palaces ever built, but its location in western Philadelphia was too far from downtown and disqualified it from first-run status which could be important here. This must have been one amazing theatre to see a movie in. Its design was innovative as instead of being at the very top of the balcony, the projection booth was housed in the center of the mezzanine section of seats, which created a superior screen image and permitted better spotlighting for stage shows. The State Theatre was demolished in 1967, and today a McDonald's Restaurant stands on the site.

Now July 16, 1943 was a Friday and as stated above, the front of the State Theatre mask says a new serial was opening on Monday the 22nd but there were only three days in 1943 that the 22nd falls on a Monday, the first in February, the second in March neither of which could have been the date the mask is referring to as they are just too soon before the movie and strip began, and the third in November which seems to be the most likely date. Additionally a Monday the 22nd can be found in May 1944 but that seems too far removed from the printing of them by the Record. So now questions must be asked. Was this mask given out in November 1943 by the theatre? Was a theatre that was denied first run movie status showing a Deanna Durbin movie in November that had opened elsewhere in July on the same day as the Batman movie serial was released? In their golden age, movies only stayed in theaters for one week runs, unlike today.  What new movie serial was opening on the 22nd? It was very unusual for a movie serial to be shown on any day except a Saturday because the rental fee for most serials was for one day. This meant having to pay a higher fee for additional days of the week to get their money’s worth from the kids who made up a good part of the audience for them. Serials were almost always shown on a Saturday (and yes there were some exceptions but apparently not many). As a second run theatre, could the serial that the mask is referring to have been the Batman one opening later than its original date or is the mask referring to a different one?

With that first serial chapter release date of July 16, 1943 which was a Friday (for most likely Saturday showings) and given the serial was 15 chapters the last released on October 22, 1943 also a Friday that would have left a month before the Monday, November 22, 1943 date mentioned on the mask. How possible is it that the State Theatre simply agreed to hand out the masks as long as it got the free publicity with that blurb on the front and it was not using the mask as a tie in to its showing of the Batman serial? Did the mask come to the Record via the State Theatre’s copy of the serial press kit? Fellow collector and Batman authority Craig Warren believes that the State Theatre part of the mask was added on after the fact and we both agree that the mask can be read as an ad for the theatre showing the movie serial. Still it would have been costly to add that blurb on after the fact regardless of who paid for it especially given that there are masks that do not have the State Theatre ad too, so it was not done for the entire production of the run. Craig believes the mask had to be run on a steel drum as was the norm then and it would have been too expensive to do a second run of the mask so it is quite possible that the State Theatre ad was an addition part way through the print run which would have been doable and the result of some advertising agreement it had with the Record. Or the State’s complete run of the mask might have always been intended as a joint effort with the Record to advertise both serial and comic strip. After a long strike the Record went out of business in 1947 and its assets sold to the Philadelphia Bulletin which also went out of business in 1982. The Bulletin's internal newsclipping files (approximately 500,000 pieces), card indexes, and photographs (ca. 3 million) are now held in the Temple University Libraries. Does that include the Record’s files as well? Further research will have to be done to see if any of the Record’s files still exist.

Either version of this mask today is considered one of the rarest of all the non-comic book Batman collectibles from the 1940s but as noted above 250,000 of them were supposedly printed just for the Record. What happened to all of them? Well they were made of paper and certainly war time paper collection drives scooped up large portions of them. Since they were made for kids to be worn they were not going to last long and if they were inserted in newspapers sold by venders and newsstands they would not have been used for anything except perhaps place makers by adults who did not have any kids in their reading of the Record. Are there caches of them sitting in some storage warehouse today never handed out but waiting to be found? It’s possible, but to date that type of discovery has not been made yet. Reproductions of the mask appear on eBay and while the dealers I have seen selling them identify them as copies, that might not be true of everyone offering one, so be careful.

I think the most likely scenario is that the mask was a joint effort by the two parties involved to save costs and to promote their respective interests of serial and comic strip. To date I have no smoking gun to prove this but the evidence does lean to this conclusion and as you can see there are still mysteries to be solved about this piece and for a collector that is part of the fun of collecting, getting the back story as the Pickers on the History Channel are always saying. With that in mind, anyone who might have further information on this please feel free to contact me through Scoop.

Contributed by Collector and Overstreet Advisor Art Cloos