SHOW AT COLLEGE : HOLY HISTORY! BATMAN AND ROBIN ARE ON MOVE AGAIN

Holy time warp! Has it really been 21 years since the “Dynamic Duo” sprung from the comic books onto our televisions screens?

Indeed it has. And Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana will be rekindling fans’ memories Saturday night with “A Tribute to Batman & Robin,” a joint presentation of the community college’s telecommunications department and “A Night With the Stars,” a firm whose president is the Boy Wonder himself.

Actors Adam (Batman) West and Burt (Robin) Ward--now 49 and 42 respectively--will be coming face to face again with such villainous types as Cesar (The Joker) Romero and Julie (Catwoman) Newmar. Lee Meriwether, who portayed Catwoman in some episodes, also is scheduled to appear.

West won’t be wearing his costume. “I don’t do that for less than a fortune,” he said last week with a hearty laugh. Still, the assembly of actors and guests will be larger than ever gathered even when the series was in full swing, according to Ward, whose 3-year-old Beverly Hills firm stages private screenings as fund-raisers for service clubs and other organizations.

It’s all for a good cause, according to Terry Bales, chairman of the telecommunications department and adviser to its broadcast journalists. “This tribute is a chance for us to raise money for our scholarship and TV production fund,” said Bales, who collects videotapes of old television shows for a course he teaches on TV history, and who says he finds “Batman” noteworthy for its comic approach.

“It gave us,” said Bales, “a definition for the word camp --something so bad, so ridiculous and so silly you watched it for guilty pleasure. It was great escape.”

Bales has been the force behind five earlier tributes at the college that honored such tube stars of yesteryear as “Leave it to Beaver’s” Jerry Mathers and “Candid Camera’s” Allen Funt.

Another past honoree, Gary Owens of “Laugh-In” fame and now a radio personality for KFI, will serve as guest host for Saturday’s entertainment, which begins at 7 p.m. in Cook Gym. Admission will be $10 (free for children 12 and under).

The panel of superheroes and villains will take questions from the audience, pose for photographs and sign autographs. The 1966 full-length motion picture “Batman” will be shown along with a short subject and a cartoon.

In these autumn days up in Idaho’s Sun Valley, Batman can be found out among the brambles and the cornfields, stalking pheasants.

At least that’s what Adam West was doing last weekend during the opening of pheasant hunting season. He bagged nine birds altogether and claims that he cleaned them all himself, just in time to host back-to-back dinner parties.

Ward, meanwhile, was hundreds of miles away, five floors up in a Beverly Hills bank building barking orders to underlings about buying furniture for his new suite of offices.

Both men are a long way from Gotham City, but they haven’t forgotten their adventures there, and neither has the viewing public.

Since it debuted as a mid-season replacement in January, 1966, “Batman” has been seen by at least 400 million viewers, according to 20th Century Fox, which syndicates the 120-episode series. Currently, the show is airing in 20 countries (though not in the Los Angeles-Orange County area), to an estimated 15 million viewers.

Reached by telephone at his home near Sun Valley in the midst of his bird-cleaning chores, West said he just recently finished shooting three films--two independent features and a picture for Cannon, “Doin’ Time on Planet Earth”-- that he hopes will raise his big-screen visibility and help make up for the “many great turkeys” he made on the heels of Batmania.

Typecast after the series ended in March, 1968, West bounced about Hollywood picking up guest shots and making a dozen pilots over the years. Ironically, West landed a guest role on the new fall TV series “Once a Hero,” only to see the show canceled three days before his episode was to air.

“Nothing has come close,” he said “to hitting like Batman did.” The adventures of millionaire Bruce Wayne and his young ward, Dick Greyson, as masked crime stoppers made for an overnight ratings success, garnering acclaim as the most offbeat new show of the season and finishing its first year in the Top 10.

Top stars of the day, recognizing the show’s popularity, vied for the juicy evil-doer roles. Burgess Meredith and Vincent Price were regulars as the Penguin and Egghead. Viewers also may remember Joan Collins as the Siren, Liberace as Chandell, Art Carney as the Archer, and Milton Berle as Louie the Lilac.

Romero, who is due back on “Falcon Crest” later this season, appeared in 22 episodes of Batman as the Joker. “Playing the villains got to be one of the ‘in’ things to do,” he said, characterizing the series as “a very important part of my career.”

And what of Robin? When the Batmobile ran out of gas, Ward, exhausted from the show’s shooting schedule, decided to take it easy for a few years and lie around the beach in Malibu. He earned a handsome living making personal appearances three months of the year.

When he got around to knocking on doors in Hollywood, he found it even harder than West to get acting work. He has done guest roles, talk shows, specials and a pilot in recent years and recently taped a segment for “Solid Gold,” due to air next month. This year, he also completed filming for Vestron’s “Night School.”

The actor-turned-businessman is now caught up in franchising his “A Night With the Stars” operation and expanding the private screening concept to elementary schools.

West and Ward have been fixtures on the personal appearance circuit, working solo and together for the past two decades, ever since “Batman” was cancelled. They’ve greeted fans at car shows, sci-fi conventions, mall openings and stadium parties.

Both said they would gladly do “Batman” all over again if given the opportunity and the right scripts. West confessed to having a “proprietary interest” in the television character he created and said he wouldn’t like it very much if anyone else were to take up his role.

“For one thing, I still fit into my utility belt,” he joked. And beyond that, he said, he’s convinced from the fan mail he still receives and people he meets that a new movie featuring the original stars could make it big.

While Ward has, for the most part, set aside his acting career for the business world, he, too, would be interested in reprising his role for a movie. But even though scripts have been passed around, and though Warner Communications, which owns creator Bob Kane’s comic strip, has toyed with the idea, no such plans are in sight.

Could Batman and Robin ever recapture their once lofty place among America’s superheroes? Do West and Ward even still look like the Dynamic Duo?

West claims he stays in shape by hunting, fishing and mountain climbing. Ward has put on a few pounds but maintains his boyish good looks.

Holy flashback!