The runaway success of ABC’s Batman show in January 1966 prompted CBS and NBC to come up with two typically banal ideas for the fall of 1967, both superhero sitcoms.
The notion of parodying superheroes was pretty obvious, and Batman had already plowed that ground anyway.
Somewhat ironically, in an era obsessed with drug abuse, both superheroes acquired their time-limited superpowers through wonder drugs.
On CBS, Stephen Strimpell played a gas station attendant who gained the strength of a thousand men and the ability to fly as Mr. Terrific. Yawn.
But NBC had something fresh from the mind that had dreamed up Get Smart. Buck Henry, in creating his clever and largely unappreciated 1960s superhero sitcom Captain Nice, anticipated with comic effect something that would probably happen in real life if some masked, super-strong fellow were to fly around doing good deeds.
We imagine helpless, grateful citizens being overawed, and look-up-in-the-sky-ing, but very, very quickly we’d get used to him, just as we get used to every impossible thing that happens — men landing on the moon, Japanese nuclear reactors poisoning the Pacific, walking around with Star Trek communicators in our hands, and so forth.
I recall an episode in which a highway bridge, ruined by corrupt contractors, collapses during its dedication ceremony. Luckily, police chemist Carter Nash (William Daniels) is on hand as Captain Nice to catch the bridge.
The mayor wonders if he wouldn’t mind just standing there to support the bridge permanently.
Alice Ghostley co-starred as Nash’s mother, and Ann Prentiss played policewoman Candy Kane. The character’s superhero name came from his spur-of-the-moment attempt to explain away his monogrammed belt buckle. His unfortunate costume was something his mother made him wear.
“Well, it had Buck Henry, and he would take a script, go into a room, and make it funny,” recalled Daniels in an interview with Will Harris. “He was a terribly gifted comic writer. But I can’t say as I remember too much about it except that once they flew me into the wall of the studio, and I banged my head!”
“There was a scene where I supposedly knock down a door and come charging in, and I was standing next to the director, right near the door, when they were practicing it. And suddenly they blew out the door, and it made a tremendous noise. And I had a ringing in my ears that went on for a couple of days, so I finally went to a doctor, who said, ‘Well, sure, you’ve got a ringing: They broke your eardrum!’ I said, ‘Well, how do you know?’ He said, ‘Because there’s blood in there!’ [Laughs.] So he says, ‘You’re going to lose some of your highs.’ Which I have.”
“But I had lovely, talented people with me. Alice Ghostley played my mother, and she was a marvelous comedienne and actress. It was a very pleasant experience. What more can I say about it?”
Gold Key published a single issue of a Captain Nice comic book in 1967, with art by Joe Certa. Mr. Terrific never got his own comic book, but I don’t believe anyone complained about that.
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