Frank Gorshin, who played the Riddler in the Batman TV series, in 2003. Photograph: Evan Agostini/Getty
• Xan Brooks, Guardian Unlimited Film editor
It could be a particularly fiendish riddle in itself. This week saw the death of a singer, a comedian, an impressionist and a Broadway star. They all died of complications following lung cancer in the same hospital, and at the same age (72). They all shared the same name: Frank Gorshin.
Gorshin CV ran the entertainment gamut, but it is his role as the Riddler in the wonderfully cheesy Batman TV series that most sticks in the memory. A flamboyant tease with the feral appearance of a small-time hoodlum, Gorshin was the show's unsung star. Watching the show as a kid, I knew that I was really supposed to be rooting for portly, pompous Adam West and his insufferable Boy Wonder, who would later write a scandalous, tell-all autobiography ("we were like sexual vampires") about life on the Batman set. But somehow I never could.
The villains were always the best thing about Batman. They had more glamour, better outfits and a sense of mischief that was lacking in the costumed dullards on their trail. Cesar Romero played the Joker as a demonic Ronald McDonald, while the libidinous Catwoman was like a hand grenade thrown into the tranquil world of dormant, pre-teen sexuality. But the Riddler was the best of the bunch.
Michael Chabon's Pulitzer prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is about a pair of Jewish cartoonists in 1940s New York, and identifies a crucial truth about comic-book superheroes. These great Wasp icons were actually born out of a working-class, immigrant mindset. They were the dreams of influence and invincibility that came out of the heads of working-class scribblers still trying to get a toe on the ladder.
Whether wittingly or not, Gorshin's Riddler acknowledged these roots. His intelligence was the intelligence of the kid hustling for nickels. His villainy was that of the streetwise con-artist with a deck of playing cards in one pocket and a pair of knuckle-dusters in the other. Against all the odds (despite the wooden dialogue, the dumb-ass plots, the tights), Gorshin brought a dose of gritty realism to Batman.
