Robert Lowery (actor)  Robert Lowery (born Robert Lowery Hanks, October 17, 1913 – December 26, 1971) was an American motion picture, television, and stage actor who appeared in more than seventy films. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Lowery grew up on Wayne Avenue near the long-demolished Electric Park. Lowery's father was a local attorney and oil investor who worked several years for the Pullman Corporation as a railroad agent; his mother, Leah Thompson Hanks, was a concert pianist. Syndicated newspaper columnist Harrison Carroll reported that Lowery was "a direct descendant of Nancy Hanks". He graduated from Paseo High School in Kansas City, and soon was invited to sing with the Slats Randall Orchestra in the early 1930s. Lowery played on the Kansas City Blues minor league baseball team and was overall considered a versatile athlete; his physique and strength were gained from a stint working in a paper factory as a teenager. After the death of his father in 1935, he traveled to Hollywood with his mother and their housekeeper, and enrolled in the Lila Bliss acting school before being signed by Twentieth Century Fox in 1937. Lowery debuted in motion pictures in "Come and Get It" (1936). During his career, Lowery was primarily known for roles in action films such as "The Mark of Zorro" (1940), "The Mummy's Ghost" (1944), and "Dangerous Passage" (1944). He became the second actor to play DC Comics' Batman (succeeding Lewis Wilson), starring in a 1949's "Batman and Robin" serial. Lowery also had roles in a number of Western films including "The Homesteaders" (1953), "The Parson and the Outlaw" (1957), "Young Guns of Texas" (1962), and "Johnny Reno" (1966). He was also a stage actor and appeared in "Born Yesterday", "The Caine Mutiny", and in several other productions. On television, Lowery was best known for the role of Big Tim Champion on the series "Circus Boy" (1956–1957). In 1956, he guest starred in "The Deadly Rock," an episode of "The Adventures of Superman" (which was the first time a Batman actor shared screen time with a Superman actor, although Lowery and Reeves had appeared together in their pre-superhero days in the 1942 World War II anti-VD propaganda film, "Sex Hygiene.")