A millionaire playboy leads a double life as a mysterious creature called "The Bat". He prowls around his gothic city, projects his bat-signal and performs nearly super-human stunts. That's the plot, anyway, of the 1926 silent film called The Bat. Allegedly Bob Kane based his comic book creation of 1939 on the film he had enjoyed 14 years earlier. He added some back story and made a few significant changes like making his Bat-Man a hero instead of a thief like in the 1926 film. Some enterprising youngster on YouTube edited clips from "The Bat" to highlight it's similarity to what later became Batman. Enjoy:
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