Kirk Groeneveld has a question…
Just finished reading your column on Bob Kane/Bill Finger and the pending star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Can you give us an estimate of when it will be completed or dedicated? Any advance notice would be helpful, whether through the grapevine, in POV or on Facebook.
No one knows except that it will be before the end of 2020 but most likely some time in 2015. The way it works is that the honoree (or in this case, his or her representative) works out a mutually-agreeable date with the committee and they have five years in which to do that.
Most of the time, the star on the sidewalk is paid for directly or indirectly by a studio or some other entity that has a financial interest in the honoree. They then want the ceremony to take place when the honoree has a new movie opening or a new CD coming out or something else they'll want to promote. It would not surprise me if the Bob Kane star was dedicated on or around the time some major Batman product was coming to the market.
The 1966 TV series is reportedly being released on DVD this November. Someone over at Time-Warner Video is probably rankled that they missed a great promotional opportunity by not arranging for Kane's star earlier. Then they could have arranged a big, press-covered ceremony with Adam West and Burt Ward and Julie Newmar and such.
Or maybe it could have been done for the new TV series which starts this fall, Gotham. It's about the goings-on in Batman's home town of Gotham City, which was named in the comic by Bill Finger.
(I think that Batman-Superman movie is targeted for May of 2016 but I doubt Kane's family will want to wait that long.)
The ceremonies are only announced a week to ten days before the date so if you want to know when the Bob Kane star gets scheduled, you'll have to keep an eye on the Walk of Fame webpage. You might also want to follow Star Girl on Twitter. I'll try to announce it here if I find out about it in time.
That webpage has lots of information on the Walk of Fame, though some of its info seems to be outdated. They say on it that "One posthumous award is given each year." But the 2015 selections include not only Mr. Kane but the late Raymond Chandler and last year, they picked Tupac Shakur and Phil Hartman (both deceased) and the year before they selected Janis Joplin and Luther Vandross (ditto) and so on…