“The Purr-fect Crime” / “Better Luck Next Time”
Written by Stanley Ralph Ross and Lee Orgel
Directed by James Sheldon
Season 1, Episodes 19 and 20
Production code 8721
Original air dates: March 16 and 17, 1966
The Bat-signal: It’s midnight at the Gotham City Art Museum, which is labelled only with the word “MUSEUM,” nothing else. Catwoman robs the place, using a cat to distract and attack the security guard while she makes off with a golden cat statue. She delivers a kitten to Gordon’s office, which has a newspaper clipping attached to its collar. It’s a picture of Mark Andrews, the owner of the cat statue, and he has another such statue at the Gotham City Exposition. Realizing that Catwoman is the perpetrator of the crime, Gordon hands the kitten off to O’Hara and calls Batman.
The Bat-phone interrupts Bruce and Dick playing four simultaneous games of chess piled on top of each other. They head to GCPD HQ, where Batman agrees that the museum job is but the first of many cat-related crimes to come from Catwoman.
We cut to Catwoman’s hideout at the Gato & Chat Wholesale Fur Retail Co., where Leo, one of her henchmen, has picked up the multivolume History of Gotham City, while Felix confirms the delivery of the kitten to Gordon. Catwoman then reads up on the lost treasure of Captain Manx, a pirate from the early years of Gotham City.
Batman and Robin return to the Batcave. Alfred and Robin do maintenance on the Batmobile while Batman plays with his chemistry set. Hilariously, he puts rubber gloves on over his costume’s gloves in order to work with the radioactive chemicals. The plan is to spray the cat statue with a tiny bit of radioactivity so they can trace it, in case Catwoman succeeds in stealing the statue.
They arrive at the Exposition. The ticket taker—actually Leo—tries to let them in for free, but Batman insists on paying just like any normal citizen, the sap. (On the other hand, Bruce can dang well afford the admission cost…) After the place closes, Batman sprays the radioactive gunk on the statue. At almost midnight, Batman goes to check the perimeter, leaving Robin with the statue. Batman promises to be back in three minutes and twenty seconds, which is a bizarrely precise interval.
Catwoman enters the room through a sarcophagus, along with her cat, who attacks Robin. The Boy Wonder manages to get off a radio message to Batman before falling unconscious. Batman runs back to the gallery to see Catwoman trying to make off with the statue. Fisticuffs ensue, but Batman is distracted when he finally notices Robin’s unconscious form, and Catwoman, Felix, and Leo escape with their ill-gotten gains.
The Dynamic Duo trace the residue to the Gato & Chat warehouse. Robin recognizes the name as being the words in Spanish and French for “cat,” and when Batman expresses his admiration for his knowledge of foreign languages, which come in handy in fighting crime, Robin actually says with a straight face, “si, si, Batman.”
They enter the warehouse, only to find that it’s a trap: Catwoman was expecting them. They fall through a trap door into an enclosed room, which has spikes on the walls. Those walls start to close in on them—but they soon discover that the spikes are just rubber (though not until after Batman tries and fails to keep the walls apart with his bare hands). Felix then leaves a bomb through a cat door, but the explosion is harmless, and when Batman picks it up, a small flag that says “MEOW!” and a recording of a cat’s meow startle both of them.
Then a tube encloses Robin and sucks him up into the ceiling, leaving Batman alone. Catwoman then gives him a classic lady-or-the-tiger choice, where he actually has to choose between one door, behind which is her (a lie, as she’s upstairs), or the other door, behind which is a tiger.
He picks the door on the right, behind which is the promised “Batman-eating tiger.” Batman fends off the tiger long enough to pull out bat-magnets from his utility belt and climb the wall. He then puts in his bat-earplugs (outside the mask, so how much good can they really be doing?) and then reverses the polarity on the communicator in his utility belt buckle to create a sonic wave that causes the tiger distress and makes him lie down. Batman then leaves through the very same door the tiger came in through.
Catwoman taunts Robin for a bit—including informing him that they’re wrong that her plans are to steal all of Andrews’s collection—before having Felix and Leo lower him into a pit with two tigers while covered in catnip. She buggers off before the job is finished, with other business, but luckily Batman finds Robin in time to save him, using the batarang to swing to his rescue. Fisticuffs ensue, and the Dynamic Duo win, though Leo manages to escape. He meets up with Catwoman, who is not pleased that Batman and Robin are still alive, nor that they recovered the cat statues. However, she puts “alternate plan B” into effect.
Robin checks in with Gordon, assuring him that the statues have been recovered, at least, while Gordon says that there’s no sign of Catwoman at the Andrews estate. An examination of the statues reveal markings on the bases—but the two cats have different markings, which is odd, as they’re supposed to be identical. Batman then looks up the Captain Manx story, and learns that one of the pirate’s treasure chests was never recovered. It turns out that the markings, when put together, form a map of Gotham City as it was in Manx’s day, complete with the location of the booty.
Robin hits on the notion of tracing Catwoman via the radioactive gunk, which would have transferred to her from fondling the statue.
Catwoman finds the treasure in a cave, thrilled at the wealth beyond dreams of avarice—and she’s unwilling to share, so once Leo packs it in a bag, she gasses him, so she can keep the loot for herself. She also had Leo mine the road to the cave, but the Batmobile’s armor resists the explosions.
Batman and Robin show up before she can make her escape, and she leads them on a merry chase through the cave. She tries to jump across a chasm, but she’s too weighed down by her loot. Before Batman can save her, she falls into the chasm, unwilling to let go of the treasure. The Dynamic Duo search the cave, but don’t find her—only her cat.
Back at Wayne Manor, Alfred tries to help Dick play chess—only to have Bruce win anyhow—while Aunt Harriet is frustrated by Catwoman’s erstwhile cat, who keeps stealing things.
Fetch the Bat-shark-repellant! The Batmobile makes an annoying buzzing sound at one point because Robin hasn’t fastened his safety bat-belt. (Oddly, Robin says they’re only going a few blocks, but they actually head straight from there back to the Batcave, which is—as the sign reminds us most every episode—fourteen miles away. Anyhow, it’s just an excuse to let Batman lecture about motor safety. Also, Robin isn’t yet old enough to drive, apparently.) They use the Bat-o-meter to trace the radioactive gunk on the statue. The universal antidote pills make another appearance, curing Robin of the neural toxin on the cat’s claws. They use the bat-beam to set off any booby traps in the entrance to Gato & Chat. Batman escapes from the tiger using a mess of bat-devices: magnets, earplugs, and polarity-reversed communicator. While roaming the catacombs of Catwoman’s lair, he uses sparkly gold Bat-logos to mark his trail. They use the spectrascope and the metal analyzer on the cat statues. Batman keeps the History of Gotham City set on the Bat-research shelf. The Batmobile has armor to protect it from landmines, and it also has automatic tire repair.
Holy #@!%$, Batman! While playing four games of chess at once, Dick cries, “Holy Reshevsky!” a reference to Samuel Reshevsky, the chess champion. Robin utters, “Holy trickery!” when he and Batman discuss Catwoman’s plans. Before being attacked by Catwoman’s cat, he really and truly says, “Holy cats, a cat!” When he sees the spiky walls, Robin cries, “Holy icepicks!” When Batman tells Robin that they never recovered one of Captain Manx’s treasure chests, he cries, “Holy felony!” Upon realizing the cat statues have a map of old Gotham City, he says, “Holy geography!”
Gotham City’s finest. When O’Hara offers police aid against Catwoman, Batman declines, saying a large police presence will only create confusion, which is a remarkably polite and considerate blow-off, all things considered, especially since he heavily implies that the GCPD is completely incompetent and would just get in their way.
Special Guest Villainess. Julie Newmar makes her debut as Catwoman, the first of three women to play the role. This is her only appearance in season 1; she’ll appear half a dozen times in season 2. Eartha Kitt will take over the role for season 3, while Lee Meriwether will play Catwoman in the 1966 movie.
Na-na na-na na-na na-na na.
“It’s a pity I can’t stay and watch, but you know how I hate the sight of blood. TTFN!”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Ta-ta for now.”
–Catwoman breaking one of the Evil Overlord Rules and then quoting Tigger (while observing Batman in a deathtrap with a tiger).
Trivial matters: This episode was discussed on The Batcave Podcast episode 10 by host John S. Drew with special guest chum Clay Dugger, prolific podcaster.
The voiceover for the cliffhanger promises Part 2 tomorrow, “same cat time, same cat channel.”
Catwoman was the one of the first villains to appear in Batman’s eponymous comic that started being published alongside his adventures in Detective Comics in 1940. In Batman #1, she was simply called “the Cat.” She has gone on to become one of Batman’s most popular recurring antagonists, though she’s been portrayed as more of an antihero than an out-and-out villain over the past twenty years or so.
Newmar is the first person to play the role in another medium—the character was never used in any of the previous adaptations—but Catwoman has since been played by Michelle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry, Anne Hathaway, Maggie Baird and Camren Bicondova in live action on film and television, and portrayed in every animated version of Batman that’s been done, voiced by (among many others) Adrienne Barbeau, Eliza Dushku, and Gina Gershon.
Catwoman’s jumpsuits were designed and sewn by Newmar herself.
The original airing of “The Purr-fect Crime” was interrupted by a news bulletin about a near-fatal situation on Gemini 8, as NASA astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott were almost killed. ABC was flooded with calls, not concerned about Armstrong and Scott, but pissed that Batman was interrupted.
This episode is the one and only time we actually see Bonnie, Gordon’s secretary. She delivers the kitten.
Pow! Biff! Zowie! “There’s more than one way to skin a cat, woman!” This is, in many ways, the perfect Batman two-parter. You have an incredibly worthy villain in Catwoman, who is magnificently played by Julie Newmar. It’s obvious the producers didn’t think of her as one of the A-listers initially. While Joker, Riddler, and Penguin all made multiple appearances in the inaugural season, Catwoman only showed up the once, no more or less than Zelda the Great, Bookworm, King Tut, False Face, the Mad Hatter, and Mr. Freeze.
But she obviously made an impression, as she’ll be back quite a bit in season 2, and be part of the roster for the between-seasons movie along with the Big Three male villains, with good reason. Her plans are straightforward, she stays a step ahead of Batman and Robin by anticipating their tracking her down and setting traps for them, and if the traps are a bit too elaborate, well, that’s true of every villain on this show. Besides, trapping Batman in a room with a hungry tiger is probably the most direct method of trying to kill the Dynamic Duo anyone’s come up with.
Newmar herself is superb. She has the same physicality that Frank Gorshin brings to the Riddler, but it’s more low-key and very effective, combining with her imposing presence and sultry voice to create a most memorable villain.
On top of that, you’ve got tons of gadgets, the standard GCPD incompetence, and terrible cat puns. Face it, this two-parter has it all!
Bat-rating: 9
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s latest work of fiction is Thor: Dueling with Giants, Book 1 of the Marvel’s Tales of Asgard trilogy, which will be available as an eBook next Tuesday, to be released as a print book in spring 2016. You can preorder the eBook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or iTunes. Coming soon are Books 2 and 3, Sif: Even Dragons Have Their Endings and The Warrior’s Three: Godhood’s End.
This is my Catwoman. Eartha Kitt was fine in the role, Halle Berry was memorably not, I can take or leave Michelle Pfeiffer, etc. But Julie Newmar will always be my #1 Catwoman. I wish I could be Julie Newmar’s Catwoman.
It’s almost impossible to decide which Catwoman is the best, but I think Julie Newmar is ahead by *ahem* a whisker. Lee Meriwether doesn’t really have time to fully inhabit the role and is up against Romero, Meredith, and Gorshin. Eartha Kitt may be the most sensual, but she doesn’t quite have the vibe, for me.
The writers clearly had a lot of fun coming up with cat references. Leo and Felix deserve special mention and TTFN is a seriously deep cut.
They’re also starting to lay on the messages with a trowel, to the point (possibly deliberate) of undermining them. Batman insisting on paying admission when he’s there to stop a crime and the batmobile insisting Robin use his seat belt right on top of each other. I’m impressed by the seat belt thing, though.The belts weren’t even standard equipment at that point. The alert came along around 5 years later, with the interlock in 1973.
And have you seen Bat Labels? I saw an article at io9 today. Somebody is going through the series and tweeting all the labels, from the stuff in the Bat Cave to the various signs in the villain hideouts to money bags with amounts printed on them.
Please note that, with thanks to Chuck Rosenberg on Facebook, I’ve fixed the bit in “Holy $@@@@@#!? Batman!” to the right Reshevsky………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, who is obviously not up on his chess masters
@2 In response to various studies in the 1950s, US automakers began offering seatbelts as standard equipment in the early 1960s (I think Studebaker was the first, in 1961), with the option being to have them omitted. By 1966, practically every US automaker had the “two-point” lap belt as standard. I can recall lots of PSAs on TV about “buckling up” running at the time. I seem to remember reading that the Batman TV show got an official commendation from the National Highway and Traffic Safety Board for the stock closeup shot showing Batman and Robin putting on seatbelts before taking off the Batmobile.
I continue to insist that Halle Berry never did play the Catwoman, certainly not the one from Batman comics. The only thing her character had in common with Batman’s feline foe was the name Catwoman. Virtually everything else was changed for Berry’s movie. It grates on my nerves whenever that film is described as “based on the DC Comics character” or when anyone includes Ms. Berry in the list of actresses who have played the feline felon from Batman on film. No, she quite simply but firmly has NOT.
Robin gets his driver’s license at the start of season 3, so presumably he’s supposed to be 14 in this season, although Burt Ward is clearly a lot older.
Good catch with Maggie Baird as one of the actresses to play Selina. She appeared in flashbacks in the Birds of Prey TV series and is officially credited only as “Mother.”
Other voice artists for Catwoman include Jane Webb and Melendy Britt for Filmation’s two series, Nika Futterman in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Stephanie Sheh in the Batman of Shanghai DC Nation shorts, and Tress MacNeille as the aged Selina in the animated adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns.
The interesting thing about Catwoman’s costume is that in the comics, she wore a purple dress, a purple-and-black cowl, and a green cape — which is surprisingly similar to the Yvonne Craig Batgirl’s ensemble of a purple catsuit with yellow highlights, a purple-and-black cowl, and a yellow cape. The comics’ Batgirl wore a black catsuit with yellow highlights and a blue cowl and cape — while the TV Catwoman wore a black catsuit. They swapped color schemes for TV!
And I agree, Newmar’s Catwoman was fantastic. She’s really the first villainess we’ve had on the show who was really a credible threat. Most of the female foes so far, like Zelda, Suzie, and Blaze, have turned out to be not all that bad, and the rest have just been subordinates. Catwoman — or the Catwoman, as she’s referred to here — is the real deal. And Newmar really rises to the occasion. You mention her physicality and her sultry voice, and her sex appeal was definitely intense, but what I’ve found striking in rewatching the show is what a fantastic flair for comedy she had. Her delivery was every bit as funny and rich as Gorshin’s or Meredith’s or Victor Buono’s (I don’t count Romero because he was trying to be comical all the time, so it didn’t have quite the same impact), and she did a fun job when she adopted disguises and fake voices too. It must’ve been fun for a glamorous actress like Newmar to get to play character roles, and she was terrific at it.
Although I’m frustrated by the ’60s gender roles, since Julie Newmar could’ve been a credible physical threat to Batman and Robin too, given her height and athleticism. It would’ve been awesome to see her taking them on in the Batfights. But instead she just huddled in the corner, which was really disappointing. (Although she will get to do more later on.)
Interesting story structure here. The deathtraps are usually wrapped up in the first couple of minutes of part 2, but here the peril stretched out for the whole first act, and there was that unusual use of narration not merely to set the scene, but to explain Batman’s action. I also like how literate this script is, with subtle references like Damon and Pythias.
Plus there’s a kitten! And tigers! As Hobbes once said, the great thing about tigers is that anything they appear in is automatically fine art.
Interesting line Catwoman had in the cave there — “Never again to face deprivation.” Is that a hint of a motivation for her criminal career? Was she once a penniless stray, driven to ruthless greed by the hardships she endured? Interesting to ponder.
And I can’t help feeling that the climax to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade totally cribbed from this.
@2/DemetriosX: Newmar is the best of the three Catwomen by a huge margin. Meriwether is fun to watch — that scene of her writhing and caterwauling in evil glee while the henchmen look on bug-eyed is practically R-rated — but her performance isn’t nearly as rich and fun as Newmar’s. And Kitt had a terrific voice, but wasn’t as impressive physically. They’re all good in their ways, but Newmar had a special magic about her.
@5/David Peattie: The thing a lot of people don’t realize about the Halle Berry Catwoman is that it implicitly presents her as the successor to Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman in Batman Returns. In that movie, Selina was a meek secretary who basically died, was swarmed by cats, and was somehow reborn with a more aggressive and feline personality and formidable fighting skills, and apparently with nine lives as well. The movie was vague about how this transformation happened. But the Catwoman movie expanded on it by explaining that there was a whole succession of Catwomen who were imbued with supernatural feline power, retconning the movie’s Selina into one of those women. It didn’t mention her by name, but the mechanics of the transformation were basically the same, so clearly that was the intention.
So yes, the Berre Catwoman was based on the comics character, indirectly, because she was derived from the Tim Burton version of the comics character. It’s not a separate creation. Although it is certainly a terrible, terrible movie.
The cat didn’t just lie down. He was killed by Batman. As the narrator said “He split the Tigers skull.”
I was shocked a little when I saw this as a kid.
Joseph
About Robin’s driving: New York’s driving age is 18, isn’t it? So, they may have been thinking of that for his character. Also, TV shows at this time often existed in a sort of time bubble. Characters were stay in high school for twenty years if a show lasted long enough and they thought they could make it credible.
@7/joseph mcguire: “Splitting someone’s skull” is hyperbole. It means to give someone an awful headache or inundate them with painfully loud noise. It doesn’t mean that Batman literally fractured the tiger’s cranium.
@8/Ellynne: Currently, 16-year-olds can get a junior or provisional driver’s license in New York City, and 17-year-olds are eligible for senior licenses if they complete a driver’s ed course. I don’t know if that was the case in the ’60s, though.
And yes, shows did exist in a time bubble, as evidenced by the fact that the Riddler, Penguin, and other supercriminals were often out of jail mere weeks after attempting murder, kidnapping, or citywide terrorism/extortion. Still, if anything, that implies that considerably more than two years passed in the first two seasons of the series.
Joseph: that was a figure of speech. Watch the tiger: he’s still very much alive with his head up throughout. Just in distress, but still moving and breathing.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
What did you all think of Anne Hathaway as Selina.
I especially liked her early scene with Bruce where she pretends to be this meek secretary and she just changes her demeanor when she is discovered.
@11/Felix: Hathaway was terrific. Given how determined Christopher Nolan seemed to be to keep Batman grounded and serious and as far away as possible from the colorful camp of Batman ’66, I’m startled that he gave us the most Newmaresque screen Catwoman since Newmar herself. She even had an updated version of the show’s Catwoman outfit — black catsuit, domino mask, cat-ear headband, and stiletto heels.
As we discussed on the podcast, 20,000 decibels would not only be enough to shatter the tiger’s skull, it would have turned his brains to mush. It would have shook the building. 130db can cause ear damage if sustained. While the tiger may have looked all right, I chalked that one up to Batman killing the tiger.
What about the mysterious third assistent? In the scene where Robin was captured and was dangling above the tiger pit, there are three men in the same suits. But in every part of the episode, only Leo and Felix were mentioned. In addition, after Leo escaped, Robin tells O’Hara they captured one person. “We’ve captured one of the Catwoman’s Mob.” No mention of the other man at all. (He is listed in the credits. As “Henchman”.)
I had the feeling he was supposed to be part of the story, but was cut out later on, for … reasons?
The whole “There’s a map on these cats, but we’re not showing the audience and it reminds me automatically of the way Gotham city looked three centuries ago” was ridiculous, even for Batman standards.
Not to mention the way he climbed up the wall with bended arms, clearly being pulled up by cables. And was clearly standing when he was doing his ear plugs.
Other than that: great episode. Utterly enjoyed it. First time a person “died” on screen, wasn’t it?
@13/John S. Drew: In fact, 20,000 decibels would be physically impossible, since it’s a logarithmic scale. For instance, 30 dB is 100 times more intense than 10 dB, 40 dB is 1000 times more intense than 10, etc. Every additional 10 decibels (or every additional 1 bel) is another factor of 10 louder. Now, even the explosion of Krakatoa was estimated at 180 dB, and the Tunguska explosion, the loudest sound ever documented, maybe 300 or so. That means that a sound of 20,000 dB would be 10^1970 times louder than the loudest sound in history. Which is meaninglessly large.
@14/Artsapat: A lot of episodes have two or three named henchmen but then have additional nameless henchmen coming out of the woodwork when needed for a Batfight.
And no, the first onscreen death was Molly in the pilot, when she fell into the Batcave’s atomic reactor. “What a horrible way to go-go!” There was also that guard who fell and made a shattering sound after Mr. Freeze froze him, but there was a line in part 2 saying that he’d survived. He might’ve lost a limb or something, though.
I forgot about poor Molly.
I’ve seen almost exactly none of these episodes, but the first one above I knew from a young age in the late 1970s when I could click through a Viewmaster version (remember those things?). It would be fun to track this one down sometime.
I don’t remember this episode, but Newmar is my favorite Catwoman. Agree too that Hathway’s version was very good too.
“This episode is the one and only time we actually see Bonnie, Gordon’s secretary.”
I’ve seen this statistic in several places, and I’ve always disputed it. In “Fine Feathered Finks,” Gordon tells Bonnie to send in Warden Crichton and then this blond lady, who is barely on screen for more than two seconds, shows him in.
Is this not Bonnie also? I realize it’s a different actress than the one seen here, but I always thought that this was supposed to be Bonnie, too. If it isn’t, then who is she? By the way, for anyone who is interested in this sort of thing, the original script for “How to Hatch a Dinosaur” reveals Bonnie’s last name: Patterson. No doubt she was named for Dozier’s secretary, Bonnie Paterson.