“Batman’s Anniversary” / “A Riddling Controversy”
Written by William P. D’Angelo
Directed by James B. Clark
Season 2, Episodes 45 and 46
Production code 9745
Original air dates: February 8 and 9, 1967
The Bat-signal: Bruce is helping Dick with geometry homework involving cutting up a pie, but it’s interrupted by the Bat-phone. Gordon’s news is so bad he won’t even discuss it over the phone—or in his office. He insists they meet at the Gotham Plaza Hotel—which turns out to be a surprise anniversary party for Batman.
Mayor Linseed says that the proceeds for this luncheon will be given to Batman’s favorite charity, which is placed in a golden calf and presented on a tray. However, green gas explodes in the room, and several firefighters show up instantly to put out the nonexistent fire—it’s all a cover, of course, for the Riddler, who steals the golden calf full of money earmarked for charity and makes his escape in a fire department van.
The Dynamic Duo give chase in the Batmobile, but they lose him. Batman gets a copy of the Gotham Herald, which Riddler hinted would have the clue to his next crime. The Sons of Balboa are holding a banquet at the Basin Street Hotel, but a water main explosion under the Gotham City Bank, flooding their vault. Batman and Robin realize it’s a bit of word play: a bank wet. Sending Gordon to the Basin Street Hotel just in case, they hie in the Batmobile to the bank.
Wearing breathing gear, Batman and Robin find Riddler and his goons in scuba gear, robbing the bank. Very slow, languid underwater fisticuffs ensue, but Riddler and his gang escape by pulling out Robin’s breathing mask, thus keeping Batman busy saving Robin, and allowing their egress.
We cut to Riddler’s hideout which is on the site of the soon to be opened Noman Jigsaw Puzzle Factory, which we know from the sign that says, “ON THIS SITE, SOON TO BE OPENED, THE NOMAN JIGSAW PUZZLE FACTORY.” The loot from the bank and the golden calf is half of what Riddler needs to buy a weapon so awesome that he’ll be able to blackmail the city. The creator of that weapon, Professor Charm, is looking forward to Riddler using the weapon, but he insists on the three million bucks for it.
Batman and Robin have failed to solve Riddler’s latest clue, left at the bank—”When is a man drowned but still not wet?”—so they attend to their appointment to pose for the marshmallow figures that will be atop the giant cake in Batman’s honor that has been baked.
But once they get on top of the cake, they discover that the cake is made of quicksand. Riddler goes off to Gotham Park to steal the rest of the money being given to Batman’s favorite charity for the anniversary. Belatedly, Robin realizes that quicksand is the answer to the riddle, as you drown in quicksand but never get wet.
They manage to calm themselves enough so that they “float” in the quicksand, then activate the rockets in their boots. But they’re too late to stop the Riddler from robbing the charity funds, which happens off camera.
Riddler’s latest clue is about an eagle’s nest, and Batman, Robin, Gordon, and O’Hara eventually figure out that he’s after Anthony Aquilla, a South American dictator living in exile in Gotham City, and who has a million dollars in his wall safe. Riddler could also be targeting a club called the Aerie, where many of Gotham’s elite wine and dine. Sending the cops to the Aerie, Batman and Robin proceed to Aquilla’s penthouse apartment. They arrive to find Riddler’s emptying the wall safe.
Fisticuffs ensue, but while the Dynamic Duo are triumphant, the Riddler has Aquilla in a deathtrap. Batman and Robin are forced to let Riddler escape while they save Aquilla.
Riddler gives the three million to Charm, who hands Riddler the demolecularizer—which looks like a cheap-ass flashlight, but can in fact disintegrate pretty much anything. Turns out he needs the three million to fund the creation of the remolecularizer, which will reverse the effects of what he just sold the Riddler.
Riddler instructs Gordon and Batman to meet him at the statue of Marshal Coley, one of Gotham’s war heroes, which Riddler then disintegrates to show off his new weapon. He threatens to make GCPD HQ disappear next, unless Gotham is declared an open city with all criminal statutes.
Another riddle is left with the ransom demand, which somehow Batman and Robin trace to the Noman Jigsaw Puzzle Factory. How almost doesn’t matter (it involves solving a riddle that every college student knows the answer to, yet it takes our heroes the better part of an hour to nail it, as well as assigning numbers to letters). Batman then orders Gordon to send 400 pounds of sodium dichloride—a nonexistent compound, by the way—to the Bat-copter. Meanwhile, Gordon has his bomb squad search the building for the means by which Riddler will destroy the building. They don’t find it, but Batman used the sodium dichloride to seed the clouds over Gotham to make lightning strike at GCPD HQ, thus shorting out the demolecularizer. Batman and Robin show up at the Noman Jigsaw Puzzle Factory where fisticuffs ensue.
After it’s all over, Charm returns the money, unable to stand having stolen charity money on his conscience.
Fetch the Bat-shark-repellant! We get both the Bat-copter (once again using recycled movie footage) and the Bat-cycle, as well as Bat-breathing apparatus for the underwater fight. Oh, and supposedly Batman and Robin have rockets in their boots. This along with the springs and the bulletproof soles…
Holy #@!%$, Batman! “Holy cryptology,” is what Dick says when Gordon is all mysterious about why he calls. “Holy trampoline!” is what Robin on-the-noses when Riddler lands on a Gotham City Fire Department trampoline, decorated, of course, with a question mark. “Holy fork in the road,” Robin grumbles when they lose the Riddler’s escape vehicle. “Holy Titanic,” Robin puns as they sink into the quicksand. “Holy Houdini,” is what he cries when Riddler makes the Coley statue disappear.
Gotham City’s finest. Twice Batman comes up with two alternative answers to a Riddler conundrum. Twice, he sends Gordon and his men to one while he and Robin take the other. Twice, the one Batman goes to is the right one. Having said that, O’Hara manages to capture Riddler’s moll, Anna Gram, though not before she kicks Robin in the shin—which, don’t get me wrong, is fantastic.
Special Guest Villain. Frank Gorshin insisted on $5000 per one-hour episode, rather than the $2500 William Dozier was willing to pay, especially in the more budget-strapped second season. Having arrived at an impasse with Gorshin, they tried rewriting a Riddler script for the Puzzler, but that proved less than efficacious, so they instead re-cast the role with the former Gomez Addams, John Astin—having already cast his Morticia, Carolyn Jones, as Marsha Queen of Diamonds twice before this season.
Na-na na-na na-na na-na na.
“We know that the caked crusaders are defunct, departed, demised, dead!”
–Riddler being convinced that his quicksand cake killed the Dynamic Duo and also showing his love of alliteration.
Trivial matters: This episode was discussed on The Batcave Podcast episode 40 by host John S. Drew with special guest chum Jim Beard, editor of the essay collection Gotham City 14 Miles.
The Riddler flooding a bank and robbing it in scuba gear was inspired by the character’s very first appearance in Detective Comics #140 by Bill Finger and Dick Sprang.
Byron Keith returns as Mayor Linseed, last seen in front of the camera in “Deep Freeze.” He’ll be back in the third season’s “Nora Clavicle and the Ladies’ Crime Club.”
Professor Charm is played by Martin Kosleck, a German-born actor who has the odd distinction of having played the Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels five times between 1939 and 1962.
Pow! Biff! Zowie! “You want me to pay three million dollars for an eighty-nine-cent pencil flashlight?” I try very hard not to hold this episode against John Astin. It’s really not his fault that he had to fill Frank Gorshin’s silly purple boots, and that’s just asking too much of anyone. Had Astin been cast as the Riddler from jump, his sardonic turn as the prince of puzzles might have worked, but coming after Gorshin made such an indelible mark on the part, practically redefining it forevermore, there was just nothing he could do. It didn’t help that he played Riddler more or less the same way he played Gomez Addams, which just made it even more frustrating.
It additionally didn’t help that the script—the only one by line producer William D’Angelo—just goes through the motions. The whole thing with Batman’s anniversary celebration starts out promising, but it’s just the excuse for a bunch of heists. Having the thefts all be of money people are giving to Batman’s favorite charity should make the stakes more personal for the Caped Crusader, but that never even seems to affect Batman. Hell, we never even find out what the charity is!
It’s funny, “The Puzzles are Coming” / “The Duo is Slumming” feels like a hastily rewritten Riddler episode, and this one feels like a hastily rewritten Puzzler episode. They’d have been better off either (a) creating another new villain for Astin or (b) having Astin be the new Puzzler or (c) just bringing Maurice Evans back. I get wanting to use the Riddler, given that he was the most popular villain in the first season and movie, but it isn’t the character that made villain popular, it was the actor, and the story suffers without him.
Not that there isn’t plenty of suffering to go ’round. Deanna Lund is wasted as Anna Gram, Riddler’s moll, who has nothing to do until the very end, when she kicks Robin in the shin—which, I say again, is fantastic, but it’s too little too late. The underwater fight scene in “Batman’s Anniversary” is a good concept, but the execution falls apart—slowing down the theme music doesn’t do it any favors, and the amusement value of the languid underwater punches and kicks (not to mention the sound effects that float up to the surface) wears off after about four and a half seconds.
And you have to wonder what it is about villains stealing money to buy things when they should just steal the thing. We saw this with Catwoman and now again with the Riddler. It’s just silly.
Bat-rating: 4
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be appearing at Intervention 7 this weekend, alongside actors Rene Auberjonois, Robert Axelrod, Gigi Edgley, Todd Haberkorn, Alex Kingston, Juliet Landau, Jon St. John, and Dwight Schultz; fellow authors David Gerrold and John Peel; musicians Thomas Dolby and Ego Likeness; director Rachel Talalay; and tons more, including cartoonists, filmmakers, bloggers, bellydancers, etc. Keith will have a table where he’ll be signing and selling books, and will also be doing lots of programming, including an Author Spotlight Sunday at 9am where he’ll be reading from one of his upcoming works of fiction. Check out his full schedule here.
I remember the first time I saw this as a kid. I immediately shouted, “That’s not The Riddler!” I also had never heard of The Addams Family at that point, so I had no clue who this mustachioed masquerader was. Of course, now I know him as all people should: as Samwise Gamgee’s father!
I agree that Astin’s Riddler didn’t work, but I disagree completely about why it didn’t work. For me, the problem is that he wasn’t playing it like Gomez — or rather, wasn’t playing to his own strengths. Instead, he was trying to imitate Gorshin’s performance style, the intensity and bombast and occasional bursts of manic rage, and of course he couldn’t do it as well as Gorshin could. If he had created his own interpretation of the Riddler with the same kind of quirky, easygoing mania that he brought to his best characters like Gomez Addams and Buddy from Night Court, it could’ve worked quite well. But as it is, he just feels like a pale imitation.
Other than the casting, though, it’s a pretty terrific Riddler story. How refreshing to have a caper where the featured gimmick of the Prince of Puzzlers is actually puzzles, rather than wax or silent movies or some other non sequitur. And I felt the underwater Bat-fight was inspired, another disagreement with Keith. Plus it had the smoking hot Deanna Lund as Anna Gram. (Batman was slipping. He heard a woman introduced as Anna Gram and didn’t instantly go on alert for the Riddler.)
Robin’s wrong, by the way; quicksand is a colloid of sand or clay and water, so you do get wet. But then, you also don’t drown in quicksand, because it’s very dense and buoyant; you can’t sink much below your waist unless you struggle, and can never really sink all the way (unless you’re tied to an anvil or something). Animals trapped in quicksand tend to die of exposure or starvation, because they can’t get out.
And there is such a thing as sodium dichloride, though it appears to be an alternate name for a disinfectant/water purification agent called sodium dichloroisocyanurate. Cloud seeding, though, is usually done with dry ice, silver iodide, potassium iodide, or liquid propane — although in recent years, they’ve begun using agents including table salt, aka sodium chloride!
I love John Astin in almost anything, but yeah, he just doesn’t work here. I think I’m more in agreement with CLB than Keith as to why. Although Keith is also right that Gorshin’s shoes were simply impossible to fill. A new villain with a schtick designed for Astin would have been best. He certainly has the chops for such a role. (Alternatively, I think he might have done better than David Wayne as the Mad Hatter, but only if they’d used him from the start.)
And you definitely have to give the writers credit for “caked crusaders”.
@3/DemetriosX: I don’t think Gorshin’s shoes were any more impossible to fill than Julie Newmar’s. Eartha Kitt couldn’t impersonate Newmar, but she didn’t try; she created her own Catwoman persona, one that played to her own strengths and worked for her, not as a duplication, but as an alternative. Astin could’ve done the same — created his own take on the Riddler, made the part his own. As Keith said, it’s the actors’ personalities that matter more than the roles they’re playing. But I don’t agree that that means it’s better to create a new role. It means the role is just a platform for the actor, and thus can be adapted to serve multiple actors. If John Astin had been the best supervillain John Astin could be, then it wouldn’t have mattered if it was the Riddler or the Mad Hatter or Killer Moth or whoever; it would still have worked. The reason it didn’t work isn’t that he was playing the Riddler; the reason it didn’t work is because he was trying to play Frank Gorshin’s Riddler instead of John Astin’s Riddler.
It’s disappointing and almost inexplicable that John Astin is so much less convincing as a manic Riddler than he was as a manic Gomez. He’s better when he plays the character as jovially, wickedly homicidal but not unhinged – – basically, at the very beginning and very end of Batman’s Anniversary.
That said, the teaser still isn’t what it could be, simply because we go to the opening credits on Batman’s emotional reaction to the surprise party, rather than the Riddler’s outing himself at the tail end of the heist, which would have been much more dramatic.
Finally, the method by which Batman rescues Aquilla from the puzzle trap is less impressive on TV than it was in the comic. On TV, he merely locates the load-bearing piece and removes it to make the entire structure collapse; in the comics, he reverse-engineered the entire structure by finding the places in which the pieces scraped against each other when the Riddler put them together. Imagine how much fun that would have been to watch, with West’s eyes darting back and forth beneath his mask as his brain went into total Bat-overdrive.
@5/Steve Schneider: “It’s disappointing and almost inexplicable that John Astin is so much less convincing as a manic Riddler than he was as a manic Gomez.”
That’s just what I’m saying — that he’s playing a Gorshin Riddler instead of an Astin Riddler. Gomez (or Buddy) is manic in a cheerful way. As you say, he’s jovial. He’s got a lunatic gleam in his eye, but he’s also having loads of fun just being himself. Gorshin’s Riddler was never really jovial in the same way. He laughed a lot, but there was more a sense of malevolence, of schadenfreude toward someone else’s impending or ongoing misfortune. He was a lean and hungry predator toying with his prey. In a way, he took himself and his activities very seriously. Gomez was more relaxed and upbeat.
Of course, you want a degree of malevolence in a Batman villain, even a comedy one, but there were villains on the show who were more laid-back and playful in their villainy, like Newmar’s Catwoman or Egghead. Maybe a Riddler more tailored to Astin could’ve been more focused on the riddles as an end in themselves, on the thrill of playing the game of crime against a worthy opponent like Batman.
It’s interesting that you should say that this story seems like a hastily rewritten script for the Puzzler, since both the underwater bank robbery and the attack on the Aerie, along with their associated clues, are taken directly from the Riddler’s first comic book appearance in 1948.
We do know what the charity is; at the anniversary party they say it’s the Milk Fund. Before WIC and federal subsidized school nutritionn programs, some cities had charity programs to buy milk for low-income children. These were usually referred to as “The Milk Fund.” Some of them have stayed in operation, providing all kinds of services to needy families.
Mustache aside, Astin looked more comics accurate than Gorshin.
@9/Periclis: How so? The Riddler’s look in the comics was based on Fred Astaire, and Gorshin resembled him more than Astin did.
Although it wound up airing a month after what it would’ve been, I get the feeling that this episode was intended to celebrate the first anniversary of the show’s premiere. Producers likely saw Riddler as best fit for the villain, for symmetrical purposes given he was the first on the show. Additionally, with the episode being scheduled for later in the season, producers perhaps felt they could bide their time to see if Gorshin had a change of heart, what reaction there was to Puzzler, or be able to find/audition a proper actor to recast as Riddler…
Although it wound up airing a month after what it would’ve been, I get the feeling that this episode was intended to celebrate the first anniversary of the show’s premiere. Producers likely saw Riddler as best fit for the villain, for symmetrical purposes given he was the first on the show. Additionally, with the episode being scheduled for later in the season, producers perhaps felt they could bide their time to see if Gorshin had a change of heart, what reaction there was to Puzzler, or be able to find/audition a proper actor to recast as Riddler…