“Catwoman Goes to College” / “Batman Displays His Knowledge”
Written by Stanley Ralph Ross
Directed by Robert Sparr
Season 2, Episodes 49 and 50
Production code 9747
Original air dates: February 22 and 23, 1967
The Bat-signal: Catwoman, currently incarcerated at Gotham State Penitentiary (and still in costume, albeit with her prisoner number on a sticker over her heart), is brought to Warden Crichton’s office to meet with the warden and Bruce to be informed that she’s been granted parole on the condition that Bruce be her parole officer. She then declares that she owes her career as a criminal to her being a dropout, so she enrolls in Gotham City University.
Not long after she matriculates, three guys steal the life-size statue of Batman that’s on campus. Gordon wouldn’t normally bother Batman with what’s probably a prank, but given that it’s the Caped Crusader’s graven image, they call, and he answers.
While it might be a prank or a hazing ritual or some such, Batman fears a more sinister motive, as the statue is made from a cast of Batman’s body and the costume an exact plaster replica of his. (Why Batman allowed such a thing is left as an exercise for the viewer.) The only clue to the perpetrator is the first-year beanie left behind. It’s not much of a clue, as there are 5700 male first-years at GCU, and 3127 of them wear a beanie of that size. Batman finds a strand of red hair in the beanie, one totally missed by GCPD’s forensics team. He takes it with him to the Batcave.
Catwoman meets with the three Bat-statue thieves in the basement of the Eta Beta Lotka sorority house. Using the statue as a guide, Catwoman has sewn a Bat-costume, and one of her henchmen can do a perfect impersonation of Batman. He tries on the Batsuit, and even fools Catwoman for a moment. (Though none of them notice that he’s put on the utility belt upside down…)
Batman and Robin are guest lecturers for the Elementary Criminology class, which both Catwoman and the henchman who lost his beanie attend. They say that they catch more criminals in the bat-lab than they do in the field (which is categorically not true), and Batman provides the findings on the strand of hair they found in the beanie: it belongs to a man who is six feet, one and three-quarter inches in height, is 36 years old, has flat feet, a deep voice, and hay fever—in other words, a perfect description of the henchman. He legs it, and Catwoman causes the bell to ring prematurely. Nobody comments on the fact that the class is only two minutes long (at first, anyhow—Robin mentions it later), and then Catwoman contrives to get a moment alone with Batman. They share a milkshake in the school cafeteria, and she says she wants to work alongside Batman when she graduates.
Their cat-a-tete is interrupted by Batman’s arrest for robbing a supermarket (actually committed by the Bat-disguised henchman). He’s arrested by Captain Courageous (really!), an L.A. cop in Gotham on an exchange program, who doesn’t realize that Batman is (a) a superhero and (b) a close personal friend of Courageous’s new boss. He has Batman call the law firm of “Alfred and Alfred,” and the butler shows up in the prison cell as “Serge Tort,” who specializes in felonies, misdemeanors, and overtime parking tickets. While they pretend to have a lawyerly conversation, they trade clothes and make Bruce up to look like Alfred.
Bruce heads home and leaves Alfred behind. Courageous gloats to Gordon about the joker named Batman that he threw in jail, and Gordon tears him a new one. Meanwhile, O’Hara has informed Gordon of a spontaneous sit-in being planned in Chimes Square by a bunch of GCU students, led by Catwoman. Gordon informs Bruce, as Catwoman’s PO, and then calls Batman to let him know—but, of course, he already knows, which Gordon, being particularly stupid, chalks up to Batman’s brilliance rather than he himself informing the guy he just talked to on the phone with the same voice a few minutes earlier.
According to the bat-calendar, there are half a dozen cat-related events, any one of which could be her ultimate goal. They attend her protest, and keep the craziness at bay, so Catwoman heads to the roof of the Chimes Building. Batman and Robin follow, and fisticuffs ensue on the roof. The henchmen are taken care of, but Catwoman pretends to cry as cover to gas them with her atomizer.
There’s a mechanical ad for Crespies Coffee on the roof, which pours coffee into a cup every minute. Catwoman has replaced the coffee with sulfuric acid—let’s see if they can taste the difference!
Our heroes escape by taking advantage of the first few drops of acid that trickle down before the gush to burn through Batman’s ropes, then he uses his batarang to hit the master switch and turn the ad off.
(As they’re escaping, Robin expresses amazement at all these life-threatening scrapes they keep getting into and getting out of, almost as if someone was dreaming up the scenarios and controlling their destiny. Batman poo-poohs this as something that only happens in the movies. “This is real life.”)
Catwoman robs the sale of a selection of Batagonian catseye opals, which is exactly what Batman planned. The villain herself goes to French Freddy’s Fencing Academy and meets in the back room (helpfully labelled with a sign that reads, “BACK ROOM”) to meet with the proprietor, Freddy Touché, who is a fence. (Get it?????) But the catseye opals are too hot, Freddy won’t touch them.
Our heroes also go to Freddy, as he’s the most likely fence for the opals, but he claims he’s out of the game. (Batman also totally kicks his ass in a duel.) Freddy goes to Catwoman to let her know that Batman’s alive. Catwoman herself has had no luck fencing the opals, so Freddy suggests turning them in for the reward—but then Freddy examines the opals and discovers they’re fakes—which is why Batman was okay with Catwoman stealing them, as he’s the one who had them replaced with fakes.
Catwoman sends a message saying she’ll surrender herself, but only to Batman at a suburban real estate development. She tries flirting with him, which almost works, until she suggests killing Robin. And, of course, it was all bullshit (catshit?), as she was wearing deadly perfume. But Batman suspected she’d try that and wore noseplugs. So Catwoman goes for Plan B, which is to sic her henchmen on him. But then Robin shows up, so the odds are a bit more even, and fisticuffs ensue. Our heroes are victorious, and Catwoman goes back to prison, having destroyed Crichton’s faith in his rehabilitation methods.
Fetch the Bat-shark-repellant! Batman keeps a pair of tweezers (which, surprisingly, have no chriopteric accoutrements) in his utility belt. He also has an electronic hair bat-analyzer that is more sophisticated than anything in the GCPD lab (or, indeed, anything that exists even now five decades later…). Alfred brings the Bat-makeup kit which is able to make Bruce look just like Alfred. The Bat-calendar provides punch cards that give out salient information on happenings of the day that relate to their crime fight du jour. The Bat-syllable device creates phonemes in Bruce’s voice when Alfred types them in, allowing “Bruce” to talk on the phone with Gordon while Batman is also in Gordon’s office. The Well Known Criminals File provides information on, er, ah, well-known criminals…
Holy #@!%$, Batman! When Captain Courageous identifies himself as being from Los Angeles, Robin grumbles, “Holy Hollywood.” When Bruce knows the bat-phone is going to buzz with the news of the Chimes Square sit-in, Dick utters, “Holy crystal ball!” When they’re trapped in the coffee ad, Robin cries, “Holy caffeine!” Upon learning of the theft of the catseye opals, Robin yells, “Holy bijoux!” (Batman helpfully informs the audience that “bijoux” is French for “jewels,” so we can all see how really clever Robin is.) When Freddy offers Batman fencing lessons, Robin sneers, “Holy Zorro, don’t you know that Batman is the finest fencer in the country?” When Batman predicts that Catwoman will deliver a message to Gordon two seconds before that message arrives, Robin cries, “Holy hypotheses!”
Gotham City’s finest. While hair analysis was still a burgeoning field in the late 1960s, it was established enough that any competent cop or police scientist would have seen the red hair in the beanie and taken it for analysis. However, as we all know, Gotham City has no competent cops or police scientists….
They’re also doing an exchange program with Los Angeles, with LAPD Captain Courageous working for the GCPD. (I’d love to see O’Hara sent to L.A.) Oh, and Gordon apparently has had his suspicions that Batman is really Bruce, but after hearing the incredibly convincing and not at all robotic and awkward Bat-syllable device pretending to be Bruce and not at all Alfred typing, Gordon happily declares that theory to be ludicrous. As always, whenever Gordon is being dense, O’Hara has to double down and be even denser, as he scoffs at the very notion of a millionaire playboy being Batman.
No sex, please, we’re superheroes. Catwoman tries to use her feminine wiles on Batman, and it almost works. In a rare bit of good sense, Robin follows Batman in secret, holding himself in reserve in case Batman succumbed to Catwoman’s charms. Robin himself is immune, as he proudly declares himself to be too young for that sort of thing.
Special Guest Villainess. Julie Newmar makes what turns out to be her final appearance on the series as Catwoman, but also her tenth and eleventh appearances in the second season, making her most prolific villain of the middle portion of the show’s run. Even with only two first-season episodes to her credit and not appearing in the third season, Newmar’s thirteen total episodes makes her the series’ third most prolific villain, following Cesar Romero and Burgess Meredith with 23 and 22, respectively.
Just as her unavailability for the movie saw her replaced with Lee Meriwether, her unavailability for the third season, due to filming the movie Mackenna’s Gold, would lead to her being replaced again, this time by Eartha Kitt. However, Newmar will return to the role in voice form in the forthcoming animated special Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders (which will also feature Adam West and Burt Ward as the voices of Batman and Robin, and which will be reviewed by your humble rewatcher, worry not).
Na-na na-na na-na na-na na.
“Commissioner, the Batman’s escaped! Tied up a lawyer and walked out in disguise!”
“Ha ha ha, good old Batman! No jail can hold him, not even ours. He’s probably at the Batcave already.”
–Courageous being shocked and Gordon being appallingly blasé about an alleged hero breaking out of jail, especially since his arrest was perfectly kosher.
Trivial matters: This episode was discussed on The Batcave Podcast episode 42 by host John S. Drew with special guest chum, “View from the Longbox‘s” Michael Bailey.
The window cameo is Art Linkletter, looking for subjects for his People are Funny show, but he’s having trouble finding anyone in Gotham City who is strange, ha ha ha.
Captain Courageous is played by Stanley Adams, probably best known as Cyrano Jones in the historic Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles” (as well as the animated sequel, “More Tribbles, More Troubles“). Amber Forever, the woman selling the catseye opals, is played by Whitney Blake, who would go on to co-create the classic sitcom One Day at a Time. The hay-fever-suffering henchman is played by Sheldon Allmann, who is better known for his musical talents, having composed the theme to George of the Jungle, as well as music for Space Patrol, Let’s Make a Deal, and Masquerade Party, and he was also Mr. Ed‘s singing voice. And David Lewis makes his final appearance of the season as Crichton; he’ll be back in another Catwoman story, her team-up with the Joker in “The Funny Feline Felonies.”
Catwoman’s henchmen are named Cornell, Penn, and Brown, all names of universities.
The New York references are fast and furious in this one: Chimes Square (Times Square), Gotham City Square Garden (Madison Square Garden), Avenue of the Armenians (Avenue of the Americas), Spay Stadium (Shea Stadium), and Norchester (Westchester).
Bruce mentions that he has met Catwoman, which seems to be a reference to the movie, which is the only other time Catwoman has interacted with Bruce.
The model house where Batman and Catwoman have their final interaction is the same set used for Brit Reid’s home in The Green Hornet.
Pow! Biff! Zowie! “I can give you more happiness than anyone in the world.” A disappointing swan song for Julie Newmar that is only watchable because of her. A lot of good ideas are thrown against the wall here, but the script doesn’t even wait around to see if they stick or not. The idea of a fake Batman is an intriguing one that almost nothing is done with. Batman breaks out of jail, and not only are there no consequences, no reluctance, no moralizing, but Gordon actually laughs about it!
Catwoman going to college would seem to provide an opportunity for some hijinks—and possibly some Horse Feathers-style satire, to lampoon college life the way “Hizzoner the Penguin”/”Dizzoner the Penguin” lampooned politics or “Penguin Sets a Trend” lampooned the military—but, again, nothing is done with it once the premise is thrown out there. And Robin lampshading the repetitive nature of the cliffhangers does nothing to make the cliffhangers less repetitive in general, nor anything to make this one less lame in particular.
There’s a lot of unkosher behavior from Batman here, starting with his using his influence to get himself assigned as Catwoman’s parole officer, a maneuver that also has no effect on the plot whatsoever, then his breaking out of jail despite being legally arrested, and then his almost succumbing to Catwoman’s fake flirting. Speaking of that fake flirting, it’s almost the exact same thing we got at the end of “Scat! Darn Catwoman,” down to Batman almost being willing to go along with Catwoman’s proposal (ahem) until she casually mentions killing Robin.
The one thing Stanley Ralph Ross’s script does right is give Newmar ample opportunity to work her charm, her wit, her slink, her gestures, and her superb comic timing. Points also to the Eta Beta Lotka sorority (I think everyone should eat a better latke), to the superb comedic work by Jacques Bergerac as Freddy the Fence (the visual gag of him using the fencing mask to strain his pasta is epic), and to Stanley Adams for making us wish they’d cast him as O’Hara instead of Stafford Repp.
Bat-rating: 4
Keith R.A. DeCandido is one of the two Author Guests of Honor at EerieCon 18 in Grand Island, New York this coming weekend, alongside Victor Gischler. Other guests include authors Erik Buchanan, Sèphera Girón, Derwin Mak, Michael Martineck, John-Allen Price, Darrell Schweitzer, Shirley Meier, and Mason Winfield; scientists David DeGraff and David Stephenson; poet David Clink; game developers Lynn Merrill and Alex Pantaleev; and many more. Keith will be doing a Q&A, various panels and presentations, and a reading. Keep an eye on his blog for the full schedule.
“Batman finds a strand of red hair in the beanie, one totally missed by GCPD’s forensics team.”
I think it’s safe to say that Batman and Robin were the GCPD’s forensics team.
College students wearing beanies? Was that ever a thing, even in the sixties?
Why did Batman break out of prison, anyway? Why not just have Robin call the Commissioner and get Batman released?
Bruce brought Dick up to speed “on the way down” the Batpoles? Just how long a trip is that?
It took me a moment to get the joke behind the name of the woman selling the cat’s-eye opals, Amber Forever. And though I immediately got Catwoman’s line “Pack up those baubles in your old kit bag,” it took me a longer while to realize that “Old Kit Bag” was another cat pun.
In the Freddie the Fence scene, it was kind of odd to see one of the villains on this show doing something as conventionally criminal as trying to fence stolen goods. Yet almost refreshing too.
They hardly did anything with the whole “Bruce Wayne is Catwoman’s parole officer” angle. Why even bother?
This episode really shows how the series had become more overtly comedic and gag-driven by this point, as opposed to the early episodes where they tended to adapt the comics fairly faithfully and let the humor come from the deadpan literalism of their interpretation of the comics’ tropes. “Captain Courageous” is an even broader, more cartoony character than was typical on this show. The bit with Art Linkletter in the window was a bit more self-conscious and labored than their previous gags about how “ordinary” Batman and Robin considered themselves to be. And Robin’s musing about the deathtraps they keep getting into and out of was too self-consciously meta.
I guess this would be the end of the Batman-Catwoman romance. The show might’ve been progressive enough to cast Eartha Kitt as Catwoman, but not enough to let her have a romance with a white leading man. Which is too bad, since that romantic angle has been key to the Batman-Catwoman dynamic since her first comics appearance as “the Cat,” where Batman “clumsily” let her escape and then mooned over her like a teenager once she was gone.
Too bad they couldn’t get Julie Newmar back after this.
Regarding beanies being a thing, freshmen at Georgia Tech are still issued beanies (Rat Caps) to this day, although it has not been compulsory to wear them since about 1960 or so when anti-hazing laws were passed.
Also regarding beanies, Flounder wears one in Animal House, which was set in 1962 IIRC, though he was the only freshman to do so.
I suppose Spay Stadium is also a nod to the cat theme.
DemetriosX: oh I’m sure “Spay” was chosen for the cat reference, yes…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
beanies – yup. There are pictures of my mother wearing her Freshman beanie in the early 60s at a state flagship university. My impression from her is that they were worn to extracurriculars only. They looked pretty silly on those early 60s women’s hairstyles, let me tell you.
I apologize in advance for the length, but I have a lot to say about this one.
I agree with krad–it’s disappointing that this is Julie Newmar’s farewell to the series, considering this particular concept could have been done so much better. As he noted, the college setting is ripe with possibilities for satire, but little is done with it. A scene with Julie sweet-talking, say, a stuffy college dean to get what she wants in terms of classes, perks, etc. could have been epic.
I also think the sorority house with no sorority girls was a wasted idea. Would have been fun to see a co-ed or two idolizing CW while she attempts to mentor them. Yeah, I know, budget, but there were a couple of minor characters among the guest stars that we could have lived without.
Really, by part 2, the college conceit of the story has been dropped almost entirely, and that part of the script easily could have been done sans the college setting.
I also echo what krad said in that Julie’s performance is terrific, as always. I have no quarrels with what she did. I do have some quarrels with what she was asked to say as CW via the script.
In both this Re-Watch and the Trek one, many excellent points have been raised by krad and the commenters about the 1960s sexism inherent in the TV of that era. And how about the fact that in part 2, CW says she wants ‘what every woman needs, the love of a good man.’
I guess that’s all Dozier and his compatriots thought a woman should aspire to. If that is what a particular woman wants, that’s her choice. But I suspect a sexy, desirable, powerful supervillainess would want just a little more from her life.
Some other problems I had with this arc:
Why Catwoman needs to frame Batman and get him out of the way is anyone’s guess, considering once she fakes some tears at the end of any part 1 he’ll be easy pickings, as will Robin.
Worse yet, it goes against CW’s raison d’etre, as often established in the show. She lives to tease and torment Batman, and to try to outsmart him. Framing him to get him out of the way–what’s the fun in that for her?? And as krad said, that subplot goes nowhere fast anyway. It’s merely a time-killer, IMO.
Similarly, the CW of this arc is a different breed of Cat, pardon the bad pun, than the one we saw in her first storyline in season 1.
I watched that first one a few hours ago, and thedifference in tone in Catwoman is noticeable, and not an improvement, as far as I’m concerned.
In The Purr-Fect Crime, she is Catwoman not merely because she dresses in a cat-suit, but because she is a cat-burglar. By College/Knowledge, she’s gone from the active cat-burglar of the opening scene of her first appearance to some disinterested criminal CEO who likes to dress in lurex. I mean, she even needs to pull a gun to steal the jewels in part 2.
Also, that CW inspired fear and awe in her henchmen, who were scared to fail and feel her wrath. By the end of season 2, CW has accepted the incompetence of her henchmen with a shrug, basically. The CW of season 1 had so little respect for her minions that she even sprayed one with knockout gas rather than share the loot with him.
The hosts of the ‘To The Batpoles!’ podcast have done a good job of disproving some of what Adam West wrote in his memoirs many years ago, so perhaps this should be taken with a grain of salt. But he made it clear that Newmar told Dozier and Co. early on her vision of CW was as a shadowy, mysterious figure who flirts with Batman in a very teasing manner. I doubt she (or Adam, for that matter) would have wanted the two characters to be sharing a malted. Ugh.
I don’t have a problem with the concept of Bat/Cat sexual tension, which, as Christopher L. Bennett noted, certainly was a thing in the comics from the very beginning (see the ‘Papa spank’ scene, for instance). I simply wish the show had handled it in a less broad, less childish style.
Hey folks! For some inexplicable reason, I thought I’d be able to squeeze the Bat-rewatch in around New York Comic-Con, even though recent history shows that thought to be a foolish one. :) I’m too fried to do it this week with the con (in addition to EerieCon last weekend), plus I really want to do justice to the Green Hornet crossover.
So we’ll have “A Piece of the Action”/”Batman’s Satisfaction” next week.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
My one big complaint about this episode is that they created the great set-up of Bruce Wayne arranging to become Catwoman’s parole officer, and then they did absolutely *nothing* with it. They didn’t examine Bruce’s motives (pretty fishy if you ask me, since he seems to have arranged the parole in the first place and Catwoman obviously isn’t rehabilitated), nor did they mine Catwoman being forced to hang around with Batman’s stick-up-his-butt alter ego for humor and UST. Bruce Wayne and Catwoman don’t even have a scene together again until the end of the episode, where they hang a lampshade on their lack of interaction. One of the biggest missed opportunities of the whole show.
I recently saw this episode, for the first time in many years, on MeTV. I agree with the idea that this story drops many threads and basically wastes the stated premise of Catwoman in college, and with J. P. Pelzman’s noting of the unused potential of the sorority house. (And the dated sexism of her late remarks, of course.) But, as far as her final confrontation with Batman: while the “Oh – we’ll just kill Robin” part of the scene is quite similar, if not repetitive – the seduction itself in “Scat, Darn Catwoman” wasn’t like THAT! Good GOD, Julie Newmar!