“Catwoman’s Dressed to Kill”
Written by Stanley Ralph Ross
Directed by Sam Strangis
Season 3, Episode 14
Production code 1717
Original air dates: December 14, 1967
The Bat-signal: Gotham City’s ten best-dressed women are being announced at Le Chat Maison by Rudi Gernreich, and he also presents a special award to Batgirl for being the best-dressed crime-fightress. Catwoman shows up with her two thugs, Manx and Angora, to protest Batgirl winning anything when she’s around. She tosses a hair-raising bomb at the ten women, and it makes their hair go all poofy.
Gordon and O’Hara are present to accept the award on Batgirl’s behalf and they proceed to do nothing but thumpher while Catwoman does her thing, and then they head straight to the Bat-phone, because heaven forfend they do their jobs.
Bruce and Dick are actually in town shopping for a tuxedo when Bruce’s pen beeps, indicating Gordon’s call. They change clothes in Bruce’s limo and leg it to GCPD HQ, where Barbara is visiting her dad. She suggests using Batgirl as bait, but Batman patronizes her, tells her not to worry her pretty little head, and says to leave the crime-fighting to the men. It’s possible something was said after this, but I was too busy throwing up at the misogyny.
Catwoman’s hideout is an abandoned loft in the heart of the garment district (conveniently labelled with a sign that just says “ABANDONED” across the door). Her target is the Golden Fleece, a dress made of 24-karat gold owned by Queen Bess of Belgravia, who is visiting Gotham City.
She sends a taunting telegram to Gordon, saying she plans to hit the annual fashion show at Fashionation Magazine’s showroom. He shares this with Batman, who urges Gordon not to tell Batgirl, as it might be a trap for the latter. However, Barbara is visiting Gordon, who tells her, since she’s not Batgirl (har har).
Catwoman does indeed hit the fashion show, and so do the Dynamic Duo—who are stopped by a net Manx and Angora throw over them—and Batgirl—who pulls the net off them. Catwoman escapes to the women’s dressing room, knowing Batman and Robin won’t go in to that hallowed and forbidden no-man’s land (a phrase used by both Catwoman and Robin). Batgirl can go in safely, though, but she is immediately ambushed and kidnapped by Catwoman.
When Batgirl’s been in over a minute, Batman and Robin bite the bullet, cover their eyes, and enter. They stumble around the room for quite a while before the models take pity on them and say they’re fully clothed.
Catwoman plans to steal the Golden Fleece at three o’clock when the queen is scheduled to have an audience with Batman—but Batman will be too busy rescuing Batgirl to be with the queen, so Catwoman is free to steal the dress. She ties Batgirl to a platform and sets a pattern-cutter on her.
Batman and Robin figure out that Catwoman’s target is the Golden Fleece, and they head out to GCPD HQ to meet up with Gordon and O’Hara for their audience with Queen Bess. Catwoman then calls to provide the address where Batgirl is trapped. They send Gordon and O’Hara ahead to the Belgravian embassy, then use the Bat-phone to have Alfred rescue Batgirl (which he does while disguised as the world’s oldest hippie, done to preserve Batman and Robin’s secret IDs), then head to the Belgravian embassy, where Catwoman has already subdued the queen and her entourage and taken the golden fleece.
To Catwoman’s chagrin, not only do the Dynamic Duo show up, but so does Batgirl. Fisticuffs ensue, and Catwoman is taken away. As an added bonus, Batman, Robin, Batgirl, Gordon, and O’Hara are awarded with the Royal Order of the Belgravian Garter for recovering the Golden Fleece and rescuing Queen Bess from the closet Catwoman had locked her in. But they’re interrupted by Bonnie, who urges Gordon to turn on the TV, which shows that Egghead and Olga are back in town.
Fetch the Bat-shark-repellant! Bruce has a pen that lights up and beeps if the Bat-phone is called and nobody’s home.
Holy #@!%$, Batman! “Holy Robert Louis Stevenson” is Robin’s literary utterance when they discover that Batgirl’s been kidnapped. “Holy priceless collection of Etruscan snoods” is Robin’s theory as to what Catwoman’s next crime might be. “Holy dilemma” and “Holy crucial moment” are Robin’s on-the-nose proclamations when they’re on the horns of a dilemma and when they arrive at a crucial moment, respectively.
Gotham City’s finest. When presented with the lady-or-the-tiger dilemma of stopping Catwoman’s theft or rescuing Batgirl, it never occurs to anyone that the police could, perhaps, handle one of the two items, a pretty damning indictment of the GCPD’s competence.
Special Guest Villain. With Julie Newmar unavailable due to being on location to film Mackenna’s Gold, the role of Catwoman once again had to be re-cast, this time with the magnificent Eartha Kitt. She’ll be back, teamed up with the Joker, in “The Funny Feline Felonies.”
No sex, please, we’re superheroes. With the mixed-race Kitt now in the role of Catwoman, all sexual tension between her and Batman is drained from the scripting, since we can’t have a white guy flirting with a black woman…
Na-na na-na na-na na-na na.
“In any comparison between Batgirl and myself, she runs a poor third.”
–Catwoman talking smack.
Trivial matters: This episode was discussed on The Batcave Podcast episode 58 by host John S. Drew with special guest chums, Michael Falkner, host of The Weekly Podioplex.
This episode was actually produced after Kitt’s subsequent appearance in “The Funny Feline Felonies” / “The Joke’s on Catwoman,” but was aired first.
Rudi Gernreich, a major player in the fashion industry and one of the most innovative fashion designers of the time period, appears as himself.
Pow! Biff! Zowie! “She may be evil, but she is attractive.” Let’s get this out of the way—Julie Newmar is, has, and always will be perfection in the role of Catwoman. There is no denying her place atop the pantheon of women who have played the role over the years. She was, in fact, the first to do so, and remains in many ways the Platonic ideal.
But that doesn’t mean that others can’t also put their stamp on the part, and what I like about Eartha Kitt’s portrayal is that she totally makes it her own. Lee Meriwether was pretty much doing Newmar’s shtick only less slinky (she was actually much more interesting as “Miss Kitka” than she was as Catwoman), but Kitt does her own thing. Where Newmar is a sleek tabby who pretends to be affectionate right before she claws you, Kitt is a feral cat who claws at you right away.
Kitt’s performance is a delight, and she lights up the screen whenever she’s on it. The glee she takes in being evil is refreshing and fun, and it’s great to watch.
A pity the rest of the episode’s a disaster. I think it’s hilarious that Batman singles Catwoman out for having an ego because she gloats of her crime ahead of time—how is it more egotistical to come out and say what her crime is, as opposed to leaving some kind of abstruse clue about it like most of the other folks in his rogues’ gallery? And the sexism is poured on thick and heavy in this one, from the most horriblest thing ever to be done to ten fashion models is to ruin their hair (to make matters worse, it’s not phrased as a bad thing to do to models, but a bad thing to do to women overall, because of course, all women are vain and self-centered…), to Batman’s patronizing exhortation to Barbara to leave the crime-fighting to the men, to Batgirl’s inability to get out of the deathtrap herself (though it does give another chance to see Alfred in disguise—take that, Sean Pertwee!). Though at the very least they also give us the doofier side of chivalry in the Dynamic Duo’s idiotic stumble through a dressing room.
Kitt is enough to make the episode watchable, but not much beyond that.
Bat-rating: 5
Keith R.A. DeCandido loves cats.
I pretty much agree with krad–I like the special guest villain performance a lot, but am not crazy about the script. I enjoyed Eartha Kitt’s performance and rate her a strong second as a 1966-style Catwoman, ahead of Lee Meriwether. Kitt’s trademark purr and growl work well, and she certainly is menacing.
Yes, the Bat-Cat sexual tension was gone because of the skittishness of the era, but I’ll say this much–she did have two white male henchmen. I’m sure that didn’t go over well with some people back then, a black woman ordering around white men. So at least give Dozier and Co. some partial credit for that.
And I’ll be honest–it was nice to see CW be ruthless and evil again. I thought the second-season scripts for Newmar were somewhat weak in that department, as opposed to season 1, in which she was so nasty she even gassed her own henchman so as not to share her ill-gotten gains. The Bat-Cat relationship had the effect of declawing Newmar in season 2, IMO, except of course when it came to her dislike for Robin.
The script has problems, though. The ‘ruining women’s hair forever’ is a sexist gambit that will foreshadow Nora Clavicle, although that one was written by Stanford Sherman, not Stanley Ralph Ross. CW’s endgame of stealing the Golden Fleece and blackmailing Belgravia isn’t bad, but the idea that Batman and Robin are joined at the hip and ‘hippie Alfred’ thus needs to save BG is awful and not funny, at least not to me. And as krad said, the fact that it isn’t even a thought that the GCPD actually can, you know, do its job is terrible.
Not much I can add. So now that there’s a female hero, Catwoman suddenly has to be obsessed with a traditionally feminine thing like fashion and be jealous of Batgirl being better at it? Although that does sound like a pretty typical Silver Age comic-book plot, come to think of it. And if Newmar had been available, Catwoman and Batgirl would surely have been fighting for Batman’s love.
Eartha Kitt does make a pretty good Catwoman, though she had little to work with. It’s certainly admirable that the producers were willing to race-swap the role, even if they were afraid to keep the romantic angle. (And it’s pathetic that now, 50 years later, there are still “fans” who pout and scream every time a white comics character is played by a nonwhite actor, as if it were some shocking outrage that had never, ever been done before.) Although Kitt’s constant “purring” of her Rs makes her sound like she’s speaking with an odd accent.
The oddest part is Alfred bothering to go along with Batman’s disguise suggestion when Batgirl already knows him. I guess the idea was that she might’ve realized that the only way Alfred could’ve known of her plight was because Catwoman tipped off Batman, so it was about protecting Batman’s identity, as Keith suggests. But that wasn’t clear in the episode itself, at least not the version I saw on TV (which might’ve had some lines cut out).
Christopher: Batman specifically said to Alfred that it was to preserve B&R’s secret that he had to disguise himself.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@3/krad: Yes, of course Batman would think that, because he doesn’t know that Batgirl already knows Alfred. What I mean is, why did Alfred go along with it, when he knows better? Why didn’t he just openly assist her as Alfred, as he’s done in multiple episodes before? And I figure it’s because Alfred didn’t want to risk Batgirl realizing that he was connected to Batman as well as to Bruce Wayne. But it’s still weird to see him disguising himself from her when he’s already her regular confidant.
Yeh, Kitt’s Catwoman never really had anything in the ballpark of a good script, but the performance is still aces. I know most of the guys who made The Emperor’s New Groove weren’t even alive when this first aired, but it feels very much like a dry run for Yzma, and who could ask for more out of a ’66 baddie?
Most of the sexism doesn’t bother me that much, since it’s not really a core plot element unlike A Certain Other Episode down the line, but I agree it’s not really that funny either. That said, Babs totally deserves that Best-Dressed Crimefightress award.
Trivia: It’s not in her imdb profile, but according to production records (both the cast budget and call sheet), Anitra Ford is one of the uncredited models. She went on to play a villainess in her own right, the mad scientist in the 1973 cult classic Invasion of the Bee Girls.
When I first watched this show as a kid, Eartha was hands down my favorite Catwoman of the bunch. Still is.
Hey, Sean Pertwee got to kick some ass this week.
I am also a Eartha Kitt is my Catwoman fan. Maybe because i only saw the reruns as a kid so they were not in order. She was so charismatic as an actress. All the cat women were excellent but Eartha Kitt is my favorite.
Kitt!
It’s right there, in her name!
Although I abhor the racial politics that mandated it, I like the actual result of removing the romantic subtext — actually just plain text in the previous couple of episodes — from Batman and Catwoman’s relationship. My affection for Newmar’s performance declined pretty steadily throughout Season 2 as her romantic interest in Batman rapidly overwhelmed and devoured every other aspect of Catwoman’s character. (Seriously: going to the local drugstore to share a milkshake. Need I say more?) Kitt’s portrayal feels like a return to the Catwoman we saw in “The Purr-fect Crime”/”Better Luck Next Time” (which remains the character’s best outing): a cold, ruthless, professional criminal who takes what she wants and couldn’t give a fig for the Caped Crusader unless it’s to dispose of him.
Quoth PatD: “Hey, Sean Pertwee got to kick some ass this week.”
Yes, but did he dress as a hippie while doing it? Well? Did he?????
(I kid, of course — I adore Sean Pertwee in the role. He and Donal Logue are the main reasons why I keep watching the ongoing trash fire that is Gotham every week.)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I was a kid when I first saw Eartha Kitt as Catwoman and was really disturbed that THIS WASN’T CATWOMAN! I think I had the vague suspicion that she had done something to the old Catwoman and stolen her job (I didn’t really get the idea that different actors could play characters back then).
That said, it would have been more fun if Catwoman had played up her supposed rivalry with Batgirl so she could kidnap Robin while Batman wasn’t expecting it. Then, Batgirl could have gone on to fight Catwoman while Batman dithered about whether to join her or save Robin until he thought of sending Alfred.
They could have also reduced the sexism about the hair by having Gordon and O’Hara caught in the hair bomb and they were unavailable to help rescue anyone because they were busy at the hair salon (although they could have explained that they were doing this because a police commissioner and police chief must maintain the dignity of their office, turning a blind eye to the fact that they were being just as vain as they were claiming the poor, traumatized women must be [meanwhile, the women could be soldiering on, dealing much better than the commissioner and chief thanks to that old standby of bad hair days: the hat]).
But, it was the 60’s and it is what it is, and someone will no doubt be writing about our own cultural blind spots with just as much horror in a few decades. They were still willing to cast a mixed race woman in a role established as white, which was pretty bold for the time.
I can’t help but mews — err, muse — on the question of whether Kittwoman should be presumed to be the same character as the Catwoman we’ve seen to date or an inheritor (or, indeed, a usur-purrrrr as Ellynne suggests) of the Catwoman identity, sort of a legacy villain thing in the same vein as DC’s many legacy heroes. (Although Batman has had legacy villains before — there were a couple of Two-Faces and three or four Clayfaces.) I’m inclined to assume that Meriwether Catwoman was the same person as Newmar Catwoman — I don’t think Batman ever saw Catwoman unmasked in her single first-season appearance, so the continuity is salvageable insofar as the show had any continuity. But Kitt is so unlike Newmar — not only in appearance and build, but in purr-sonality. She’s such a striking presence in her own distinct way that it seems an injustice to pretend she’s interchangeable with someone else. So I tend to lean toward the “legacy Catwoman” interpretation in her case. But that raises the question of why the Dynamic Duo and the cops react to her as though she were the same purr-son. (With Gordon and O’Hara, I could buy that they just don’t recognize the difference. But B&R generally aren’t quite that oblivious.)
Or maybe each actress is a different one of Catwoman’s nine lives. She regenerates!
DC has its share of legacy villains, too, and one good example is a Bat-villain: the Mad Hatter.
And it could be that Kittwoman (I love that) took over the part in a story we didn’t see. There are plenty of Bat-adventures that were not televised, after all………..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@15/krad: That sounds like the kind of story the Batman ’66 comic could tackle, except their practice has been to use the Newmar and Kitt versions interchangeably with no explanation. At first, they saved Kittwoman for a Batgirl story, but I think they more recently had Newmar-Catwoman and Batgirl as contemporaries.
CLB @14
Catwoman as a Time Lord! Then you could do a Dr Who crossover.
@CLB: A-yup. Jeff Parker has actually mentioned in multiple interviews that he’s proud of keeping up the inconsistent Catwomen in the Batman ’66 comic. And y’know what? I agree with him.
For me, a great part of this show’s charm comes from its shoddiness – not to plot-crippling extents like the Londinium non-saga, but definitely from little things like most of the arch-villains not having real names (even when they’re trying to look legit), or none of them recognizing Alfred no matter how many times they cross paths. I especially appreciate it in something like the B66 digital comic, which often feels too sleek compared to the series it’s supposedly continuing.
@18/rubberlotus: That’s one thing that annoys me about the ’66 comic — it sometimes does things that are closer to the comics than the show, like using the villains’ given names, or putting them in Arkham rather than prison. There was one I read recently that had Penguin use the name Oswald Cobblepot instead of something like P. N. Gwynne or K. G. Bird. That’s just not right. Heck, once or twice they’ve even had Batman and Robin take their masks off in the Batcave! Blasphemy!
That was in what I think was the last collection of the regular series, although they’re still doing crossover specials. I felt that one had too many stories that were about introducing new villains like Solomon Grundy and Clayface and Bane and the like, and some of them were too dark in tone and not very comedic, more like conventional Batman stories with the West and Ward versions of the characters starring in them. Although it ended with a pretty impressive issue that actually created a semi-coherent narrative out of the show’s main title sequence.
J.P. Pelzman: Anitra Ford also played a renegade Amazon in the Cathy Lee Crosby TV movie version of Wonder Woman. I had a bit of a crush on her character as I recall.
The comic book Catwoman resurfaced after decades of editorial limbo in order to go up against Batgirl because she saw BG as a romantic rival, an idea which Batgirl rejected after sending CW to jail. I remember liking Kitt’s voice as a kid, and I thought she was brought in because she was closer in height to Yvonne Craig. I don’t think I noticed her race until I was an adult, and then came to the same conclusion about the networks nixing the romantic aspects. Though, to be fair, the third season had taken on such a kiddie show quality that I think they removed ALL sexual tension from the show.
@20/kenn: “Though, to be fair, the third season had taken on such a kiddie show quality that I think they removed ALL sexual tension from the show.”
I wouldn’t say that, given how routinely they played up the flirtation between Batman and Batgirl (and also Bruce and Barbara). And earlier in the season, we had the Siren, probably the sexiest non-feline-themed villainess in the whole series.
@14/Chris: Good point about Batman not having seen Catwoman unmasked until the feature film. But otherwise, I don’t think you can really put the movie into any sort of continuity as far as Catwoman is concerned: As I recall, there’s no mention of her having been presumed dead at the end of her last appearance. Yet when the character appears for the first time in season 2, with Newmar back in the role, the first thing that’s mentioned is that she must not be dead after all. It’s as if the events of the film – – and the Merriwether Catwoman in toto – – never happened at all.
And I have to disagree strongly with everyone who has suggested Season 2 diluted the character. To me, the Newmar Catwoman is so wonderful because she isn’t just evil – – she’s also by turns sweet and funny and occasionally even a little sad. Newmar plays all of those nuances beautifully, and they just aren’t in evidence in the movie or the third season. And barring the pathos of her fear at the end of Better Luck Next Time, they aren’t exactly in abundance in her first appearance either. Season 2 is when Newmar really got the chance to shine.
@22/Steve: That’s a fair point about Catwoman, but it just leaves me to revert to my first theory, that the movie takes place before the first season. It was originally meant to come out first, after all, both to build publicity for the series and to take advantage of the movie budget to build vehicles like the Batcopter and Batboat and get stock footage for later use. But ABC wanted the series to come out sooner, so the first season preceded the movie instead.
@23/Chris: Yeah, I’ve thought for a while that the movie’s placement in the canon might be before the events of the first season, in part because of the Catwoman issue. Do we know if the script was actually written before Season 1?
@11/Craverguy I also thought the shared milkshake was a low point. As was the time Catwoman in season 2 said all she wanted was ‘what every woman wants–the love of a good man.’
It’s funny how as a kid I never, ever questioned there was a different Catwoman.
I too have always felt that the events of the movie came before the first season expressly because Batman didn’t recognize Catwoman without her mask on. It’s really the only way that makes any sense in light of later episodes.
Catwoman’s dressed to kill was my favorite episode. I wish they would’ve shown the entire strap down process for Batgirl. Also wish there were some overhead shots so I could see whit kind of buckle the straps had. Are there any overhead pictures of Batgirl on the table?