“The Funny Feline Felonies” / “The Joke’s on Catwoman”
Written by Stanley Ralph Ross
Directed by Oscar Rudolph
Season 3, Episodes 16 & 17
Production code 1715
Original air dates: December 28, 1967 & January 4, 1968
The Bat-signal: Joker, having been paroled—his parole approved by the chairman of the parole committee who is, of course, Bruce Wayne—says his goodbyes to Bruce and Warden Crichton while wearing a very dapper—and very gray—suit. Crichton gives him a $10 bill, and Joker offers him a cigar in return. (Bruce declines, as he doesn’t use tobacco in any form.) To Crichton’s relief, the cigar doesn’t explode.
He’s picked up at the gate by Catwoman in her Catmobile, who holds a gun on him and makes him get in—except, of course, it’s for show, as this was Joker and Catwoman’s plan all along.
While Crichton sends his people out after Catwoman (something he doesn’t even think of until Bruce suggests it), Bruce calls home and has Alfred plug the line into the Bat-phone, so he can answer it when Gordon calls—which, of course, he does and he promises to be right there. (How “right there” he can be when he has to go from the Gotham State Pen to Wayne Manor and then get from there to GCPD HQ is left as an exercise for the viewer.)
Catwoman and Joker are holed up in a sleazy hotel that’s actually called The Sleazy Hotel, and which is across the street from police HQ. She uses her cat gun to fire a bullet into Gordon’s office, complete with a taunting note saying that the next one will be between his eyes. (Joker asks if Catwoman is going to kill Batman and she says no, but provides no good explanation, since she can’t actually say, “Because he’s the star of the show.”) Batman figures out which room the shot came from via math, and entering that room, he finds the suit Joker wore when he was released on parole and smells Catwoman’s perfume. The only other physical clue is a scrap of paper—which Batgirl palms when she flounces in offering to help, which happens shortly after Barbara arrived in Gordon’s office. Batman sees her do so, but lets her get away with it because he’s a condescending prick.
Catwoman brings Joker to their hideout, which is filled with cats and harlequins, as well as two henchmen, one dressed in Joker’s traditional henchgarb of a peaked hat and red vest, while the other is in the cat-outfits favored by Cat-henchmen.
She has a line on a cache of a million pounds of gunpowder that was hidden near Gotham during the French and Indian War, the hints from a piece of poetry written by the thief, the original manuscript of which she stole from Gotham City Library. The map to the treasure can be found on an antique nightshirt and a small cradle. Catwoman deliberately left a bit of the manuscript behind in the hotel, which Batgirl purloined. Barbara quickly discovers that the manuscript is missing, but the library keeps a backup on microfilm.
Batgirl sneaks into Gordon’s office and uses the Batphone, urging Batman and Robin to meet her at Little Louie Groovy’s place. (At one point, while Bruce is still on the phone, Dick says, “Gosh, Bruce, I’ve always wanted to meet him!” which Batgirl could probably hear, so she now knows Batman’s real given name. Good job, Dick!)
Little Louie owns the antique nightshirt, and Joker, Catwoman, and their henchmen break in and take it right off his back—but then the Dynamic Duo arrive, and fisticuffs ensue. Our heroes are triumphant. Since Batman and Robin don’t know about the nightshirt’s value as a treasure map, Joker concocts a cock-and-bull story about how Catwoman wanted to play a prank on Little Louie. Joker insists he was duped by Catwoman, and he’s seen the error of his ways and offers to shake their hands. Because they’re saps, our heroes comply, and are zapped with buzzers that will kill them.
Batgirl finally shows up after the bad guys have left, and gives the boys an antidote pill. (She was late because of rush hour traffic and because she wouldn’t run red lights. Batman admires her law-abiding spirit, though the results nearly got them killed.) She also reveals why they stole the nightshirt. Their next target would be the cradle, which is in the possession of Karnaby Katz.
When they arrive at the Katz mansion, they’re too late, as the cradle has already been stolen. The heroes go their separate ways, but it turns out that Joker and Catwoman hadn’t gone far, and they took the Batgirl-cycle’s spark plug (which, as we know from last week, is radioactive…). They ambush Batgirl and tie her up with cat’s whiskers that will strangle her before long. However Batgirl manages to roll over to the sprinkler system and turn it on, the water causing the cat’s whiskers to expand rather than contract, and she’s free.
She calls Gordon and tells him to tell Batman to meet her at Grimalkin Novelty Company, which is the bad guys’ hideout. They work through the clues that will lead them to the gunpowder. Batman, Robin, and Batgirl follow along, leading them to the Phony Island Lighthouse. They unearth the two-century-old gunpowder, but then our heroes stop them. Catwoman hires Lucky Pierre to be their lawyer.
Batman is once again allowed to play prosecutor. He calls tons of people to the stand, but Lucky Pierre doesn’t cross-examine any of them, even though they all lay Catwoman and Joker’s crimes bare. He doesn’t sum up, either. The jury doesn’t even bother to deliberate—and they find the defendants not guilty.
The judge is appalled, but then the foreman’s fake mustache starts to come off, and Batman recognizes him as a former thug of Catwoman’s. (Why he didn’t recognize him during voir dire is left as an exercise for the viewer.) Batman moves for a mistrial on the grounds of a prejudicial jury, and then the foreman whips out a machine gun. Batman gets rid of the gun with his batarang, but then fisticuffs ensue with the jury, and our heroes are triumphant. Catwoman and Joker are led off to prison.
Back at Gordon’s office, Robin muses on how at least they got to meet some colorful characters on this caper. Gordon calls Barbara’s office and she reveals that Louie the Lilac just showed up at the library…
Fetch the Bat-shark-repellant! Batman and Robin bat-creep across the floor of Gordon’s office on what look like bat-skateboards. He uses a bat-fingerprint kit to dust the windowsill of the room in the Sleazy Hotel, which is a waste of time, as both Catwoman and Joker wear gloves. Batman tunes the bat-radar on the Batmobile to pick up the vibrations of the Catmobile’s motor. He carries anti-blast bat-powder in a handy aerosol can in his utility belt.
Batgirl has created her own antidote pills, probably from the chemistry extension courses she took in library school.
Holy #@!%$, Batman! “Holy special delivery” is Robin’s frightened response to the note in the bullet. “Holy return from oblivion” is Robin’s relieved response to them not blowing up.
Gotham City’s finest. The GCPD’s response to a bullet being fired into the commissioner’s office is—um, nothing. They lay on the floor a lot. Oh, but O’Hara does manage to restrain Catwoman in the end and hold her.
Special Guest Villains. Eartha Kitt and Cesar Romero return as Catwoman and the Joker. It’s Kitt’s second (and third) and final appearance as Catwoman after “Catwoman’s Dressed to Kill,” while Romero will return one final time in “The Joker’s Flying Saucer.”
No sex, please, we’re superheroes. To save time, Batman suggests that the three of them drive to Phony Island in the Batmobile, leaving the Batgirl-cycle behind for the nonce. Batgirl smiles and says, “Cozy,” which makes Batman uncomfortable and Robin a bit nauseous.
Na-na na-na na-na na-na na.
“Karate isn’t effective unless accompanied by yelling.”
–Catwoman showing her ignorance of martial arts. Luckily for her, Little Louie Groovy’s subsequent moves prove that he is equally ignorant.
Trivial matters: This episode was discussed on The Batcave Podcast episode 60 by host John S. Drew with special guest chum, Michael Falkner, host of The Weekly Podioplex.
This was written to be Eartha Kitt’s debut as Catwoman, but it was decided to let her fly solo first in “Catwoman’s Dressed to Kill.”
Later in 1968, Kitt made cutting anti-war remarks at a White House function in front of Lady Bird Johnson, the First Lady, which led to her being more or less blacklisted and exiled, so not only was this her final appearance on Batman, it was her final appearance in an American production for a decade. For the next ten years, she worked mostly in Europe and Asia, before being welcomed back to the States by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 and her appearing on Broadway in Timbuktu! in 1978.
Lucky Pierre was played by Pierre Salinger, former press secretary to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, an interim U.S. Senator from California for four months, and friend of William Dozier’s. The role was written specifically for him, complete with digs at his political career in the tag.
Little Louie Groovy was based on Phil Spector. He was played by Dick Kallman. Years after playing a character whose antique nightshirt was stolen, Kallman would become an antiques dealer and be shot and killed during a robbery of his store.
Joe E. Ross, best known for his roles on The Phil Silvers Show, Car 54 Where Are You? and It’s About Time, and for his trademark “Ooh! Ooh!” makes an uncredited cameo as Little Louie Groovy’s agent.
Catwoman’s green car is a reuse of a car from a 1964 episode of Bewitched. The car was also seen in a commercial in Star Trek‘s “Bread and Circuses” (where it was called the “Jupiter 8”).
The script originally called for a good-old-fashioned deathtrap cliffhanger bridging the two parts, but it was scrapped—either because of the no-cliffhangers philosophy of the third season or because the budget wasn’t there for an elaborate deathtrap (accounts are split on the subject, though both are likely, given how the third season was run). However, Joker’s expression of surprise in the lighthouse that the heroes are still alive after escaping said deathtrap wasn’t cut, thus making that line of dialogue particularly nonsensical, even by this show’s low standards.
Phony Island is another fractured New York location, in this case Coney Island.
Pow! Biff! Zowie! “That’s the first time I ever heard a cat purr in French.” As is far too often the case with villain team-ups not in a feature film, this really only works for one half of the pairing. Joker serves absolutely no function in this episode except as Catwoman’s dumb-but-loyal sidekick. This is good for Eartha Kitt—she’s actually magnificent in this two-parter, slinking her way wonderfully through all of it—but a waste of Cesar Romero’s talents.
Still, this is an amiable throwback to the show’s earlier days, with silly bat-gadgets, tons of earnest moralizing, goofy guest stars, and a fun caper—at least until the anticlimactic climax followed by a truly bizarre courtroom scene. Writer Stanley Ralph Ross either doesn’t know or conveniently forgets that a judge has the power to vacate a verdict if he or she feels that the verdict is contrary to that which is presented by the evidence, and that certainly could have happened here.
(By the way, this is the second time Batman has prosecuted a case, and the second time he’s lost, as in “The Bird’s Last Jest,” he couldn’t convince a judge to arraign Penguin even though he admitted to the crimes he committed right there in front of everyone. Ol’ Bats should, perhaps, leave the lawyering to the professionals…)
It’s funny, but prior to this rewatch, if you’d asked me how many times Eartha Kitt appeared as Catwoman, I’d have said she probably appeared in about half as many episodes as Julie Newmar, so it’s rather a shock to realize that she’s only in a quarter as many. It’s to Kitt’s credit that she created that much of an impression in only three episodes—and not three of the show’s best, at that.
Still, even with the courtroom scene, the neutering of the Joker, and the obvious sops to the reduced budget (the sets are just getting more and more sparse), I’m favorably inclined toward the episode, mostly because of Kitt. (It’s also nice to see Batgirl get out of her own trap.) The visual of Catwoman, Joker, and the henchmen exaggeratedly stepping through Phony Island in single file is hilarious, Mr. & Mrs. Keeper’s vaudeville act is diverting, and while the satire of the music biz with Little Louie Groovy isn’t as biting as the show’s previous stabs at straight-up satire (notably “Hizzoner the Penguin” / “Dizzoner the Penguin,” “An Egg Grows in Gotham” / “The Yegg Foes in Gotham,” and “Pop Goes the Joker” / “Flop Goes the Joker“), it’s still fun.
Bat-rating: 6
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be a guest at Farpoint 2017 in Timonium, Maryland this weekend, both as an author and as a performer, the latter with both Prometheus Radio Theatre and the Boogie Knights. Other guests include producer/director Nicholas Meyer, actors Sam Witwer and Enver Gjokaj, authors Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger, Glenn Hauman, David Mack, Marc Okrand, and Howard Weinstein, plus tons more authors, performers, podcasters, artists, and scientists. Keith’s schedule can be found here.
Not Stan Ralph Ross’s finest hour, but frankly, even a phone-in from him is preferable to a middle-of-the-road script from Stanford Sherman…
Yeah, the villains’ big plot is both stupid and unimpressive (they don’t even get Stage One off the ground), Joker spends most of this episode lumbering around like a hideously miscast Kronk, and I’m sure someone will be here in a few hours to claim Batgirl is Literally Satan for stealing evidence, but at its best it gives Kitt way more chances to shine, Bruce’s (stupidly exaggerated) humanitarianism is a nice precedent for his BTAS characterization, and the Cat’s Whiskers provide a delightful bit of fanservice while never undercutting Babs’ competence. Much.
(Fun fact – I believe in the original script, Chief O’Hara starts firing back in response to Catwoman’s little stunt. There’s potential for a story in there somewhere – I think CLB said last review that Gordon and O’Hara tend to get bloodthirsty when left to their own devices, so maybe B&R are deliberately trying to defang them?)
Catwoman’s car – more germane to you and this page is that it was also in an episode of Star Trek. It was the Jupiter 8 in a commercial on the episode, “Bread and Circuses”. Gene Winfield built the car, the same Winfield who designed the Galileo 7.
Catwoman’s Kitty Car was a customization of a concept car called the Reactor Mark II, which was also seen in Star Trek: “Bread and Circuses” as the Jupiter 8.
Another 2-parter by Stanley Ralph Ross, so one would expect it to be good, but it’s just okay, and imperfect. For instance, in the opening: Bruce and Crichton see Catwoman “kidnap” the Joker, and Bruce tells Crichton to go alert his forces while he (Bruce) calls the Commissioner to tell him about the kidnapping. Instead, he calls Alfred and has him hook up the Batphone for when Gordon calls him to notify Batman of the kidnapping. So how the heck did Gordon find out about it?
And it’s great to see Catwoman as the undisputed mastermind of the team-up, and Eartha Kitt does a terrific job at it. Pretty remarkable for a 1967/8 episode to show a mixed-race woman giving orders to a white (well, Hispanic) man. Unfortunately, it comes at the expense of the Joker, who’s reduced to a clueless second banana needing everything explained to him. (Good grief — basically the Joker is Catwoman’s Chief O’Hara!) He’s become pretty much a buffoon since “Pop Goes the Joker,” but he’s stupider than usual here.
I’m surprised that Little Louie lived on “Disk Drive.” Did that term exist back then? Wikipedia says the first disk-based storage drive was made in 1956, but still, they can’t have been that commonly known in the ’60s. I suppose it may have been “Disc Drive” as in a vinyl disc, aka a record album, but then it’s quite a coincidence.
Nice to see Batgirl saving Batman and Robin from certain doom, even if it’s just with “Batgirl Antidote Pills.” And it’s nice in part 2 to see her free herself from Catwoman’s cat whiskers through her own cleverness, without needing Batman and Robin’s help. With Batgirl being so resourceful and Catwoman so smart, this is a pretty good showing for the ladies. Well, except for Mrs. Keeper and her housekeeping obsession.
The story took a weird turn in the last quarter, going right from the caper to the trial. This is the second time we’ve had a courtroom scene in this show, but this one isn’t all that interesting or satirical as the last one. I don’t think it really works all that well.
I think this is the first time we’ve seen Gordon and O’Hara participate materially in the action. It may have been just holding on to Catwoman, but this Catwoman was pretty darn feisty.
@3/Chris:
“I’m surprised that Little Louie lived on “Disk Drive.” Did that term exist back then? Wikipedia says the first disk-based storage drive was made in 1956, but still, they can’t have been that commonly known in the ’60s. I suppose it may have been “Disc Drive” as in a vinyl disc, aka a record album, but then it’s quite a coincidence.”
Reading things like this makes me feel extremely old, because I had to think really hard to figure out what you were talking about. To me, the term disk drive is such a modern reference that I wouldn’t have even considered the possibility of Disk Drive being an intentional pun. Yes, it’s Disc Drive as in vinyl records, and yes, the fact that this would later go on to be an actual, commonly recognized computer term is a total coincidence.
Uhm… not if the verdict’s an acquittal, (s)he doesn’t. Thank the gods. There’s a terrifying thought:
Judges can enter a judgement notwithstanding the verdict (JNOV) if he believes a criminal jury convicted in error, or in a civil case if he feels there was insufficient evidence for a plaintiff to prevail. Acquittals are sacrosanct, however.
Of course, that’s how the law works in the real world. Considering that Comic Book Courtrooms presumably either enter guilty verdicts despite the absence of prosecuting witnesses and/or allow prosecuting witnesses to testify wearing masks and/or using pseudonyms and/or after they may or may not have violated defendants’ constitutional rights, who knows how the law actually works? (“Alright, Mr. ‘Batman,’ if that is your real name, let’s try this again; you claim you’re a private citizen and not acting under the color of law, but then you also testified under direct examination that you began your campaign of harassment against Mr. Cobblepot–I’m sorry, your ‘investigation’ of Mr. Cobblepot–after being summoned to the rooftop of Police Headquarters by the Commissioner of Police, Mr. Gordon?”) Maybe a judge who hears a man dressed as a human bat testify that the defendant murdered fifty-nine people with a nerve agent that caused them to smile themselves to death while trying to steal a box of Hostess Fruit Pies can do whatever the hell he wants, including overruling a “not guilty” verdict and sentencing the defendant to life in a decrepit, obviously uninspected mental hospital without civil commitment proceedings or review.
I know, of course, various comic universes have tried to retcon this issue by postulating various special laws allowing costumed vigilantes to testify without unmasking, but I’m not sure those “solutions” really solve anything. Also, honestly, I think it’s funnier to imagine a public defender goading the prosecution’s chief witness into admitting that he’s really a juvenile delinquent who skips high school so he can assault people with a combination of fists and some weird chemical goo that’s never passed any kind of state or Federal regulatory scrutiny, on top of which he lies to his dear elderly aunt about it, doesn’t he? Lies all the time, in fact, to his family, his teachers, his girlfriend, and his boss at the newspaper, so why should we believe a single lying word that ever comes out of his lying mouth?
What, no cat’s cradle jokes?
@eric, ’cause his boss is an even bigger liar, and everyone believes him, so…
I believe this episode includes the line “That’s Dave the Dummy! He also worked with the Joker,” which is a personal favorite.
I always was amused at the fact that not only was Catwoman’s plot to get their hands on the dynamite overly convoluted, but Joker himself even lampshaded that by pointing out that it would be much easier to just steal a truckload of dynamite from somewhere else….only to have Catwoman chide him on how little style that would show.
I’m guessing Catwoman’s reason for not killing Batman was the same reason it always is, but they couldn’t say that on 1960’s TV.
Would gunpowder still be usable after 200 years? Not that science has ever been a barrier to plot developments before.
All male jury. You know, even in the 60’s, I think the odds against that were pretty high.
Ellynne: the unusual male-ness of the jury was actually sorta commented on in the episode. Batman started his opening statement, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury….” Then he paused, times his head, then amended it to, “Gentlemen of the jury….”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Also, it was alluded to in the story that all of the jurors were former henchmen of Catwoman’s, planted there by Lucky Pierre, so blame him for the lack of female jurors.
I love the Catwoman aesthetic, very slinky and sexy with mod jewelry and discrete bits of glitz, but man, that Catmobile is UGG-LEE.
John & Christopher: Thanks — I’ve (belatedly, I was at Farpoint and very busy) edited the Trivial Matters to include the Trek appearance by the Catmobile…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@5/eric: You would love the Law and the Multiverse blog, I feel like. :D
@15 Idran: Clicked on the link, read the first headline, subscribed. Thank you!
@11Krad, Thanks, good to know they lampshaded it like that (I rewatch some of these, but others I rely on very vague memories as a kid. For some of the badder episodes, it’s much better that way).
The exterior of Karnaby Katz’s home is the same building used to depict the homes of Minerva Matthews in “The Cat and the Fiddle” and Mr. Van Jones in “Death in Slow Motion.”
“… he calls Alfred and has him hook up the Batphone for when Gordon calls him to notify Batman of the kidnapping. So how the heck did Gordon find out about it?”
@3. Chris, I think Bruce did, indeed, call Gordon and told him. After Bruce calls Alfred and tells him to prepare for the batcall, he disconnects and then starts to dial the phone again. Bruce doesn’t need to dial anything to receive the batphone call; Alfred has forwarded it to ring in Crichton’s office. So, who is he dialing if it’s not Gordon? When the scene then switches to Gordon’s office, Gordon is standing at his desk, looking a bit grim, and Barbara excuses herself saying something about “I think I’d better take a rain check” on lunch. Looks to me like this is immediately after Gordon has gotten a call (it would explain why he’s standing grimly and why Barbara thinks she better take a rain check). My theory is that this is actually the end of a slightly longer scene that got trimmed in which Gordon and Barbara were planning to go to lunch until they were interrupted by Bruce’s call. Barbara’s presence for that one line seems odd otherwise; why did they need for her to be there? It really does make it look like it’s the end of a brief scene that we simply didn’t see. I think we’re just supposed to glean that Bruce has called Gordon and now Gordon is calling Batman, even though we didn’t specifically see Gordon taking Bruce’s call. It’s a rather bizarre thing to have been edited out, but that’s how it looks to me.
@19: Interesting, thanks.