“The Great Escape” / “The Great Train Robbery”
Written by Stanley Ralph Ross
Directed by Oscar Rudolph
Season 3, Episodes 21 & 22
Production code 1723
Original air date: February 1 & 8, 1968
The Bat-signal: Calamity Jan and Frontier Fanny spring Shame from the Gotham City Prison with a big red tank. O’Hara calls Gordon, who is at his daughter’s place, along with Bruce, where they are having fondue. Gordon has O’Hara use the bat-phone, and Bruce nervously activates his cufflink, which signals Robin and Alfred that they need to set up the bat-answer-phone. (Why Robin doesn’t just answer the bat-phone himself—which he’s done in the past—is left as an exercise for the viewer.)
Gordon says that Shame has escaped. The recorded Bat-voice says that they’ll be right there. (Why Batman doesn’t just use a recording every time Gordon calls, given how generic these calls tend to be, is also left as an exercise for the viewer.) Gordon excuses himself, as does Bruce, as it wouldn’t be proper for him and Barbara to be alone together without a chaperone. (Ah, 1968…)
Bruce returns to Wayne Manor, and Batman and Robin head to GCPD HQ, where O’Hara reveals that Calamity Jan got the tank from Madman Otto’s Used Tank Lot. Only in Gotham City would there be a used tank lot.
Shame leaves a sawhorse (because an actual horse isn’t in the budget) with a note for Batman. Batman, for reasons known only to the voices in his head, reads the note in a Western accent, revealing that Shame intends to hit the Gotham City Stage at 8:45 that evening. He’s going to steal a rock and a roll. Batman and Robin head off to the Batcave to try to figure out the clues in the letter.
At the Gotham Central Park stables, Calamity Jan introduces the other two members of the gang—a Mexican named Fernando Ricardo Enrique Domingues (Fred for short), who speaks with a posh British accent, and a Native named Chief Standing Pat.
In the Batcave, they deduce that “a rock” is slang for diamonds, and “a roll” is slang for a bank roll. Then the bat-phone beeps, and it’s Barbara in Gordon’s office, saying that she (as Batgirl) has figured out what the Gotham City Stage is. They agree to meet, then Gordon enters the office, they exchange pleasantries, and Barbara leaves. Batman calls back to determine which corner, but Gordon says Batgirl isn’t in the office and never has been. At no point does he even consider the fact that his daughter was alone in the office with the bat-phone just a few minutes ago. For their part, Batman and Robin are baffled as to how Batgirl does it (Gordon never mentions to them that Barbara was in the office).
Shame and his gang break into the Gotham City Opera House, where the current opera playing is a Western, which would attract Shame. And the leading lady always wears a 283-carat diamond, while the leading man always carries a ton of cash on him for luck. Batman, Robin, and Batgirl catch the gang in the act of robbing the opera singers, and fisticuffs ensue.
But while our heroes take down the men-folk, Calamity Jan and Frontier Fanny spray them with fear gas, which makes them scared of everything. Shame leaves, taking Batgirl as a hostage. (The fearful Batman and Robin give her up in an instant.) The Dynamic Duo head back to the Batcave, where Alfred feeds them chicken soup laced with bat-antidote (though the fearful, paranoid heroes almost don’t eat it for fear that it’s poison; one wonders how they were able to operate the Batmobile in such a state). With pressure from Gordon (who is in turn getting pressure from the mayor and governor) and the urgency of Batgirl’s kidnapping, our heroes dope out that Shame is in the Gotham Central Park stables, and they head there, where Shame has a still-fearful Batgirl tied up. He sends Fred and Standing Pat to purchase what they need to rob the train, and then they head out. But as they leave, Standing Pat (who is very tall) bumps his head on the door, and Shame’s lucky horseshoe falls on Frontier Fanny’s head, knocking her out.
Batman and Robin arrive to find Frontier Fanny, who refuses to give up any info on her fellow criminals. Meanwhile, Shame and the rest of his gang steal weaponry from a gun shop, then they send Standing Pat to deliver a message: a trade of Frontier Fanny for Batgirl. Exchange is to be made at eleven o’clock at the Central America pavilion of the Gotham State Fair, which is shut down.
The exchange happens, but Shame comes well armed and intends to shoot the heroes down once Frontier Fanny is safe. Luckily, Batman has a chemical that makes metal twenty times heavier, which evens the odds. (How the stuff doesn’t affect any of the three heroes’ utility belts is also left as an exercise for the viewer.) Fisticuffs ensue, but our heroes are done in by Shame managing to pick up a gun long enough to shoot a piñata off the ceiling, which knocks our heroes for a loop, allowing the bad guys to escape.
Batgirl overheard Shame mention the great train robbery he’s planning (he’s mentioned it so often, Fred eye-rollingly mouths the words alongside Shame when he speaks of it), and they figure out that he’s after the bank train that takes tattered old money to the treasury to be destroyed. Shame breaks in with the only thing that can penetrate the armor of the train—a 283-carat diamond drill—and uses the fear gas on the guards.
Batman resorts to taunting Shame with a skywritten note calling Shame a coward who is afraid to face Batman mano-a-mano. Batman says his goodbyes to Robin, Batgirl, Gordon, and O’Hara in case he doesn’t make it out of the showdown alive, and then he heads to a condemned urban renewal district to confront Shame.
Shame, of course, brought his whole gang with instructions to shoot Batman. However, Robin and Batgirl suspected such a double cross, so they show up as well and hogtie the gang. Left to confront Batman alone, Shame tries taunting and cowering in fear, neither of which works particularly well, so fisticuffs ensue, and Batman is triumphant.
But while Shame, Calamity Jan, Frontier Fanny, Fred, and Standing Pat are all ensconced in prison, King Tut is in the process of breaking out of prison…
Fetch the Bat-shark-repellant! The Emergency Bat-communicator is linked to Bruce’s cufflinks to signal that Robin and Alfred should set up the bat-answer phone, which has a prerecorded Batman voice saying, “Yes, Commissioner,” “What’s the problem, Commissioner?” and “We’ll be right there, Commissioner.” The stuff that the bat-antidote pills are made of apparently also comes in powder form, which Alfred puts in chicken soup for the Dynamic Duo. Batman has a chemical that makes metal twenty times heavier, bravery pills that can combat the fear gas, and a skywriting drone.
Holy #@!%$, Batman! After reading Shame’s note, Robin growls, “Holy gall.” Seriously, that was the best he could come up with. He scarcely does much better when they figure that Shame is going after diamonds, and he says, “Holy carats.” When they figure out that Shame’s hiding out in the park stables, Robin declares, “Holy hoofbeats!”
Gotham City’s finest. Gordon is utterly clueless as to the fact that his daughter is Batgirl, even though Batman tells him that Batgirl just called him on the bat-phone when Barbara was alone in his office, and even though Barbara goes missing at the exact same time that Batgirl is kidnapped. Having said that, O’Hara is critical in this one, as his having some tattered dollar bills in his billfold clue our heroes into Shame’s target.
Special Guest Villains. Cliff Robertson returns as Shame, following “Come Back, Shame” / “It’s How You Play the Game,” this time accompanied by Robertson’s real-life wife Dina Merrill as Calamity Jan. When he was approached to reprise the role, Robertson requested a role for his bride, and Stanley Ralph Ross accommodated him.
Na-na na-na na-na na-na na.
“You’re a sham, Shame. Don’t ever cry on my tights or pull on my leg again.”
–Batman doing his best John Wayne.
Trivial matters: This episode was discussed on The Batcave Podcast episode 64 by host John S. Drew with special guest chum, serial podcaster The Hunnic Outcast.
The episode titles are both riffs on film titles, Part 1 being the 1963 John Sturges film starring Steve McQueen, Part 2 the 1903 silent short by Edwin S. Porter (and also the name given to a 1963 heist in the UK).
Frontier Fanny was played by Hermione Baddeley, who was also in Mary Poppins, and would later go on to fame as Mrs. Naugatuck on Maude.
The two opera singers (played by Dorothy Kirsten and Brian Sullivan) are named Leonora Sotto Voce and Fortissimo Fra Diavolo. Sotto voce and fortissimo are Italian terms used in music that indicate, respectively, vocalizing quietly and playing loudly, while fra diavolo is the name of a hot sauce.
Leave it to Beaver‘s Jerry Mathers make an uncredited cameo as the stage door manager, who is nicknamed “Pop” even though he’s only seventeen, while standup comic Arnold Stang makes an uncredited cameo as the gun-shop owner.
When Batman’s skywriting note appears, Shame’s gang cry out, “Look! Up in the sky!” “It’s a bird!” “It’s a plane!” This was the famous opening to the Superman radio show, and was also used on The Adventures of Superman TV show.
This is the last story in the show that was told in more than one part.
Pow! Biff! Zowie! “You sure he’s Mexican?” Parts of this final two-parter are magnificent. I love Batman reading Shame’s note in a Western accent. I love how craven Batman and Robin are under the influence of the fear gas. I love how Batman calmly replies to each of Shame’s insults with a reasonable calm response. (“Your mother wore Army shoes!” “Yes, she did. As I recall, she found them quite comfortable.”) I love that Gotham City has a used tank lot. I love that it takes the brain power of all three heroes to dope out the opera-house robbery. I love the easy banter between the husband-and-wife team of Cliff Robertson and Dina Merrill as Shame and Calamity Jan. I love that Batgirl and Robin save the day by actually expecting the bad guys to go back on their word, thus saving Batman’s trusting ass from getting shot.
And oh my goodness do I love Fred! Barry Dennen is superb here, looking every bit the unbathed, droopy-mustachioed Mexican that was a tired staple of Westerns, but speaking with a posh British accent and with a delightfully withering dry wit. Honestly, this whole storyline is worth it just for Fred and his sardonic commentary. He’s fantastic.
But there are serious problems, too, most of them relating to Standing Pat and Frontier Fanny, who embody awful stereotypes. Even as Fred is nicely subverting clichés, these two are living down to them in the worst way. Standing Pat started out promising, using a cigar to “speak” in smoke signals, handily translated by Calamity Jan, but they abandoned that in short order, and Standing Pat started talking like a not-too-bright eight-year-old, the common Hollywood stereotype of the type, but no less offensive for that—and without the satirical elements that made the show’s last Native stereotype, Screaming Chicken, at least tolerable.
On top of that, Frontier Fanny’s sole purpose is to be The Annoying Mother-in-Law, which not just offensive, it’s lazy. Not to mention a waste of Hermione Baddeley’s talents, as she’s utterly wasted in a thankless role here.
In addition, Shame has been seriously dumbed down here. He was actually a clever foe in “Come Back, Shame” / “It’s How You Play the Game,” but here he can barely string a sentence together, and he’s constantly baffled by Fred’s erudition. It just feels wrong, never more so than when he cowers before Batman in their climactic confrontation.
The comedy is fast and furious in this one, and while the script doesn’t do Robertson any favors by turning Shame into an idiot, his comic timing is superb, as is his Western drawl, perfectly embodying the many Western bad-guy clichés that the character needs to embrace to work. In addition, Adam West nicely channels John Wayne and Gary Cooper at various points, being even more the stiff-jawed hero than usual.
It’s flawed, but still fun, and certainly a damn sight better than most of the third-season offerings.
Bat-rating: 6
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be a guest at I-Con 32 this weekend in Brentwood, New York, alongside fellow authors David Gerrold, Peter David, Christopher Golden, and Cory Doctorow, as well as Daniel Knauf, Cecil Baldwin, Rikki Simmons, Pamela Gay, and tons more. You can find his schedule here.
“Batman, for reasons known only to the voices in his head, reads the note in a Western accent…”
I took that to mean that the note was spelled phonetically that way.
This is one I hadn’t seen in a long time prior to MeTV rerunning it last year. I believe that when the Hub network (now called Discovery Family) ran the series some years back, they left out both this one and the first Egghead story for their Native American stereotype characters (although other ethnic stereotypes were left intact). Anyway, it’s pretty fun, with some good gags. The Bat Answering Machine is clever, and F.R.E.D. is a fun character, though I could’ve done without Chief Standing Pat. Meanwhile, Shame and Calamity Jan have a startlingly passionate relationship for a ’60s kids’ show. I don’t think we’ve seen this much kissing in the rest of the series put together. I guess their being real-life spouses helps explain that.
Hold on — fear gas? Where did Calamity Jan get hold of fear gas? Did she date the Scarecrow before hooking up with Shame?
The “showdown” ending is fun, with Batman rolling with Shame’s insults. It’s unusual for the climax to be a one-on-one confrontation like that. All in all, this one worked pretty well, stereotypes aside.
That looks almost like a Sherman tank that spent too long in the dryer.
Totally agree about Fred, who is endlessly hilarious and gets off the best direct-to-camera aside of the series. (“Couldn’t you just get sick?”)
Totally disagree about Shame’s character being diluted by making him a dimwit. Decades later, Cliff Robertson remembered his lack of brain power as the character’s animating trait – – the detail that made him special. And Robertson was right. There’s something wonderful about how stupid he is, searching in vain for a word as simple as “early” and failing to recognize that his supposed bandito henchman is clearly a Brit with a droopy mustache ( which is what makes the character of Fred work and not be offensive: The joke here isn’t that a Mexican could sound like an upper crust European, but that Fred IS an upper-crust European and Shame is just too thick to realize it). And notice that Shame still remains pretty darn scary not despite but because of his idiocy — as when Fred goes too far with the mocking and Shame reminds him that he can put him six feet under anytime he feels like it. In retrospect, this episode taught the young me that stupid people should not be trifled with, because they often have guns and can thus get what they want.
Plus, it’s great to watch Shame cower in fear when he realizes his ambush has failed, and to see Batman’s appropriate reaction of disgust. I always like it when this series returns to its philosophical roots by reminding us that criminals are a cowardly lot.
As for Frontier Fanny being an objectionable caricature, well … let’s just say accuracy is in the eye of the beholder. To coin a phrase, your marriage may vary.
Autobiographical appendix: I met Robertson around the turn of the last century at a film festival, and he was just a charming, humble guy. A movie star in the best sense of the term.
Barry Dennen will always be The Chamberlain to me.
Hmmmmm……
My guess is that much of the utility belts are made from plastics and the metal is a Magnesium/Aluminum alloy (snaps, buckles etc). In contrast, the villains had guns made of steel and probably lead based ammunition which explains why only their holsters dropped.
@2 Wiredog, Not a Sherman, I’m pretty sure it’s either an M3 or M5 Stuart, a light reconnaissance tank with a 37mm cannon.
I wonder, is it the same tank they painted gold for the Penguin/Marsha 3-parter last season? Apparently that was an M5 Stuart, and was probably the same one used in a Green Hornet episode a month earlier. It’s appropriate that it would be used in a DC superhero show, because it’s the same kind of tank featured in DC’s Haunted Tank series, about a Stuart tank that was both commanded by a descendant of Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart and haunted by the ghost of Stuart (although it seems problematical to present the ghost of a Confederate general as a good guy).
CLB @7- If the ghost of General Stuart is opposing Nazis, it’s at least pretty good. Maybe just okay.
@8/sps49: A general who fought in defense of slavery and white supremacy doesn’t really strike me as an apposite choice for a Nazi-fighter. Although I suppose if he admitted he’d been wrong and been seeking redemption, that would be okay. Except apparently the comic had the Tank flying the Confederate battle flag instead of the US flag, which hardly suggests repentance.
Fra Diavolo is also an operetta — Laurel and Hardy did an adaptation of it called The Devil’s Brother.
J.E.B Stuart was considered a hero in the South well into the 70’s. The high school in Fairfax County still hasn’t been renamed.
Well apparently the Stuart tank was named for JEB Stuart, but the appellation came from the British. Who knows why they picked that name. The Haunted Tank started in 1961, so DC was probably looking for some sort of Civil War tie-in for the centennial. For all I know, it might even have been intended as a one-off in G.I. Combat, but proved popular enough that they stuck with it.
The point is, it’s extremely clueless at best to paint a Confederate general, a fighter for the cause of slavery and white supremacy, as a protagonist. It’s not a politically neutral statement; it’s a tacit endorsement of racism. The Confederate battle flag has been used far more heavily by white supremacist movements in the 20th century than it was ever actually used during the Civil War itself. The rhetoric about it being a symbol of “state’s rights” and “Southern pride” was a smokescreen invented by groups fighting against federal laws promoting racial equality and desegregation. (I gather that this is more clear to people overseas than it is to many Americans. I once saw the infotext on a Doctor Who DVD assert that the Confederate battle flag is “sometimes called the American swastika.”)
Of course, the Haunted Tank was created by Robert Kanigher, who was hardly what you’d call enlightened. He was the head writer on Wonder Woman and Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane for decades, which was kind of a nightmare, because he was the least feminist writer imaginable, defining both characters exclusively by their romantic pursuits (or in Wonder Woman’s case, by various men’s pursuit of her). Kanigher also created one of the most grotesquely racist comic-book villains of all time, Egg Fu. Although apparently he also did a notable anti-racism story in Sgt. Rock at one point, and he wrote the well-intentioned but problematical Lois Lane story “I Am Curious (Black)!” in which she used Kryptonian technology to become black for a day and see how the other half lived. So he wasn’t intentionally a bigot, but he was still mired in a lot of old-fashioned preconceptions about gender and race, so a lot of what he created is unfortunate in retrospect.
That’s all true and I don’t really disagree with you, though much of that may not have been quite so clear in 1961. Heck, the Confederate battle flag was seen jumping ditches on TV every week for seven seasons in the late 70s and early 80s. The Haunted Tank did eventually wind up with a black crewman (I don’t know how the general’s ghost felt about that). Somewhere towards then end it was replaced by a Sherman tank and had the ghosts of both generals hanging around.
Egg Fu is amazingly terrible. And what a weird concept for a villain. Obviously inspired by the office take-out menu. I can’t believe they brought him back in recent years. At least they acknowledged how racist he is. But now I kinda want to see a crossover with Egg Fu and Egghead.
Is Standing Pat wearing brownface? Oh, it’s Victor Lundin, so yes. Even worse.
@1 – Chris: Calamity Jan probably bought the fear gas in the Gotham City Fear Gas Emporium, right next to the used tank lot.
@14/DemetriosX: Yeah, but the fact that so many white Americans came to see a symbol popularized by white supremacists as something harmless and positive just underlines how effective the white supremacists have been at normalizing their politics and concealing it as “Southern pride.” That’s what’s so insidious about racism — the people who aren’t victimized by it often have trouble realizing how pervasive it is.
I was always rather fond of The Dukes of Hazzard and thought it was harmless fun, but now I feel the prominent display of the battle flag makes it hard to watch. I mean, it was on a car called the General Lee, but Robert E. Lee himself was the one who said that the flag should be retired forever since the cause it had represented had been defeated. It was the Ku Klux Klan who revived it as a banner for their movement in the 1920s, and the practice of flying it over Southern state houses began in 1961 specifically as a protest of school desegregation — so, hell yes, people in 1961 could and should have recognized how politically charged it was. It is purely a symbol of white supremacy, but the hate groups that embraced it were successful in selling the smokescreen that it was a symbol of “Southern heritage,” and that led to a lot of (white) people innocently propagating it without realizing the statement it was really making. Presumably the creators of The Dukes of Hazzard and The Haunted Tank are in that category, but it’s still unfortunate. Not knowing any better isn’t really a defense, because that ignorance of the problem is a large part of what perpetuates the problem.
I always felt Shame was one of the most underrated villains on this show, more-or-less for the reasons Steve outlines above. He is, in one fell swoop, both dumb as a post and the most “mature” baddie in all of ’66 Gotham. Seriously, how many other villains pack heat as consistently as he does, never mind actually having sparks with their moll of choice? And his one-liners leave pretty much everyone else’s in the dust – “I’m picturing about two-thirds of it.” “Why couldn’t you have been born an orphan?” I don’t even care how hacky the subject matter is – Robertson is just that good.
But the fear-gas stuff remains baffling. I know the concept didn’t originate with Batman (Sherlock Holmes tangled with the Devil’s Foot decades before Batman’s invention, and the concept is probably even older than that), but I still can’t help feeling it was ported from some Scarecrow script that never made it past preproduction. Hey, we know Two-Face got turned down multiple times – why not Professor Crane, who if we’re being honest, probably had better comics presence in the ’60s?
@17/rubberlotus: I just got the second volume of Batman: The Golden Age from the library (reprinting the original comics from the beginning — this volume covers December 1940-November ’41), and the very first story in the volume is about a fear dust (or, as it was inexplicably rendered, “fear” dust, with quotation marks) developed by Professor Hugo Strange, who was one of Batman’s two primary recurring foes at the time, the Joker being the other. As it happens, the debut story of the Scarecrow is near the end of the same volume (World’s Finest Comics #3, Fall 1941), but in it, Crane doesn’t yet have a fear-inducing chemical — just the costume and more brute-force ways of terrorizing people.
For some reason, after reading about the Mexican bandit with the posh, British accent, I couldn’t help imagining Standing Pat staying silent till the end and then blowing up in a French accent. “Sacre bleu! Why are you looking at me like zat? You have heard of the French-Indian War, non? Well, I am a French Indian. Mon dieu! Americans!”
This was just shown again on Me TV.
1.I thought Shame was meant to be street smart but not book smart. He can barely read or write and has trouble stringing sentences together, but at the same time, he figured out how to break into the train and he, not F.R.E.D recognized that it wasn’t worth the risk to steal the torch.
2.Maybe the version on Me TV that aired had this part cut out in syndication but Barbara Gordon is never shown returning even as Batgirl is found out to have been kidnapped by Shame. In the version that aired anyway, Batgirl just says to Commissioner Gordon/her father “I know she’s safe…call it women’s intuition’ and it seems everybody relaxed about missing Barbara after that.