More Batman Humor That Went Over My Head as a Kid

Loren Ewing, Doodles Weaver (Sigourney
Weaver's uncle) and Art Carney
In the "Shoot a Crook Arrow" episode
of Batman

Shoot a Crooked Arrow/Walk the Straight and Narrow: The second, much campier season of Batman premiered with Art Carney as The Archer, a low-rent, wanna-be Robin Hood. Carney was inspired casting for this role since he was best known for playing the blue-collar, lovable sewer worker Ed Norton on The Jackie Gleason Show. Norton was the opposite of the debonair Errol Flynn image of the noble bandit. In fact, I remember Carney as Norton making a joke about a weirdly dressed fellow cruise ship passenger on the Gleason Show. "He looks like this week's Special Guest Villain," Norton quipped. I remember thinking Carney was a Special Guest Villain just a few weeks earlier. 

As the Dynamic Duo descend the side of police headquarters to pursue the escaping Archer, they encounter this episode's window cameo, Dick Clark, then host of the ABC music series, American Bandstand. (Although what Dick Clark is doing in police headquarters is never made clear.) There's also a reference to The Music Man with Bruce Wayne informing Dick Grayson, "we've got trouble, right here in Gotham City." Veteran character actor Sam Jaffe appears as Zoltan Zorba, the first poor Gotham City resident to receive a $100 bill from the Wayne Foundation (which turns out to be a counterfeit bill courtesy of The Archer). Jaffe was best known for playing Dr. Zorba on Ben Casey. There's also a corny lecture from a police officer who chides a complaining female motorist that Batman gets away with speeding through Gotham City without so much as a ticket. The cop informs the griper Batman is pursuing criminals but under normal circumstances he's the safest driver in GC. The other drivers applaud. Robert Cornthwaite appears as Allan A. Dale (get it?), the fussy, clench-jawed administrator of the Wayne Foundation grants and secret accomplice of the Archer. This character is coded-gay with a handkerchief tucked up his sleeve and creepy admiration of Batman's cowl.

The Minstrel's Shakedown/Barbecued Batman?: Comedienne Phyllis Diller made an unbilled appearance as a cleaning woman, mocking Batman and Robin's outfits and assuming they are dressed to take over her cleaning duties. There are many references to Special Guest Villain Van Johnson's Minstrel's status as a heartthrob, echoing Johnson's days as a movie box office idol in the 1940s. Aunt Harriet swoons over the "nice young man" who was 50 at the time.

Shelley Winters as Ma Parker with
Batman and Robin.

The Greatest Mother of Them All/Ma Parker: Double Oscar winner Shelley Winters anticipates her role as Bloody Mama (1970) with this Guest Villainess assignment as Ma Parker, based on the real-life crime matriarch Ma Barker who was gunned down by the FBI in 1935. Her three sons are named after gangsters of the period (Pretty Boy, Machine Gun and Mad Dog) and her daughter Legs is the obligatory attractive female sidekick/gun moll. In one of their crime sprees, they rob a movie theater showing The Lady in Red, the film John Dillinger was attending when the feds caught up with him. The plot involves Ma and her gang deliberately getting caught by the Dynamic Duo so she can take over the prison. Julie Newmar as Catwoman makes a cameo but why is she still in her costume if she's in jail? Milton Berle also appears briefly as a prison guard.

At first I thought the title of the episode was a reference to Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thompson's opera, The Mother of Us All. 

Gail Hire as Miss Bacon and Vincent Price
as Egghead.

An Egg Grows in Gotham/The Yegg Foes in Gotham: This was one of my favorite episodes because it was so crazy and viewing it again revealed many jokes and references I totally missed. Vincent Price egg-cels as Egghead, the smartest crook Batman ever faced. The outdated gag refers to a 1950s and '60s slang term for intellectuals as eggheads. Egghead's henchmen are dressed like academics in tweed jackets--Benedict even smokes a pipe. Egghead has a secretary, Miss Bacon, rather than a gun moll, who takes down his every utterance in shorthand for his memoirs. Edward Everett Horton (character actor from many Astaire-Rogers films and narrator of Fractured Fairy Tales) makes a politically incorrect appearance as Native American Chief Screaming Chicken, who acquires Gotham City and turns the whole works over to Egggead. The Chief has a roadside tee-pee where he sells Navajo blankets, pizza, tacos and blintzes.

As the new police commissioner, Egghead allows crime to flourish and the Caped Crusaders are banned from the city limits. Mayhem ensues as criminals are allowed to rob and pillage with impunity. There are a series of clever short scenes where robberies are permitted, but ordinary citizens are penalized for minor offenses like jaywalking and failing to wear a seat belt. In the last one, a lady complains that she littered because all the shooting distracted her. The plainclothes cop writing her up in none other than Ben Alexander who played Frank Smith, Sgt. Joe Friday's partner on the radio and TV versions of Dragnet. He utters the famous catchphrase, "Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts." (I've been listening to many episodes of the radio Dragnet on Spotify.) Ironically, Jack Webb had a reboot of Dragnet on the air the following year, but Alexander was not available to reprise his role. Harry Morgan, later of MASH fame, played Friday's new partner, Bill Gannon, who was just as eccentric as his predecessor.

Bill Dana, then a popular TV comic for his character Jose Jiminez, was the window cameo this episode, popping out of a window as the Caped Crusaders scaled down the police headquarters wall. Like Chief Screaming Chicken, Jose probably would bot be palatable in today's cultural environment since his humor was based manly on his Hispanic accent. I wonder if Dana was in the same room as Dick Clark. Jose tells Batman and Robin he's in a jury and they are deciding a case, then asks the pair to leave the rope (because they found the defendant guilty, I guess).

The set for Egghead's hideout is brilliant with giant ova and bacon everywhere. Egghead returns in the third season, but for some reason, he is no longer a formidable giant-brained foe, but rather the submissive paramour of Olga (Anne Baxter), a sort of Russian-Serbian Empress. It would have been more interesting if he had retained his character from Season Two.

Death in Slow Motion/The Riddler's False Notion: I realize this is out of chronological order, as this is

Frank Gorshin as the Riddler imitates
Charlie Chaplin.

a Season One episode. But I had reflected on it after watching the others. There aren't a lot of over-my-head-as-a-kid jokes in this one, but it does contain a brilliant performance by Frank Gorshin as the Riddler. Gorshin was probably the best villain of the entire series. He was the only cast member to receive an Emmy nomination (losing to Werner Klemperer as Col. Klink on Hogan's Heroes.) He brought such manic intensity to the role, exemplified by that insane laugh. Here he shows his famous versatility as the Riddler commits a series of silent-movie themed crimes. He does a brilliant Charlie Chaplin, a hissable melodrama villain complete with mustache and black cape, and in the final sequence he is attired as a cowboy and sounds like Kirk Douglas. He was a famous impressionist, appearing in nightclubs and variety series imitating dozens of movie stars. He even starred in a short-lived series called the Kopykats along with other impressionists such as Rich Little, George Kirby and Marilyn Michaels. Interestingly, silent film star Francis X. Bushman plays a silent-movie buff in one of his last roles. The only other film I saw him in was The Silent Planet on Mystery Science Theater 3000. 

In this episode, Batman breaks police protocol and abducts Pauline, the Riddler's assistant, to the Batcave, violating her rights. This was Gorshin's last appearance as the Riddler until a single episode in Season Three. John Astin of the Addams Family replaced him for a two-part ep in Season Two. 

Otto Preminger as the second Mr. Freeze

Green Ice/Deep Freeze: Otto Preminger was best-known as a director of films like Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, In Harm's Way and Hurry Sundown. But he also was an actor who usually played villains like the camp commandant in Stalag 17. He played the second of three Mr. Freezes after George Sanders and before Eli Wallach. Apparently he was difficult to work with, but his performance was fascinating, giving Freeze an almost human dimension. He kidnaps Miss Iceland and plans to lower her body temperature so she will love him. His second plot is to discredit Batman and make him feel how Freeze feels--hated. Preminger conveyed the villain's twisted need for love and revenge. Plus that signature phrase, "Wild!" was memorably delivered. I also enjoyed the scene where Mr. Freeze attacks Commissioner Gordon and Chief O'Hara with his freeze-ray turning the Commissioner's office into a frozen wasteland. Evidently, the police were too inept to rescue them and had to wait for Batman and Robin.