The Batscholar on Episode 98 and 99

By Joel Eisner

After only three weeks Penguin is back and this time he teams up with Ethel Merman aka Lola Lasagne aka Lulu Schultz. Why Penguin teams up with Lola is anybody's guess. Penguin knew Lulu from the old neighborhood before she married and was dumped by Luigi Lasagne. The parallel between Penguin and Lola and Archer and Maid Marilyn are frightening. When Hoffman felt it necessary to steal from previous episodes proves the downfall of the series. Merman in a non singing role is playing the same loud mouth role she played in It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, where she played Louie the Lilac's (Milton Berle) mother in law. Merman might have been better at playing Ma Parker. Like Winters she turns the volume control up too high and even a whisper is a scream.

Of all the Penguin stories this season, this is the worst. Although Penguin pasting up the Batmobile was a novel idea.

Actress Yvonne Craig “If it hadn’t been for Batman, I would probably have never worked with Milton Berle, Ethel Merman and Burgess Meredith.”

Having two episodes allowed for the extra budget of paying both Meredith and Merman plus extra henchmen and a few bit players. Including Horace McMahon as Glu Gluten, he was better known as Lt Parker on the Naked City tv series. He also teamed up with Eivol Eckdol Jack Krauschen as the comic villains in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars.

Lewis Charles returns as Penguin's henchman Armband, he was last seen as Hawkeye in the first Penguin episode of the series. Joe Brooks, aka Vanderbilt from F Troop returns as Visor (he was one of Falseface's henchmen). Stuntman actor Max Kleven was one of the generic henchmen, who later was the stunt coordinator for Batman Returns.

Dennis the Menace's father Herbert Anderson formally Harry Hummert from the Clock King episode is now promoted to the Racing Secretary for this episode. Gary Owens the voice of both Laugh In and Space Ghost, was the resident newscaster for the Green Hornet series, provides the voice of the radio announcer.

During the actual horse race, a stuntman is disguised as Batgirl and riding Waynebeau, but there were too many closeups so they were not fooling anyone. It looked a like a man wearing Batgirls clothes.

At the end of the episode, King Tut shows up rummaging around the library and the rare Egyptian scrolls (carelessly lying around an open book self labeled Egyptian scrolls. (The book of parasols in this episode though was in a locked cabinet, go figure).

Next Tut returns for the first of two single part episodes that were originally a two part script that was split and made into two episodes.