The Batscholar on Season Three

By Joel Eisner

As the second season drew to a close, the producers decided that a new character should be added to help raise Batman’s sagging ratings. So Batgirl, who made her first comic book appearance in early 1967, entered the Bat-World.

Prior to Batgirl’s addition to the show a trial pilot film using Batgirl was produced. The film, which ran about seven and a half minutes, took place solely in the Gotham Library where Barbara Gordon worked as the new librarian. While Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson look for a book about butterflies, (Bruce had a bet with fellow millionaire and butterfly expect, Roger Montrose, about a particular type of butterfly and planned to use the book to win the bet), Killer Moth (played by actor Tim Herbert, last seen as Whiskers, one of Riddler’s River Rat Gang), dressed in a gold and green cape like outfit with a cap with two wire antennae on top), and his gang of Mothmen (lead by actor Joey Tata) plot to kidnap Roger Montrose and hold him for ransom. Spotting trouble, Bruce and Dick change into their Bat-costumes and, using the Bat-Lock Breaking Ray, they enter the now closed library and battle the Mothmen, but are overpowered by Killer Moth with his cocoon spinning spray gun. Meanwhile, Barbara Gordon is locked in the adjoining room by Killer Moth which just so happpens to be where she has her secret closet containing her Batgirl costume. She then disappears into the closet and reappears outside the library window. Smashing through the window, she trashes the villains (and the library as well). She then frees the dynamic duo with a powerful laser contained in her Batgirl compact. and together they finish off Killer Moth and his men before she rides off on her Bargirl-cycle.

While the pilot was not long enough to air as a regular part of the series, and Killer Moth was by far one of the weakest villains yet (Killer Moth was far more formidable in the comics and had a better costume), it was enough to prove to the executives at ABC that Batgirl should join the series.

Actress Yvonne Craig remembers how she joined the show: “Mr. Dozier and Howie told me that the character was aimed at a prepubescent female audience and an over-40 male audience. Now, I understood the over-40 part, but I wasn’t certain that they had their finger on the pulse of pre-pubescent females. I figured that pre-pubescent girls probably thought Robin was cute, or else they had a crush on Batman and would resent my character. It turned out that they were right. Whenever I did public appearances, it was the little girls who came up to me. Once one of them said to me, ‘Miss Craig, from now on, every time I see someone kicked in the face, I’ll think of you.’ I know she meant it as a compliment, but I was horrified.”“Howie was a funny man; he had a wife and three daughters, and he wanted them all to be very feminine. So, he specifically said that Batgirl was not to do any karate, kung fu, any sort of martial arts-type stuff. That wasn’t ladylike to him. I was allowed to kick the bad guys in a sort of high-kick, ballet manner—my ballet training really came in handy—or spin into them and waste them, but I was supposed to be able to sneak out of their grasp before any punches were thrown. Consequently, I had an easier time talking Howie into letting me do my own stunts.” “For the pilot film, I wore a mask with pointed edges that left marks on my cheeks and made me look as though I had been crying for a week. They changed it for the series. (They also cut the eyeholes bigger in all the masks, because anytime Adam took a step forward, it was an act of faith, as he absolutely couldn’t see in his cowl.} “I was terribly excited about going to work. I woke up, rushed to the bathroom—and promptly slammed my foot into a chair and broke my little toe. Since it was understood that I was going to be doing my own stunts on the show, I was told that I was to jump through a candy glass window as part of this presentation film. I did the stunt on the first take, and the stunt supervisor was so happy for me that he ran over to hug me—and stepped on my broken toe! ‘As I was getting dressed to change into the Barbara Gordon character, Howie, who felt that I shouldn’t be doing my own stunts, looked and saw that I was purple up to my ankle. And he figured I did it doing the stunt; there was no convincing him otherwise. So, he told me they were going to hire a stunt girl for me, which they did—for two segments. She got another job and I went back to doing what I wanted to do.” “In the pilot Batgirl was a little saucier, she had a touch of Eve Arden. She wasn’t exactly condescending to Batman, but she had a ‘I’m better able to do things than you are’ attitude, treating him as if he were less than capable and finding it amusing. He was also somewhat sexy; he appealed to her.” Unfortunately, the reduction to only one show a week hurt the romantic relationship as Yvonne realized, “Between Adam and Burt Ward and me and Alan Napier and my father and the police chief and the guest star, if they just said hello to one another, you filled up a half-hour. My relationship with Batman became more one-dimensional, which was OK, since it was a comic book.”

Prior to her involvement with the series, Yvonne’s only reaction to her future costars Adam West “was the fact that the guy who played Batman had a paunch. I recall saying to myself, ‘I can’t believe that this guy has a big stomach in certain shots.’ What I didn’t realize then, of course, was that it was Adam’s stunt double. “I finally met Adam West when we shot the presentation film. . He has this wonderfully dry sense of humor. He said to me, ‘Oh, .You have. ballet dancer’s. legs. I like...ballet dancer’s. legs..” “He was charming.. Later he said ‘Make sure that I don’t block your key light, I’m very broad-shouldered.’ And I thought, ‘Shouldn’t somebody else be saying that?’ But, it turned out that it was not vanity on his part, : he is very broad-shouldered. When I stood behind him, I looked like I was in black-face: there was no light. I also realized that Adam had a very nice physique. It was Hubie Kearns, his stunt double, who was about 30 years older than Adam, who had the gut.”

"Burt Ward was wary. I started to shake hands with him when we were introduced, but he didn’t offer his hand to me. I found that really peculiar. Knowing that this was the first job he had ever had, I think he felt threatened. But it was the only time he was anything less than wonderful. Once shooting was underway, he seemed to warm up to me. And he was a doll from that day forward.”

One of the difficulties in adding Batgirl to the show was selecting her costume. Everything about the show seems to have had its funny side, though, as Barrie Howard (daughter of the late producer Howie Horwitz) explains: “I remember my father had to choose the color scheme for Batgirl’s costume, and he had to try to match it to Batman’s cape so it wouldn’t clash. The funny part about it was that he was color-blind and couldn’t tell one color from another.” A few other severe changes flew in with Batgirl. The time slot changed from twice weekly to once weekly (on Thursdays). This dramatically changed the shows themselves, for the producers felt the cliff-hanger endings would be difficult to remember from week to week. Instead, they opted for ending a storyline within a half hour, then introducing the next week’s villain at the end of each week’s show. The character of Aunt Harriet was reduced to two cameo appearances during the third season. This was done to accommodate Madge Blake who was in ill health, as well as for economic reasons. When the series was reduced from its regular twice a week airing to once a week, the scriptwriters according to Stanley Ralph Ross “were limited to a maximum of thirteen characters per episode. So, after Batman, Robin, Batgirl and their alter-egos of Bruce, Dick and Barbara (who each count as a separate character), Alfred, Chief O’Hara and Commissioner Gordon, there was only room for the villain and a couple of henchmen.”