“Riddle me this, ladies and gentlemen. When is a prizefight like a beautiful lady?,” Batman’s enigmatic archvillain queries the spectators sitting ringside at Gotham Square Garden for his boxing match with the Caped Crusader. “Answer: When it’s a knockout.”
This episode, only the second entry in the show’s third and final season, was most memorable for the fact that it heralded the return of Frank Gorshin to the Rogues Gallery roster for the first time since season one’s penultimate two-parter. Not to mention, this reappearance would also prove to be Gorshin’s last laugh as The Riddler.
William Dozier, creator, executive producer, and narrator of the 1960s Batman TV series, had delivered a knockout blow to Frank Gorshin at the conclusion of the first season’s wildly popular 34-episode run. The William Morris Agency, newly representing Gorshin, demanded a hefty salary increase on behalf of their client. A doubling of his per-episode compensation to be precise, from $2,500 to $5,000. An Emmy nomination for Gorshin as Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (won again that year by Don Knotts, his fourth of five awards) was assumed to be the primary impetus behind the request. A request which would be denied.
Despite Batman’s initial success, ABC was looking to tighten the purse strings in an effort to curtail excess spending on the show. Each two-part episode in season one carried a price tag estimated at $205,000 and they were intent on taking a scalpel to that figure moving forward. With this in mind, Dozier fired off a letter to Gorshin dated May 9, 1966–when the actor would have been eleven days into production on the Batman movie, filmed during hiatus–in which he wrote, “I had hoped you would be satisfied to reap your financial harvest from the multiplicity of opportunities playing The Riddler has opened up for you, rather than attempt to exact a fatter stipend from Batman.”
The quirky comedian’s hyperactive physicality and manic zaniness made his question mark-embellished green leotard an impossible one to fill. Not that Dozier didn’t try. After first reworking a story arc halfway through season two originally planned for Gorshin and substituting Planet of the Apes’ soon-to-be Dr. Zaius, Maurice Evans, as The Puzzler (originally a Superman foe, first appearing in June 1942’s Action Comics #49), Dozier later hired the now unemployed John “Gomez Addams” Astin to give it a go as The Riddler in back-to-back episodes (“Batman’s Anniversary” and “A Riddling Controversy”). Ironically, Astin’s availability was possible due to The Addams Family’s premature demise at the hands of the ratings juggernaut that was Batman.
Technically speaking, Gorshin's welcomed reprise as The Riddler came at the very end of the season three premiere, “Enter Batgirl, Exit Penguin,” which served as a teaser revealing the following week’s special guest villain. This new contrivance was one of many the show would unveil in an attempt to shake things up, reverse the recent downturn in viewership, and further reduce the budget. Standalone narratives were one such distinction, bucking the series’ established trend of airing two episodes on consecutive evenings with the first closing on a cliffhanger and an invitation for the audience to tune in for tomorrow’s thrilling conclusion. Same Bat-time, Same Bat-channel.
Of course, season three’s most significant modification was the aforementioned introduction of the Dynamic Duo’s female partner in crime fighting. Portrayed by Yvonne Craig, a ballet dancer turned actor (Gidget, 77 Sunset Strip, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and Star Trek being but a few of her notable onscreen credits) and former girlfriend of Elvis Presley (the two became an item while filming 1957’s Loving You), Batgirl was the alter ego of Commissioner Gordon’s daughter Barbara, a librarian by day with the Doctorate to prove it.
Producer Howie Horowitz justified the addition of Batgirl, who had debuted in four-color print not long before (Detective Comics #359, January 1967), by professing that he wanted to give little girls a character to identify with. But no doubt the lovely Yvonne Craig was also brought onboard as eye candy for the pubescent male Bat-fans. It certainly worked like a charm on me. She was one of my first boyhood crushes as a kid of the seventies watching syndicated reruns of Batman every day after school.
In any event, if ABC executives had gotten their way and given the green light to a fourth season, Burt Ward would have gone on the proverbial chopping block, with Robin to be replaced by Batgirl as the Caped Crusader’s lone sidekick. This was not to imply that she was being thrown into the mix as a potential love interest, at least according to Horowitz, although the blatant flirtation between Bruce Wayne and Barbara Gordon throughout season three certainly suggests otherwise, old chums. In “Ring Around the Riddler,” Batgirl takes the initiative in helping Batman and Robin thwart the conundrum-loving fiend’s latest scheme, which is to take control of prizefighting in Gotham City. And then everywhere else.
With there being no secret about the fact that the boxing world and criminal underground have long been cozy bedfellows, The Riddler’s infiltration of the fight racket makes perfect sense as a plot point. Frankie
Carbo, Blinky Palermo, Owney Madden, and Sammy ‘The Bull’ Gravano were a few
of the more notorious mobsters who owned a piece of the action by wielding
influence over boxers like Primo Carnera, Jake LaMotta, Johnny Saxton, and Sonny
Liston.
Using the Little Used Gymnasium as his hideout, Riddler’s plot unfolds with an overture to local favorite Kid Gulliver (a young James Brolin, back for the last of his three Batman appearances) to take a dive in his upcoming fight. When Gulliver refuses, Riddler has his stooges toss him into the gym’s Steam Room (like everything else in the Adam West Bat-mosphere, it is prominently labeled as such) where the boxer’s defiant attitude will be shrunk down to size.
One of the wonderfully campy aspects of the show was that the villains’ goons were given comical monikers, typically printed on their uniforms for convenient identification, that fit with the theme of that week’s criminal and/or caper. Which is why in this boxing-related episode, The Riddler has henchmen named Kayo and Cauliflower.
Journeyman character actor Gil Perkins, whose Hollywood career began in the silent era and ended by playing a cornerman in Scorsese’s Raging Bull, portrayed Cauliflower. Among Perkins’ more than 200 screen credits were bit parts in films like King Kong, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, and Spartacus in addition to steady work on television programs such as Lassie, Maverick, Thriller, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and The Red Skelton Hour. Perkins appeared in four other episodes of Batman, as well as the 1966 feature film.
Kayo, meanwhile, was played by Nicholas Georgiade, who had boxed in high school and won the European heavyweight championship while serving in the U.S. Army. Georgiade’s claim to fame was scoring the role of Elliott Ness’ right hand man Enrico Rossi on The Untouchables, but also acted in Mannix, Get Smart, Quincy, and T.J. Hooker among many others.
Tuning into the big fight on TV at stately Wayne Manor, millionaire Bruce Wayne and his youthful ward Dick Grayson watch in disbelief as Kid Gulliver is knocked out with suspicious ease in the third round. In addition to his countless other civic responsibilities, Bruce also serves as the Gotham City Boxing Commission’s chairman and immediately detects foul play. Summoned to police headquarters by the Bat signal operated by Chief O’Hara, Dick and Bruce are off in the Batmobile after a quick change of costume for a pow-wow with Commissioner Gordon and his daughter Barbara, who is similarly incognito thanks to her superhero disguise.
The Terrific Trio inspect a rectangular metal canister topped with blinking lights retrieved by Batgirl from the Gotham Square Garden box office where it had mesmerized the cashier into a stupor, allowing Riddler and his flunkies to break into the vault behind her and make off with the cash from the Kid Gulliver fight’s gate receipts. This calls to mind Gorshin’s last two-part appearance as The Riddler, way back in season one. Dressed like Charlie Chaplin in the lead-in episode “Death in Slow Motion,” Riddler orchestrated the robbery of a movie theater box office after a well-attended silent film festival.
The placement of the receptacle in Gotham Square Garden, meant to be readily discovered, was as deliberately thought out as its contents. Inside the box, Batman finds one of Riddler’s trademark brain teasers buried beneath a mound of metal shavings. “Who rules the ring? No prince, king or rajah. Look for a clue on the walls of Khafaja!!”
The tricky word play stumps the usually astute Robin and, although Batman identifies Khafaja as a Mesopotamian temple, the full meaning of the riddle doesn’t become apparent until Barbara Gordon, who just so happens to have an expertise of bygone civilizations dating back to her college days, enlightens them when the Caped Crusader and Boy Wonder pay a late night visit to her apartment.
“As I recall, strange scrollwork was found on the walls of that temple indicating men fought with their fists long before the supposed beginning of boxing in ancient Rome and Greece,” she explains to the Dynamic Duo. This part of the puzzle is a subtle hint at the prizefighting character the cackling, cavorting supervillain has cooked up with Betsy Boldface, a sports reporter who hosts a late night talk show and has been working in cahoots with The Riddler all along. The metal filings found in the blinking box will come into play later.
Riddler appears on Betsy’s program masquerading as southwestern Asia’s unchallenged champion, Mushy Nebuchadnezzar, who has arrived in Gotham to take on any and all comers. Ultimately, of course, the endgame of this ploy is to lure Batman into the squared circle. Decked out in a pink and red Arabic burnoose for the interview, Riddler’s outfit looks like something more cartoonishly suited for a pro wrestler than a prizefighter. Then again, you have to consider the fact that he will ultimately be boxing a grown man dressed like a bat.
In “Ring Around the Riddler,” writer Charles Hoffman commits with tongue planted firmly in cheek to the show’s emblematic absurdity. Hoffman, who took over as series script editor at the start of season two and penned a total of twenty-two Batman scripts, would significantly up the ante eight weeks later with the even more farcical surfing contest between Batman and The Joker. It goes without saying that The Dark Knight this is not. Even if Betsy Boldface (played by Peggy Ann Garner, most famous for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn) serves an alternate purpose as The Riddler’s moll in this episode, the fact that she is a renowned female sportscaster is certainly worth pointing out since this was a rarity in the 1960s, Jane Chastain being the only woman to that point to have gained a notable measure of upward mobility in the field with far more to come in the following years. The trailblazing Chastain would become the first female sports journalist to call play-by-play action at both the regional and national levels, to be allowed onto a Major League Baseball field, and to gain entry into an NFL press box and announcer’s booth. Settling in to watch Betsy Boldface’s midnight sports show at Barbara’s apartment, Commissioner Gordon tellingly remarks to his daughter–an atypical female crime fighter (even if he is unaware of it), “She’s as good as any man would be on that job.”
Betsy asks Mushy, whose restrained demeanor is quite contrary to The Riddler’s typical lunacy, what his diet consists of. “Tamarisk berries. Bulbul bird eggs. And licorice. But only licorice native to my country,” he responds in a nondescript accent. Perhaps not so odd given the nature of the show’s running motif of scarcely concealed secret identities, no one seems to notice that beneath his hooded burnoose, Mushy is wearing The Riddler’s telltale lavender eye mask. When it comes to liquids, Nebuchadnezzar says that he drinks one thing only. “Just camel grass juice. What else?”
Riddler’s ruse doesn’t pass the smell test for Barbara Gordon, and she later tails Betsy Boldface on her errand to pick up Mushy’s required foodstuffs, unwittingly leading Batgirl back to the lawbreaker’s lair. Before that though, Riddler turns up at the Gotham Square Garden box office where Batman and Robin swing by to check on Chief O’Hara, who was sent to look for clues relevant to the burglary.
The Dynamic Duo find O’Hara in an amnesic trance, presumably under the influence of the same “Riddle Juice” drug administered to Kid Gulliver, who vanished after his fight only to be discovered wandering aimlessly in front of the arena. Riddler suddenly materializes in his more formal question mark-adorned dress suit and bowler hat to confound them with a verbal word puzzle before vanishing into thin air.
Riddle me this: since when does The Riddler possess supernatural powers? Despite Batman dismissing Riddler’s magical disappearing act as a simple matter of “Now you see him, now you don’t,” this sequence is a head scratcher for sure, even within the structure of this show which admittedly loses the plot more and more as season three goes along.
Back at the Little Used Gymnasium, Riddler tries to subdue Batgirl by calling on The Siren, or as she is otherwise known, Lorelei Circe. Played by Joan Collins, Siren will be next week’s guest villain as teased again by her reappearance inside Commissioner Gordon’s office for this episode’s coda. For now though, Lorelei’s Siren song has no effect on Batgirl, nor on Betsy Boldface, proving that only members of the male persuasion are susceptible to her ear-splitting octaves. Which explains why Riddler and his accomplices are wearing protective earmuffs.
In an earlier draft of the teleplay, Batgirl was supposed to have been strapped down to a vibrating table. Assuming that the producers chose to circumvent censorial interference due to the mildly sexually suggestive nature of the apparatus, she instead ends up being dragged into the Steam Room where she will be kept captive, her kidnapping used for leverage to entice Batman into accepting Riddler’s challenge to a prizefight.
While he has Siren at his disposal, The Riddler opts to employ her services to rid himself of three more pugilists that he has rounded up. The entire trio were real-life contenders, all fighting out of Los Angeles, two of whom would go on to win world championships. Jerry Quarry is the only one of the three whose name is spoken.
Three months prior to the September 21, 1967 airing of this episode, the heavy-handed Quarry (53-9-4, 32 KOs) attained his first meaningful degree of recognition by battling former two-time heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson to a majority draw in a thrilling slugfest which saw both men hit the deck, and even more by besting Patterson in their title elimination rematch six weeks after “Ring Around the Riddler” hit the airwaves.
Quarry would drop a majority decision to Jimmy Ellis in his bid for the WBA belt vacated by Muhammad Ali and would later be stopped twice by ‘The Greatest’ as well as Ali’s nemesis, Smokin’ Joe Frazier. The hard luck Irishman himself said he was “always the bridesmaid, never the bride” and indeed had varied success while mixing it up with the heavyweight division’s cream of the crop–defeating the likes of Brian London, Alex Miteff, Buster Mathis, Mac Foster, Ron Lyle, and Earnie Shavers, while losing to Eddie Machen and getting knocked out by George Chuvalo and Ken Norton.
Not only is Quarry afforded no dialogue, but a scant amount of screen time, brought under The Siren’s spell within a matter of seconds before being dispatched to the Steam Room. The other two boxers are both seated silently with their backs to the camera and off to the side of The Riddler, who is once again posing as Mushy Nebuchadnezzar. Unlike in the shooting script, where Betsy introduces them to Mushy prior to Jerry Quarry, they are distinguishable in the show only by the lettering on their robes which identifies them as Raul Rojas and Armando Ramos.
Unbeaten in his first 24 bouts, with 16 of those victories coming by way of knockout, Raul Rojas (38-7-2, 24 KOs) suffered his first loss to WBC/WBA world featherweight champion Vicente Salvador, who scored a TKO in the 15th and final round of their 1965 title fight. Picking up the California State super-featherweight belt along the way, Rojas would win the vacant WBA world featherweight title in 1968 by outpointing Enrique Higgins but relinquish it to Shozo Saijo in his first defense six months later. Armando ‘Mando’ Ramos (37-11-1, 23 KOs) similarly came up short in his first world championship bid, losing a unanimous decision to WBC/WBA lightweight title holder Carlos Teo Cruz in 1968. Their rematch five months after the fact would end with Ramos claiming the pair of title belts by way of an eleventh-round technical knockout when the fight was stopped on cuts. Unfortunately, Ramos’ bout opposite Ismael Laguna would culminate in reverse fashion with Mando’s corner throwing in the towel and ending his year-long reign. He would reclaim the WBC title in a 1972 rematch with Pedro Carrasco but drop it to Chango Carmona later that same year.
Besides Kayo and Cauliflower there are now two other unnamed stooges, and when the henchmen drag the three boxers off to the Steam Room they discover that Batgirl has somehow escaped. The temporarily unhinged Riddler is forced to improvise a new tactic to coax Batman into the ring. Commissioner Gordon’s office is subsequently besieged by dozens of letters containing riddles which the question-marked scoundrel knows will provoke a visit from the Caped Crusader.
When Batman does show up at police headquarters, The Riddler places a phone call wherein he finally succeeds in his game of mental warfare by way of a pair of brain-teasing taunts. “Riddle me this, Batman. What are the chilliest twelve inches on Earth?” With little hesitation, Batman answers, “Cold feet!”
“What suit of cards lays eggs?,” prompts Riddler. “One that’s chicken-hearted,” Batman responds through gritted teeth. If being mocked wasn’t bad enough, Batman is told by The Riddler that their call has been tapped into radio station GTCR, meaning that listeners all around Gotham City have heard him essentially being called a coward. This has the desired effect of an uncharacteristically agitated Batman accepting a fight against Mushy Nebuchadnezzar that very evening at Gotham Square Garden.
Charles Hoffman’s final draft included a celebrity gag that occurs before the boxing match, similar to the bat-climb window cameos in the first two seasons but in a different context, which had Batman being stopped by Mae West as he walks down the aisle toward the ring. “If you win this fight, Batman, come up and see me sometime,” she says, delivering her seductive catchphrase. This wouldn’t have been as egregious a guest appearance as it might seem since Ms. West had a long-standing affinity for prizefighting. And for prizefighters. Holy debauchery, Batman!
A handful of Hollywood insider-type newspaper pieces even mentioned her upcoming spot on the show. Nevertheless, for one reason or another it was not filmed and exists only as a scripted what-might-have-been encounter between the Blonde Bombshell and the Caped Crusader.
Who does show up at ringside, however, is Aunt Harriet. This is noteworthy because it would be the first of only two third season episodes in which she would appear due to the declining health of series regular Madge Blake, who would sadly pass away two years later. To cover for her lengthy absences, they have Aunt Harriet explain to Commissioner Gordon that she has become quite the world traveler. She interrupted her wanderings to stop by Wayne Manor and surprise Bruce and Dick but didn’t find them at home, so she came to the Garden because Aunt Harriet evidently just can’t resist a good fight.
Batman is not at all surprised when Mushy Nebuchadnezzar removes his burnoose in his corner before the fight to reveal that it was The Riddler the whole time. The role of the referee went to Johnny Indrisano, a Boston-based welterweight of the 1920s and 30s who defeated world champion Joe Dundee in a non-title contest and retired boasting a more than respectable career ring record of 48-8-1 with 10 knockouts. Three decades in show business followed for Indrisano, with more than 200 credits on the small screen and the silver screen alike including The Great John L., It’s a Wonderful Life, the Joe Palooka film series, Body and Soul, Requiem for a Heavyweight (the 1962 movie version), The Manchurian Candidate, Bonanza, and Mannix. Indrisano had previously appeared on two other Batman episodes (“The Joker is Wild” and “Dizzoner the Penguin”) and died a little more than nine months after “Ring Around the Riddler” was broadcast.
Riddler crisscrosses the ring, swinging and missing with a few wild haymakers, before running right into a stiff jab from Batman. Gorshin reacts in his signature over-the-top fashion with a wonderful jelly-limbed dance where his legs wobble and arms flail about, all in total disharmony, looking like a marionette whose crazed master has spontaneously snipped half the puppet’s strings.
He then knee-walks across the canvas to his corner where Kayo and Cauliflower inform him that Betsy Boldface loaded his gloves with metal shavings–like the ones found in the metal box earlier–and that she is hiding beneath the ring with a giant magnet to immobilize Batman. How The Riddler was unaware of these developments is one of the episode’s gaping plot holes that requires a liberal suspension of disbelief to navigate past. In any event, Riddler hits Batman with a left to the body, showering metal scraps all over the Caped Crusader who, with Betsy’s magnet underfoot, is suddenly frozen in place.
Barbara Gordon excuses herself from her ringside seat under the pretense of having something in her eye and changes into her Batgirl costume in the Ladies Lounge. Was the outfit inconceivably stuffed inside her tiny handbag, knowing she might need it? Did she somehow hide it in the women’s room beforehand just in case? And what does she do with her street clothes? Again, best not to worry yourself too much about these things.
Expecting Batman to still be incapacitated, Riddler turns to deliver a certain knockout punch after playing to the crowd only to find the Caped Crusader beyond his reach thanks to Batgirl having disabled Betsy’s oversized magnet. Riddler slides under the bottom rope and slinks out of the ring, back to his secret lair at the Little Used Gymnasium where the obligatory but always fun Bat-fight ensues.
Alfred, disguised as a grizzled trainer they called Gus, had seconded Batman for the abbreviated boxing match. Wayne Manor’s faithful butler gets in on the free for all, even dealing the finishing blow to Riddler, who can’t help himself from trying to perplex his arch rival one last time before passing out. “What do you throw away that keeps returning?” Batman guesses that it is a boomerang. “Correct,” retorts a woozy Riddler. “And I am a boomerang. And I shall be back.” But, as we know, unfortunately he wouldn’t. Not
in the original Batman series, anyway. Gorshin would don the question-marked
leotard one last time for the 1979 TV special, Legends of the Superheroes.
Before the final commercial break, the Boy Wonder is seen enthusiastically enjoying a glass of Mushy’s camel grass juice. A disapproving Batman warns his impulsive sidekick, “Beware of strong stimulants, Robin.” Heavy-handed public service announcements like this were routinely incorporated into the show’s dialogue for the benefit of impressionable young viewers, of which there were legions.
Jerry Quarry, Mando Ramos, Raul Rojas, and Johnny Indrisano were not the only prizefighters featured on Batman. Bronx-born heavyweight contender Roland La Starza (57-9, 27 KOs), best remembered for his pair of wild dustups with Rocky Marciano, appeared as The Mad Hatter’s underling Cappy in a first season two-parter.
Meanwhile, legendary light-heavyweight world champion and heavyweight title challenger Archie Moore (186-23-10, 132 KOs) played the part of Everett Bannister, a banker minding his own business before being robbed at arrowpoint by Art Carney’s villain The Archer in the season two premiere episode.
It’s also fun to note that for a 1989 bout against Lorenzo Canady only five fights into his career, future undisputed heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe stepped between the ropes at Harrah’s Casino in Atlantic City sporting a black cape and cowl like the one worn by Michael Keaton in Tim Burton’s Batman film that had just come out three weeks before. Though he didn’t go so far as to wear the outfit into the ring, the always flamboyant Tyson Fury showed up for the press conference prior to his 2015 challenge to then-unified heavyweight titleholder Wladimir Klitschko dressed as Batman.
Just like these combatants each left their indelible mark on the manly art of self-defense, so too did Frank Gorshin put his uniquely demented stamp on The Riddler, single-handedly elevating a peripheral malefactor, who had a grand total of three comic book appearances to his credit prior to the 1966 Batman television show, to the upper tier of the Caped Crusader’s Rogues Gallery, shoulder to disreputable shoulder with The Joker, The Penguin, and Catwoman.
“I’ll puzzle you a puzzle, I’ll quiz you a quiz,” Gorshin sings in the 1966 novelty song based on his kooky miscreant of a character and composed by ‘The Velvet Fog,’ Mel Torme. “I’ll keep you guessing like nobody’s business. I’m a whiz. And my name is The Riddler!”
Sources:
John S. Drew. The Batcave Podcast. (Episode 50: Ring Around the Riddler, January 5, 2016)
Frank Gorshin. The Riddler (A+M Records, 1966)
Martin Grams, Jr. Batman: The TV Series (Martin Grams Blog, May 14, 2011–accessed at http://martingrams.blogspot.com/2011/05/batman-tv-series.html)
Charles Hoffman. Ring Around the Riddler–Final Draft Teleplay (July 20, 1967–accessed at http://www.knowitalljoe.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Batman-Ring-Around-the-Riddler-Script.pdf)
Batgirl and the Batman Phenomenon (Television Obscurities–accessed at https://www.tvobscurities.com/articles/batgirl/)
Ring Around the Riddler (Season 3, Episode 2–written by Charles Hoffman, directed by Sam Strangis. Airdate September 21, 1967)
The Batman 1966 Message Board. Mae West as Minerva? (accessed at http://www.66batman.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6787)
boxrec.com
imdb.com
