“Hizzoner the Penguin” / “Dizzoner the Penguin”
Written by Stanford Sherman
Directed by Oscar Rudolph
Season 2, Episodes 17 and 18
Production code 9719
Original air dates: November 2 and 3, 1966
The Bat-signal: The Penguin foils a robbery of a blind news vendor, right in front of a cop. (Said cop was way more concerned with Penguin than the poor blind dude.) He then saved a baby and donated money to the Gotham City Charity Fund. A very confused Gordon and O’Hara immediately go to the red phone…
The Bat-phone’s call interrupts Dick’s rehearsing for the school play—he’s doing the title role in Macbeth—and said interruption proves a boon to Shakespeare lovers everywhere, as Dick is an even less convincing Macbeth than he was a thug back in “He Meets His Match, the Grisly Ghoul.” They slide down the Bat-poles and head to GCPD HQ.
While riding the elevator up to Gordon’s office, they discuss the rumors they’ve heard that Penguin is running for mayor. Batman reveals that the Gotham City Charter (the same one Egghead recently stole) allows convicted felons to run for mayor.
Mayor Linseed is in Gordon’s office, and he’s not sanguine about his reelection chances. According to a Gallus poll, Penguin’s at 60%, with Linseed only at 30%. Seven percent are undecided, and 2% are for Harry Goldwinner, a monarchist candidate. (The three Gallus representatives don’t account for the remaining 1%.)
Linseed feels he has no chance, but he has a notion on how to defeat the Penguin: Batman runs against him. Reluctantly, Batman accepts. This immediately results in a bump in the polls—Batman is at 55%, with Penguin down to 35%. (The undecideds and the monarchists are holding steady.) Penguin gives a speech before a crowded campaign HQ insisting he’ll only do slogans and flash, no issues (they confuse the average voter)! Meanwhile, Batman and Robin strategize in an empty campaign HQ, putting together modest posters, with Batman insisting that he will focus only on the issues, and avoid flash. He also gets a very large campaign contribution from Aunt Harriet.
Two couples with babies show up for a Batman rally. However, Batman refuses to kiss the babies, as it’s a bit of an unsanitary habit. The parents express their outrage, as they suspect any politician who won’t kiss a baby. Penguin shows up and kisses the babies—with his cigarette still in his mouth, thus doubling down on the unsanitary nature of the action—which costs Batman four voters, who now think he hates children. Privately, Penguin confesses to the Dynamic Duo that he should have gotten into politics years ago, as all the things he loves to do as a criminal are completely okay for a politician.
The rally itself is rather poorly attended—only five people in the audience. On the podium with Batman are Robin, Gordon, Linseed, and a barely awake O’Hara. Meanwhile, Penguin’s rally has a bellydancer, champagne for everyone, and Paul Revere & the Raiders.
Batman is scheduled to speak before the Grand Order of Occidental Nighthawks. (By a startling coinky-dink, several of Penguin’s campaign workers are wearing shirts labelled “G.O.O.N.”) He shows up, and the goons (surrounded by “Vote Pengy!” posters) immediately attack with umbrellas. Fisticuffs ensue, but Batman capitulates when Robin is captured. They’re placed in one side of a scale that’s hovering over sulfuric acid (conveniently labelled with the words “SULPHURIC ACID”). In the other side of the scale is a pile of ice, which is melting.
Penguin shows up and expresses outrage that the goons would endanger a candidate. He intends to call the police, but dagnabbit, he’s out of dimes! So he walks very slowly out the door intending to go to police HQ directly. He should be back in a few hours…
However, Batman and Robin’s costumes are acid-proof (something either Robin forgot or was never told), so Batman—covering his face with his cape—simply rolls over and into the acid, thus saving Robin from going into the vat. He emerges unscathed and frees Robin.
Batman and Penguin have a televised debate. Penguin raises the completely legitimate point that Batman wears a mask and nobody knows who he is. Every newspaper picture of Batman shows him with criminals, while all of Penguin’s are with police. Penguin associates with the law, while Batman rubs elbows with the worst elements of the city. Penguin believes that Batman is a criminal under the mask.
Penguin’s goons overlay Penguin’s campaign song over Batman’s (very dull) rebuttal. Then the debate is interrupted by a robbery at the convention center where a jeweler’s convention is being held. Both the Dynamic Duo and Penguin head off to save the day (leaving a befuddled debate moderator behind). The trio fight the goons, though Penguin is play-acting for the cameras. The TV news is reporting on the fight as it happens, with one reporter trying to interview both candidates mid-fisticuffs.
Penguin actually “takes out” most of the goons, thus improving his poll ratings to 65%. Penguin calls Batman’s campaign HQ and taunts Gordon, saying he’ll appoint Riddler police commissioner and Joker the chief of police. However, the actual voting turns out to be very close. The Gallus guys are devastated, as they feel no one will trust their polling data ever again after this, though they console themselves with the notion that they could go into television ratings…
Penguin, seeing his margin for victory close, goes off for one last dirty trick: he kidnaps the Board of Elections, who have to count the vote for it to be legitimate. Penguin instructs Batman to convene the City Council to declare him mayor, or the board will be toast. But Batman assumes he’s at the headquarters of the Grand Order of Occidental Nighthawks, and sure enough he finds them there, and fisticuffs ensue, with Penguin and the goons shoved through the Campaign Literature Packager, which puts them all in big boxes ready to go off to jail.
Only after the fight does Robin reveal that Penguin kidnapped the board too late—they’d already counted the votes, and Batman won. However, Batman immediately resigns, which puts his deputy mayor—Linseed—in charge. Batman then gets calls from both political parties, asking him to run for president in 1968…
Fetch the Bat-shark-repellant! Batman uses the Bat-tracer to try to trace Penguin’s call, but he doesn’t stay on the wire long enough. He also has a bat-mirror that he uses to check on his debate makeup after Alfred applies it.
Holy #@!%$, Batman! When he learns that convicted felons can run for mayor in Gotham, Robin mutters, “Holy disaster area.” When Harriet hands Batman a large campaign contribution, Robin goes goggle-eyed and cries, “Holy bank balance!” When Batman tells him that their costumes are acid-proof, he grumbles, “Holy coffin nails.” When Penguin kidnaps the Board of Elections, Robin complains, “Holy pot luck.” When Batman is asked to run for president, Robin cries, “Holy bulging ballot boxes!”
Finally, as part of the cliffhanger voiceover, William Dozier utters, “Holy batgraves!”
Gotham City’s finest. Several plainclothes cops and the elevator operator at GCPD HQ are Penguin supporters, and whoever issues firearms to uniforms also is, as at least one cop’s gun doesn’t fire bullets, but instead kicks out a flag that supports Penguin’s mayoral run.
Special Guest Villain. In terms of airing order, this is Burgess Meredith’s first second-season appearance as the Penguin. However, the first two episodes actually filmed for season two were “The Penguin’s Nest” / “The Bird’s Last Jest,” which is still five stories away from now in terms of air dates. Given the subject matter, however, it’s not really surprising that they placed this episode during Election Week…
No sex, please, we’re superheroes. Front and center at Penguin’s campaign headquarters are three nubile young women, who say they wish they were old enough to vote. Yeeeeeeah.
Na-na na-na na-na na-na na.
“I’m convinced the American electorate is too mature to be taken in by cheap vaudeville trickery. After all, if our national leaders were elected on the basis of tricky slogans, brass bands, and pretty girls, our country would be in a terrible mess, wouldn’t it?”
–Batman, showing his ignorance of U.S. electoral history.
Trivial matters: This episode was discussed on The Batcave Podcast episode 27 by host John S. Drew with special guest chum, writer/editor Glenn Greenberg.
The plot for this episode had to have at least partly inspired one of the storylines in the Tim Burton-directed 1992 movie Batman Returns, in which the Penguin (played by Danny DeVito) runs for mayor, although Michael Keaton’s Batman doesn’t run against him…
The Gallus poll is a play on the Gallup polls that are still used today, and Walter Klondike, Chet Chumley, and David Dooley are plays on popular newscasters of the era, Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, and David Brinkley.
That really was Paul Revere & the Raiders providing the music at Penguin’s rally, along with bellydancer Lorraine Shalhoub, who legally changed her name to “Little Egypt,” a name also used by several bellydancers at the turn of the 20th century.
Given how contentious the 1968 presidential election wound up being, having both parties contact Batman to run for their party was amusing, more so given that the second call—to which Batman responded, “Don’t you already have a candidate?”—had to be from the Democratic party. President Lyndon Baines Johnson originally intended to run for reelection in 1968, but he withdrew from the race in March 1968 after the New Hampshire primary.
Pow! Biff! Zowie! “It’s a pleasure to hear plain, honest talk from a candidate instead of the usual political mumbo-jumbo.” Batman has toyed with political satire twice before, once at the end of “Batman Sets the Pace” when they poked fun at the 1966 California gubernatorial election, and again in the movie with the digs at world politics and military bureaucracy. But this is the first time they’ve embraced it so wholeheartedly, and it’s an absolute delight, quite possibly the show’s finest hour, though I freely admit that I’m slightly biased toward it because (a) I’m an election junkie, and (b) I’m rewatching it the same week that Donald Trump (who is pretty close to a real-life super-villain) became the last man standing in the Republican primary race.
Penguin’s mayoral campaign is a delight, as it’s an expected triumph of style over substance, aided by Batman’s substance being so incredibly boring. Even his biggest fans—Linseed, O’Hara, Gordon—are put to sleep by his rally (to all of five people). In particular, Penguin’s vague declarations of clichés and bromides, followed by constituents grateful for his alleged straight talk has been a hallmark of bullshit campaigns for centuries. (It’s certainly not a new phenomenon, as even a cursory study of nineteenth century political campaigns will reveal. If anything, “dirty” campaigning got cleaned up in the latter part of the 20th century…) And the news coverage of the fisticuffs in the convention center, down to on-the-floor interviews, was just classic.
With all that, though, Penguin raises at least one good point: Batman hides behind a mask. They don’t know who he is. Leaving aside the fact that it should probably keep him from even being on the ballot (seriously, you kinda have to reveal your real name in order to run for something), it’s a legitimate point, one that Batman doesn’t get the chance to rebut thanks to the heist at the convention center.
And still with all that, the moral of the story is (more or less) in the right place. Batman’s appeals to trust votes over poll results and issues over flash are worthwhile ones.
Bat-rating: 10
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s Stargate SG-1 novel Kali’s Wrath is now available for preorder on Amazon and Amazon UK. The eBook will go on sale on 19 May and the print book will be available in June. In addition, check out Keith’s seasonal Stargate Rewatch right here on Tor.com.
This is the most prophetic Batman episode ever…
This one’s a classic, probably the show’s most full-on satirical episode. It’s the second time they’ve gone to the “Penguin tries to act respectable” well, and as usual it’s amazing how fickle the mood of the Gothamites is, in that Penguin could go from notorious felon to highly popular mayoral candidate in the time it takes Batman and Robin to drive 14 miles in an atomic-powered rocket car. But that’s just to get the setup out of the way so they can dive into the electoral satire. A satire that’s still all too timely today, for all its sixties references.
There are some really hilarious bits here. Batman is at his squarest and Penguin at his smarmiest. I love the Penguin’s feigned outrage at the deathtrap and his lackadaisical “rescue” attempt. (Although including a deathtrap at all seemed rather random, given that Penguin seemed to be winning.) And the “convention” sequence with the reporters calling the blow-by-blow was one of the show’s greatest comic set pieces, as well as probably its most epic fight scene ever. It was a bonus seeing Jack Benny’s announcer Don Wilson as “Walter Klondike.” (Odd, though, since the debate moderator in the previous scene, played by Jack Bailey, looked much more like Cronkite.) Also the familiar face of game-show host Allen Ludden as the David Brinkley stand-in. Apparently Dennis James, who played the Chet Huntley stand-in, was also a game-show host, but he was mostly before my time.
If anything, the episode seemed weakest when it reverted to the standard tropes of deathtraps and fight scenes, as if the writer just wasn’t particularly interested in those. Which is a worrisome sign — was the show’s creative staff starting to get tired of its format already?
It might have been the staff getting tired, but it also may have been simply that the formulaic elements only really fit into this episode with a really big hammer, but they were nonetheless necessary: gotta have at least one fight scene per ep, and you have to have a cliffhanger…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Gallus is also the Latin genus name for the domestic chicken, so it’s another fowl pun.
StrongDreams points out what should be the obvious @@.-@, explaining why they didn’t go for the more obvious Trott or Cantor for the polling company.
I wonder if using game show hosts as the news anchors was another bit of satire or just a way to shoehorn them in. Allen Ludden was probably best known for Password and being married to Betty White. Dennis James goes all the way back to the Dumont Network but did host the nighttime version of The Price is Right for most of the 70s. Either I’m older than I thought I was or CLB is very young indeed (I fear it’s the former). It’s a pity that ABC, Batman’s own network, didn’t have an iconic evening news anchor to be included.
They kind of wasted Paul Revere and the Raiders, since they didn’t let them sing.
@5/DemetriosX: I guess I didn’t watch the nighttime Price is Right much, or if I did, James didn’t leave much impression on me. I mainly remember Bob Barker and Johnny Olson.
Keith neglected to mention (or figured it was self-explanatory) that runner-up “Harry Goldwinner” was a pun on Barry Goldwater, who was the Republican presidential nominee in 1964 and lost to Lyndon Johnson in a huge landslide, getting only 52 electoral votes.
“I love Hispanics! Wah Wah Wah!”
If anything, “dirty” campaigning got cleaned up in the latter part of the 20th century…
Yeah, that was a good two hours.
This was before the passage of the 26th amendment in 1971 lowered voting age across the nation to 18. “Old enough to vote” line would have meant the women were under 21. Whether it was in support of lowering the voting age (look! Young people who are concerned about politics but who aren’t allowed to vote!) or keeping it as it was (would you trust those women to decide who’s running things?) is left as an exercise for the viewer.
Why did those guys buy a projector screen and then just write on it?
It isn’t really surprising to me that Batman was able to run without giving his real name. The Penguin ran under the name “Penguin”; whether he gave his real name to the officials in charge is up for us to decide.
(Also, Penguin got it backwards – I’d rather have the Riddler as police chief and the Joker as commissioner. Chaos and law unite in the most bizarre way…)
This is the episode I most remember, because I recall watching it while eating a pile of delicious pancakes my mom had made that afternoon in the late 80s.
Had Penguin been elected and appointed Joker as police chief and Riddler as commissioner, I would’ve watched the hell out of the inevitable “Law & Chaos” spinoff.
Only one of the lookalike pollsters is named Gallus (spoofing Gallup). The other two are Rooper (Roper) and Trendek (Trendex). :)
Alas, this episode has been on my mind since its recent playing-out in American politics. Your quote from Batman is just what I had been looking for: I remembered that the “moral” of this story was how Batman put his faith in the wisdom and sagacity of the American voter. Ah, for those old days…
@16/Mark: Before you get too nostalgic for the ’60s, remember that those wise, sagacious voters Batman praised would go on to elect Richard Nixon two years later.
I’ve been making my way through this rewatch. I saw some of these in my youth (15ish years after they originally aired), but I’d never be able to tell which episodes. By and large, my knowledge of Batman flows from the Burton/Schumacher movies, the ‘90s animated series, the Nolan movies, and Gotham. It’s been interesting to see that some of the characters that I didn’t remember before seeing Gotham, most notably Jervis Tetch/Mad Hatter, had origins in the early days of the comics.
This episode is eerie in its prescience. And the Na-na na-na na-na na-na na quote above seems to be playing out in front of us on a daily basis.
But enough of modern politics. I realize full well that on a network show in the ‘60s and ‘70s there’s no way the blank in “Holy #@@@@@!%$, Batman!” would be anything other than the innocuous things that Robin says on the show here. But I seriously can’t imagine I’m the only person who, when reading these rewatches, inserts the natural expletive in that spot when I’m reading the section header. Am I?
Look up Buddy Cianci twice convicted felon 3 time elected mayor of Providence Rhode Island says it all.