PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*
Though Lorenzo Semple’s adaptation of
a comic-book story produced one of the series’ worst episodes in
“Zelda the Great,” the same writer recycled elements of the
earlier script to produce one of the series’ best outings, at least
in terms of playing up the camp aesthetic.
As noted in my review of “Zelda,”
the titular villain was a performer who turned to crime in order to
pay off a secondary villain, who supplied her with the devices she
needed for her career. Here, famed pianist Liberace plays famed
pianist Chandell, who engineers crimes on the sly in order to pay off
his criminal twin brother Harry (also Liberace). Harry is the only
one who knows that when Chandell gave a command performance for the
President—a performance that made Chandell a celebrity—the pianist
had injured his hands, so he used a player piano to fake it.
At the start of the episode, it’s
implied that Chandell has paid blackmail to his brother for some
time, by having his three henchwomen—Doe, Rei, and Mimi—commit
crimes in the cities where he Chandell is playing. In this trope
Semple is parodying the tendency of other Bat-villains to broadcast
the type of crimes they plan to commit. But whereas the Joker and the
Penguin are indelibly associated with their “theme-crimes,”
Chandell professes to know nothing of the strange women who follow
him around and commit “music-crimes.”
The over-the-top melodrama of the
blackmail-plot is further enhanced by Chandell’s plans for ending
the relationship by gaining control of the Wayne fortune. Here too
one can see some indebtedness to the “Zelda” script. The
comic-book story on which “Zelda” was based did not involve Aunt
Harriet or anyone comparable, but Semple’s script for the episode
worked the venerable dowager into his narrative to provide a
cliffhanger ending. This time, Aunt Harriet is far more
crucial to the plot—to say nothing of providing actress Madge Blake
with something more substantial than fretting over Bruce and Dick.
When Chandell—said to be a “ladies’
man”—meets Aunt Harriet at a benefit, the pernicious pianist
perceives that she’s infatuated with him. Thus he lays plans to
knock off Bruce and Dick, so that Dick’s aunt will inherit the
entire Wayne fortune. However, no one, least of all Aunt Harriet,
ever really takes issue with Chandell’s murder-plot.
Semple also de-stablilizes the usual
situation by starting off the episode with Bruce Wayne out in the
country (hunting muskrats!) while Dick Grayson seems to be having his
first-ever date with an age-appropriate young lady. But Bruce just
happens to be listening to a recording of Chandell’s command
performance—and, though he knows nothing about the criminal
goings-on in Gotham, his detection of false notes in Chandell’s
performance moves him to return to Gotham and to summon Dick away
from his date. Batman and Robin seek to interview Chandell about the
robberies, but he directs them to Brother Harry’s piano-roll
factory—where the Duo are inevitably overcome by Harry’s thugs
(with some help from the henchwomen, who use their feminine wiles to
distract the crimefighters during the big fight). Harry then puts the
Duo in one of the series’ wildest death-traps: a conveyor-belt
leading the bound crusaders into a piano-roll punching-machine.
Batman’s method of escape is likewise one of the best, less in
terms of probability than of pure absurdity.
Having survived the deathtrap and
guessed Chandell’s plans, Batman and Robin fake the deaths of Bruce
and Dick, apparently willing to take chances with traumatizing poor
Aunt Harriet in order to draw out the villain. Chandell’s
relationship with his henchwomen up to this point seems to have been
all business, but suddenly the three girls resent Chandell dropping
them to turn straight and marry for money, so they kayo him with a
sonic bagpipe (also one of the episode’s outstanding gadgets).
Harry takes over romancing Aunt Harrier, though his only plan is to
ransom her. (Interestingly, this was also the role Aunt Harriet
played in “Zelda.”) The amazing aunt-woman deduces Harry’s true
identity, since he just can’t be as charming as his brother, but
Batman and Robin arrive in time to zap Harry, his henchmen, and the
ladies, with the classic line, “And you, you nasty old man! Have a
whiff of Bat-gas!”
The coda shows Aunt Harriet, Bruce and
Dick in Commissioner Gordon’s office as she receives a citizen’s
award. Semple goes all out with the typical bromides (“And isn’t
that what makes America great?”), but he eschews any mention of the
old lady’s reaction once she learned her closest relations faked
their deaths without telling her. Aunt Harriet’s sentimental
infatuation plays equally well as pathos and comedy, and the episode
ends with showing Chandell in prison-garb (but with Liberace’s
notorious sequins!) as he plays a piano for his former cronies in
crime. Harry gets the last word, as Liberace does a really bad Edward
G. Robinson impersonation.
I’ve omitted many of Semple’s witty
lines and characterizations here, but suffice to say that on its own
terms, everything works in this episode. Back in the day, I wasn’t
crazy but having a Bat-villain based on Liberace, of whom I knew next
to nothing. I did not know—as indeed many of the pianist’s female
fans did not—that various fan-magazines had alleged that he was
homosexual. In life, Liberace never admitted this sexual proclivity, even after a very public palimony suit. Still, Semple was working in
Hollywood, so he probably knew all the rumors. I don’t
know to what extent Semple was aware that the art-style known as
“camp” was associated with homosexual parody of hetero forms of
melodrama. But even if the writer had such awareness, Semple
certainly did not load “The Devil’s Fingers” with the sort of
references to gayness that many current scholars love to ferret out
in pre-Stonewall pop culture.
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