How a costume evolved!!!
It’s 2 August 2022. MeTV reran the 31 May 1958 Perry Mason episode, The Case of the Lazy Lover, which featured Batgirl and Commissioner Gordon from the 1966 Batman series!!! Nine years before the third season of the Batman series, Yvonne Craig and Neil Hamilton guested on the crime mystery series which was becoming a hit for CBS. And since this month also marks seven years since Yvonne left us, we thought we would make note of her costume and its use throughout the series.
Linda Gaye Scott would be the first recipient of this outfit. As Moth, she was the third of four ladies to play moll to Frank Gorshin’s Riddler in Season One of Batman. And The Riddler was apparently a popular villain for the show, as the episodes, “The Ring of Wax”/”Give Them The Axe” aired on 30-31 March 1966, not even three months after the beginning of the show. The episodes are top notch and like the pilot, involve a crime that could have resulted in an international incident. We happen to be friends with Ms. Scott, a truly fine performer who managed to make a memorable appearance the following spring on the final episodes of The Green Hornet, which we are so fond of.
The second recipient of the blue lurex outfit was Kathy Kersh, a New York native who was Miss Rheingold for 1962. She had made it out to the West Coast where she soon landed acting roles. By the time she had landed the role on Batman, she had a short-lived marriage to actor Vince Edwards (Ben Casey) that yielded a daughter.
And that role?
She played Cornelia, moll to The Joker in his first Season Two episodes, “The Impractical Joker”/”The Joker’s Provokers,” which aired on 16-17 November 1966. She apparently must have hit it off with Robin (Burt Ward), as they got married on 15 November 1967. Neither the marriage nor her acting career would last, with her last acting job taking place in 1975. By that time, she had gone to business college and was working in commercial real estate.
It was not long after that Yvonne Craig would go on to do her pilot for Batgirl, with that blue lurex outfit we have all fallen in love with. And history would be made that fall in 1967. It seems a good time to remember Yvonne, and to also salute both Linda and Kathy!!!
