EPISODE NUMBERS: 67-68, Production Code N/A

PLOT SUMMARIES:

The Contaminated Cowl:
During a leisurely softball game at Gotham State penitentiary, Jervis Tetch the sinister Mad Hatter, steals home and keeps right on going along with the cap of Warden Crichton. Later, he and his henchmen swipe 700 hatboxes from BonBon's Boutique and he and his moll, Polly, use the hatboxes to put his entire collection of heisted headgear into storage. Jervis then tells Polly that he has lost all fascination with stealing hats and announces he is altering his tactics to instead use hats for crimes! Alerted to the hatbox heist, Batman and Robin use The Batcomputer to predict The Mad Hatter's next criminal scheme, which is the robbery of Hattie Hatfield's ruby from The Headdress Ball at The Top Hat Room.

Jervis Tetch, in cognito as The Three-Tailed Pasha Of Panchagorum, removes the ruby just as The Dynamic Duo arrive and he quickly throws his gimmicked fez to the floor, which causes an explosion of fireworks. In the confusion, The Hatter manages to spritz Batman's cowl with radioactive spray turning it bright pink before he and his men make a break for it. The Caped Crusader and The Boy Wonder rush to Professor Overbeck at The Atomic Energy Laboratory, where Tetch in disguise as Overbeck's assistant Otto Puffendorfer, snatches the pink cowl just as The Batman changes into a spare one. The Dynamic Duo leap out to confront Jervis The Hatter and his crooked co-horts only to be immediately overtaken, captured and trapped inside a gigantic X-Ray Accelerator Tube and Fluoroscopic Cabinet, which when activated will permanently irradiate The Duo!

The Mad Hatter Runs Afoul:
After Jervis Tetch and his criminal quintet hit the road, Overbeck releases Batman and Robin, who managed to avert the deadly rays with the helpful aid of their trusty Bat-X-Ray Deflectors, from the cabinet and replace them with a pair of human skeletons clad in Batsuits. Later, The Mad Hatter and his slippery stooges are very convinced The Dynamic Duo is a Defunct Duo when they discover the skeletons (typical of a criminal to return to the scene of the crime to admire his handiwork!). And so does the rest of the world, when The Batskeletons are discovered by a cleaning woman the very next morning, and she alerts the police. With The Caped Crusader and The Boy Wonder out of the loop, the full force of Gotham City are at half mast, believing they're dead, and all businesses are shut down and people flocked into their homes by the thousands! The Mad Hatter is given carte blanche to commence with his true scheme: substitute Hattie Hatfield's paste ruby (certainly he knew it was phony!) for a priceless ruby from the forehead of The Golden Buddha Of Bergama on display at The Gotham City Museum.

Meanwhile, The Dynamic Duo, back at their familiar haunt, trace Jervis to his hideout at the defunct Green Derby Restaurant (what more fitting GHQ for a criminal of The Hatter's caliber to hang his headgear?), thanks to a Homing Battransmitter hidden inside the stolen pink cowl. Finding Jervis The Hatter and his quartet of crooked cronies awaiting them at the top of a giant water tower adjacent to the restaurant, Batman and Robin clamber to the top after them and rout them. Chief O'Hara and his boys in blue arrive to take over the proceedings, and The Duo greet the millions of Gothamites who came out to cheer them on, having learned they were still alive! Later, at Wayne Manor, Alfred Pennyworth answer Aunt Harriet's burning question about how Bruce and Dick could possibly have known The Dynamic Duo were still alive, while other's didn't; he says he told them himself, after hearing it from Maudie, his cousin Egbert's wife and cleaning woman at the atomic energy lab, who'd discovered the Batskeletons and, well, has a predeliction to exaggerate!

WRITTEN BY: Charles Hoffman

DIRECTED BY: Oscar Rudolph

CAST:
Madge Blake (Aunt Harriet Cooper)
William Dozier (Narrator)
Adam West (Bruce N. Wayne/Batman)
Burt Ward (Richard "Dick" Grayson/Robin: The Boy Wonder)
Alan Napier (Alfred Pennyworth)
Stafford Repp (Chief O'Hara)
Neil Hamilton (I) (Commissioner James W. Gordon)
Jean Hale (Polly)
Victor Aames (Skimmer)
Leonid Kinskey (Professor Overbeck)
Jesslyn Fax (Bonbon)
Paul Bryar (Jennings)
Gil Stuart (British Operator)
Margaret Teele (Russian Operator)
Richard Collier (Otto Puffendorfer)
Ivy Bethune (Maudie)
Charles Picerni (Stooge #1)
Roger Creed (Stooge #2)
Leonard Bremen (Benny)
David Wayne (Jervis Tetch, The Mad Hatter)
Barbara Morrison (Hattie Hatfield)
Heather Young (I) (American Operator)

INTERESTING NOTES:
- We learn here that Alfred Pennyworth makes all of The Batcostumes.

- Writer Charles Hoffman based his material on a comic book story, "The Mad Hatter of Gotham City" from Detective Comics #230 (April 1956), but did little to develop the material.

SCREEN GRABS FROM EPISODE 1

SCREEN GRABS FROM EPISODE 2

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