Those Babe-Licious Molls -- Did the Villains Go for Them?

There was something pretty standard on TV spy shows and action shows and Westerns in the 60's.

Our heroes (series regulars) had to have as guest stars each week (1) A main villain and (2) a beautiful woman.

You could say that ALL stories have a hero, a villain, and a heroine, but in the 60's, the villains and heroines seemed to be "rented" from small "contract crews" who rented those players out on a weekly basis.

Consider Victor Buono. He was King Tut on Batman; Count Manzeppi on The Wild Wild West, and well, "somebody" on The Man From UNCLE.

Truth be told, Batman seemed able to draw some more special villains from that show that the other series didn't get: Cliff Robertson, Art Carney, Walter Slezak. Tallulah Bankhead.

But the BABES? Oh, most of the shows traded those gorgeous women off interchangably.

Diane McBain. Jean Hale. Sherry Jackson. Francine York.

Sometimes the babes were good girls on those shows, sometimes bad girls.

But on Batman...they were always BAD girls. Henchwomen to the villains. A very hot almost movie actress named Jill St.John took the moll role in the pilot (with the Riddler.) If memory serves, Jill St. John never did The Wild Wild West or The Man From UNCLE. Again...Batman must have been a little more of a "get" of a show for some actors and actresses.

Which brings me to my point:

Watching the show as a kid, I simply accepted the gorgeous moll in each episode as the "required TV episodic babe guest star," eye candy particularly for the (very) young male viewer.

But as I grew older -- much older -- I came to toy with the concept:

Did ANY of these arch villains EVER actually dally with their molls in the manner that real-life gangsters do with theirs?

I could never picture the garish clown-faced Joker getting it on with one of his "babe molls." But then Harley Quinn has changed THAT concept today, eh?

Some of the villains were simply too old and/or portly to create that image. Victor Buono as King Tut? No. Maurice Evans as the Puzzler? No. Walter Slezak as The Clock King? No.

I could see The Riddler(either Frank Gorshin OR suave John Astin from The Addams Family) getting it on with his moll. Especially if she was Jill St. John.

Jervis Tetch the Mad Hatter had two sequential gorgeous blondes in his two two-parters(Diane McBain and Jean Hale.) He was a wild looking guy, but rather virile and on the macho side. Maybe.

Cliff Robertson as Shame had a blonde hottie for the first-two parter -- and then the actor's actual lovely but somewhat matronly wife Dina Merrill the second time. You KNOW those two were compatible.

I'd say the hottest hottie on the show was Francine York as the moll to Roddy McDowall's persnickity Bookworm. York filled out a skintight catsuit(non Catwoman style) real good. York got one (daring for its time) scene in which "tied up as a fake hostage" and talking to Robin, all of the camera angles from her side were over her side breast as Robin peered over it!

The only problem for York with the Bookworm is is that he seemed rather like he preferred books to her. Or maybe it was not just books he preferred to women, given his manner.

In the rather witty episode in which paunchy New Yawker Art Carney played an oversized Robin Hood called The Archer, they gave him the somewhat aging and past-it hottie Barbara Nichols as his moll. It was a rather sweet fit. They'd both seen better physical days. (Nichols was already getting past it as a loose woman in 1957's Sweet Smell of Success.") Maybe THEY got it on.

Oh, well. Those are my favorite Batman villain molls of the remembered moment. You could look over the list and its INCREDIBLE, all the babes. Nancy Kovack just came to mind.