Ms. Poppins' Penguin

Today is the 50^th anniversary of the debut of the Batman TV show. I loved that show, loved the music, loved the characters. You could tell they had fun making the show. And you had to love the bad guys. The Riddler. The Joker. The Penguin.  I would have loved to have been there when the writers were creating the bad guys. “OK. We’ve got a riddler and we've got a joker. I think we need a penguin.”  Those were my kind of writers. Yeah, they stole The Penguin’s flying umbrella transport concept from Mary Poppins, but that was brilliant. I mean, who thinks to steal from Mary Poppins for a Batman bad guy? I don’t think I could have come up with that. For what it’s worth, I think that’s why there was never a Mary Poppins sequel. The Penguin pretty much stole her thunder. Meanwhile, the Batman franchise is running strong after 50 years. 

Now that I think about it, I bet Julie Andrews wished she had a couple of those flying umbrellas in the Sound of Music when she was taking that family through the Alps in WWII.