Sketchin’ 51

When news came that actor Yvonne Craig passed away in 2015, I admit to being shocked. How could someone that young have passed away?

It was an illusion: Mrs. Craig passed away at the age of 78, hopefully after a very full and beautiful life, and my surprise was based on the images I had of her in my mind, frozen as they were in her prime and while she appeared in many TV shows. Her most famous role, of course, was that of Batgirl in the famous Adam West starring Batman TV show.

Mrs. Craig would appear in the show’s final 1967 season but, as I mentioned before, she had appeared in many shows and movies before and after, including appearances in the original Star Trek show, The Wild Wild West, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Starsky and Hutch, among many others.

But she had a role, way back in 1958, in the TV show Perry Mason that always intrigued me. It was the 35th (!!!) episode of the show’s first season and titled The Case of the Lazy Lover and the reason it intrigues me is that not only was Mrs. Craig in the episode, but so too was Neil Hamilton, who would subsequently appear as, yes, Commissioner Gordon in the Batman TV show!

I know, I know, perhaps not as big a deal as William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy appearing together in The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’s 1964 episode The Project Strigas Affair a few years before they played Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock in Star Trek, but I’ve always enjoyed the coincidence.