Arts & Entertainment

Catching up with Catwoman

Actress Julie Newmar on camp, ‘Batman,’ advice for living and ‘To Wong Foo’

Published

14 years ago

February 23, 2012

Actress Julie Newmar has discovered a passion for writing. Her advice book ‘The Conscious Catwoman’ is out now. She plans future books on gardening and childhood celebrity crushes. (Photo by Alan Mercer; courtesy Julie Newmar)

‘The Conscious Catwoman Explains Life on Earth’
By Julie Newmar
Eleven Books
75 pages
$18.95
julienewmarwrites.com

Fall’s a busy time and things only seem to accelerate as the year winds down and the holidays loom. So I’m taking care of some regretfully unfinished 2011 business.

Last September I spent a purrrrfectly — OK, sorry, couldn’t resist — delightful hour on the phone with Julie Newmar from her Los Angeles home about two miles from Brentwood. Everybody remembers her as Catwoman on the campy ‘60s TV show “Batman,” but serious fans know she’s also a Tony-winning actress who’s had triumphs on both stage and screen (both TV and film).

Unlike some actors who only begrudgingly acknowledge or discuss roles that, for whatever reason, got etched into the pop culture collective consciousness to a disproportionate degree, Newmar is happy to talk “Batman” and even called her 2011 book “The Conscious Catwoman Explains Life on Earth.”

It’s a 75-page wonder you think you’ll be able to plow through in an hour but it’s sneaky that way — I found myself spending an hour on each page, pondering the pearls of wisdom she shares. It’s also liberally peppered with eye-popping images of Newmar throughout her career as well as a playful series of mime-inspired photos that show the 78-year-old actress’s playful side.

Newmar says she’s always been a fan of how-to books and decided she’d lived enough life to share some tips. Most are hers but others she includes are from everything from the Bible to Voltaire to Carl Jung.

“I think after the age of 50 you start wondering why you became what you did and you start thinking about your life, what worked, what’s different,” she says. “I’ve always been in love with these how to books since I was in my teens. How to look better, how to not be frightened speaking in public or whatever … I’d had the idea for awhile but it takes time to do it the right way, so I took my time with it.”

Among her insights:

Don’t try to be like others; you’ll not only be sorry, you’ll soon be out of fashion and the shallowness, the telltale marks of your insecurity, will show.
You can bury a lot of troubles digging in the dirt (Newmar is an avid gardener)
Life works once you get to be more in a state of gratitude than supplication or neediness.
The important thing is to ask the right question — never mind the answer, it will drop in your lap.
I hide my annoyance when people tell me, “But you can wear anything.” Anything is what I don’t wear.
Every professions has its scullery duty.

“I love one liners,” she says. “Something you can peel off and put on the fridge or in the car. If you’re wanting to do better in life, you sort of collect these things over time and they stay with you. I think you cull your own garden in the sense there’s this assimilation of wisdom that takes place and can be very healing … you have to learn to love yourself as your maker does.”

Newmar happily answers any question I throw at her.

She says she “never ever” has felt frustrated by being so widely known as Catwoman, a recurring role she played in 12 episodes during the series’ first two seasons in 1966 and ’67. The famous body-hugging Lurex costume — reportedly made by Newmar herself — is now on display at the Smithsonian.

“It’s the first part of your house,” she says. “I’m lucky, fortunate and totally lucky to have something in my house that people know. Then you can invite them in and share the rest. I always look at the work as beneficial.”

And what of stars who reject their trademark roles or feel limited or typecast by them?

“It’s sad,” Newmar says. “It should always be seen as an opportunity. Strong people know how to take the negative and make it work for them, like making lemonade. I always like to look at things that way.”

Newmar attributes the character’s longevity to her bevy of traits.

“She’s very bright, savvy, smart. She wears high, daunting heels. She looks good from the front and back. She’s got a cute ass. She’s fun to play with. Naughty.”

The actress didn’t grow up with cats. Her mother had a wire-haired Terrier named William Powell (named after the “Thin Man” actor) but during the time she played the part, Newmar adopted two cats from actress June Havoc and observed their behavior.

“I’d wander over and watch them eat and play and frolic around. You do your homework.”

Newmar in her Catwoman days. (Photo courtesy Julie Newmar via Harlan Boll)

And how intentional was the camp quotient at the time? Were the actors encouraged to ham it up?

“It doesn’t matter what it looks or sounds like, whether it’s camp, straight or this, that or the other,” she says. “You still have to find the truth in it. You play the truth, then the rhythm seeps in and you go with it.”

Newmar, who introduced the part, had other projects brewing at the time so she didn’t feel especially connected to the role until later. Former Miss America winner Lee Meriwether played Catwoman in a 1966 film version that starred most of the TV series cast, but then Newmar was back in the role for the show’s second season. And in a performance perhaps as indelible as Newmar’s, the late Eartha Kitt played the character in the third and final season. Newmar, who was photographed for USA Today with Meriwether and Kitt in 2004 around the time the Halle Berry movie came out, says she “loved” Kitt in the part and owned several of Kitt’s albums at the time. She says Michelle Pfeiffer had the best Catwoman costume, but says the Berry film “didn’t quite come together.” She’s “100 percent” supportive of Anne Hathaway in the latest version, “The Dark Knight Rises,” slated for a July release.

Newmar as one of nine 'Legendary Ladies of Stage & Screen' during a Smithsonian presentation of her famous catsuit in 2008. (Photo courtesy Harlan Boll)

“I think our show worked because, well, color was pretty new on TV at the time and it just seemed to sit really well within the confines of a television screen. The excesses of it, the booms and bams, it just fit so very well and you could just imagine the little kids sitting there on the floor with their eyes wide open. The color really popped. I really think that was a big part of it — they made extraordinary use of the color. I’d just done ‘My Living Doll,’ but that was in black and white. This became far more popular.”

Newmar is a bit taken aback when I ask if her hair being longer in the second season — it went from a flip to a much longer, past-the-shoulders look in the later episodes — is intentional. She says no significant thought was put into it — just a reflection of the changing styles. The initial look, sort of vaguely Jackie inspired, was a sign of the times. Longer hair was more popular in the late ’60s. Newmar remembers doing her own makeup — “nothing terrifically trend setting,” she notes — on the show. “Nobody ever asked me that before,” she says.

Of her dozens of television guest appearances, she says her famous “Twilight Zone” episode (she played the devil in the season four episode “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville”) is especially memorable. She met creator/writer/host Rod Serling during the filming and remembers his trademark cigarette smoking and “oh, that brilliant mind — that marvelous, marvelous man. Aren’t we grateful that we have this and that they kept these films? I remember shooting in this small little theater on 44th Street under the New York Times. It was all about story on that show.”

She also remembers her “Batman” costars fondly — she calls Adam West (Batman) “darling, a doll,” and says Burt Ward (Robin) was “perfect. He wasn’t an actor at all. He was 19 at the time and they found him in a gym.”

Newmar next plans a book about celebrity crushes. She’s widely credited — anecdotally at least — with having awoken the hormones of practically a whole generation of American straight boys on “Batman.” She considers it a paradoxical wonder that her gay appeal — they wanted to have her, we wanted to be her — is perhaps equally as strong.

And, of course, we can’t let Miss Newmar go without asking her about her eponymous drag film “To Wong Foo.” She chuckles at the memory.

Foo, it seems, was the owner of a Chinese restaurant in New York that’s no longer in business. It was near Sardi’s on 44th Street. Legend has it screenwriter Douglas Beane saw an autographed photo of Newmar there and the sheer wackiness of its inscription jumped out at him.

“He probably made it up,” Newmar says with a laugh. “I don’t remember doing it. I think he just thought if he gave it an innocuous little title it wouldn’t make it out of the stack on some producer’s desk so he gave it this crazy title. And sure enough, it did make it out of the stack.”

And one more “Batman” question — of either her show or the characters in general, is there a homoerotic subtext between Batman and Robin?

“I don’t think so,” Newmar, whose brother is gay, says first, then backpedals. “Well maybe. I think anytime something is too straight, we want to throw a snowball at it. We crave some alternate. Thank God we can have both gay and straight.”

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Theater

National tour of ‘Gatsby’ comes to National Theatre

Out actor Edward Staudenmayer talks playing the show’s gangster

Published

5 hours ago

May 10, 2026

Patrick Folliard

Edward Staudenmayer plays Meyer Wolfsheim in ‘The Great Gatsby.’ (Photo courtesy National Theatre)

‘The Great Gatsby’
May 12-24
The National Theatre
1321 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
$59-$196
Thenationaldc.com

Often dubbed “The Great American Novel” for its depiction of ambition and self-invention alongside the reversals of success, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” says it all in a fast read.

Set against the excesses and energy of the Roaring Twenties, “The Great Gatsby,” novel and now the same-titled hit Broadway musical with a jazz/pop original score by Jason Howland and Nathan Tysen, tells the story of Nick Carraway and his friendship with Jay Gatsby, an enigmatic millionaire intent on reuniting with ex-lover, Daisy Buchanan.

It was during a four-month 2025 run in Seoul, South Korea, that out actor Edward Staudenmayer first played the show’s heavy, Meyer Wolfsheim, a gangster who helped Gatsby make his murkily acquired fortune. As Meyer, Staudenmayer opens the second act with, appropriately enough, “Shady.”

Now three months into a year-long North American tour, the show is poised to enjoy a brief run at Washington’s National Theatre (5/12-5/24).

While putting on his eyeliner prior to a recent Wednesday matinee at Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Theatre, the upstate New York-based actor shared about Gatsby and a life in theater.

WASHINGTON BLADE: Despite your good looks and terrific voice, you’re rarely the leading the man. How is that?

EDWARD STAUDENMAYER: I’m definitely a character man. I’ve been painting lines on my face to play old men since I was in high school. I was the youngest freshman in college playing old Uncle Sorin [in Chekhov’s “The Seagull”].

There have been many villains. Some darker than others. Meyer Wolfsheim is a very bad guy, but he doesn’t haunt me once I’m offstage. I play a lot of pickleball.

BLADE: Is it true that like so many of Fitzgerald’s characters, Wolfsheim is famously based on someone the writer encountered in life.

STAUDENMEYER: That’s true, Wolfsheim is pretty much a direct portrayal of real-life mobster and 1919 World Series fixer [Arnold Rothstein].

BLADE: When did the 1925 novel first surface on your radar?

STAUDENMAYER: Like many of us, I was assigned “The Great Gatsby” in high school. It was short, and filled with sex and illicit activities. I thought it was great. Definitely wasn’t a Judy Blume novel.

Interestingly, the book wasn’t originally a huge a success for Fitzgerald, but because it was about war and having the girl at home, they gave it to GIs leaving for WWII. After returning, a lot of those guys went on the GI Bill and became English teachers. They assigned the book to their students.

BLADE The idea that the book’s first-person narrator, Nick Carraway, is gay and enamored with Jay Gatsby is long discussed among readers and scholars. Does the musical touch on that?

STAUDENMAYER: Yes, there’s conjecture about Jay and Nick, and it’s implied in our show. It’s also implied about Jordan Baker, Jay’s fleeting romantic interest. Ultimately, she’s a confirmed bachelor, and a professional golfer who only wears pants.

Our performers are really good. Josh Grasso who plays Nick is fantastic. I’ve had to stop watching him in his last scene; it’s not good for Meyer Wolfsheim to take his curtain call crying. Our Gatsby, Jake David Smith, is good too. He’s gorgeous like Superman and sings like an angel.

BLADE: Do you ever imagine backstory for your characters whose sexuality is undefined?

STAUDENMAYER: I do, but not with Wolfsheim. I don’t see it. I’m trying to be as butch as possible with this ruthless killer.

BLADE: Have you had to do that in your career?

STAUDENMAYER: For a long time, I wore a mask to hide my gayness. I worked hard on being believable, that I was into the girl or that I was a tough guy.

It’s a different world now, and it’s so refreshing to be around the younger actors today; they’re remarkably open and comfortable.

BLADE: What was your coming of age like?

STAUDENMAYER: I played high school football in Palm Springs [he chuckles, alluding to the arid gay mecca], and I was pretty good too. But much to the chagrin of my parents and coaches, I quit the team to act in our senior year play. My super butch dad played semi-pro football and he was an ex-cop. I’m named after him. While I didn’t become my dad, I’ve played him often on stage. He was a true Gaston [the bumptious rival in “Beauty and the Beast”]. And like Gaston, he used antlers in all his interior decorating.

BLADE: Did he live to see your success in theater?

STAUDENMAYER: He did. Life was challenging growing up but the last 10 years of his life we couldn’t get off the phone with each other [his voice catches with emotion]. He accepted me entirely, and we became very close.

BLADE: Looking ahead, is there a part you’d especially like to play?

STAUDENMAYER: Like all baritones I’d love to play Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd.” I’ve come close but it hasn’t happened yet. There’s still time.

Music & Concerts

DJ Chanel Santini is bringing the heat and some gender-fluid diversity to XBIZ Miami

Pool party celebrates most charismatic personalities, creative artists in adult entertainment

Published

7 hours ago

May 10, 2026

Susan Hornik

DJ Chanel Santini (Photo courtesy of Miss Lainie PR)

Chanel Santini has crossed over to being a DJ, performing at clubs all over the country. Now known as Santini, they will be making music and hyping the pool party, DJ-ing at XBIZ, the conference for adult creators and digital players, in Miami.

Taking place on Monday to Wednesday, the event honors the most charismatic personalities and creative artists in entertainment.

“I am honestly so excited — getting to DJ in Miami Beach is literally a DJ’s dream!” Santini told the Los Angeles Blade.

“I thought it would be a good opportunity because I haven’t been around my industry peers in a long time. It’s a great event to network and show off the new me!” said Santini.

While Santini is unsure what music they will be playing, they want everyone to have a good time. “My goal is to ignite the dance floor and play great music that everyone will vibe to. My sound includes house music, bass house, tech house, and I always like to throw a little bit of hip-hop in my sets.”

Santini loves how DJ-ing brings people together.

“Music really ignites us all! It is so universal, no matter what language you speak. I think it’s the best high in the world when you play a banger track, and everybody on the dance floor screams loudly. You can’t describe that feeling until you’re up there on that stage.”

Santini describes DJs as the “modern rock stars” in today’s world.

“I always feel like such a superstar when I’m up on that stage. The best feeling is after my set when I have people come up to me and say, ‘Thank you for sharing that amazing music.’ That’s how you know that you’re a good DJ — I love when I get those types of compliments!”

*DJ Chanel Santini / Photo courtesy of Miss Lainie PR*

While sometimes it’s hard to please everyone’s musical tastes, Santini endeavors to try! “You just have to go out there and give it your all and be the best DJ that you can be,” he noted.

Santini, who had previously identified as transgender, recently decided to transition back to being gender fluid.

“It’s definitely been a journey, but I’m definitely happier in my own skin now than I was. I don’t go by he/him pronouns. I don’t go by they/them either. I guess I just really don’t have a preference. Whatever you see me as is your opinion. I’ve learned over the years that I’m not trying to be one specific thing. I’m just Santini. I’m just me.”

Santini acknowledged they felt respected more when dressed as a woman.

“I think it’s just because femininity runs the world. When I started to de-transition, I felt like I had to just be a boy all the time. But I’ve realized over the years that I don’t need to stick to one specific thing. I am always gonna be feminine, and that’s OK.”

Recently, Santini has been embracing their feminine side more.

“I definitely feel more comfortable in female presentation, and more powerful when I’m on stage dressed as Chanel. I love DJ-ing in drag because there are so many straight male DJs in the world. It’s almost like a superhero when he puts on his cape! I think it makes me confident and stand out more as an artist.”

And because Santini loves makeup and fashion, they can incorporate that into their sets. “I’m not just bringing you good vibes and good music. I’m bringing you a show/ production!”

Santini is already working on big plans for the future.

“I’m opening up for a huge Pride block party in my hometown, Albuquerque, N.M., on June 12 and 13. It’s a two day festival and I’m super excited for this opportunity. I’m even hiring backup dancers and a choreographer.”

Santini plans to go “all out” for this show.

“It’s gonna be the biggest crowd that I’ve ever played for,” Santini enthused. “I’m putting my heart and soul into this performance, especially because it’s Pride in my hometown, and that means so much to me. I know the younger me would be so proud.”

Santini remembers going to Pride when they were younger and telling themself they couldn’t wait to be up on that stage.

“I’m truly living my dream right now, and I’m so excited for the future. The last 10 years of being in the adult entertainment business have been great and have given me major success. But I always knew that I didn’t want to be in this industry for long.”

Santini acknowledged that, in the recent past, it was a struggle.

“I’ve been trying to find myself and figure out what I wanna do next with my life. Now that I’ve found this passion for DJ-ing, it makes me want to go far in this business.”

In addition to being a DJ/artist, Santini is starting college next semester.

“I’m gonna get my degree in audio engineering,” Santini enthused. “I can’t wait to start producing my own tracks. I especially can’t wait till the day I’m headlining a major festival! I know with a little bit of patience and hard work that I can get there! I just have to continue believing in myself.”

Santini wanted to thank all of their fans for their support. “Truly, if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be able to fund my art in the way that I have. I’m truly grateful. And I’m excited for the future!”

Out & About

Learn more about queer love

Friends of Dorothy Cafe hosts event at City-State Public House

Published

2 days ago

May 8, 2026

Tinashe Chingarande

Friends of Dorothy Cafe will host “Living History: How We Loved” on Thursday, May 14 at 7:30 p.m. at City-State Public House.

Guests will hear how queer and trans people have loved and cared for one another, especially when legal, medical, and social systems did not recognize those relationships. We’ll reflect on chosen family, long-term partnerships before marriage equality, caregiving during the AIDS crisis, hidden romances, friendship as survival, chosen family, and the loves that changed the course of our lives. This evening is about honoring lived experience, preserving community memory, and strengthening the bridge between generations.

Tickets are $24.57 and are available on Eventbrite.