The first thing that catches your attention when you talk to Julie Newmar is that she still has the same purr in her voice in her 70s that helped win her the iconic role as Catwoman on the 1960s “Batman” TV show. Just in case you aren’t aware of who Julie Newmar is, let’s get one thing straight: she is the only Catwoman that will ever matter. My first phone conversation revealed that Julie Newmar is so much, much more than Catwoman, however.
I wrote an article for Yahoo Movies that asked the question “Can Anne Hathaway Possibly Replace Julie Newmar as the Ultimate Catwoman.” As a writer, I naturally wanted Ms. Newmar to be aware of my contention vis a vis her position as the iconic inhabitant of that character. I merely hoped for the possibility of conducting a celebrity interview in my standard method of sending questions via email and receiving back the answers. One thing led to another, as they say, and the result was 58 minutes and 45 seconds of a phone call that I will never forget.
A surreal shadow cannot but fall over you when you are on the phone with a woman you have known nearly your entire life who is asking questions about your career, your family and your life. Two minutes into the phone call and I felt like I was talking with an old friend. Julie Newmar, I was soon to discover, is an amazing woman. And she possesses a secret. The secret is simple and when written in words seems almost crudely sophisticated: life is good.
Of course, you say, life is good for Julie Newmar. She’s beautiful, successful, famous and has led a life to be envied by those of us whose relationship with the television set has been entirely from the other side. Yes, true, Julie Newmar has had it better than a lot of us. But she’s also the mother of a son with Down’s Syndrome. Before Catwoman, Julie Newmar achieved fame as a dancer capable of combining grace with sensuality, making it particularly tragic that she developed Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a disorder that results in the loss of muscle tissue and the ability to sense touch, especially in the feet.
Miss Newmar’s only reference to this unfortunate crippling of her talent was “I have CTM or CMT…whatever it’s called.” Her almost comic dismissal of a neurological disorder that has permanently reduced her once noble sense of mobility is a feature of the once and only Catwoman that defines one’s admiration of her. The catlike grace of Julie Newmar as a dancer in multiple roles or as the Catwoman outwitting Batman and Robin was cruelly embezzled from her by the same fates who initially deposited that elegant movement into her account in the first place. You might think such a person would be bitter. I asked Miss Newmar if she had ever been happier in her life.
No hesitation and no consideration…yes! Yes! YES! Today, with limited mobility obstructing many opportunities to share a lifetime of wisdom with those who, like me, could benefit in ways they could not possibly imagine while knowing her only as the one actor who has so far been capable of making Catwoman both good and bad without separating her into hero and villain, Julie Newmar considers herself to be happier than she’s ever been.
