MAGS AND BOOKS
Serial and Year: TX 4219 / 1978.
Pages: 7 pages out of 92 pages in total.
Pictures: 1 full-page b&w picture.
Article: 7-page article on Lynda Carter and the Wonder Woman series.
Author: Peggy Herz.
Publisher: Scholastic Book Services.
Country: USA.
Lynda Carter plays the fabulous Wonder Woman, champion of truth and justice. As a young girl, Lynda loved comic books, and Wonder Woman was her heroine! ZAP! She's done it again! Wonder Woman was dropped by ABC last spring. But before she could jump in her plastic plane and zoom home to Paradise Island, she was saved by CBS! How do you like that?
     "I like it," said Lynda Carter, as she sipped water ("No ice, please") in the Beverly Hills Brown Derby. Lynda waited more than two years for the show to be made into a weekly series. Finally, this season, she got her wish.
     But who, you mights ask, is Lynda Carter? On TV she looks -and acts- like a six-foot towe of strength. Is she really that tall?
     Lynda laughed at the question. "People always think I'm much bigger than I am," she replied. "I'm not really not six feet tall!" I stand about 5 feet 9 inches, and I weigh 125 pounds. I'm on a diet all the time. That's why I'm drinking water now. I'm always about five pounds overweight, except when I'm working."
      Lynda was born in Phoenix, Arizona. "I grew up on comic books," she told me. "Wonder Woman was my heroine. Mys siter and I loved her!"
     Lynda was gangly as a youngster, she said. "I was tall and I had big feet and freckles," she recalled. "At one point I was 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighed 100 pounds. I was ghastly, but I finally outgrew that. In high school I wanted so badly to be a pom pom girl, but I didn't make it. I was just going into high school when my father lost all his money and my parents got divorced. We moved from a huge house to a tiny house. It was awful. There are so many snobby people. I worked all through high school. I never studied much, but I was good in school."
    Lynda became a professional singer while she was still in school. "I sang in pizza parlors, supper clubs, and other places in Phoenix," she said. "I always loved singing and dancing."
     She didn't date much in high school. "The boys all seemed kind of short and skinny," she remembered with a smile. "I always wanted to fit in with all the kids, but I never really did."
     By the time she garduated, however, she had become strikingly good looking. She decided to enter a beauty contest -and it was no contest at all! Lynda was named Miss U.S.A. in 1973 and was a finalist that same year in the Miss World contest. Today, she has mixed feelings about beauty contests.
     "I didn't get paid anything for winning except $ 1,000 for a wardrobe," she explained. "Then I got paid $70 a day whenever I was traveling and promoting the contest. It's really a glorified public relations job."
     "It was stilla terrific experience, though," she added. "It was like playing out a big fantasy. You feel really the princes of your dreams when you're chosen to be a beauty queen! A little girl from nowhere becomes someone. There's no doubt the promoters use the girks to make money for themselves. But beauty contests do give girls a chance to get out of their hometowns and meet new people. You see new places and have experiences. It adds to you life. It certainly helped me. Winning that beauty contest made it possible for me to move to California and study acting. It helped me get my singing and acting together."
     Lynda believes very strongly in the feminist movement, although many members of the movement are opposed to beauty contest. "I don't like to see women held back in any way," TV's Wonder Woman declared. "I try to impress upon young people .boys and grils alike. that they can be anything they want to be. It isn't how you look that's important. It's how you sue whatever you have that's important -how you use your talents, your interest...
     "It's much easier to complain about life and how lousy it is than to be happy. It's harder to be a success than a failure -that's why a lot of people take the easy way out. They let themselves be failures."
     Lynda was determined not to let that happen to her. After her year's reign as Miss U.S.A., she headed for Hollywood. She knew it wouldn't be easy. Thousands of young people head for Hollywood every year. Once there, they take acting lessons and wait to be discovered. Few ever are.
     But producer Doug Cramer was casting Wonder Woman. He had interviewed hundreds of would-be Wonder Women. Finally he found the one he wanted: Lynda Carter.
     Lynda was tunned. "My first thought was: I hope I can do it. But I think anybody can do anything they want it badly enough." Lynda wanted this very badly. She wanted to be an actress -and this was her chance.
     "Wonder Woman was changed this season," Lynda noted. "It was moved from the 1940's to the present day. Everyone felt we had done enough shows about the Nazis and World War II. I think it was a good idea to update the show. It's still the same show. It's just been moved to amodern setting."
     Lynda works hard to keep herself in shape for the show. "I do many kinds of exercises," she said. "I swim a lot. I play tennis. I jump on the trampoline, and do leg lifts and push-ups. I run -and for the opening shows this season I had to take fencing lessons. I hate working out in a gym but I do it. Any exercise where you use your whole body is good. You body becomes balanced. You become aware of your head, your hands, every part of your body."
     Last May 28, Lynda married her manager, Ron Samuels.
     "We had a garden wedding with a mariachi band and we served Mexican food," said Lynda. "It was a wonderful day"! I wore the most beautiful wedding dress I have ever seen, and flowers in my hair. There were about 100 people there -and I have never been so nervous in my entire life! I'm so happy we had a very traditional wedding. It's a memory we will always have.
     "From this point on," Lynda said earnestly, "a new chapter is beginning in my personal life -and in my career. There were times in the past when I didn't know if I'd be able to pay the rent, but I kept busy going to acting classes and working on my music. I would say these past few years have been happy, frustrating, exhausting, depressing -you name it! But that's what life is all baout. I've gotten more and more involved in the character better than anyone else at this point!"
     Lynda has many plans for the future. "I want to sing, act, write music, and direct," she exclaimed. "Maybe I won't do it all, but I can try! I hope my success in Wonder WOman leads everywhere! Somebody has to be everywhere -why not me?"
     Why not, indeed?
© 1978 by Scholastic Book Services.
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