WONDERLAND • The Ultimate Wonder Woman Site

	If Batman became an overnight sensation on television, Wonder Woman proceeded one step at a time. More than two years passed between her first appearance and the start of her weekly series, and before the program ran its course there had been changes in the star, the setting and even the network. Along the way a wonderful Wonder Woman was discovered in a self-styled "struggling actress" named Lynda Carter, who says today that "Wonder Woman struck a chord that no one expected."

	The first TV Wonder Woman cast was Cathy Lee Crosby, a slim blonde with short hair and rather angular features who looked nothing like her comic book counterpart. She appeared in a 1974 ABC TV movie called Wonder Woman, which would hardly have been recognizable without its title. Perhaps basing his scenario on the shortlived attempt to alter the contents of the comic books, screenwriter John Black turned his protagonist into a spy with no super powers and dropped her into a dull plot about stolen code books. This could have scuttled Wonder Woman forever, but fortunately Warner Bros. and ABC persevered.

	Stanley Ralph Ross, a writer responsible for the Catwoman episodes of Batman, came up with a version of Wonder Woman that restored creator William Moulton Marston's concepts,
including the World War II setting and the origin story. Ross's screenplay, appropriately entitled The New, Original Wonder Woman, became a TV movie in 1975. Executive producer Douglas S. Cramer insisted that Lynda Carter get the title role despite network qualms about her inexperience. Carter herself was hardly concerned about potential problems with typecasting. "To tell you the truth, I couldn't pay my next month's rent when I got the part," she recalls. I was thrilled to have a pilot of my own."

The pilot was successful enough to spawn two more TV movies, entitled Fausta the Nazi Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman Meets Baroness Von Gunther. Finally, in December 1976, ABC launched a weekly series of hour-long episodes. True to Marston's themes, the opening episode showed the Amazon princess rehabilitating her enemy, a female Nazi. Comic books were acknowledged by the animated opening credits, and by a scene-setting device in which hand-lettered captions appeared in the corner of the screen. The historical background and the female lead made for an unusual adventure series, but in late 1977 the show was updated to modern times and sold to CBS. "I think they wanted to retool it and modernize it when they bought it, so they weren't just buying the same show," says Lynda Carter.

"I think I was much better in the part when it was modernized," the star says. "The series matured as we went along." She may have grown more comfortable with the role, but something unique was lost when the period setting was dropped. Now called The New Adventures of Wonder Woman, the CBS version looked more like a typical action show of the 1970s, with lots of guys in turtlenecks driving, around Los Angeles. The only actor to keep Carter company in both versions was Lyle Waggoner. Once considered for Batman, Waggoner played Steve Trevor on ABC, and then Steve's son on CBS.

In any case, the main attraction of the show was Lynda Carter. With her dark beauty and statuesque figure, she made an impression intensified by her apparently commanding height. "I'm 5'9 " but most people think I'm about 6 feet," she says. "It's because I have very long legs." Her appeal was so evident that other qualities she brought to her role have sometimes been overlooked. I tried to play her like a regular woman who just happened to have superhuman powers," Carter explains. "I figured she'd lived with it every day of her life." As a result, the star seemed poised and natural even while running around in an outlandish outfit. That's not easy, as was demonstrated when future Oscar-nominee Debra Winger appeared on the ABC series as Princess Diana's little sister Drusilla. Despite her talent, she seemed stiff and awkward next to Carter.

Of course Wonder Woman was also a physical role. She was constantly jumping great heights and distances, an effect achieved with springboards, reverse photography, and an oversized pendulum called a Russian Swing. "I really loved doing the stunts," says Carter. "I had a lot of stunt women, because they all did something different, but I ended up doing most of the fights myself. The stunt guys taught me how to throw a punch, and eventually I became an honorary member of the Stunt Women's Association." She also "got in trouble" for hanging from a helicopter. "The stunt girl was about to go under it and I said, 'Oh, I can do this!' I ran under and they went up, and when the producers found out about it, they went ballistic."

Lynda Carter's three years of episodes still run regularly today. "I'd like to think I had something to do with it, but it's a phenomenon unto itself," she says. "And it's not too bad to be a sort of pop icon, You know? It's not too tough to handle."