WONDERLAND • The Ultimate Wonder Woman Site

(...) Clifford would serve as Altman's best man at his marriage to actress Lynda Carter of "Wonder Woman" fame, and the couple would name their first child after the elder lawyer (…)

(…)In late 1982, Altman had gone to Memphis, Tennessee, on a business trip for the parent company of Maybelline, the cosmetics firm. A Maybelline executive arranged a dinner for him that night with Lynda Carter, the statuesque Hollywood starlet who had played Wonder Woman in the television series and was now the spokeswoman for the cosmetics line. Carter's first marriage had just broken up and she found the young lawyer from Washington an intriguing change from Hollywood. A year later, Altman proposed to her in Monte Carlo.

On January 29, 1984, they were married at her home in Pacific Palisades, a ritzy community outside Los Angeles. Clifford was the best man and Agha Hasan Abedi, who also attended, gave the bride a black Jaguar automobile as a wedding gift. The marriage was a blend of Hollywood and Washington. A post-wedding party at Washington's F Street Club hosted by Congressman James Symington brought out congressmen and senators from both parties. Clifford, who always appreciated attractive people, was quite taken by the stunning Carter. "Bob's decision to marry Lynda was an important step in his life," he later said. "She's a real star. She's not only wonderful to look at, but she understands his devotion to the law and supports him in it."

Soon Altman found himself in the tabloids. The paparazzi ambushed the couple emerging from a Hollywood restaurant and the photo was splashed across the National Enquirer. One observer noted that Altman looked "like a deer caught in the headlights" and "she looked smashing." In a town starved for celebrity, Altman and Carter became sought-after guests and staples of the gossip columns. The Washington Post referred to them as "that couple seen everywhere around town." Their move into a $2.5 million, 20,000-square-foot mansion in affluent Potomac, Maryland, was chronicled by the press. So was the birth of their first son, who was named James Clifford Altman. The American Lawyer, a legal' publication, included a profile of Altman in an article on up-and coming lawyers. It ended with Clifford saying, "Twenty years from now I expect him not only to be the leader of this firm but to be the leader of the bar in Washington."

For the first time, Altman had moved out from behind Clifford's shadow and, on the currency of his wife's glamour, soon found himself mixing with prominent Republicans as well as Democrats. It was a measure of the times: Bob Altman had achieved status in Washington not through government service, as had Clifford and so many others, but by marrying a starlet (…)

(…) Finally, after more than eight hours of testimony, Clifford walked slowly out of the hearing room. He was slightly stooped and held his gray fedora in one hand. Marny, who had sat faithfully in the row behind her husband of sixty years throughout the long day, clutched his other hand. Trailing them, and absorbing most of the television lights, were Altman and Lynda Carter (…)

(…) As they emerged from a dark sedan outside the Criminal Courts Building in lower Manhattan on March 30, Altman and his wife showed strain as they walked, hand in hand, past the television cameras and still photographers. Lynda Carter, wearing a red jacket with white cuffs, recognized a reporter in the crowd and let go of her husband's hand momentarily to bestow a kiss on the cheek of the embarrassed journalist. Altman, dressed in a tailored, double-breasted blue suit, moved stoically toward the building's elevators.

The tenth-floor courtroom was a dreary, windowless box. Beside a table with two assistants stood John Moscow, rocking on his toes like a boxer. Altman's lead attorney now was Gustave Newman, a canny New Yorker whose goatee and mustache gave him a resemblance to the painter El Greco. Newman was a shrewd pick. Robert Bennett or Robert Fiske would have been the choice had the first trial been conducted in federal court in Washington. They were accustomed to the respectful tenor and tone of such sessions. But Newman, whose clients had included mobsters and murderers, knew how the criminal courts of New York operated. He was street smart and scrappy, with a roguish charm tailored to appeal to New York juries.

Behind the lawyers on the wooden benches sat Altman's three sisters and his parents. Alongside them was Lynda Carter, easily the most watched figure in the courtroom as she whispered to her friend Blaine Trump, the socialite sister-in-law of developer Donald Trump. Reporters and spectators filled the remainder of the small room (…)