WONDERLAND • The Ultimate Wonder Woman Site

	*Even as the Fanfare* typographer was laying down copy for the preceding article, a miracle of sorts was in the works.**

	It started, in a way, back in 1967. That's when producer William Dozier put Stanley Ralph Ross, one of his better Batman writers, to work on a half-hour Wonder Woman comedy. The resultant pilot script never got before a camera, but years later, when Warners had their own Wonder Woman project in mind, they called Ross in.

	He told them how he wanted to do it: No camp, no ridiculing the character as Batman had. What Ross proposed was, as he puts it, "somewhere between adventure, comedy and tongue-in-cheek" and set firmly and irrevocably in the midst of World War II. That wasn't what Warner had in mind, it seems. Ross stashed his notes in a filing cabinet and returned to a heavy load of other TV commitments. Warners went their own route and produced Wonder Woman their way, resulting in high ratings and a veritable Meleagris gallova (i.e., Turkey) of a show. So they went back to Square One -back to the drawing board, as it were- back to Stanley Ralph Ross.

	Ross brought forth his notes and pointed out that what people wanted was the real Wonder Woman, not some cheapjack facsimile. Ross took a copy of the Gloria Steinem/Ms. magazine Wonder Woman book (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972) and used the original Wonder Woman origin story by Charles Moulton as a basis. He added much new material, mainly emphasizing the Nazi menace, and came up with a gem of a first draft, tow hours in length. Along the way, it would wind up as a 90-minute script with not so much humor (a scene where a saleslady tries to explain to the naive WW what a brassiere is was among the casualties) but which was furlongs ahead of its predecessor. Particularly good was the delicate handling of the Wonder Woman-Steve Trevor romance. Back on the Batman show, Ross, in addition to most of the King Tut and other "new villains" episodes, had handled the Catwoman scripts, carefully plotting out the subtle love interest between her and the title character. (He also designed much of Julie Newmar's skin-tight wardrobe.) The Batman-Catwoman romance, by the way, was to have culminated in one episode with a marriage aboard the Staten Island Ferry - but then Eartha Kitt inherited the role from Newmar and all romantic entanglements vanished. Television was not ready for Batman in a mixed marriage.

	But television was ready for "The ORIGINAL Wonder Woman." The comely Lynda Carter, a former Miss USA, played the Amazon Princess, abetted by a supporting cast that included Cloris Leachman as Queen Hippolyte, Lyle Waggoner as Steve Trevor, plus Red Buttons, Kenneth Mars, Henry Gibson, Fannie Flagg and Stella Stevens. What finally showed up on ABC one Friday night was a superb rendition of the character - proof positive that a comic book can be transferred to the screen and maintain not only the mood of the source material but also the integrity of the character.

	And ABC was ready. Buoyed by its bionic successes, the network was willing to go with the Amazon Princess, though not as a series. Rather, programming tsar Fred Silverman ordered up a batch of Wonder Woman specials which he could situate at will in and about his schedule, the better to neutralize competing networks. Long the "third network" (and, at times, just barely that), ABC was already moving into the lead, thanks to bionics and Fonzie. Wonder Woman proved to be Silverman's queen in the chess game of network television. Moved into one time slot, she clobbered a Bob Hope special; in another, a competing network movie. At this writing, the series remains a programming nomad - but it is a series and its star is fast becoming a star.

	Lynda Carter was naught but a former beauty queen when she first walked onto the Burbank Studios/ Warner Brothers lot. She had made one appearance on the short-lived Nakia TV series and another in an unsold pilot called Shamus. Other than that, what she had to her credit was the usual ex-Miss USA shtick: personal appearances, ceremonial promotions and a USO tour. And she was but one of countless gorgeous young ladies who journeyed to Burbank, seeking the lead role in the film of Irving Wallace's novel, The Fan Club. Producer Larry Gordon made much hubbub in the industry over his search for the actress who might play Sharon Fields, the movie sex symbol who is kidnapped and ravaged by some of her adoring public. Lynda Carter proved not to be that actress. Neither did the rest of the countless gorgeous young ladies. At the moment, the oft-postponed film looks like it will join the even more countless number of unproduced movies, though there are rumors that Barbi Benton is being considered anew. Whatever the disposition, Ms. Carter didn't get the role.

	Not that Larry Gordon wasn't impressed with her, however. He liked her and, more importantly, he told Douglas Cramer about her. Cramer, you see, was producing this show called Wonder Woman and that's how it happened. Soon, she was pulling down six grand a week (twice co-star Lyle Waggoner's stipend), plus making countless TV guest appearances and, thus far, two movies. With Lynda's television success as Wonder Woman leading the way to a budding film career, steps were taken to avoid the specter of typecasting (as had happened to George Reeves following his long-running tenure as TV's Superman) by contracting for her a wholly different kind of role in her first feature motion picture, Bobbie Joe and the Outlaw.

	Hang in there now, because this is going to take us out and back via the North Forty...

	Bobbie Joe, spelled that way and released by American International in 1976, was yet another entry in the recent cycle of movies dealing with the now familiar Bonnie and Clyde theme and its mutations. The basic situation is the same in every film. A footloose girl in her teens or twenties hitches up with an itinerant guy of about the same age, and together, discovering a sense of adventurous team strength they lacked singly, they embark on an unabated crime spree while letting the devil take the hindmost. In the main variation the protagonists are cast as ill-fated, restless innocents brought together by chance. Having nothing better to do they hit the road, traveling rural byways leading to small town stops and making the disastrous mistake of crossing county lines. By a luckless turn of events that puts them on the wrong side of the law, they soon find themselves pursued by and ever-tightening police dragnet, depicted as manned through and through by tank-town rednecks. With itchy trigger fingers at the ready, they catch the fugitives and wipe them out - provided the couple hasn't beaten them to it by destroying themselves in a car crash.

	The spectacular success of Bonnie and Clyde, starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beauty, started the trend in 1967. It resulted in a succession of movies that worked assorted improvisations on the idea of a youthful pair of criminals or social outcasts against the hopeless odds of a system presented to us as obliged only to do them in: Thieves Likes Us (Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall), Buster and Billie (Jan Michael Vincent and
Joan Goodfellow), Badlands (Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek), Return To Macon County (Don Johnson and Robin Mattson), Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry (Susan George and Peter Fonda), The Sugarland Express (Michael Sacks and Goldie Hawn), Aloha, Bobby and Rose (Paul Le Mat and Dianne Hull), among others. A new one seemed to come out every few months like clockwork.

The cycle, threatening to saturate theaters during 1970-75, had its own sucession of forerunners produced at less predictable intervals. In 1958 Dorothy Provine and Jack Hogan were the principals in The Bonnie Parker Story, a low budget exploitation drama directed by former mainstay of 1940s Republic serials, William Witney. The Bonnie and Clyde theme appeared still earlier in Gun Crazy (John Dahl and Peggy Cummins, 1950) and They Live By Night (Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell, 1948), both appropriately framed in the grim, fatalistic postwar styler now referred to as film noir.

Noir elements in Bonnie and Clyde and most of its offspring are minimal at best. Noir elements in writer-producer-director Mark Lester's Bobbie Joe and the Outlaw are non-existent. His previous effort was Truckstop Women, a 1974 American International release featuring Claudia Jennings, the 1969 Playboy Playmate of the Year. Truckstop wasn't quite the contemporary gem it was cracked up to be, with an energetic wimlib-inspired storyline fizzling out in a weakly staged ending, but it did show considerable promise if Lester continued to inject novel ideas into the old, honorable formulas. Bobbie Joe had a bigger budget and, with Lynda Carter and Marjoe Gortner, marginally bigger name actors. Expectations for a standout movie, however, went unfulfilled.

Bobbie Joe and the Outlaw was not precisely an auspicious screen debut for Lynda. There is no great shortage of guy-and-girl-on-the-lam-from-the-law films and this one has all the imitative accouterments: Redneck Southern sheriffs, car demolition, blood (though not a lot), sex (ditto), country-styler music (including one song performed by Lynda) and extremely dumb plot points. Tricked into being an accomplice to murder, the Outlaw (Gortner) must get out of town with his woman, Bobbie Joe (Carter). At this point, the minions of the law have absolutely no leads on the murder but they have a roadlock. For no visible reason, other than that it had been an entire reel since the last car chase, Gortner runs their roadlock, thereby allowing the Keystone rejects to get his license number and description. Forced by an unreasoning law to become fugitives, the title characters decide to do it up right. Now, pay attention to this because it's incredible. They want to get reputations as hot-shot bank robbers so they decide to pull a daring, daylight Savings and Loan heist. But they have only a few machine guns in their arsenal so, in order to get the proper weaponry, they stage a commando-style assault on a gun shop. They kill most of the gun shop empolyees and make off with enough pistols to pull their daring, daylight bank job and become famous. Machine guns and murder so they can get pistols to rob a bank and be famous. Figure that one out. Also, figure out why the film got decent reviews and high box office grosses. Could it have had anything to do with the fact that its release in most cities was timed to coincide with a Wonder Woman TV special? Maybe it had something to do with those ads that had Lynda Carter's name in REAL BIG TYPE. Or maybe a lot of folks just like dumb movies. Or all of the above.

Her second film is not yet release: Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam war epic Apocalypse Now, filmed partly on location in the Phillipines in the midst of nearly impossible weather conditions when typhoon Olga hit the island of Luzon. The film company was, to quote from a tune by the Cadets, stranded in the jungle -helplessly watching their sets being reducted to shambles by the relentless downpour. Telephone communications were cut off, all bridges were down. One group of actors and technicians were sequestered across the river, while Coppola and additional cast members, including Lynda, were with another group at Olongapo. For three days each gathering was totally isolated from the others ten miles away, not knowing if their colleagues were alive. Fortunately there were no casualties. During her two and a half weeks in the Phillippines, Lynda spent most of the time slogging about in the mud clad in Army fatigues and combat boots, hoping with everyone else to get production underway again. Eventually Apocalypse Now resumed filming and she was able to complete her scenes, after which she returned stateside to start work on the first of eleven 60-minute Wonder Woman specials.

Lynda's fast-accumulating credits as a dramatic actress often overshadow her other talents in the performing arts. She's been interested in singing for as long as she can remember. Raised in Phoenix, Arizona, at age 15 she started singing several nights a week at the local college crowd's favorite after-hours hangout, the Pizza Inn. Enrolled at Arcadia Titans High School in Scottsdale, a Phoenix suburb, she was an active participant in choral groups and musical theatre productions. She played the role of Rosie in a student production of Bye Bye Birdie. After graduating from Arcadia she went on the road to perform professionally, debuting at the Sahara in Las Vegas. She traveled the club circuit for three years until she decided the rigors of that life weren't for her, so she gave up touring and returned home. She cut a demo for a recording company. While waiting in Phoenix for the outcome of her demo session, she entered a beauty contest. In only one month's time she was Miss Phoenix, Miss Arizona, Miss USA, and was then on her way to London for the Miss USA, and was then on her way to London for the Miss World Pageant. When this whirlwind of activity was over, she headed for Hollywood to study acting. This Miss USA title proved to be more of a hindrance than a help at first, but soon the career she looked for started to take shape. She still studies acting, now with coach Laura Zucker, fitting classes into an increasingly busy calendar of occupational pursuits.

A steady stream of guest appearances (Hollywood Squares, Dinah!, The Carson Show) are integrated into Lynda's shooting schedule on Wonder Woman. Though the show is filmed relatively fast at Burbank Studios, it still takes a good deal of time -and exhausting time, at that. She does most of her own stunts and, when the camera is off, puts herself through a rigorous exercise program. Though others may have just cause to admire her figure, Lynda Carter is ever-so-critical. The first time she saw herself on-screen in the Wonder Woman skimpies, she was horrified and inmediatly went on a crash jogging program to plane down her hips. A semi-vegetarian, she is also an advocate of Pyramid Power, reincarnation, parapsychology, psychic energy and various and sundry higher wisdoms. Her press agent hand-out informs us that, in the past existences, she was an Aztec Indian, and English commoner, a Pioneer and the wife of a Pharaoh. Sure sounds like a super-heroine to me.

So there you have her: Lynda Carter, latest in the line of superhero personators, starring in one of the better comic-book-to-film transferences. Hopefully, Wonder Woman is but the first in a new wave of many.