Date and Issue: Number 106, November 1, 1986.

Pages: 13 pages.

Pictures: 6 b&w pictures of which two are full-page size.

Article: 13 pages in total of which there's a 3-page article on the Wonder Woman series, a 3-and-a-half-page interview to Lyle Waggoner and a 3-page interview to Stanley Ralph Ross.

Author: Andy Mangels.

Country: USA.

	Comics' premiere superheroine burst onto America's TV screens on March 12, 1974. Well, she didn't actually "burst." Wonder Woman the movie was a cinematic dog that starred Cathy Lee Crosby as the blonde mini-skirted heroine and sort of slithered onto the screen. This dastardly-and decidedly sexist-waste of film featured the Amazing Amazon versus Ricardo Montalban, villainous leader of an international spy ring. Wonder Woman sported a new costume which seemed to be comprised of a jogging top by Nike, a skirt by Tres Unchic, and a tiara by Invisible Fashions Unlimited. Thank heaven she wasn't in hip boots.
	Wonder Woman battled her way past twin spies who knew her secret identity (as did everyone in this film), escaped from melting multicolored Silly Putty, followed a donkey around for a while, battled a rogue Amazon, and finally captured Montalban, who was escaping his hideout via rubber raft. Virtually no stunts or special effects were used, and Cathy Lee Crosby as Wonder Woman was never seen again.
	Nevertheless, ABC decided that it was still interested in the property and, perhaps spurred on by the success of Police Woman and Bionic Woman, ordered up a new Wonder Woman movie in November of 1975. This film's script, meticulously researched by writer Stanley Ralph Ross, was probably the perfect treatment for Wonder Woman. Set during World War II, the movie featured Steve Trevor (as played by Lyle Waggoner), General Blankenship, Queen Hippolyta, and Nazis galore. And the role of Wonder Woman went to newcomer Lynda Carter.
	The six-foot-tall brunette seemed born for the role. She was tall, shapely, beautiful, and looked right in the star-spangled costume, which was taken directly from the comics, with the exception of a red-white-and-blue cape she wore for special occasions. Carter had been a singer, dancer, variety show performer, and former Miss World USA before landing the role. She had no other film experience before being cast (though she appeared shortly in Bobby Jo and the Outlaw, in which she uncovered more than her .38 specials).
	The New, Original Wonder Woman, as it was called, was an instant success. High ratings told ABC that they were on the right track. The writers were trying to keep the flavor of the 1940s comics as WW met Baroness Paula von Gunther and Fausta, Nazi

spies were always on the loose, and Steve Trevor was always captured.

Wonder Woman had a sense of realism to its super-human stunts, which were quite good for a television show. Wonder Woman deflected bullets with her bracelets, hurled her tiara like a boomerang, and used her magic lasso to rope villains and force them to tell the truth. Perhaps the most spectacular stuntwork involved the "wonder-jumps," performed mainly by stuntwoman Jeannie Epper. Wonder Woman jumped over tanks, buildings, and other assorted obstacles with the greatest of ease. The only effect that didn't quite work was the invisible plane, which looked plastic and silly. However, Wonder Woman's transformation to and from Diana Prince was convincing: in a burst of light, she would spin around, as portions of her costume would be replaced by her civilian clothing.

WATCH OUT, AXIS, HERE SHE COMES

Another special in October of 1976 convinced ABC to schedule Wonder Woman as a regular series, which began in November with a two-part episode called "The Feminum Mystique:" A young new starlet named Debra Winger played the part of Drusilla, Wonder Woman's younger sister, a.k.a. Wonder Girl (clad in a costume remarkably like that of her comic-book counterpart). In this episode, Wonder Girl was kidnapped by Nazis who forced her to reveal the secret location of Paradise Island. There they planned to steal enough Feminum, the metal with which Wonder Woman's invulnerable bracelets were made, to construct bulletproof tanks. Of course, Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl saved the day in the midst of a spectacular Amazon vs. Nazi fight on Paradise Island.

Over the next three episodes, Wonder Woman fought the giant ape Gargantua, a deadly Irish mercenary, and a Nazi named Wotan (no relation to DC's sorceror of the same name). Then, in homage to The Day the Earth Stood Still, Wonder Woman met Andros, a judgmental emissary from another planet who was prepared to destroy Earth rather than let its warlike ways spread throughout the galaxy. This two-parter ended with Andros sparing Earth because of his growing affection for the Amazing Amazon.

Two more episodes had Wonder Woman fighting more enemy agents alongside Steve Trevor and enemy cattle rustlers alongside the Army. The last show of the season featured the return of Wonder Girl and Queen Hippolyta (Cloris Leachman), as Wonder Woman went to Hollywood to stop more Nazis, Unfortunately, this was to be Wonder Woman's last wartime screen adventure. The show's producer (Warner Brothers) had grown tired of ABC's on-again, off-again scheduling of the show, and rival network CBS picked it up.

The ABC shows were charming, witty, exciting, and much truer to Wonder Woman's comic book origins. There had been super-villains, Nazis, Amazons, and even Wonder Girl. The light humor of the show came forth from the actors and the situations as much as the scripts. Then everything changed.

CBS: CONTRIVED, BLAND, AND SILLY

When CBS added the series to its Fall, 1977 lineup, they picked an even longer name for the program: The New Adventures of Wonder Woman. They also updated everything. Set in the present, the premiere episode showed young Steve Trevor, Jr., crash-landing near Paradise Island, to which Wonder Woman had retired almost 30 years prior. Shocked to see Steve, Jr. (also played by Lyle Waggoner), Princess Diana once again fell in love and went once more to Man's World. There she flew an updated plane, wore an updated costume (skimpier, with a different star-pattern on the shorts and a different chest-eagle and bracelets), and sported an updated hairdo. She eventually got two additional skin-tight spandex costumes-one for riding a motorcycle and one for swimming. Both were all-blue and star-studded, and she wore either boots or flippers depending on the situation. The new Diana Prince worked alongside Steve at the Inter-Agency Defense Command (IADC), an intelligence network linked with the White House. She would often go on specialized missions alone, leaving Steve in Washington with the computers.

Some of the episodes were good and up to the level of the ABC shows, but most of them seemed silly, bland, and contrived. Their humor and charm seemed badly forced. Interestingly enough, the first three episodes harkened back to the 1940s adventures as Wonder Woman faced a cloned Hitler in South America, a revenge-torn Japanese veteran, and a crisis in the Bermuda Triangle. (The Japanese veteran episode involved a man who was obsessed with Wonder Woman. His house was full of WW memorabilia and upon finding it, Wonder Woman unearthed several DC comic books, a giant coloring book, and a Mego Wonder Woman doll.)

Wonder Woman stumbled around fighting different villains for the next five episodes. Among them was Carolyn (Jayne Kennedy), a black Amazonian Wonder Woman counterpart. Eventually, Andros returned from space, looking younger (and like a different actor) and ready to help Wonder Woman rid the world of the mind-stealing Skrills and their pet (who looked suspiciously like Darth Vader). Lynda Carter got to play Wonder Woman as a villainess in the next episode as a dastardly toymaker created an evil, life-size Wonder Woman robot. He used it to steal top-secret plans (which is not exactly what I would do with a life-size Wonder Woman replica... ).

There were seven more episodes to endure before Wonder Woman would have another interesting show. She teamed up with Rick Springfield, fought Count Cagliostro, and saved the IADC's semi-sentient computer, IRAC, before she found herself genuinely threatened by the "Seance of Terror." This episode featured a confrontation between Wonder Woman and a young psychic boy who discovered her identity. A haunting wall of psychic flames in which Wonder Woman must deal with different facets of her personality made this one of the better episodes.

Nine shows later (and well into the second year of The New Adventures of Wonder Woman), Wonder Woman met a legitimate super-villainess. After fighting off Leif Garrett, Wolfman Jack, and a psychic disco vampire, Diana was truly challenged by Formicida (played by popular mime Laureen Yarnell), who had the proportionate strength of an ant and the ability to control insects.

The program lasted 14 more episodes, for a grand total of 57, before being put on "temporary hiatus." Of special interest to science-fiction fans was the "Starships Are Coming" episode, which guest-starred Robby the Robot and was partially filmed at the 1979 Worldcon. Lynda Carter even got to show off her singing talents in one of the later episodes shortly before her first album, Portrait, was released.

WHAT HAPPENED IN MAN'S WORLD?

Despite its ratings and a deluge of fan mail, CBS never took The New Adventures of Wonder Woman off hiatus. Lyle Waggoner went into semi-retirement and now owns his own company. Lynda Carter got divorced, got religion, got a series, got it cancelled, got married again, and got the spokeswoman job for Maybelline make-up. She also did a few made-for-TV movies and a lot of Circus of the Stars shows, as well as three of her own variety specials. Though, not having had any successful shows since Wonder Woman, Lynda Carter still divorces herself from the role completely and refuses to be interviewed about the show.

Meanwhile, Wonder Woman, though 11 years old, survives well in syndication. With the new interest in her comic book, perhaps more fans will encourage their local TV stations to carry it.

Despite some disparaging comments, this writer still loves the Wonder Woman TV show. It was very enjoyable, featured nice special effects, and showcased Lynda Carter-who was Wonder Woman. With the possible exception of The Adventures of Superman, no television show was ever truer to its roots. You're a wonder, Wonder Woman. Hola!

	Lyle Waggoner has been performing for over twenty years. He was the "handsome announcer" on The Carol Burnett Show from 1966 to 1973, then went to Wonder Woman for its three Years. He's a familiar face on Love Boat, Happy Days, and Fantasy Island reruns, as well as many other shows.
	Waggoner's role in the Wonder Woman series is under discussion here, though, as we find out what made Steve Trevor and Steve Trevor, Junior, tick. Lyle had the odd job of portraying his own son when Wonder Woman switched networks and time periods. He had to not only play straight man to an Amazon super-heroine, but he had to do so while still looking heroic himself.
	Waggoner was a truly entertaining interviewee, and kept both of us laughing more than was recorded here. I enjoyed the time I had to talk with him. Thanks go out to both Mark Evanier and Stanley Ralph Ross for helping me gets in touch with him. Thanks again go to Chris DeMayo for some last-second help with the interview.
	And thanks go to Waggoner for creating a role for which he shall always be remembered among comics fandom: Steve Trevor.
	-Andy Mangels
	AMAZING HEROES: How did you first get involved with Wonder Woman?
	WAGGONER: Well, Stanley Ralph Ross called me and said, "Hey, I'm writing a pilot for you. I have a character and I'm thinking of you as I'm writing it." I said, "That's wonderful. I think of you a lot too." No, really, he told me it was Wonder Woman and the part was Steve Trevor. Well, I had read Wonder Woman when I was a kid and I didn't look anything like Steve Trevor. He was blond. He said, "No problem. We can change that easily enough." I thought it was terrific. I had just gotten off The Carol Burnett Show and was excited about the prospect of doing another series. They accepted me as Steve Trevor, and then they had to look for a Wonder Woman. They asked me to audition some of the actresses they were considering in their final auditions. I thought that would be thrilling So I auditioned five girls, one of which was Lynda Carter. They were all different looking girls. It was amazing, the girls that they had considered. I can't remember her name now, but it finally came down to Lynda and another girl. I thought Lynda looked like Wonder Woman. She has the same hair and skin coloring and body and everything. The other girl was a far more experienced actress but didn't look anything like Wonder Woman. She had red hair, she wasn't terribly attractive, and she was lean. They asked my opinion, and I told them Lynda was my choice because she looks like Wonder Woman. Lynda was kind of athletic, she was a dancer, but she had no experience at all. I guess you really didn't need experience playing Wonder Woman. We had good directors, and she was a very willing student.
	AH: You mentioned you had read the comic books. Were you a comics fan?
	WAGGONER: Well, I wouldn't say a "fan." When I was a kid, that's all we had was comic books. We didn't have a television. We had comic books and radio. So, we had a lot of them; Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, and all those super-

heroes. My gosh, I had thousands of them. I enjoyed them though.

AH: Did you ever dream that one day you might be portraying a character in a comic book?

WAGGONER: No, no. Never in my wildest dreams. That's why I was so thrilled when Stan called in about the pilot. It's interesting to see what kind of image you project in this industry. When he started writing Steve Trevor, he thought of me. Why, I have no idea. I got the image, I guess, from Carol Burnett, who announced me as the "handsome announcer" whether I was handsome or not. I son of got that "handsome" image, which I guess is not a bad image to have. It's kept me out of a lot of parts, but I've gotten a lot of parts because of it. I've had a lot of fun with it because I never took it as a fact. When Stan was looking for Steve Trevor, he had to be handsome and dashing, and I guess that was where he got me from.

AH: What did and didn't you like about your role?

WAGGONER: I liked it when they had it in the '40s, the period shows. When they went to the '70s, I thought it lost all of its charm and all of its humor. I really didn't care for that transition. As you know, I played my own father, which I thought was a little weird. If the audience would buy that, they'll buy anything [Laughter]. I could identify the period shows with the comic book more because, in the modern shows, [Wonder Woman] was a gorgeous model. She wasn't Diana Prince; her only disguise was a pair of glasses. I was supposed to be surprised and not recognize her when she put on her glasses. It was ridiculous. It was really hard to deal with. When she was Diana Prince in the '40s, she had a dowdy naval uniform on, her hair was in a bun, and she had these awful horn glasses on. You might possibly believe that I wouldn't recognize her. In the '70s she had her hair fabulously done, designer clothes, and designer glasses, and when she turned into Wonder Woman she still had her hair fabulously done, and her wonderful Wonder Woman costume. She'd just take off her glasses, and I'd have to say "Who are you?" That was hard to deal with, but they were still sending me my checks, so I said, "Fine, I don't recognize you."

AH: What were some of your favorite shows?

WAGGONER: I can't remember any of the specific shows, but I was a great fan of the special effects: the explosions and falls and stunts and tanks. I get a big kick out of watching the reruns. Those are fun. I always kind of hung around to watch the special effects and stunts. The stunt people are amazing. They're crazy. You couldn't pay me enough to do what they do. I watched a lot of those stuntgirls get badly hurt doing the jumps and falls. There's a lot of stories about the stuntwomen on Wonder Woman.

AH: What a cue! Go ahead and tell me some.

WAGGONER: This is sort of hard to tell, but to have Wonder Woman jump in the air, they used a teeterboard, which -is a board like a seesaw. One person jumps on one side of the board and fires the other person up in the air. One day, they spent hours with this teeter-board, lining up the landing pad to get it exactly right so that the stuntwoman would land safely on the pad. Finally, when it came time to shoot it, they had it all lined up; the distance was correct, the weight of the jumper was correct for the weight needed to hurl the stuntwoman. So, they said "Roll 'em! Action!" The guy jumps on the teeter-board and fires this stuntgirl right up into a tree branch. They hadn't even considered it. They'd figured out the distance and everything, but they didn't figure out how high she was going to go. So they fired her up right into this limb and, of course, that stopped her dead. She fell straight down onto the grass. She didn't get hurt, but she almost knocked herself out. It was hysterical. [Laughter]

AH: Did you or Lynda ever do any of your own stunts?

WAGGONER: Oh, no. Fight scenes and stuff like that, they always had stunt people do that. We would throw the first punch and step out, and then the stunt people would come in and fight like crazy. We'd get hit or throw the last punch. Usually I got hit and would fall down and hit my head on a rubber rock and go unconscious. I was really good at being unconscious. I think that was half my job. I always acquainted it to Superman, except she was Superman and I was Lois Lane.

AH: Did you ever feel odd playing the helpless one of the duo?

WAGGONER: Well, I never considered myself helpless. I was always the hero. I was the one who attacked all these gangsters and criminals and everything and then just got the heck beat out of me. I figured that I was really macho and I could handle these guys. I wasn't helpless, I was just kind of stupid.

AH: [Laughter] Okay, do you ever feel weird being the stupid one of the duo? Did you ever wish for a role where you'd win for once?

WAGGONER: No, I knew we'd always win in the end, but my job was to... let's see, what was my job? I forgot. What's the question? Jeez, I feel stupid being stupid. I always thought of the show as a comedy and tried to put a lot of humor in it. When Steve was really serious, saying, "I can take on all those guys at once. Don't worry about me:" that's comedy. That's humorous. That's stupid. I figured that was kind of the charm of the show, so that's how I played it.

AH: Do you think the theme of the show was too much- comedy? Too much spoof?

WAGGONER: I think when it got into the '70s it was unbelievable. When we were in the period shows we could get away with a lot more. When the producers updated it, they tried to make it into Police Woman, and it lost a lot of its charm. I think that's why it died. It was charming and fantasy-like in the '40s, which made it fun to watch. It was more of a cartoon when it went to the '70s. They tried to make it too realistic and it didn't work.

AH: Any anecdotes from the shows?

WAGGONER: I don't remember much now. I would do a lot of crazy things during rehearsals just to keep my sanity. One day, I did a whole entire scene with my tooth blacked out. I knew it was a serious scene, and I wouldn't be smiling, so they wouldn't see my tooth. I did the entire dialogue, in a close-up. At the end of the scene, right before they said "Cut," I flashed a big smile at the camera. They edited it out, of course. I used to sit behind my desktop do a serious scene with Lynda, and, at the end of it, I'd fall out of my chair or something like that. If I'd known they were going to have shows like Bloopers ... boy, we'd have given them some great stuff. I used to plan-because I had so few lines toward the end of the series-I used to plan silly things to do at the end of a scene. Everyone would look forward to it. That's how I'd get my kicks.

AH: Okay-your co-stars. How was working with Lynda?

WAGGONER: She's a very attractive girl. It was fun to watch her in costume.

AH: Was she easy to work with?

WAGGONER: Easy? Well, she never gave me any trouble.

AH: Do you think she made a good Wonder Woman?

WAGGONER: She looked more like Wonder Woman than any other human I have ever seen. That's why I said she should be the one. She still looks terrific. I saw her about a month ago. It was the first time in five or six years. She came out and gave me a big hug. She's still got the biggest boobs in Hollywood.

AH: Anything ever happen with her costume?

WAGGONER: No. She never fell out of it. One gal did. Jeannie Epper. She did all the Wonder Woman fights and stunts. She was quite a gal, and very well endowed... she's been blessed by the chest fairy! They had to roll down a hill one time, as she was fighting a villainess. They had her roll, and roll, and roll. Boy, her whole top kept coming down to her waist. [Laughter]

AH: They never had Lynda do anything like that?

WAGGONER: No. Are you kidding? Don't want to mess up the star.

AH: How did they do the spinning striptease transformation?

WAGGONER: They isolated a camera so that it was totally still. Then they'd have her stand in front of it and start the spin. She'd spin around about three times, and then step out and change into her Wonder Woman costume. She'd come back, step into exactly the same place, and spin again. Then they'd go into the editing room and edit it all together. They'd blend her from her clothes to a flash of light to her uniform with optics and effects. The light would go away and suddenly she'd be in costume.

AH: What about the bullets and bracelets?

WAGGONER: Well, the bracelets were interesting because they had little firecrackers in them. In her hand she would hold a tiny grip that had buttons on it, and when she pushed the button it would set off the firecrackers. So when she threw her wrist up, she'd push the button for one bracelet, and then put the other bracelet up for two more flashes. That was clever.

AH: Did you ever have to do any dangerous things? Especially in the World War II scenes, with all the explosions going off?

WAGGONER: In the pilot, I was a pilot. I remember my plane had gotten shot down, and I was descending in a parachute. The villain had shot me, and he was coming down, too. We bad been in a dogfight. Eric Brayden shot me with a .45, and it hit my parachute strap. They had to fire off a charge hidden in the strap. Boy, I had no idea how loud those things were. I'd never had a charge planted on me in all my career. From that time on, I was ready for the power of special effects. There was another scene where I was walking across the front of a store and the front two windows blew out. It was done with compressed air. That was shocking, too. I had no idea the power of those compressed air tanks. Nothing ever dangerous, no. We were safe. They took care of that.

AH: Another guest star was Debra Winger, who played Wonder Girl. What was she like?

WAGGONER: She was young. She played a 15-year-old and she looked 15 with her hair all pulled up. She was kind of an average-looking teenager, but she did have a kind of nice job as Wonder Woman's little sister. They had some cute things for her to do, like trying to spin around. After the first two shows were aired, there was a lot of mail. The audience liked her, so they had her come back to do a second set of shows. They got even more mail and thought it was great, and maybe they could do a spin-off with her. A third script was written for her, but due to politics, it was never done. So Debra Winger went on to become a movie star. They had a black Wonder Woman once, played by Jayne Kennedy. There was a possibility of a spin-off series from that, but she never came back to the show. Debra was terrific. She was a lot of fun, innocent, naive, and real cute. She was a lot of fun to be around. Then there was Shields and Yarnell, the pantomime artists. They were really popular at that time, so they had them guest on Wonder Woman. Laureen Yarnell, who was a dancer, played a spider-woman. She had the best legs of any human being I've ever seen in my life. Classic legs. They put her in this spider-woman costume and she was incredible. Before the costume made it to the screen, though, she was covered up quite a bit more. Laureen never came back either.

AH: Your oddest guest-star was the little robot you had to work with in the '70s shows.

WAGGONER: Oh, I forgot all about him. What was his name? Robbie?

AH: No. Robbie was the big one that guest-starred in the science fiction show.

WAGGONER: Well, anyway, he was a riot.

AH: There was IRAC the computer and the little mail carrier. So tell me about working with two computers.

WAGGONER: There's not much to tell. In fact, that's about all I got to work with at the end of the series. But that little-bitty thing on wheels who'd scoot across the floor ... they had him on a string, a little piece of filament, and they'd pull the string and he's go shooting across the floor. One time they pulled the string and he ran across the floor, but the door wasn't set up right. He was supposed to get out in a hurry. He went flying across, and hit the edge of the door, and just destroyed himself. We had to shut down for an hour or two so they could make another one. But he just went right to the edge of the door, and knocked himself to pieces. It was hysterical!

AH: What are you doing now?

WAGGONER: Not much acting. One thing Wonder Woman did for me was to start me in a new business. I started a company called Starwagons, and I rent equipment to the studios. I rent luxury motor homes and dressing rooms and trailers. It gives me much more free time, and I'm really enjoying it. I'm doing a pilot this year. We'll see if it sells. If it doesn't, I really couldn't care.

AH: Do you ever want to do a super-hero show again?

WAGGONER: I don't think I'll ever do another series, or at least a single-camera show, again. Maybe a three-camera situation comedy. I've lost my desire. When you've lost your desire, you usually don't work too much anymore.

	Stanley Ralph Ross has probably the deepest voice I've ever heard. That's the first thing I noticed as I spoke to him. It also seemed to be a very familiar voice, although if wasn't until the end of the interview that I found out why.
	Ross has been one of the most celebrated TV super-hero writers in the business. He wrote 27 out of 120 of the Batman shows, more than another writer. He has done cartoon voices for years, made thousands of commercials, written hundreds of TV shows, been in countless TV roles, and still manages to run a publishing company. And he wrote the first Wonder Woman movie starring Lynda Carter.
	As I talked with him about the 11-year-old show, I found a surprising candor in his responses. Wonder Woman was just one of many shows he's done, but it seemed to hold a Special place in his memory.
	I'd like to thank Mark Evanier again for helping me get in touch with Ross ("Just tell him I told him to tell you everything you want to know "). Thanks also go to Ross for trying to get Lynda Carter to consent to an interview even though she declined.
	-Andy Mangels
	AMAZING HEROES: How did you first get involved with Wonder Woman?
	STANLEY RALPH ROSS: Well, I first got involved with Wonder Woman as a kid, reading the comic book, like everybody else. Professionally, what happened was that after writing for Batman, I became more or less known as a person who knew how to write adaptation of comic books for television. Bill Dozier asked me to rewrite the halfhour Wonder Woman comedy attempt that had been written by Stan Hart and Larry Siegal. So I rewrote the script, and we got a go-ahead to make a 15-minute presentation film which was a totally different idea that what eventually hit the screen. The studio executive at the time, Douglas Cramer, did not like the idea of Wonder Woman and he put an end to it. So, I forgot about it, and a couple of years later, Doug Cramer was in his own business, and suddenly he wanted to do Wonder Woman again. Before Doug got his idea, Warner Brothers called me up and said, "We have an idea for this Wonder Woman thing which we want to do with Cathy Lee Crosby."  I said, "Well, Cathy Lee Crosby is a very nice lady, but she's blond and Wonder Woman has dark  hair." Now these guys had no idea what I was talking about. They said, "What's the difference?", and I said, "It's like making Superman a redhead!"

They told me they'd already signed Cathy Lee Crosby, so I told them I wasn't interested. I was busy with other stuff at the time, anyhow. So they made another Wonder Woman film that John D.F. Black wrote and produced that was a modern-day thing with Ricardo Montalban as the villain. It was really, universally damned by the critics, although they did get some sort of rating. They attributed the rating to the title, so they came back to me and said, "All right, how would you handle it?" I had made two or three pages of random notes as to how I would handle it, and I walked in with my notes to Doug Cramer, the very man who had turned it down before. He was now assigned to this, and he took my notes and said he'd let me know. Evidently, though I'm not sure of this, I think he xeroxed my notes and sent them over to the late Steve Gentry, who was running ABC at the time. Steve must have liked the notes because within a couple of hours I got a call to go write a story. So I wrote a story over the weekend which became the pilot for the new Wonder Woman series.

AH: Going back for a moment, what was the original half-hour pilot like?

ROSS: It was a pilot where Wonder Woman was actually played by two different people. She was played by an ugly woman as Diana Prince, and when she turned into Wonder Woman, it was a complete metamorphosis, almost a Jekyll-and-Hyde type thing. It was strictly, absolute, complete comedy. It was sort of like Captain Nice and Mr. Terrific were.

AH: Were there any actors or actresses chosen for that that we'd know?

ROSS: Not that I can recall. It was directed by Leslie Martinson, who had directed some of the Batmans.

AH: Why was your pilot called The New, Original Wonder Woman?

ROSS: Because the other one was called just plain Wonder Woman. They had to change the name from that of the Cathy Lee Crosby one for both the public and the residual people.

AH: Your pilot, as I remember it, was very faithful to the comic book origin. Did you do a lot of research?

ROSS: Sure I did. I went right back to her comic origin. I adapted it essentially from that first strip, while adding my own bits in. What you might find interesting is that my original script was much funnier than the one that went on the air, but Cramer wanted it to be "punched down." He felt that it was too funny, so I had to cut some jokes. Those jokes were what got the director, Leonard Horn, to do it in the first place. He was disappointed, and so we told the actors what happened, and told them if they wanted to infuse some of the fun of the first one into the second one, it was fine with us.

AH: Was there any thought about updating the pilot, or was it always going to be set in World War II?

ROSS: Well, I wanted it in World War II and insisted on it. They later updated the series to modern-day, and I was totally against that.

AH: Were you involved in the casting of the original pilot at all?

ROSS: Yes. As a matter of fact, in the case of Lyle Waggoner, I had run into Lyle in the parking lot of CBS. He had just left The Carol Burnett Show, and he was telling me that he didn't have any work. It was like the next day that I got the Wonder Woman assignment, and I wrote into the script, "Colonel Trevor, a Lyle Waggoner-type." Then I wrote in, "better yet, get Lyle Waggoner." I couldn't be more specific than that. I was also involved in the casting of Kenny Mars as the Nazi. Of course, Kenny plays Nazis better than anybody. The same with Henry Gibson, who played his associate. As far as casting Lynda Carter, a lot of women were tested, and Lynda had that nice, fresh look about her. Lynda came out of a variety show background. We finally decided on her for several reasons. I think some of the more "name" actresses were probably too much money. They didn't want to spend much money on this.

AH: What "name" actresses were up for the role?

ROSS: I don't remember them all. I think Joanna Cassidy was.

AH: Not Joan Collins?

ROSS: No way. Not Joan Collins. She's too small, I would have been against that for a number of reasons. Joan had appeared in a Batman episode I wrote, where she played a character called The Siren. I really don't think much of Joan Collins as an actress.

AH: What did you think of Lynda Carter the first time you saw her, and then again the first time you knew she was going to be Wonder Woman?

ROSS: The first time I saw her was on screen and I liked her. The first time I met her in the flesh was more interesting. I went over to her apartment to talk to her about the role. Lynda looks quite different without the make-up on-she has bad eyes and such. So this girl comes to the door, a sort of plain-looking girl with big, thick glasses on. I said, "Lynda?" She said, "Stanley, I don't look like this at all," and she showed me an 8x10 glossy of herself.

AH: How closely were you involved in the making of the pilot?

ROSS: As closely as any writer is. I went out to some of the sets, and I was at the shooting of the Amazon Olympics segment. We shot that out at the Arboretym at Santa Anita, which is a place where they've got a lot of foliage and no overhead wires. So it doubled as Paradise Island. I wasn't involved in the filming of it a lot. I gave them my suggestions, but as a writer, once you turn in a script, you usually can't get anyone on the phone, until such time as you finish the script, they'll do anything for you, but once that's over, they're not interested in you.

AH: Whose idea was the spinning striptease transformation of Diana Prince into Wonder Woman?

ROSS: I believe that was mine. I wanted a transformation using stop motion.

AH: How was that done?

ROSS: At first they tried putting her on an actual spinning platform, but that didn't work and she got dizzy. I don't remember how it was finally done.

AH: Not to sound tacky, but Lynda costume was very well done but had no visible means of support. How did they keep it up?

ROSS: Oh, that was easy. It was the original bra design by Howard Hughes. They just cinched it in really tightly. It's basically a hardboned corset-type of thing.

AH: You got great reviews for the pilot, didn't you?

ROSS: Well, Leonard Maltin didn't give us a good review in his book , but he never actually watches the shows. I asked him if he saw it and he hadn't, so he gave it an "average" review without even seeing it. I did get some good reviews, though.

AH: I know Judith Crist gave it a great review. How were the ratings on the pilot?

ROSS: Excellent. They were just great. It wasn't made as a pilot though, I should clarify. It was made as a 90-minute TV movie, but I knew it would be a series. It just smelled like series. And here it was a series from ABC that got cancelled and then went to CBS, where it had a better afterlife than it had had on ABC. At the time the Wonder Woman [movie] was shooting, I had two pilots shooting and had been doing some commercials. That's why I wasn't on the set too much.

AH: How long was the shooting schedule for Wonder Woman?

ROSS: 17 days.

AH: Wow! Short time. You mentioned earlier, that the comedy was really prevalent in the first script. Do you think at any time it was too much of a spoof or too campy?

ROSS: I thought it could have used more comedy.

AH: Is that because of your association with Batman?

ROSS: No, no. It was a different type of comedy.

AH: On a different topic, did you have anything to do with the Wonder Girl character played by Debra Winger later in the series?

ROSS: No. Debra came up to me at Nate and Al's delicatessen and introduced herself to me. She was very sweet, and she said, "Thank you so much for putting me in the show." I had to tell her that, honestly, I didn't, because I didn't have a lot to do with any of the other shows.

AH: What kind of person was Lynda Carter to work with?

ROSS: Well, put it this way. I'm about to create another series for her, so I must have liked her. She was easy to work with then, and she seems sweet now. She just won a hispanic award called Nosotros [The Golden Eagle Awards] for Woman of the Year.

AH: At that time, she was really happy with the role and wanted to continue with it for...

ROSS: Well, she doesn't want to do it anymore. In fact, she doesn't even like her name to be associated with it. I think she's smart, because people who do costumed roles often wind up being so identified with them. She managed to break away. Poor Adam West and Burt Ward. They'll be Batman and Robin forever. Of course, there's George Reeves, who eventually killed himself because no one took him seriously as an actor after Superman.

AH: Why do you think she was so happy with it then, but now she wants to disavow it?

ROSS: Then, she was 24 or 26 years old and making a lot of money!

AH: That's true. So what kind of person is Lyle Waggoner?

ROSS: Lyle was very much like the character you see on screen. He's sort of charming and engaging and a nice guy.

AH: What was the Wonder Woman set like, the people making the show, the feel as a whole?

ROSS: Happy. It was a happy set.

AH: Why didn't you stay on Wonder Woman as a writer?

ROSS: Well, they were frightened of me. I'm fairly powerful, and I have my own thoughts, and they would just as soon send me my royalty check and say goodbye. Cramer especially was frightened of me. They kept me away from even making a cameo appearance, even though I'm an actor, because they knew I had an influence on Lynda, and they didn't want me around.

AH: Where is the main Wonder Woman cast now? Lynda, Lyle, some of the others?

ROSS: I don't know what Lyle is doing now. Lynda is continuing to make her TV movies. She lives in Washington, D.C. and is married to an attorney named Robert Altman. She wants to make shows in Washington.

AH: What are you doing now?

ROSS: I am busily overseeing an encyclopedia called "The Motion Picture Guide," which is 51,000 movies reviewed and analyzed. It's a 12-volume set which will be updated every year. Every movie ever released will be in it. This will be from Cinebooks later this year. I'm about to direct my first motion picture, called "A Marriage of Convenience," and I've been doing a lot of acting, commercials, and cartoon voices.

AH: Cartoon voices? Anything we might know you as?

ROSS: Sure. I'm Dark Paw on Paw Paws, Redlin on the Inhumanoids, Grodd the Gorilla and Brainiac on Super Friends/Super Powers, and Snakebite on Rambo. I've also done Plastic Man, Richie Rich, and lots of other shows.

AH: Do you ever see yourself working on another super-hero TV show or movie again?

ROSS: I might. If there is another super-hero show, I'd love to do it, but I don't like working in television much these days.

AH: Besides Wonder Woman and Batman, were there any other superhero shows you worked on?

ROSS: Not unless you'd consider The Man From Uncle a super-hero.

AH: Do you think that Hollywood is dead to the idea of super-hero TV shows and movies?

ROSS: Yes, until somebody comes up with one that's a success. They're doing one now called Sledge Hammer, which is not a super-hero show, but it's sort of campy. It's being executively produced by the associate producer of Batman. I don't see any screen future for Wonder Woman anytime soon.

AH: Until there is, I guess there's always syndication.

© 1986 by Andy Mangels / Fantagraphics Books, Inc.

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