WONDERLAND • The Ultimate Wonder Woman Site

	Lynda Carter's voice is froggy. She alternately coughs and yawns through the last lap of a frenzied publicity tour-the windup of a carefully calculated blitz to make her the sleeper superstar of the '80s before most people realize she's hung her Wonder Woman suit in mothballs.

	The author of that master plan is her manager and husband of three years, Ron Samuels, who has on occasion been accused of being cast in the Roger Smith/John Derek mold-playing Svengali to a beautiful woman with talent but no direction.

	"I couldn't care less what other people think about the relationship," Carter says. "They can call him Svengali, they can call him whatever they want to-and they have. But Ron had his own career before I met him, and I had mineand we're much better together than we were apart."

	Which may be an understatement. Just recently, their collaboration resulted in her second variety special, as well as a dramatic telefilm (The Last Song), both Ron Samuels Productions for CBS, plus a record of the film's title song. Midmonth, she flew to London for a highly touted engagement at the Palladium, then to Florida to host the $100,000 Lynda Carter-Maybelline Tennis Classic.

	Though Carter sneers at the notion that she needs a Svengali, she admits to following what she considers her husband's better judgment. "I think there's a blessing when you defer to your husband's opinions. I can't think of anything worse than a henpecked husband or a wife who's domineering. But he doesn't put that pressure on me. There is very, very rarely a situation where he says 'absolutely not' about something."

	She met Samuels while she was doing Wonder Woman and he was managing the careers of Jaclyn Smith, Lindsay Wagner (still a client), and "a million others," in addition to being an independent producer. At first they agreed that it would get in the way of their relationship if he became involved In her career. "That lasted about two weeks," Carter recalls. "He couldn't take it. He said I was being handled horribly and he couldn't just sit and watch."

	Wonder of wonders, before the series wrapped, he'd lined up a record deal and a gig at Caesars Palace. Then came her first CBS special. A big part of his plan covered what she would not
accept"game shows and all kinds of endorsements, from hardware to mattresses."

When an offer came from Maybelline cosmetics, however, he felt it was right for her image. Now she participates in more than advertising and promotional campaigns. As Maybelline's Fashion and Beauty Director, a position that's "not just hype"; she actually tests prototypes of new products on herself and works with the company's chemists in Memphis.

The women's tennis classic was Samuels' brainchild. It sprang from their mutual love of the sport, and several top-ranked women players, including Chris Evert-Lloyd, entered partly because of personal friendship with Carter. Evert-Lloyd frequently visits their Beverly Hills home. So do many other athletes, since the couple's personal life runs more to fun-in-the-sun than Hollywood glitz. They swim, jog, play tennis ("Ron's very good and very competitive, but I just hit"), and Carter works out with weights. They also love to ride and are considering switching their permanent residence to an 18-acre ranch In Malibu.

The ranch, says Carter, was "the most rundown place you've ever seen." A massive renovation included Installation of a pool, tennis court and riding ring, and the landscaping of huge rolling lawns studded with 80 hundred-year-old oaks.

Carter also takes a firm lead in the couple's financial investments, which have bolstered their yearly income to the multimillion-dollar level. "I get most everything initiated and then he gets into it very deeply," she explains. Currently, they're developing and building industrial sites. She has an extremely canny business sense and speaks glibly of "investitures" and "leverage of funds."

She's somewhat less glib, although emphatic, on the subject of the religion that has become intrinsic to their lives. "It's hard to describe without sounding really boring. The last thing you would think of me doing is going to prayer meetings, but it's just something that turns your life around."

Carter was introduced to bornagain Christianity by her devout older sister at a time when, she says, "I had everything- Wonder Woman, a record contract, I was going to appear in Las Vegas, I had a wonderful husband, a beautiful home, lots of money, I was on the covers of magazines. And none of these things could fill the void that only the Lord could fill. I went home to Phoenix over Christmas, my sister and I prayed together, and I asked Him to come into my life."

Samuels adapted his own version of her new-found faith: he is a "believing Jew." Says Carter: "He believes in Jesus and accepts Him as the Son of God."

Currently, they're directing their efforts toward developing another TV movie, The Baby Brokers, for NBC, and a comedy-western feature film, Rose and Violet, which she describes as "a female Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

Of all the mediums she works in, Carter loves live performance best. "If you could close your eyes and Imagine what it's like to be on stage in front of thousands of people, with lights and great costumes and a big band behind you, and you're singing and dancing...

Her enthusiasm wasn't dampened by a near-disastrous incident while performing at a Texas convention. Carter, who doesn't wear her contacts when performing or acting"I don't want to be distracted by people leaving to go to the bathroom"-had completed her last number to a standing ovation and headed downstage to take her bows. "And I just walked right off the edge. I mean, I didn't slip-I walked.

Luckily, since everyone was standing, she was caught by a forest of outstretched arms and propped back up on the stage. "It's a good thing I didn't give a bad performance or they would have been sitting and I would have been flat on my face."

With Samuels' strategic propping, she probably won't come that close to falling on her face again.