WONDERLAND • The Ultimate Wonder Woman Site

	Trying to break out of her Wonder Woman image, Lynda Carter has to contend with indifferent critics and scathing directors

	To Lynda herself, the story of Lynda Carter in Hollywood is clear and happy. She's the young woman who obediently wore that silly Wonder Woman uniform for five, years to make her fortune, and then gambled her own money to prove she's a gifted singer, a talented actress and "a respected person in the business."

	There's no doubt that her Wonder Woman series was a dizzying financial success; her shows in Las Vegas and concert tours pull in big bucks, and her musical specials for CBS win enthusiastic notices and good ratings. Her first TV movie for CBS also did well, even though CBS didn't seem to mind letting her second one go to NBC.

	But Lynda Carter still hasn't brought Hollywood to its feet cheering. Her second musical special, despite those good reviews and an intense advertising campaign in the trade press,
failed to win her an Emmy nomination. Husband/manager Ron Samuels admits, "We were intensely disappointed."

It may be the old Hollywood custom of refusing to let anyone out of her stereotype-to some she'll still be a comic-book character when she's 60. But there's also a suspicion Lynda has thrown more than Wonder Woman's bracelets around in her rise from a sweet-faced, rather plump unknown to international celebrity. Some actors who worked in her TV-movies refuse to discuss her, which also goes for Lyle Waggoner, her co-star and frequent sparring partner on Wonder Woman. A representative of Waggoner says, "Lyle can't think of anything positive to say about her, so why say anything?"

None of which surprises Alan Shayne, president of Warner TV, who claims credit for discovering her. "It happens on almost every series. A little girl comes along who's so happy to be allowed on stage she can't believe it. But in a year people are asking her it she's getting enough money, if her dressing room is big enough.

"Then she becomes a star, but other people on the show aren't stars. The sparks fly. I wish it weren't that way, but it usually is."

With the Wonder Woman series finally coming to an end, Lynda and Samuels decided to change her image with a $200,000 Las Vegas crapshoot. That's the amount of their own money they spent to mount a lavish show at Caesars Palace, built around her singing and dancing. There was an impressive Hollywood turnout, with many in the audience obviously looking for laughs. Far bigger stars than she have made fools of themselves on Las Vegas stages.

Lynda believes a line in one of the newspaper accounts tells it all. "It said, 'Her room was filled with flowers but, to the critics' surprise, it wasn't a funeral'." Recounting it all in the living room of her new Malibu hideaway, she squashes out a cigarette, sits up straight and demands:

"Why should the critics be surprised? They hadn't seen me sing or dance. How could they decide in advance that I'd flop?" She recalls that a magazine was all set to display her on the cover. "Instead they put me on a back page. Why? Because I succeeded. They would have liked the story a lot better if they could have made fun of me."

Veteran Stan Harris directed the first TV special and admits, "I figured this would be a cover-up show. That's one where the director has to cover up the fact the star can't do anything. A lot of other people involved felt the same way, and I'm not sure Lynda herself was all that confident."

Conductor and arranger Johnny Harris (no relation to Stan) says, "It was a challenge to get the public to accept her, but they did. She's a natural musician with a wonderful ear. She can do it all: country, rock, ballads."

Lynda Carter could almost certainly have a long, solid career simply doing concerts and a few well-spaced musical specials, but she and Samuels always had headier ambitions-theatrical films, a monster album and a series of TV-movies to show this world she's a top-flight actress who thinks and cares.

No major theatrical-film offers have turned up, and she's still working on songs for the album, - but television movies have been easier, it only because almost any performer with proven drawing power gets them. But there's that image problem.

"They don't take me seriously. They keep bringing me fluff. After Wonder Woman, I could have just kept walking around with less and less on, but it wouldn't ham made any sense. Just flirtation and fluff, with a nice wardrobe and a little violence throw in. Why waste every one's time even if it gets a 50 share?"

Lynda's first TV-movie, "The Last Song," drew 37 per cant of the audience, but perhaps a lesser share of the critics. After that she and Samuels decided to be their own producers and money men. Their first effort is "Born to Be Sold" (scheduled for NBC, Nov. 2), in which she is a social worker alarmed about the black market in babies. She is determined to do more movies on such serious subjects as toxic shock, despite hints from the networks that they'd be happier with cleavage and legs and lots of smiles. "That attitude," she snaps, "makes me mad."

She is definitely not as much at home with a difficult line as with a challenging lyric. An actor recalls the director stopping the action at one point in a Carter movie and, addressing no one in particular but looking at his star proclaiming, "it would be so much better if we would listen to the other person before we start our own speech."

Not many actors have the nerve, much less the money,- to finance their own movies. Lynda says, "They try to scare you with all those fright stories. What if it rains for 40 days, what if everyone walks out on you ...?"

Of course, she and her husband are hardly babes in the Hollywood woods. Samuels is known for negotiating what are called "fabulous" deals for such clients as Jaclyn Smith and Lindsay Wagner. He says he raised Lynda's take on Wonder Woman from $3500 an episode in the first year to a cozy million a year by the fifth season.

Their beat Mends are not in show business but in sports, headed by her closest pal, Chris Evert Lloyd, and husband John. They have vacation homes within bicycle distance of each other in Palm Springs, Cal., where the two women have such exciting adventures as pedalling to the supermarket for the evening's groceries.

The Samuels ranch is an example of Lynda's desire to keep the world at a distance. It's at the end of a dirt road in a secluded area of the Santa Monica mountains, and a visitor bumping Wong the road and passing over a ridge-on what looks like the route to Pa Kettle's farm suddenly encounters an 18-acre Shangri-La of lush pastures, sweeping lawns, waterfall, tennis court corrals and a rambling house faced in native stone.

The Samuelses reputedly know how to handle money, and Ron insists its Lynda's doing. "I can make deals and Wing it in, but after that it gets boring." Says Lynda, "I enjoy the money stuff." Ron adds, matter-of-factly, that their joint income runs to $3 million a year.

Lynda Jean Carter ("My mother named me Linda because it's Spanish and she is Spanish and Mexican but I changed it in grade school") was belting out songs in night clubs for $25 a week when she was 15. But she says, "I wouldn't lot a daughter go on the road the way my mother let me." She is bitter about some of her early days. "Everyone tried to discourage me. They said I was too tall, too this, too that. It's easy to forget how hard it was. When I needed encouragement the most I never got it…

At 29 she is confident all the beg things are still ahead. She might do another series but not "if it's the kind where I have to carry it alone and work 12 to 14 hours a day." Will she ever completely shake the Wonder Women image? "Probably not it's in reruns every day all over the world." Lynda Carter looks around at her estate, smiles and adds, "I don't mind."