WONDERLAND • The Ultimate Wonder Woman Site

	BREATHTAKINGLY-beautiful Lynda Carter was ecstatic -and it had nothing to do with Nielsen ratings or the fact that Wonder Woman has won a weekly TV berth.

	"I just didn't think that anything this fabulous could ever happen to me. I love being married. I love being in love. It's a whole part of life I didn't even know existed. I could give you a sophisticated Hollywood type conversation, but the fact is I am so filled with joy. Life is so short and I just didn't realize what I was missing. Ron is a man who stands beside me, stands in front of me, stands behind me; and I do the same for him. I've never before experienced that. My work has been the most important thing in my life. It is still just as important. But Ron is more important than anything. It's as if I had grown a new dimension and he is that dimension."

	THIS from a girl who has been such a trouper, a loner, so independent, so sure she was with-it and happy, earning her own way since she was a 15-year-old student at Arcadia Titan High School, Scottsdale, singing and acting in all the school plays and singing four or five nights a week at the college hangout, the Pizza Inn. Singing was just something Lynda Carter did. And, after high school, she just naturally went, on the road, debuting at the Sahara Las Vegas at 17.

	"If I were a parent and my baby daughter was leaving to sing all over the country, I'd say absolutely not, but my
parents were wonderful, very supportive. So were my sister and brother. We're all individuals in our family. We're very proud of each other. My parents gave me a few lectures on the horrors of show business, the fast people and the morals-not exactly that, but anyone from the far-open spaces of Scottsdale doesn't really know what show business is like, I certainly didn't, but that's where I was going."

She's worked very hard. It wasn't always easy. After three years on the road, Lynda decided she'd had that and made a demo record for a recording company. In Phoenix, awaiting their decision, she entered a beauty contest. Within a month she was Miss Phoenix, Miss Arizona, Miss USA, and, with her mom as chaperone, was en route to London for the Miss Universe contest. After winning there, it was on to Hollywood where she found herself duped by people’s supposed friendship: "That was the most painful thing I had to learn. Everyone is so nice when they couldn't dare less. I didn't understand that... I wasn't raised that way.

"In this town, there are men who seem to be professional dates. They know everyone, they've been out with everyone, they have been out with you, and the very fact that they have is taken to infer other things. Horrible, the dating scene.

"The casting-couch is not dead, it's simply disguised. I have heard conversations between filmmakers who speak of a girl as if she were a piece of meat. Shocking to me. That's where I think Lib should come in. It's a dupe on the female population. Just like nudity in pictures. The sexually explicit scenes-I would never film one. They serve no purpose. A dissolve or fade-out on a love scene can stimulate audience imagination rather than the actual act. Making love is a personal and private thing arid-to make a mockery of it is a real sin. I just don't think it necessary and it's a big con on the women in this country which is run by men."

LYNDA is really adament when it comes to discussing the casting couch: "No one ever got a really big part because they did or didn't. The ability has to be there, the talent. There are those who put themselves on the line and never got the part. And there are those who didn't, and did. It's like: Little girl, here is apiece of candy. A form of rape. Would I love to have the Screen Actors' Guild get into some of these men! On the other hand, Hollywood has many pluses to offer. It is a dream factory. Where else can someone make this kind of money acting, which is fun to do, and having loyal fans adore them?

"I decided to settle for the fun and fantasy and forget all about a personal life, except for my family and for friends. I ended up a perfectly happy -I thought-loner."

Then, unexpectedly, along came Ron Samuels, one of the most successful personal managers in Hollywood (and the wizard responsible for Lindsay Wagner's career). He dropped by Lynda's set one day, suggested dinner, and she countered with lunch.

LOVE? "I never knew what it meant," she says honestly. "I'd come to the point where I was either never going to date again or I'd tolerate, and date just one nice person even though I had no terrific feelings for him at-all. Arid now here I Was, with this man! I couldn't believe there was anyone like him in this town or in this world. So honest, a person of real integrity, so good-looking and so sexy!"

That unforgettable first lunch lasted three hours. Long before it was over, they knew they were in love and knew they would marry. "It was terrific," Lynda remembers. "We could have gotten married that weekend ... we started right in looking for a house."

LYNDA'S family couldn't believe it when she took him home at Christmas. Everyone was so surprised. Her father, especially, has wanted -her to be married, has wanted someone to love and cherish this girl of his, but he never liked anyone she's brought home.

But they love Ron and arrived en masse for the garden wedding at the home of Jack Litt, president of Arpeja, for whom Lynda has done some advertising. Don Feld, her designer. on Wonder Woman, designed the Victorian-style gown in which Lynda looked like a young, queen, coming through the garden on her dad's arm.

"All the old-fashioned things," she muses, showing the snapshots. "Beautiful. And a Mariachi band and Mexican food. I was so scared I can't tell you. We'd had a big dinner party the, night before and that was great. I'd worn a silk blouse and pants, and boots, and my hair down the way Ron is used to seeing me. But now I was in this dress and he doesn't like dresses, and my hair was up on top Of my head, and I was so afraid he wouldn't think I was pretty enough."

NATURALLY, Lynda was nervous. "The most open and vulnerable I have ever been in my whole life, walking down the aisle to meet my husband," she says. "It was really great. We said our vows together, and said our own vows. I don't even remember what the preacher said. I just remember Ron saying, 'I love you so.' And then the Mariachis. And we were off to Hawaii for this terrific honeymoon.

"So funny. We spent one night in Hawaii. We had dinner and the next morning we kept telling each other I'm not homesick, are you? No, I'm fine, not a bit homesick. We realized almost immediately that both of us wanted to be in our own home with our own tennis Court and our own pool. We didn't want the hassle of being in a hotel. So we just came back, didn't answer the phones for a week and didn't tell anyone we were in town. It was wonderful. It still is...

TOTALLY different being married versus living with someone. I'm so free! I have never had the kind of total freedom that I have being married. It's a state of mind. If you feel confined, then you are-confined, whether it's by a piece of paper or by agreement between two people. I know all the Lib arguments. Sexual freedom "I agree with that, but I don't want anyone else. I have sexual freedom and I am never with anyone but my husband. I agree with Lib but you can't blanket-statement.

"I am married, locked in, and I never felt so free. I don't have to hassle with anyone, I have someone who helps to fight my battles. I don't have to ask or depend on any business manager. My husband is now my business manager.

NOW you can watch for Lynda to really come into her own., With the series on weekly, and some films being discussed for next hiatus, Ron is developing a TV special -for Lynda and, right now, she is in the process of writing and putting some music-together with Paul, Anka- for an album for CBS Records. They start recording as we go to press.

The career is just as important as ever. But there's something more important. Her husband, their love.