WONDERLAND • The Ultimate Wonder Woman Site

	In her first shot at Vegas at 17, Lynda Carter worked herself up to a lounge gig at the Sahara. "My name was on the marquee in iddy-biddy letters," she recalls. "But I snapped pictures of it anyway." She wanted proof to take back home when she left "because I couldn't stand living in cheap hotels, and not having a home." Next week, 10 years later, Lynda will be back in Vegas, headlining at Caesars Palace and enthroned in a $1,400-a-week VIP rental. What put her atop the marquee in big letters this time was, of course, her CBS series. The casino proprietors must have presumed that if nothing else, they could fill the room with folks who wanted to see Wonder Woman fall on her act.

	Happily, that's not how it worked out. Her show is, to be sure, a big, overproduced extravaganza, with 26-piece orchestra and film clips from her past narrated by Howard Cosell yet. But when it had a premiere run at Caesars last month, she won over even the coldeyed critic from Variety, who applauded her "knack for cleffing." Meaning that Wonder Woman is a surprisingly accomplished singer too. Simultaneously Lynda has released a debut album titled Portrait, as well as a single, Toto, she herself composed about Dorothy warbling to her pooch on the road to Oz. Certainly, Carter's on the yellow-brick road herself, though manager-husband Ron Samuels' estimate of a 1978 income of $6 million has to be hyperbole.

	Not that Samuels is any dummy in pushing his wife's new moonlight sideline. The star-spangled, bouncy-breasted Wonder Woman may fend off bullets with her wristbands on CBS, but no one-including that other star Samuels client, Lindsay (Bionic Woman) Wagner-can stand off Supernielsen forever.
So Lynda's $50,000 Vegas wardrobe purposely displays more of sequins and slink than of her other famous assets. "People see me in a bathing suit every Friday night on TV," she figures. "I'm determined to make it on my talent, not my bosom. Singing is something I've been doing all my life, and I want people to know it."

As a kid in Arizona, Lynda had ambitions appropriate to her generation -"not really to be a movie star, but a television star." When she failed to "make the cut" as a high school cheerleader, she joined the glee club. Then at 15, after her parents had divorced, she turned pro, earning $25 a weekend singing at the Pizza Inn in Scottsdale. "I needed work to help my family out," she explains. After graduation came her original run on Vegas and a suggestion from her mother that she return for a hometown beauty contest. From Miss Phoenix, Lynda rose to become Miss World-U.S.A. and then went to London to go for the globe-wide title. She recalls how in the Q-and-A part of the contest, "My big question was, 'Do you think the institution of marriage will die out in the next decade?' At that time I was pretty cynical and could have given them a really smart answer, but I wanted to win, so I gave them what I thought they wanted to hear-that love and marriage were part of the American tradition and would always remain so." Carter went home a loser via Hollywood.

Shazam. She won the Wonder Woman role over 2,000 other auditioners, and later on the set met the brassy Samuels, who's also managed Joyce (Three's Company) DeWitt and Jackie (Charlie's Angels) Smith. Lynda and Ron (who was newly divorced) spent three hours over lunch, decided they were in love and started sharing housekeeping almost immediately. Last year, six months later, they married. Away from work, TV's lady of steel finds it "soooo much fun to have someone to take care of me, to fight my battles, to see that everything gets taken care of."

The couple lives atop L.A.'s Benedict Canyon in an $850,000 home with fabric-lined walls throughout and a guard pack of German shepherds. A large crucifix hangs above the bed-testimony to the born-again Christianity Lynda has been espousing since last December. Raised in the United Church of Christ, she now goes to prayer meetings every week and passes out proselytizing religious pamphlets to acquaintances. "I was thirsty, I was searching," she says. Five minutes be fore showtime in Vegas she and Ron clear the dressing room of visitors and sit down to read the Bible. He is Jewish but "Ron believes in Jesus too," explains Lynda, who gave him a gold cross with a Star of David in the center in honor of their first anniversary.

Religion has not dulled her taste for Hollywood glamour, however, and Ron has bedecked her, she reports, "with all kinds of diamonds and jewels and Bentleys. But I put all the jewels in the vault and just wear these plain old gold earrings every day." Currently Samuels is trying to negotiate a book deal to reveal how Lynda has become "the world's most beautiful woman" (according to London's International Academy of Beauty). "I wasn't the beautiful blond cupcake when I was growing up," Lynda notes. "I've been skinny and I've been heavy [she now weighs 115 lbs. and is 5'81. 1 wear glasses. I'm a real person. I've learned how to look great without wearing any makeup except a little bit of blusher and some mascara."

Although a book deal would be nice, says Lynda, "I certainly don't need the money and I don't need to be any busier." Indeed, when she returns to Wonder Woman at Universal the end of the month, there will be at least one important change from the old days. "In the beginning I did almost all my stunts," notes Lynda. "Now they don't let me do a thing. I'm too valuable."