WONDERLAND • The Ultimate Wonder Woman Site

“It was a great adventure,” she says with that look. “No phones, the bridges all down; we were stranded there for two and a half weeks waiting for the rain to let up, and it never did. For three days we were entirely cut off from the other group of 10 miles away. They didn’t know whether we were alive; we didn’t know if they were. Total isolation! There were times you got pretty tired of rice and mangoes. There were other times when the bugs and no food at all really got to you; but for the most part, everyone was in great spirits. Although, I will say that when that helicopter finally got through to us and landed on the roof of our hotel, we were all packed and there on the roof, ready!”

There are strong men who have faced typhoons with terror; but Lynda even without the magic-power bracelets she wears on wonder Woman, doesn’t scare easily. She knows that there is a plan for her and that everything that happens along the way, well, …”suddenly it’s an experience!” They were never able to shoot a foot of film on Apocalypse Now. They had to watch their sets slowly disintegrate in the watery waste . . , they were deeply worried about one another: but Lynda was never scared, and who could ask for a greater adventure? She was absolutely certain it would have a happy ending-she believes in happy endings, not cliché ones, not 'contrived ones, but endings that send you out into the world refreshened and exhilarated. And, of course, because she thinks this way, it won't surprise you to know that when she landed as Bangkok and was able to contact her agent by phone, it was to find that NBC's option date had expired and ABC had ordered eleven, 60-minute specials of Wonder Woman, each to be produced with the care they'd give a movie-making Lynda Carter the youngest female star to have her own show this season. It is the show based on Charles Moulton's world-famous comic book character of the '40's, and Lynda's challenge and pleasure is to play two different characters. "In the opening show I played three." she says, as we sit in her dressing room at Burbank Studios. "It's like Superman. I'm the U. S. Navy Military Intelligence and war hero, Diana Prince." She springs up, grabs her chic little Navy hat and snaps the brim over her lovely brow. "But," flinging it off, "I come from Paradise Island where Steve has crash-landed on same, and taking him back in my invisible plane; I've fallen in love with him and have decided to pose as his secretary. What he doesn't know is that I'm Wonder Woman. A part every young actress in Hollywood coveted, and of which Lynda Carter was totally unaware. She'd come to the studio to test for a Larry Gordon project at Columbia and she so captivated him that he showed her test to old friends Doug Kramer and Leonard Horn who gave her the role!

But that's not just coincidence. Lynda's whole life has been a series of happenings, all, very natural, just as all her decisions have seemed the only possible decision. "For example, I was always singing for as long as ... well, always. At Arcadia Titans High in Scottsdale, just outside Phoenix, Arizona, there were always school plays and musicals and choruses. I played Rosie in Bye Bye Birdie. And then when I was 15 1 started singing four or five nights a week in the college hang-out, the Pizza Inn. Singing just happened, and after high school I just naturally went on the road," (debuting at the Sahara in Las' Vegas). My mother and father were wonderful, very supportive. If I were a parent and my 17-year-old daughter were leaving to sing all over the country, I think I'd freak out. If I were a parent and it were my child, I'd say absolutely not. But my parents- just said, 'Well, you have to do what you have to do, Lynda,' and they'd come to see me. So did my brother and sister. We're all very much individuals in our family; we each do our own thing and disagree about many things, and love each other all the more for disagreeing.

"Of course, my parents were cautious, too, and I had a few lectures on the horrors of show business and all the fast people and how they, become alcoholics or turn to drugs and kill themselves. Not exactly that, but, I mean anyone from Phoenix, and not even from Phoenix, but from the very open spaces of Scottsdale, has no idea of what show business is like. And neither did l. But it was where I was going,

"My father, Colby Carter, is in the furniture business and real estate. My mom, Jean Carter, works at a Motorola Lab. My sister, Pamela, has a health food company, and she and her husband, Jon Cole, have a vitamin franchise. Jon works training athletes and people who have bone and muscle problems. My brother, Vincent, is in the insurance business. A very normal kind of family and they're very important to me. Their opinions are important; we're very close. When I go home to Scottsdale, I just go from my mother's to my dad's to my sister's' to my brother's."

She was in seventh grade when her parents were divorced. In retrospect, ; Lynda realizes it was a traumatic experience, but at the time what occurred to this seventh-grader was that now she had only one parent' whose permission had to be asked on each detail in life. "Now I realize it was traumatic for me, but it was also terrific because I became even more independent, although we're very independent people in my family, anyway."

Or is independence really the word? Isn't she constantly being led? Lynda's eyes grow wide and thoughtful. "I think God has a plan for me," she says simply. "A destiny. Because things just happen. I've prepared. I've worked at what I'm doing now. I've worked very hard; I always have.' If I love something it doesn't seem like work. I've been led and taught; things just seem to happen. I was on the road singing for three years: and decided I didn't wish to; do that anymore. I did a demo record for a recording company. Then, while I> was waiting in Phoenix for an answer, I entered a beauty contest. As simple as that. No one said, do it. I was 20, and' I wasn't singing at the moment, and it was a new experience. I just entered. And in one month's time. 1 was Miss Phoenix, Miss Arizona, Miss USA, and was on my' way to London for the Miss World contest. Just like that! Whoosh!"

A new experience, and when it was over, she headed for Hollywood to study acting- The Miss USA title wasn't the greatest help in the world. It was just another pretty-girl-in-Hollywood-via-the-beauty-contest routine. But Lynda hadn't come for that. She'd come to study acting and she is still studying, now with coach Laura Zucker. And things began to happen. An appearance on Nakia, another in the pilot film Shamus; this year's premiere of Starsky and Hutch, the,' premiere for Bill Cosby's new show, Cos, Bobby Joe and the Outlaw with Marjoe Gortner, and of course, Wonder Woman. "The first pilot, a year and a half ago, aired last November. Then we made two more pilots this year; now we're set."

“It’s always exciting to be backstage on a new show which has already elicited rave notices. There's an aura of excitement in the air, and this is especially true when you get to Stage 19 and enter Lynda Carter's dressing room. There is something so very special about this girl: her beautiful head is on so straight, and there is this quick wit, the slight touch of mischief, and there is the willingness to accept life and this definite spiritual awareness. Mention this and she says: "Spiritual, yes. I really believe that God is within each of us, the source of energy; and it's amazing how many people I've been meeting lately who feel this way. It's like an incredible wave of understanding. My sister is into it and people in our cast and crew are, also We have wonderful conversations. Some people would call me lucky, but I don't believe in luck. I believe I've been led and taught through so many experiences. We're each like a television set, fully equipped, but you have to turn the knob and use the power. The important thing is knowing that your spirituality is not for free. It is a gift, but you have to spend the time to fulfill whatever your destinies are. Like the quote from the Bible: 'Faith without work is dead.' Now I'm reflecting my father. He had a moral or a saying for everything. I remember when I was growing up . . . I was so tall and skinny. I'm 5' 8 1/2" tall, but I was almost that tall in high school and I had these big hands and size 10 shoes and weighed 90 pounds! I was always trying to slouch to cover up. That's when my father told me, 'Lynda, girl, stand straight and tall.' What he was saying was be proud. So you're different; yes, you're taller. That will change; other people will grow a little later than you have, you'll fill out to meet your own bones. But stand tall and proud right now, ft's important now, not tomorrow when everything will fit. Somehow, he said it with such feeling, I got the message."

She is proud; that's what makes her stand out. Not conceited proud-there's a great deal of that in show business-but gratefully-aware proud ... the ability to enjoy visits from her mother (from whom she inherited the zest for adventure) and her seven-year-old nephew, Sean ("He's my little sweetheart") . . . her own visits back to Scottsdale . . . almost everyone she meets ... the interview we're doing . . '. the part she's playing, even though it is a little scary to be suddenly on top. Hollywood, per se, hasn't changed Lynda Carter. She goes to parties occasionally, prefers a group of close friends, has no steady boyfriend, and, well-aware of the tentacles awaiting beautiful girls in Beverly Hills, prefers to date just regular people . . . a carpet salesman, a psychiatrist. No time to fall in love right now. "If I fell in love it would be terrific, but I'm not looking to fall. There's so much to do and not that much time to do it in."

But she's looking for those happy endings. She's looking for significance, onscreen and off . . . laughter, fun, and good feeling. So even if the story is tragic, you feel good about what's happened. It has lifted you somehow. To her way of thinking, every piece of film is like a painting to which each writer, each actor, each director, each technician has put something of himself into it in a positive way; and if they each succeed, the sum total achieves a momentum which Sends people away from the film feeling better, more aware; they've grown an inch.

That's the big thing with Lynda... the growing. She is not playing Wonder Woman like a comic bock character. "No. I'm making that comic book lady not a caricature but a real person." She has to grow with the part just as she's grown with every other experience of her already astonishing young life. Whether it was singing at the Pizza Inn, or competing for Miss USA, or wading through the typhoon at Olongapo, or writing songs and lyrics and making demo records . . . it's all, well, a fantastic experience. And you're not surprised when the phone rings and it is hews of her new recording contract with Lou Risner (responsible for the "Tommy" album) at MCA Records.

Another happy beginning with lots more growing ahead. Why not? Lynda Carter may be the youngest lady in this business with a show of her own and now a recording contract to boot; she's amazingly, for her age, all together. Her father said stand tall, and she heard loud and clear. This is a girl who knows just who she is and where she's going, and has the confidence to pull herself through. A wonder!