WONDERLAND • The Ultimate Wonder Woman Site

Believe it or not, gorgeous, lovely Lynda Carter suffered a lot in her teens ... but now, as WONDER WOMAN she can laugh about it!

She's a bride, a beauty-and she's bright as the Morning Star. Words like statuesque and ethereal and heavenly body describe Lynda Carter perfectly. But most of us just say 'Wow!'

She's a winner in everyone's book-but she's been battling for her own niche since she was the tallest girl in class-and trying to ‘scrunch' down to seem shorter! "I think my height has been advantageous-and this should be encouraging to every girl in her early teens who hates towering over her classmates," she says. "But I really suffered, and it could have been avoided if I had been encouraged to took ahead..."

It's no surprise to learn Lynda was a beauty contest winner. But she started out as a singer-and look at all she's doing today! She's making an album for Epic Records, preparing a musical special for one of the networks, working up an act for next spring in Las Vegas-and writing a book!

Is there any wonder she's perfect for her role of Wonder Woman? Love, romance, career-today. Lynda has them all-and she's earned every little bit of the happiness she's finding in all of them. "I've worked at what I'm doing now," she points out. "I've worked very hard. I always have!"

She has also known exactly what she wanted-and gone after it: "I used to dream about what I would do if I were Wonder Woman," she says. Even love, romance and marriage fell into Lynda's plan as though they were diagrammed and blueprinted carefully! "I've never been in love with anyone before," she says, her eyes shining. She and her handsome manager took one look at each other-and wonder of wonders, they fell in love! In no time at all, Lynda was saying "He's my lover, my sweetheart, and the person I care for more than any other in the world! It feels wrong to place him in the category of manager."

In late May, in one of the most romantic weddings of the year, she married her manager, Ron Samuels who also manages beautiful Jaclyn Smith of Charlie's Angels, and TV's famed Bionic Woman, Lindsay Wagner. (Ron's the incredibly successful creator of superstars who, when Bionic Woman was canceled on one network, took it to another where it continues to be top-rated. Actually, he's master-minding the careers of three of the hottest properties on TV these days.

"My mother always said I would know when the right man presented himself," Lynda smiles. "I waited a long time, and when Ron finally came along, it happened so fast that I didn't have time to ponder the pros and cons! We met and went to lunch on a Friday, played tennis Saturday, went out Sunday night-and I haven't left him since!"

In a gown as frothy and fluffy as a white cloud, and with flowers in her hair, Lynda and Ron (with lilies-of-the-valley in his lapel) exchanged vows in a garden ceremony-while such luminous guests as Jaclyn Smith and her date, Dennis Cole, Liz Torres-and Roz Kelly and nearly a hundred other friends joined in wishing them well. To make the occasion even more poignantly memorable, Lynda forgot her lines during the ceremony -and the top of their gorgeous wedding cake was stolen from the van that delivered it, en route!

The girl who once dreamed of playing Wonder Woman says she chose her future career at the tender age of three-and she's been singing almost as long as she can remember. "I started singing four or five nights a week in the college hangout, the Pizza Inn, when I was 15," she points out. "I was always singing." She played the role of Rosie in Bye, Bye, Birdie at school. "At Arcadia Titans High in Scottsdale (which is near Phoenix, Arizona, where Lynda grew up) there were always school plays, musicals, choruses. Singing just happened-and after high school, I just naturally went on the road." But none of those things took the sting out of those 'too-tall' years. "In high school, I was too tall to be in the pep squad, too tall for a boy to feel comfortable with me on a date-and too tall to feel at ease anywhere. Everybody used to tell me-sympathetically, I guess-'Don't worry, you've got what it takes: talent. You'll make it.'"

The words were meant to be encouraging, but "nobody showed me how," says Lynda, "until someone-I forget who-said 'Study!' So I took up music and singing."

Those adolescent years were difficult ones for a girl who was head and shoulders over her classmates. "I was so tall and skinny! I'm 5'81/2" 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! It's important now-not tomorrow when everything will fit!

"Somehow, he said it with such feeling, I got the message," says the beautiful woman who has made that brief Stars-and-Stripes Wonder Woman costume a symbol of all that's shapely and right and wonderful.

Lynda's list of accomplishments covers the gamut. From those stints in a Phoenix college hang-out to four years touring with a rock group seemed a logical step-until the rigors of that exhausting life of one-night stands and constant traveling seemed to melt into one endless nothingness. "One day I woke in some town in Ohio-by that time, they all looked alike-and I thought, here I am, 20 years old, and I've been on the road four years! I could see myself at 40, still on the road. I quit," she remembers.

"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." It wouldn't have been `simple' for most-but Lynda takes things as they come. "I was 20, I wasn't singing at the moment, and it was a new experience," she explains. Before the month was out, Lynda became Miss Phoenix, then Miss Arizona, Miss USA-"and I was on my way to London for the Miss World contest!"

Put beauty and brains, enthusiasm, determination and a real zest for living together and they're bound to ring up a winner-and Lynda's a winner, for sure. "Some people would call me lucky, but I don't believe in luck," she says. Lynda's parents separated when she was in seventh grade-a traumatic experience for Lynda, "but it was also terrific because 1 became even more independent." When she went on the road at such a tender age, it was with her parents' consent plus "a few lectures on the horrors of show business and all the fast people, how they become alcoholics or turn to drugs and kill themselves." Even so, her family had "no idea what show business is like and neither did I," she admits. She appreciates her family's total support-but says, "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-I'd say absolutely not!"

But Lynda followed her dream-found her special niche, and ultimately, the Wonder Woman dream that came true. "1'm making that comic book lady not a caricature. but a real person," she says. "It's difficult-and it's also lots of fun! 1 spend weekends on the script, and at least an hour every night-after spending four or five hours on it before we start taping!"

As everyone who knows her would tell you, Lynda doesn't take short cuts, either. "I do as many of the stunts as I can get away with-I do my own riding and roping. It's only the really dangerous ones, like horse falls and leaping through a window that the stuntmen have to do. I love athletics-I play tennis and swim and run. I don't jog, but I sprint for speed ... and of course, in front of the camera, I have to sprint gracefully!"

That red-white-and-blue Wonder Woman costume is measured to fit Lynda's beautiful figure exactly: "No one else could wear it," she smiles-but even Lynda has two of them: "so if I eat too much chocolate, I can fit into one of them!"

Certainly no one could look so beautiful, so glamorous-or put so much into the role in symbolizes-as Lynda Carter. "The biggest thing," she says thoughtfully," is honesty-and how contagious it can be. I've put what I am into what she is-all the good things in my character."

Though many do, Lynda doesn't consider herself a star. "To be a star, you have to pay a lot of dues, like a Katharine Hepburn or Barbra Streisand," she says.

But this tall and lovely lady is putting star qualities into everything she does, and with that kind of attitude, her talent and her beauty, she's bound to be our favorite Rising Star!