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Date and Issue: October 9-15, 1977.
If you read the recent national magazine cover story on "Wonder Woman" Lynda Carter and her husband/manager Ron Samuels, you likely got the impresson she's a man-made success - that he's the Womder Man responsible for all she's achieved, for all she ever hopes to achieve.
However, if you speak to Ms. Carter you get the distinct impression she's solely responsible for having made the leap - ZAP! POW! - from being Miss World U.S.A. beauty winner of 1973 to star of one of TV's most popular prime-time kid-vid series. With only three bit television acting parts in the interim. "People have referred to Ron as my Svengali before," concedes the statuesque brown-haired, blue-eyed beauty. "I try not to let it bother me though."
She tries to keep in mind that, "Some people just have to find a way to justify a woman's success. That's why they tend to say, 'The reason she's accomplished this is because she's being manipulated by someone else." That's easier for them than facing the realization that a woman can make it in this male-dominated business. The simplest thing for them to believe is that whatever she does is a direct cause of the man in her life."
Ms. Carter met the man in her life long after ABC had signed her to star in a series of "Wonder Woman" specials - but long before that network dropped the show the end of last season. It was just about the time, in fact, when Samuels and Ms. Carter were planning their wedding that he was negotiating with CBS to pick up "Wonder Woman" this fall for a full 26 episodes - that will repotedly earn his bride a cool $1,000,000.
Her celebrity status has also earned her such star-like accoutrements as a chaffeur-driven limousine. Too, she has a motor home/dressing room of such impressive proportions that when Oscar-winner Louise Fletcher was on the Warner Bros. lot filming "The Cheap Detective," it caused her to comment, "Makes me wonder why I studied so long and hard to become an actress."
But Ms. Carter doesn't let barbs like that - or about her relationship with Samuels - faze her. People are going to talk, she realizes, and she keeps reminding herself. "They'll say what they want, anyway - and that's their problem, not mine. It'll just hurt me if I set up at night and worry about it."
Now that she's deep into her new season of weekly series work, she explains, it's all the more important that she not allow small concerns to affect her.
"We're working a lot of 14-hour days - on location five days a week and shooting at the studio one day." In addition, she's been preparing to make an album for early '78 release.
"I've been trying to work on it during weekends," she says, "and I'll have to record it during weekends. Otherwise, it would be eight months before I'd have time to do it."
And that would be too late to coincide with the publicity push CBS is giving its "Wonder Woman."
She admits that attempting to capitalize on her current series fame with such involvements as recording does "create a certain kind of pressure - but that's not something I object to. Everyone in the world has pressures: housewives, business-people, everyone. And I love this.
"Besides, if you go into something with the attitude that you are frustrated with the load, or are feeling tried, you're never going to make it."
Making converstation during a break in series shooting, she gives the impression of not only keeping a firm rein on her career and personal life, but on her emotions and disclosures as well.
Coming off as poised, gracious, erudite, she makes the point that she refuses to worry about the longevity of her series because "every show has a certain life, none go on forever." But, she adds with a Pollyanna note, " 'Wonder Woman' has existed for 40 years as a comic strip - and that's encouraging."
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