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Date and Issue: December 19-25, 1976.
"My nieces and nephews aren't much impressed by what I do for a living. They've been seeing me on television since they were very small, and their attitude is: Doesn't everyone have an aunt who's Wonder Woman?"
Yes, Virginia, there is a Wonder Woman.
She exists as certainly as fantasy and equal rights and women's lib exist. Not believe in Wonder Woman! You might as well not believe in Santa Claus, who has traditional male dominance this Christmas week But soon, as she did last night (Saturday), Wonder Woman again will roam the skies, not in a sleigh drawn by reindeer, but in her customary in-visible airplane.
No Wonder Woman! She lives, and she lives not only this season, but perhaps if ABC picks up its option, or if 'another network jumps at the chance to acquire her ardent audience beyond. Years from now she may continue to make glad the heart of young girlhood.Lynda Carter, the tall (5-feet-8½), 2b-year-old brunette who portrays the comic-book heroine, regrets there's no Yuletide chapter of the sporadically scheduled show ("Wonder Woman Meets Santa Claus"?), but doesn't feel it's needed.
"There's "a theme throughout all the 'Wonder Woman' shows," she says, "like what Christmas is sup-posed to be -about sharing and truth and treating one another with respect."
She's been getting all sorts of invitations to participate in Christmas celebrations, she reports.
Presumably that invisible airplane could whisk Wonder Woman to hundreds of homes, to visit yearning youngsters ("It's very, very touching, to think they want me to share their holiday").Alas, she's too busy, kept revolving for presto! changes from mousy secretary to spectacular superwoman and deflecting baddies' bullets with her magic bracelet for as much as 12 to 14 hours a day. She's working so hard, in fact, that she doubted, when we talked, she'd be able to adorn a Los Angeles Christmas parade. She was even afraid she'd be unable to get home to Phoenix, Ariz., for Christmas with her family.
"For us," she says, "it's a very important time of the year. We have a big Christmas tree and songs and gifts and fresh-baked cookies.
"One night, usually Christmas Eve; there's a huge Mexican dinner, with home-made tamales. That night we're allowed to open just one present!
"Christmas Day there's turkey, and everything's much more formal.
"If I can't get home, Fil miss seeing my nieces and nephews, who range from 3 to 9.
"I have a brother who's 30. and a sister, who's 27, and each has a son and a daughter.
"The kids aren't much impressed by what I do for a living. They've been seeing me on television since they were very small, and their attitude is: Doesn't everyone have an aunt who's Wonder Woman?"
Wonder Woman toys, from which she profits, aren't in as great supply this Christmas as, they may be next Christmas ("It usually takes a year"), .. but they'll forge another link between Christmas and the comic-book character.
And, of course, comics and kids like Christmas and kids have al-ways been coupled. Miss Carter remembers her own youthful addiction.
"From the time I could start read ing I was into the whole fantasy thing.
"I read Wonder Woman religiously. It sounds like a `hype,' but it's true.
"From comic books I graduated to sci-fi. I'm still a sci-fi buff. But now I also read a lot of spiritual philosophy.
"I'm so excited about the many programs to help a person develop himself I've been looking for answers for a long time, and I'm finding them.
"What I've discovered is that all things are possible, even if you aren't Wonder Woman. But first you've-got to be together in here;" she said, tap-ping her head.
"I do get some strange looks, because I've been doing a little research on Wonder Woman.
"People see me paging through my little stack of comic; books, and they think, `There's a real Hollywood flake!'
"From thι start, Wonder Woman to me wasn't just another TV character.
"I'm living out a -fantasy. Since I first read about her, it's as if Wonder Woman were a part of my being.
"Wonder Woman was, created by Charles Moulton, with the help of a psychologist, to expose young girls to a female hero, but the fan mail for the show is about equally from girls and boys. A quarter to a third is from adults.
"Some, in Canada, have formed a fan club, The New Original Lynda ' Carter Society for the Fulfillment of Our Fantasies.
"I try to answer all the thousands of letters, except a few from dirty old men.
"There are college kids who tell me absolutely straight, how they feel. It cracks me up. I don't see myself as a sex object. It's a-side effect, and it's OK, I guess, but I don't want to dwell on it.
"That whole area either exists or it doesn't. There's nothing I can do to change it. I don't know that I want to change it. I don't see it as something negative."Certainly that costume (strapless, red bodice adorned with a goldeneagle, brief blue shorts studded with white stars, and red boots) doesn't obscure my figure!"
That figure (37-22-36, according to one recent estimate) was reportedly 38-26-38 when Miss Carter at 21 was named the Miss World contest's Miss U. S. A. in September, 1972. The topography has apparently been altered by, among other things, Wonder Woman exercises like bouncing on a trampoline and dangling from a suspended harness. Even before competing successfully first for the Miss Phoenix, then the Miss Arizona title, she was a professional performer. At Phoenix's Arcadia Titans High School she was voted "most talented student" for her singing and dancing skills. She dropped out of Arizona State University after a single semester, to become a vocalist. After making her debut at Las Vegas' Sahara Hotel, she toured for three years.
"I was in a couple of groups," she recalls. "One in Phoenix was, called The Relatives because two of the five fellows were cousins. And I sang in the Catskills with The Garfin Gathering with Lynda Carter.
"I was so cocky then, I thought I was such hot stuff, that I said, `I want my name on the marquee!'
"I was the lead vocalist, with four fellows. That was the end of 1969, I was 17 - I had a big smile and I wore go go boots, a short skirt and a blouse. Oh, God!
"But I learned a lot about music, and I'm going back to writing and recording."
After entering the Miss Phoenixcontest between singing stints, to pasa the time," she landed in Lon don as a Miss World finalist. In Los Angeles to study acting, she appeared in "Nakia" and "Shamus" telecasts before auditioning for the role of a kidnapped, much-ravished Hollywood sexpot in a movie version of Irving Wallace's raunchy novel, "The Fan Club." She didn't get the part, which still hasn't been cast, but her screen test resulted in an invitation to test for ABC's second "Wonder Woman" pilot. (The first, a year earlier, drew a sizable audience, but riled purists by, casting a blonde, Cathy Lee Crosby, in the title role.) For a while, because both had high ratings, it was uncertain whether "The Bionic Woman" or "Wonder Woman" would become a weekly ABC series. The network opted or the former, but ordered 11 later raised to 13 hours of "Wonder Woman" as "specials."
That decision forced Miss Carter to relinquish a prize role opposite Marlon Brando in Francis Ford Coppola polies storm-interrupted, Philippines-based "Apocalypse Now. She's still hoping for a movie career. Meanwhile, "Acting is acting" and her TV exposure is strengthening her box-office appeal. "So few. women," she notes, "have financiability'." And does Wonder Woman have a Christmas message for young fans? Yes, indeed. This: "Be yourself. There's only one of you, and that's the best possible you. there can ever be!"
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