When it came time to fight for the United States, Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter) never backed down from a challenge.
Wonder Woman never received a theatrical chapter play series, nor a radio show, nor exposure in any of the other popular outlets that many early heroes had. No, her first steps into liveaction would come more than a quarter century after her creation, and they would be on the small screen. Wonder Woman’s most famous adaptation was still nearly eight years away when, in 1967, the staff of Greenway Productions first had the idea to bring her to life. The phenomenal success of their Batman series in 1966 inspired company head William Dozier to explore bringing similar comic characters to television. Wonder Woman’s status as one of DC Comics’ most popular ongoing characters, coupled with the fact that she had never been on television, made her a natural follow-up for development. Of course, the instincts of the producers were to duplicate their successful Batman pattern and create their version of Wonder Woman as a comedy. A script was co-written by Stan Hart, Larry Siegel and frequent Batman scribe Stanley Ralph Ross. Our brief glimpse of this version of Wonder Woman takes place during a stormy night. Dubbed Wonder Woman—Who’s Afraid of Diana Prince? (the title being a play on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the famous film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton from the year before), it stars Ellie Wood Walker as a mousy-looking, clumsy Diana Prince who appears to be in her twenties, but is actually 27 million years old. She lives in the modern-day suburbs with a mother who is well aware of her superheroine status. But her overly dramatic parent feels that flying around saving the world is no way for her daughter to behave, and she constantly picks on her to settle down with a husband. But Diana only has eyes for Steve Trevor. After deciding she needs to rescue Steve from the downpour, she quickly ducks behind a secret panel in her bedroom and steps out in full Wonder Woman costume. On top of her problematic home life as Diana Prince, her transformation into Wonder Woman also reveals that the character is delusional and narcissistic. As she fawns over herself in the mirror she sees the reflection of a curvy, attractive woman (accompanied to the musical strains of “Oh, You Beautiful Doll”, no less), when in reality she is still a scrawny girl who doesn’t even fill out her costume. After blowing a kiss to her optimized reflection— played by actress Linda Harrison—she crawls out the window and dashes off on her adventure to help Steve. This last bit of business was a very odd choice. Had the pilot been picked up it would have been interesting to see if the producers would have kept the idea that Diana saw herself as far more attractive to others than she actually was. Although it was just a short one-act scene, and unable to fully delve into the history of Wonder Woman, the pilot seemed to completely ignore the comic book origins of the character in order to make Diana Prince like any other young American woman stuck in the suburbs. The project was THE NEW ORIGINAL WONDER WOMAN ©Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.