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Excerpted from Starlog Presents Batman & Other Comics Heroes, 1997  In the 1960s, TV's Batman set a trend for comic characters. Both on stage and screen, they became camp comedies. The Man of Steel appeared as a singing oaf in the Broadway musical It's a Bird, It's a Plane. It's Superman and campy approaches were taken with even, major character, from Dick Tracy to Doc Savage Comic strip women Barbarella and Modesty Blaise reached the screen in farces.Comics' first superheroine. Wonder Woman, stayed out of the camp era. With her self-determination and skill, Wonder Woman was a role model for "60s feminists and nothing to be made light of: she even graced the cover of Ms. Magazine! With her bulletproof bracelets, invisible plane and golden lasso (a weapon that predated the lie detector(editor's note: Wrong. The polygraph predated the lasso. -Alex)), she might have seemed an easy target for spoof treatment. Although the Wonder Woman TV show of the '70s came from Batman veterans Stanley Ralph Ross and Charles B. FitzSimons, the camp elements were kept to a minimum and Lynda Carter gave a straight performance as the Amazon princess. What many fans do not know is that Wonder Woman was targeted for camp in the '60s, in a never-seen short film that the producers shot for the network. "We didn't do a pilot for her," FitzSimons recalls, "But Bill Dozier and I did a presentation for a camp version of Wonder Woman. Because of Batman, we were the kings of camp. My idea was different and I think Stan Ross wrote the presentation." The show took an offbeat approach to Paradise Island's most famous resident. "Our idea was that when Wonder Woman was a baby and all of the gods are giving her gifts, the goddess of beauty comes, leans over her bassinet and says, 'Vanity.' Instead of giving her beauty, she gives her vanity. We went with a Wonder Woman who looked like Ruth Buzzi! "And we found a girl who looked like Ruth Buzzi and had all of Ruth Buzzi's talent," he says proudly. "She was flat-chested and spindly. We dressed her up in a Wonder Woman bodice, so that when she turned quickly, the bodice stayed there. We made her pants too big and her legs looked like sticks. "We did everything with the Wonder Woman costume, but it was exaggerated so this poor lady looked ridiculous. She was a brilliant dancer and comedian and the whole plot was that she was an ugly bitch who, because she got vanity instead of beauty, thought she was God's gift to men! This Wonder Woman thought she was the most beautiful thing in the universe!" Ironically, the presentation also showed how Wonder Woman might look if the show had been done straight. "When she would pass by a window or mirror and see her reflection, we had Linda Harrison in the costume looking back at her. Linda looked even better as Wonder Woman than Lynda Carter did years later(editor's note: In his opinion. -Alex).  "Linda Harrison was [20th Century Fox exec] Dick Zanuck's then-wife and she was gorgeous. [Best known as Nova in Planet of the Apes, Harrison was profiled in STARLOG #213.] We had the homely Wonder Woman look in a mirror and see this stunning image of Harrison in the costume and over it we would play this song 'Oh, You Wonderful Girl!' "
Steve Trevor, her longtime boy friend from the comics (who never guessed that Wonder Woman was also his secretary Diana Prince),
was also on hand. "We had this poor guy who was perplexed because he had the ugliest secretary in the world and an ugly Wonder Woman who drove him crazy." FitzSimons laughs."Wonder Woman didn't have the invisible plane in our show. she would fly like Superman and then land on her feet like an airplane, running down the runway. In the presentation, there was a Russian spy she had to get to talk. She does the 'Dance of the Seven Veils' for him, a sex dance and this poor Russian will confess to anything to get away from this girl! Wonder Woman thinks it's her sexiness that wins him over." The network wasn't quite ready for the concept of the ugly Amazon. "We wanted to do this as an outrageous camp comedy, but we couldn't sell it," Charles FitzSimons notes. "Years later, I did the 'normal' Wonder Woman for Warner Bros. It was a fun show and not really campy at all." |