Wonder Woman is an American television series based on the DC Comics comic book character Wonder Woman (which was co-created by William Moulton Marston and Elizabeth (Sadie) Holloway Marston). It starred Lynda Carter as Princess Diana/Diana Prince.

It aired on two American networks between 1975 and 1979. During its original run the series was extremely popular. It is also the title of a TV movie starring Cathy Lee Crosby, loosely based upon the character, that aired in 1974.

The Lynda Carter series was actually the third attempt at mounting a live-action series based upon the superhero.

The first attempt to translate Wonder Woman to the small screen occurred in 1967, when the success of the Batman television show led to a flurry of copycat series. Greenway Productions, the company behind the Batman show, produced a four-and-a-half-minute Wonder Woman test film subtitled Who's Afraid of Diana Prince? starring Ellie Wood Walker as Diana Prince, Linda Harrison as Diana's Wonder Woman alter ego, and Hope Summers as Diana's mother.

As with Batman, the reel took a comic slant on the character, although while the Batman character himself was played straight, in the proposed series Diana Prince (not Wonder Woman) would have been the focus of the comedy. Diana, an awkward and rather plain young woman, lives with her mother close to an U.S. Air Force base. She is madly in love with pilot Steve Trevor, and believes Steve is also madly in love with her Wonder Woman alter ego (a fact consistent with the early comic books). Much of the film consists of her mother berating Diana about not having a boyfriend. When her mother leaves the room, she changes into her Wonder Woman costume and admires her reflection in a mirror. What she sees is not Diana Prince, but rather a sexy super-heroic figure (played by Linda Harrison) who proceeds to preen and pose, in the process becoming somewhat grotesque and exaggerated, ultimately becoming little more attractive than her Diana alter-ego.

This, presumably, was to be the basic gimmick of the show. Diana believes that as Wonder Woman she is irresistible to men, but the reality is far different. Steve Trevor is never seen in the pilot, but the assumption is that, had the show gone into production, he would have spent much of his time avoiding the romantic advances of the title character. The pilot ends with Diana climbing out a window, giving a goofy giggle, and flying away.

Writer Stanley Ralph Ross said, years later, that he felt the people at the head of the production lacked the enthusiasm for a female-centric show to make the pilot a success. This pilot episode was never broadcast, and the project was taken no further. The pilot has been circulated on the Internet and is of interest to Planet of the Apes fans for the early appearance of Linda Harrison who would later go on to play Nova in the first two films of that series.

Wonder Woman's first actual broadcast appearance was as a guest in a Brady Kids cartoon in 1972, entitled "It's All Greek to Me"[1][2]. (Her sister Wonder Girl had already appeared on television in a series of Teen Titans cartoon shorts, part of The Batman/Superman Hour cartoon show.) The Brady kids meet Diana Prince and together they find themselves transported back in time to the Trojan War, where Wonder Woman must come to their rescue.

At roughly the same time, other DC heroes were trialed in cartoons which saw them teamed up with the likes of Scooby Doo, in what is assumed to have been a move to test the waters for a full blown superhero cartoon show. Shortly thereafter Wonder Woman was included in the Super Friends cartoon series, which eventually enjoyed a long and successful run.

Wonder Woman's first appearance on TV screens in live-action form was via a television movie made in 1974 for the ABC Network, starring athlete-turned-actress Cathy Lee Crosby as a blonde non-superpowered Amazon, pitted against a debonair villain played by Ricardo Montalban. This version owed little to the classic Wonder Woman comic book character, and leaned more towards the "I Ching period" abandoned by the comic book some years before in which Diana abandoned her superhero life and became a secret agent à la Emma Peel. In the closing action sequences, Wonder Woman a red tunic with star-spangled blue long sleeves, blue tights and boots, but this is far from a traditional superhero costume. The pilot instead sets the character up as more of a Bionic Woman style secret agent. And while in the first two acts she doesn't don her 'costume', everyone seems to know she's Wonder Woman. [While the Cathy Lee Crosby version of WONDER WOMAN has YET to be released on DVD, it can be accessed free at In2TV.com ; search WONDER WOMAN CATHY LEE CROSBY for on-demand viewing.]

This pilot was screened, but reportedly generated little interest from the public. It has been sold around the world as a stand-alone TV movie, and occasionally crops up in TV schedules.

Though not successful at the first attempt, ABC still felt a Wonder Woman series had potential, and within a year another pilot was in production. Keen to make a distinction from the last pilot, the pilot was given the rather paradoxical title The New Original Wonder Woman. This version of the film has not yet been released on DVD, instead the re-edited 'Wonder Woman' 1976 pilot for the television series is on the DVD. This 1976 pilot re-cut replaced the serious 1975 pilot version. The notable difference is that the 1975 pilot movie title is changed to simply 'Wonder Woman', and the bullet-deflecting animated sequence is replaced by the lasso toss in the animated introduction and the rest of the television series.

Scripting duties were given to Stanley Ralph Ross, who had worked on Greenway's unbroadcast Wonder Woman pilot reel, but this time he was instructed to be more faithful to the comic book and to create a subtle "high comedy". Ross set the pilot in World War II, the era in which the original comic book began. Thanks to a generous budget and more relaxed shooting schedule, the feature length pilot was able to attain a level of polish and special effects beyond that of regular episodic television at the time.

Some of these effects, such as the expensive full sized invisible plane prop and the stunt bracelets (designed to carry small explosive charges for Wonder Woman's iconic 'bullets and bracelets' encounters) were then able to be carried forward into the series proper.

After an intensive talent search, a former beauty pageant winner from Arizona named Lynda Carter was chosen to play the lead role. For the key role of Steve Trevor, the producers chose Lyle Waggoner, who at the time was better known as a comedic actor after several years co-starring in The Carol Burnett Show. He was also known to Ross as having been one of the leading candidates to play Batman a decade earlier.

Although the pilot followed the original comic book closely, in particular the aspect of Wonder Woman joining the military under the assumed name, Diana Prince, a number of elements were dropped, presumably for practical reasons. The character of Etta Candy was no longer an obese member of Holliday College (the Holliday Girls never featured in the show), but a mature work colleague of Diana Prince. The ancient myths and legends which informed many of the early Wonder Woman comic book stories were lost too, in favour of more conventional stories involving Nazis. And, on a minor note, Steve Trevor was no longer blonde, but dark haired.

One change which was later to become synonymous with the show was the twirling transformation which dissolved Diana Prince into Wonder Woman. Lynda Carter claims to have suggested the move herself, having studied dance as a child. Coincidentally, this slow motion dissolve is similar to the illustrated "running" change sequences in the comic books of the era, in which Diana would peel off her uniform and add her tiara and boots. In both versions she is left with her outer uniform to stow somewhere.

From Wikipedia