Tuesday, November 14, 2017

What Might've Been: Wonder Woman (1974)

Seven years after William Dozier's campy sitcom pilot was rejected by ABC, Wonder Woman returned, this time inspired by her "civilian" phase, if you will, a period that had the Amazing Amazon swapping her traditional star spangled costume and her powers for a white jumpsuit that made her into DC's answer to Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) from England's The Avengers. However, by the time this ABC Movie of the Week first hit the air in March 1974, to be encored five months later, Wonder Woman was back in the red, white & blue in the comics, if my memory serves me correctly.

Veteran sci-fi writer-producer John D. F. Black and director Vincent McEveety cast Cathy Lee Crosby as Diana, with character actor Kaz Garas as Steve Trevor, the only one of Diana's usual supporting cast left intact. The plot deals with Diana taking on a corrupt businessman, Abner Smith (Ricardo Montalban) and his aide, George Calvin (Andrew Prine), who have stolen some top secret code books from across the globe.

Edit, 8/20/21: Had to change the video. Now, we have a compilation focusing on Cathy Lee Crosby:



Later in 1974, Crosby would turn up as a corrupted version of Helen of Troy, or so it would seem, in an episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, before rebounding with the reality-magazine series, That's Incredible, a couple of years later. Montalban landed an endorsement deal with Chrysler right around the time this movie aired or thereabouts, and, of course, parlayed that into Fantasy Island. Wikipedia says that Crosby has claimed to have been offered another shot at Wonder Woman, but we all know who ended up taking over the role a year later (Lynda Carter). In all honesty, Crosby was just not believable enough as Diana to warrant a second chance. However, in the course of Wonder Woman's CBS run, she would run into a few more Abner Smiths and George Calvins, garden variety crooks looking to feather their nest in a misguided belief they were looking to better the world.

In other words, no different than the ordinary folks Wonder Woman encountered on Super Friends at that time.

Maybe I'm a little spoiled, having seen this year's model of "Wonder Woman", epic in its scope, but this comes off as a wee bit pedestrian.

Rating: C.

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