The Pop Culture Addict presents... Television

May 7th, 2006

Putting comic book characters on the screen can often be a treacherous endeavor. The comic book fan is a fickle breed and their thumbs up or thumbs down to a superhero-based screen adaptation will make or break the production. Many are not done well. However, what could be seen as the worst comic book adaptation of all time? Could it be Joel Schumacher's "Batman and Robin"? Ben Affleck as "Daredevil"? Roger Korman's "Fantastic Four"? David Hasselhoff as "Nick Fury"? Hell, don't even get me started on former Full House star Laurie Laughlin as the Black Canary! Yeah, all of these are contenders for the worst superhero screen presentation of all time. However, my top candidate for the worst adaptation of a superhero to the screen would be, without a doubt, Wonder Woman. No, not Linda Carter as Wonder Woman. That was brilliant. And I'm not even talking about the horribly miscast and misdirected Cathy Lee Crosby production that predated the Linda Carter version. No, before Linda Carter, before Cathy Lee Crosby... hell even before Wonder Woman and the Incredible I-Ching was Ellie Wood Walker. Never heard of her? You have no idea what I'm talking about? Well perhaps you're one of the blessed. However, I invite you to walk with me through a nightmare journey and discover for yourself the worst four and a half minutes of superhero footage that was ever filmed in something I'd like to call:

GREAT HERA!:

CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT PRESENTS

ELLIE WOOD WALKER AS

THE WONDER WOMAN THAT NEVER WAS

The year was 1967 and television producer William Dozier was looking for a third superhero series to add to the growing roster of Greenway Productions' stable of action/adventure shows for the 1968 television season. Dozier's first production, the now classic Batman, featuring Adam West and Burt Ward as the Dynamic Duo, was a runaway success. His follow up series, the Green Hornet, while not nearly as successful, was gaining a giant cult following and skyrocketing the series' co-star Bruce Lee to international stardom. Now Dozier had been playing with different styles of storytelling between the two series. Batman was a tongue in cheek kitschy romp that proved successful with audiences. The Green Hornet was a more straight-forward action series and was proving to be popular with older and more sophisticated television audiences. Dozier wanted to do something completely different with his next series. A real departure from the first two. Inspired by the rival network's new superhero sitcom "Captain Nice" Dozier decided that his next project would also go down the same route. He'd leave tongue in cheek adventure for slapstick antics and a laugh track. Dozier decided that his next project would be a sitcom version of the popular comic book heroine Wonder Woman.

Now why William Dozier chose Wonder Woman for his project is unknown. Perhaps it was that before then Wonder Woman had never been tackled on the screen before. She hadn't been part of the Saturday afternoon movie serials of the 1940s. She had never even been on radio or even animated yet! Yet what was odd was that despite the fact that Wonder Woman was a comic book mainstay, even DC comics was having a hard time selling her books in the late 1960s. Wonder Woman was probably one of the most unmarketable commodities on the comic book market at the time. At any rate, for some reason Dozier thought she would be perfect for his project. Now all he had to do was hire an actress, a writer and throw out the complete Wonder Woman mythos entirely! This is when disaster struck.

First up was writing a script. Dozier first gave the script writing chores to Batman screenwriters Stan Hart and Larry Siegel but was unhappy with the script they produced. Dozier tried again and for the second script he pulled in his favourite Batman script writer Stanley Ralph Ross. Ross also worked on "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and "The Monkees" and would later work on such series as "All in the Family", "GI Joe", "Tales From the Crypt" and, oddly enough, Linda Carter's "Wonder Woman". Together Dozier and Ross put together a four and a half minute script titled "Who's Afraid of Diana Prince?" that would introduce the new Wonder Woman, and the premise of the series to the studio, intending to entice them to produce the series for television. However, Dozier's take on the amazing Amazon was questionable. Dozier and Ross presented Diana Prince as a mousy young woman who, at age twenty seven million, lives with her henpecking mother in a small one bedroom flat. Diana isn't overly bright, is bossed around by her mother and has one real desire - to get (as she calls it) an "M-A-N". Diana's mother would rather her settle down and get married than have her "flying around" as Wonder Woman. The four minute script featured absolutely no Wonder Woman action and much of Diana getting lectured and bullied by her overly dramatic mother. However, once Diana decides to stop listening to her mother and "fly off" to help Steve Trevor she goes through a rotating closet and reemerges in the famous Wonder Woman costume. However, another giant painful change was made in this version of Wonder Woman. In a voice over by William Dozier, he exclaims: "Wonder Woman! Who knows she has the strength of Hercules. Who knows she has the wisdom of Athena. Who knows she has the speed of Mercury. But who THINKS she has the beauty of Aphrodite." Thinks? What the hell? Wonder Woman DOES have the beauty of Aphrodite! What follows is a painful sequence featuring Wonder Woman mugging and admiring herself overdramatically in the mirror. This, I assume, was supposed to be funny, but for any viewer, especially a comic book or a Wonder Woman fan, it's just painful. What the comedy of the series would entail is that Wonder Woman believes she is more beautiful than she really is which would have her believing that men found her irresistible while they all repel her advances thus making her unable to get an "M-A-N". After she is finished, Diana climbs out a window, clicks her heels and does possibly the most awkward flight sequence ever filmed as Diana's mother howls a final round of demands and orders at her. And so ended Wonder Woman's first television debut.

Now I know what you're thinking. I MUST be making this up! Well dear friends, you can view this monstrosity for yourself if you dare, courtesy of www.tvobscurities.com and clicking here. After watching it one must wonder just how terrible the original Siegel and Hart script was!

Now we've all heard the legends surrounding the casting of Linda Carter as Wonder Woman and the fact that it was nearly as difficult as casting Scarlet O'Hara. So who was Ellie Wood Walker, the original Wonder Woman who seemed to be cast so quickly? Now perhaps it's my faulty eyesight or the bad quality of the film but Ellie Wood Walker isn't, in my opinion, all that hideous. She's no Linda Carter, but it's not like they cast Janis Joplin in the role. I mean she might have been a pretty Wonder Woman if they made her up to be so. She might have been a good actress if they gave her a good script. Now looking for information on Ellie Wood Walker proved to be quite futile as she really didn't make any mark at all in Hollywood. However it's not like she didn't star in any real productions. Prior to the Wonder Woman gig Walker had appeared in a 1964 flop called "The New Interns". However, she would go on to make brief appearances in two more legendary films later on, but in completely unmemorable roles. In 1968 she appeared in Boris Karloff's anti-gun movie "Targets" playing the crazed sniper's second victim. Basically seen through the scope of the sniper's gun she is the woman on the freeway who is shot in the back. The next year, 1969, saw her appear in the legendary "Easy Rider" as a mime. Mimes? I don't remember any mimes in that movie! There were mimes in "Blow Up". Mimes in "Modesty Blaise". But "Easy Rider"? Well apparently there were at least three because she was credited as "Mime #3". Characters without names would follow her when she appeared in Martin Sheen's 1986 TV movie as "adult friend" and former co-star Dennis Hopper's 1990 directorial debut "Catchfire" (co-starring Jodie Foster and Vincent Price in a film both wish they never made) as "woman in van". However, in the last sixteen years Ellie Wood Walker has seemingly disappeared and her current whereabouts, at least to this Pop Culture Addict, are now unknown.

But if success wasn't in Ellie Wood Walker's future her co-stars in the four minute film were another story completely. Actress Maudie Prickett, who played Diana's mother, was already a screen veteran since 1938 and had dozens of small television and film credits under her belt, including recurring roles on Hazel, the Andy Griffith Show and The Jack Benny Show. If Wonder Woman had been sold it would have made her first, and only, staring role. Maudie Prickett had worked with some of the greatest actors on the silver screen and television but was always a bridesmaid and never a bride. As terrible as the script was, the expertise in Ms. Prickett's acting is evident. She makes the best out of the script put before her and while her character could have gone down in television history as the most obnoxious TV mother ever, Maudie Prickett displays perfect comic timing. Perhaps it's a blessing in disguise that the show wasn't picked up so that it would not be a stain on Ms. Prickett's impressive acting résumé.

Most interesting though is the figure that Ellie Wood Walker sees in the mirror when she transforms into Wonder Woman. In the mirror is a woman that is far more beautiful and curvy than Walker is which was supposed to represent the image that Walker's Wonder Woman sees in her head. The woman in the mirror was none other than Linda Harrison who would go on to hit pop culture gold a year later as Charlton Heston's love interest Nova in "Planet of the Apes". Linda Harrison had worked a year earlier with Dozier in her screen debut when she played opposite Caesar Romero and Donna Loren as "Cheerleader #2" on Batman. However, I think we all can forgive Linda Harrison for making this short appearance in a terrible presentation. When Linda Harrison made this film she was still an unknown actress and was not yet aware of the sci-fi/fantasy legend she was going to become. Thankfully Dozier's Wonder Woman was never made and would not prevent her from becoming Nova.

So why wasn't Dozier's Wonder Woman picked up by the network? A number of explanations have been suggested. The most popular is that the pre-mature cancellation of the Green Hornet after only one season destroyed the network's faith in Greenway productions. Furthermore, the cancellation of Captain Nice on the rival network cast a shadow of doubt over the value of a commodity like a superhero sitcom. It has also been suggested that time had run out for action/adventure shows. 1969 would mark the end of shows such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Time Tunnel and even Batman. Stanley Ralph Ross offered another explanation, saying that the network wasn't ready to produce a series in this vein that starred a female character. However I think I can offer the most realistic reason why Dozier's Wonder Woman was not picked up by the network. Did you take a look at the four and a half minutes of footage? My theory is that the reason the network didn't pick it up is because it's awful. What ever happened to awful? Your average retarded eight year old can tell you that it was awful! Any person with half a brain can tell that it could be one of the worst four minutes of television they have ever seen, and any Wonder Woman fan would have been on their way to fire bomb Greenway headquarters. I believe that the reason it wasn't made into a series was because the producers had good taste.

Thus Dozier's Wonder Woman was sealed into the vault to suffer its fate as an obscure oddity and piece of trivia for pop culture buffs everywhere. So remember next time you run across Halle Berry's version of Catwoman on your television screen, instead of throwing a brick through the screen just remember that it could honestly be worse. It could be Ellie Wood Walker as Wonder Woman.