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Years before Lynda Carter donned the red, white and blue garb of Wonder Woman this four minute "pre-pilot" was produced. Starring Ellie Wood Walker as Diana Prince and Linda Harrison as Wonder Woman, the presentation was crafted as a comedy, with slapstick humor and not much else. It was produced by William Dozier, the man behind Batman and The Green Hornet. But no pilot was ever produced, let alone sold. The presentation remains simply as a curio for Wonder Women aficionados.

Wonder Woman

For one shining moment in 1965, William Dozier was the king of television, thanks to Batman, which zoomed to the top of the ratings charts shortly after it premiered in January of 1965 on ABC. Batman was produced by Greenway Productions, Dozier's company. In September of 1966, two additional Greenway Productions premiered on ABC, The Tammy Grimes Show and The Green Hornet. Unfortunately, neither show was a hit. The Tammy Grimes Show was canceled after only four episodes were broadcast while The Green Hornet was canceled after a single season.

Dozier, who had worked in television and film in the mid-to-late 1950s, returned in 1965 to produce Rod Serling's The Loner for the 1965-1966 season. He also produced a one-hour pilot based on Eric Ambler's novel, Journey Into Fear [1]. The pilot, which starred Jeffrey Hunter, was considered by NBC as part of its 1966-1967 season, but a series never materialized. The Loner was cancelled after only one season.

Undaunted, Dozier moved from drama to comedy and from NBC to ABC, resulting in the debut of Batman in January of 1966. The series, which was shown twice a week, ranked near the top of the Nielsen ratings from the very start and both installments landed in the Top Ten for the 1965-1966 season as a whole. Obviously, it would return for the 1966-1967 season, along with the aforementioned The Green Hornet and The Tammy Grimes Show.

In early July, Broadcasting reported that William Dozier's Greenway Productions and 20th Century-Fox TV were working on a potential half-hour series based on Chester Gould's Dick Tracy character [2]. Broadcasting also noted that the two companies were looking at the character of Wonder Woman for a series to debut during the 1967-1968 season[3]. Although a pilot for Dick Tracy was produced, it was never picked up .

In August, shortly before the start of the new fall season, in an article discussing the differences between Batman and The Green Hornet, The Chicago Tribune noted that "Wonder Woman is waiting in the wings" should The Green Hornet manage to recapture the early success of Batman [4]. Despite the cancellation of The Green Hornet after only one season, a series based on Wonder Woman, was indeed shopped to the networks by Dozier prior to the start of the 1967-1968 season.

However, a full-fledged pilot was never produced. Instead, "presentation" running less than five minutes was filmed in an attempt to sell the concept. It never sold. The presentation was more than campy, it was more than silly, it was inane.

Unlike Batman, which relied on outrageous gags for laughs, the proposed Wonder Woman series would be a "pure" sitcom, revolving around Diana Prince (Ellie Wood Walker) and her mother (Maudie Prickett) in their day-to-day life. An awkward, almost helpless woman, Diana constantly worries her mother because she just can't meet a nice man to settle down with.

Diana and Her Mother

The presentation, titled "Who's Afraid of Diana Prince?," begins with a shot of a Wonder Woman comic book and then takes the viewer to an ordinary, everyday living room, where an ordinary, everyday young woman (hint: its Diana Prince) sits reading a newspaper. The windows in the room are open and it appears to be storming outside, so Diana has trouble keeping the paper together. She leans over to pick up part of the newspaper and falls over, just as her mother walks in. The two manage to get themselves put together.

Diana Prince is therefore introduced. She isn't exactly the ideal candidate for a super heroine. After listening to her mother mentioning the lack of planes in the sky, Diana decides that she should go help Steve Trevor (who never appeared in the series but was a main character in the comic) whose plane must be grounded. Exactly why Steve would need her help is never explained.

Her mother doesn't want her going out in the storm; she would much rather see Diana safe at home eating dinner. While Diana hurriedly eats to appease her mother, she is berated for not having a husband and always flying around. After a moment, Diana gets up and goes to put on her bracelets, anxious to transform into Wonder Woman. She enters her closet the comely Diana and comes out the beautiful Wonder Woman. Or so she thinks.

Wonder Woman

Admiring herself in a mirror, Diana is overjoyed to see a gorgeous woman staring back at her (the woman in the reflection was portrayed not by Ellie Wood Walker but by a pre-Planet of the Apes Linda Harrison). Diana spends an inordinate amount of time in front of the mirror as the narrator (William Dozier) remarks that Wonder Woman knows she is as strong as Hercules, as wise as Athena, as fast as Mercury and thinks she is as beautiful as Aphrodite.

Eventually, content with her admiration, Diana climbs out the window and onto the roof outside. Exclaiming that she has a job to do, she flies off (although the flying is more of an absurd twinkling of the toes). Her mother runs to the open window and yells after he daughter, begging her to call when she gets wherever she's going.

With that, the presentation ends, thankfully. Upon viewing the presentation short it is hard to believe that William Dozier could possibly believe that any network executive would accept the pilot and agree to produce a series. Dozier was never given the go-ahead to produce a pilot, no doubt in part because The Green Hornet failed to match the popularity of Batman (his Dick Tracy series never got past pilot stage for the same reason). It would take another failed pilot, this one produced in 1974, before the classic Lynda Carter Wonder Woman series was created.

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