All 7 Wonder Woman actresses ranked from worst to best

5. Cathy Lee Crosby

Appeared in: Wonder Woman (1974 TV movie and pilot)

Before Lynda Carter and the Wonder Woman TV series would bring the Amazonian princess to the small screen, there were a number of unsuccessful attempts to make it happen earlier. We mentioned the unaired Diana Prince pilot, but there was another attempt close to a decade later in 1974.

Cathy Lee Crosby would take on the role in the ABC pilot but its respectable success led to the network opting against picking it up for series. It was later repackaged as a made-for-television movie.

Crosby was convincing in the role and she certainly looked the part, but she was dealt a bad hand by the producers who opted against bringing a more comic-accurate version of Wonder Woman to the screen. As a result, the show is based on the comics of the time instead, portraying Diana Prince as a James Bond-like superspy with no superpowers, no comic-accurate villains to take on, and an updated uniform that looked nothing like the original source material. The producers would later admit that reinventing the character was a mistake.

It was definitely an interesting idea, but a very bad one for Wonder Woman’s TV debut. Thankfully, ABC didn’t give up on the idea and decided to move forward with a more comic-accurate Wonder Woman instead – a decision that would change the character’s legacy for the better.