Thursday, August 20, 2015

Beyond Batgirl

Yvonne Craig, who died earlier this week at age 78 due to complications from breast cancer, has received a great deal of attention both for her dazzling role as Batgirl on the 1960s TV series Batman and her sexy turn as an Orion slave girl on Star Trek.

However, the Illinois-born ballet dancer turned actress was also once a familiar guest star on American TV crime dramas, from Perry Mason and Philip Marlowe to Checkmate, It Takes a Thief, 77 Sunset Strip (on which she appeared four times), The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Wild Wild West, The Mod Squad, O’Hara, U.S. Treasury, Mannix (two episodes), The Magician, Kojak, and Starsky & Hutch. In addition, she portrayed a wannabe dancer in trouble in the 1973 NBC-TV film Jarrett, an unsuccessful pilot starring Glenn Ford as a private investigator who specialized in fine-arts cases. Click here to watch clips from a variety of Craig’s on-screen performances.

“It’s nice to be remembered,” Yvonne Craig told a New Orleans interviewer in 2000. Really, how could we forget?

READ MORE:Yvonne Craig, TV’s Sexy Batgirl of the 1960s, Dies at 78,” by Mike Barnes (The Hollywood Reporter); “Yvonne Craig, TV’s Batgirl, Dies at 78,” by Bill Koenig (The Spy Command); “The Late Great Yvonne Craig,” by Terence Towles Canote (A Shroud of Thoughts); “Yvonne Craig, 1937-2015” (Tor.com); “Yvonne Craig, R.I.P.,” by Mitchell Hadley (It’s About TV!).

2 comments:

Bob said...

Like many young boys growing up, she was a childhood crush.

Terence Towles Canote said...

While I loved Yvonne as Batgirl (who didn't), she do so much more in her career. She appeared in several feature films (two with Elvis) and was a very talented ballerina as well!