In 1975, female action heroes were virtually nonexistent in Hollywood. While the women’s liberation movement was marching through the streets of New York, the television landscape was still a male-dominated fortress. Enter Lynda Carter—a 6-foot-tall beauty from Phoenix, Arizona, who would not only break the glass ceiling but do so while wearing a tiara and the American flag. Today, her legacy as the definitive Wonder Woman remains untouched, but the road to the Lasso of Truth was paved with financial desperation and behind-the-scenes battles.

Born in 1951, Carter was a natural performer who made her television debut at just five years old. However, her true passion was music. By fifteen, she was singing in local pizza parlors for $25 a weekend, eventually dropping out of Arizona State University to pursue a singing career that never quite caught fire. She pivoted to the beauty pageant circuit, winning Miss World USA in 1972, though she later described the experience as “painful” and “cruel.”