Eight years before Wonder Woman became a series with Linda Carter — after Cathy Lee Crosby appearing in the TV movie — William Dozier, who also worked on the 1967 Batman series — tried to get Wonder Woman on the air. We’re all the better that it never happened.

In this four-minute screen test, Ellie Wood Walker (Targets, Easy Rider) is Diana Prince and TV veteran Maudie Prickett is her mother, Hippolyta. They live in the big city, together, with mother needling daughter about growing too old without getting married with lines like, “How do you expect to get a husband flying around all the time?”

The narrator, who was Dozier, says that Wonder Woman has the strength of Hercules, the wisdom of Athena and the speed of Hermes — who is she, a female Captain Marvel? — but she only thinks she has the beauty of Aphrodite. This leads to her staring in the mirror, as we see her as she sees herself, as  “Oh, You Beautiful Doll” plays. In the mirror is Linda Harrison (Nova from Planet of the Apes) dressed in the famous Wonder Woman costume, as we get a full minute of her nearly touching herself.

It’s as if the women’s liberation revolution was never happening.

This was written by Stan Hart, Stanley Ralph Ross and Larry Siegel. Hart and Siegal were writers for Mad Magazine and would go on to be writers for The Carol Burnett Show. Ross worked as a voice actor and wrote several episodes of Batman, as well as developing the 70s Wonder Woman show, developing the Monster Squad and That’s My Mama series and becoming an ordained minister and marrying TV Robin Burt Ward to his third wife. He was also Ballpoint Baxter on the Batman show, a name he’d used on other projects, as well as the writer and producer of 200 songs, owned nine comedy clubs, two baseball teams and came up with the phrase “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” while working for ABC Sports.

At one point, Dozier had three TV series on the air: Batman, The Tammy Grimes Show and The Green Hornet with plans to make a Dick Tracy series. The Chester Gould newspaper strip had been the original character that ABC wanted to make a show about before settling for Batman. The pilot for that show, “The Plot to Kill NATO,” had Dick Tracy (Ray MacDonnell) battle Mr. Memory (Victor Buono). Yet by 1967-1968, Batman was down from two days a week to one, Tammy Grimes had been cancelled and The Green Hornet wasn’t as big as the campy DC series. Dick Tracy would never be picked up, despite a fully produced pilot.

You can watch this on YouTube.