Yvonne Craig

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Yvonne Craig was a renowned American actress best recognized for portraying Batgirl in the iconic 1960s television series, Batman. She was born in Taylorville, Illinois, and initially trained as a ballet dancer, performing as a member of the corps de ballet with the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo during the 1950s. Eventually, Craig transitioned into acting, making her film debut in 1959 with three movies: The Young Land, The Gene Krupa Story, and Gidget. In 1960, she starred alongside Bing Crosby in High Time as a vivacious coed and married singer and actor Jimmy Boyd shortly thereafter. The following year, she appeared in the film Seven Women from Hell alongside Cesar Romero, who would later become famous as one of Batman's key villains. Another link to the Batman franchise came when Craig performed in the Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Lazy Lover" in 1958, where Neil Hamilton played her stepfather; Hamilton later portrayed her father in Batman.

After she divorced Boyd in 1962, Craig appeared in various films, notably alongside Elvis Presley in It Happened At The World's Fair and Kissin' Cousins, as well as having a role with Dennis Hopper. She also starred in In Like Flint as a Russian ballet dancer opposite James Coburn. As her film opportunities diminished in the mid-1960s, she shifted her focus to television, most memorably playing Marta, a green-skinned Orion slave girl in the third season of Star Trek's episode "Whom Gods Destroy" in 1968. In this episode, she performed a dance number while portraying a character in an insane asylum. Craig also contributed to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in the episode "The Brain Killer Affair," where she helped unravel a mystery involving a dangerous poison. The show later released a theatrical film, One Spy Too Many, in 1966, for which Craig was cast in a semi-nude sunbathing scene and flirted with Napoleon Solo.

Her talents extended to roles in other series like The Wild Wild West, where she played an assassin in "The Night of the Grand Emir," and she also appeared as an exotic dancer in McHale's Navy. Craig featured in an episode of The Big Valley and portrayed a bride-to-be in The Ghost & Mrs. Muir. However, her most significant role came as Batgirl, where she played the character and her alter ego, librarian Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Commissioner Gordon, during the series' final 1967-1968 season. Unbeknownst to Batman and Robin, Batgirl's true identity was only known to Alfred, their loyal butler. While the Batman television series has often been labeled "campy," Craig's performance has been celebrated for establishing a precedent for future television heroines. Throughout Batman, she frequently found herself in dire situations alongside Batman and Robin, and she expressed her discontent to DC Comics regarding Barbara Gordon