Yvonne performed crazy stunts while riding the “Batcyle,” a motorcycle with wings. But riding the bike and wearing the Batgirl mask wasn't as easy as it looked.
"The Batcycle was very difficult. They had taken off the shock absorbers to put on the bat wings, so whenever I went over a bump, it was like jumping off a table stiff-legged. It would really jar my teeth!" she said. "The first Batgirl mask made little dents on my face.Basically, when I took it off, it looked like I had been crying for weeks. So they changed that and opened up the eyes so I could see better."
“Batman” aficionados will always remember the scene when he accidently rested his hand on her breast.
"Yes, I was felt up by Batman. I was in front of him and he was supposed to rest his hand on my shoulder,” she told www.batmantoys.com. “Well, I turned around and the rest shall we say is history. The sad part about it all was that the fool (Adam West) was so into the scene that he didn't even notice where his hand was resting.
“It took all the stage hands to start cracking up before he realized what was going on...he turned several shades of red under that cowl... we kept teasing him about it for the longest time afterwards."
Classic TV Beauties 1960s Countdown
YVONNE CRAIG as Batgirl in "Batman"
The “Batman” producers were attempting to attract a pre-pubesecent female and an over-40 male audience, and when they cast Yvonne as the alluring Batgirl, they hit a home run.
Even Batman and Robin were startled when Batgirl burst on the scene. At her first appearance, Robin asked, “Who is that masked girl?” and the Caped Crusader replied, “I don't know but I'd like to know her.”
A swirling ball of energy wearing a tight-fitting purple suit and yellow cape who fought villians alongside the Dynamic Duo, Batgirl made her mark in her lone season (1966-67) on the super heroes series.
“I really didn't think we were making 'Gone With The Wind,'” Yvonne said in an interview posted on her website, www.yvonnecraig.com
“[It was] just another episodic TV series that would be over when it was over, and then it would never rerun again. I've been told that 'Batman' has apparently never stopped rerunning somewhere in the world.”
Like Batman and Robin, Batgirl kept a secret identity. During the day she was plain librarian Barbara Gordon, daughter of Police Commissioner Gordon, who wasn't aware that his little girl was out saving Gotham City from the likes of the Penguin and the Joker.
Yvonne had previously worked with “Batman” producer-narrator William Dozier on an unsold sitcom, so she jumped at the chance to play a super hero.
“I think they probably chose me because they knew I had a dance background and although they didn't want me to do my stunts, I talked them into it,” Yvonne said. “The producers didn't want [Batgirl] to be too aggressive so they thought that by having me do my own stunts I wouldn't be too 'butch.' They wanted a Batgirl that was still going to be 'feminine' both in appearance and action.”
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A native of Taylorville, Illinois who was raised in Columbus, Ohio, Yvonne was trained as a ballet dancer. She made the move to acting, appearing in three movies by the time she was 22.
Before she obtained “Batman” fame, Yvonne starred in two Elvis Presley movies, “It Happened at the World's Fair” and “Kissin' Cousins.” She also starred as a ballet dancer in the James Coburn movie “In Like Flint.”
After “Batman,” Yvonne appeared in numerous TV series, most notably in the original episode of “Love American Style,” along with three later episodes. She made appearances in “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” but considered her finest performance in a guest starring role in “The Mod Squad.”
Sci-fi fans will recall Yvonne as the green slave Orion Marta in a “Star Trek” episode “Whom Gods Destroy.”
“It's not easy being green,” she said. “It took a long time to put it on, even longer to take it off and until the next to last day of filming we never figured out a way to make it stay.”
“I certainly have no regrets over any roles I was ever in,” she said in an interview with www.thecelebritycafe.com, “And this series ['Batman'] was certainly a fun one to work on.”
