I smiled a lot yesterday to see all the folks on the 'net showing their love for the late Yvonne Craig. The web was full of remembrances and photos — including an awful lot of photos of other women in Batgirl suits who were misidentified as Yvonne. Most of all, there were sweet stories about meeting her and a few folks sent theirs to me. Here's Steve Haynie's…
Yvonne Craig's first convention appearance was at the 1988 Magnum Opus Con in Columbus, GA. She was going to give away autographed photos, but a few of us talked her out of that by pointing out that other guests supported themselves by selling photos. We warned her about the autograph dealers that would swoop in to take advantage of her generosity. She gave in with, "OK, then. How about fifty cents?" We told her no again. I took off for a few minutes, and when I came back she agreed to go as high as two dollars apiece. All the money was donated to a charity the local Star Fleet chapter worked with.
I saw her a few more times over the years at conventions. She was always nice. Al Bigley had his baby boy at a convention, and over the years Yvonne Craig kept up with how the little guy was growing up. One of the best ways to sum up how she felt about fans came from a comic book dealer I knew. He said she was at a show where there were sports stars who came in to sign for a very brief time and left. Yvonne Craig was married to a successful businessman, and she did well as a real estate agent. She did not need to be there to make money, but she spent the entire day signing and meeting fans when she could have just limited herself to a short time like the sports stars did. Yvonne Craig enjoyed meeting fans.
By the way, Alan Napier lived in the same condominiums as Yvonne Craig, and they would get together weekly until his death.
Alan Napier, just to remind you all, was the gent who played Alfred the Butler on the Batman TV show. And I received this from Gene Stuart…
I am not one to write fan mail but I really felt compelled to thank you for your homage to Yvonne Craig. It was heartfelt and sweet and very authentic, and there is no better way to honor someone who is no longer with us. It must have been great actually getting to meet her. Being gay, I can only appreciate the teenage crush by analogy. But as the owner of 25,000 comics, I completely understand the fanboy part of the crush.
In fact, in those days I read letters pages just as religiously as the comics. I am sure I read your letter and I would have completely disagreed with you [although apparently most of fandom agreed with you — about nine years after that comic came out I was told by someone at DC comics that those Batman-Elongated Man cross-overs were the lowest selling issues of Detective Comics in each of the years they came out and that's why there were only two of them].
Anyway, I was a big television fan as well as a comic fan. What came through in your story on Ms. Craig was a bit of that unique and special relationship that people have with folks they see on television, especially recurring roles on weekly television. It was truer in the sixties then today, before you had telephones, tablets and computer screens to watch television on at your convenience. If you weren't available at that time and place [same bat-time, same bat-channel] you were just out of luck until summer rerun season. Your references to that poor guy having his comic passed around out his control were priceless. I know that feeling all too well.
So thank you very much for sharing your stroll down memory lane and giving us a personal glimpse of a talented lady.
And lastly, here's one from Alicia C., who wrote to say…
Thank you for making a very important point about Yvonne Craig. Most of the tributes I read just focused on how physically attractive she was and of course no one had to make that point. It's obvious in every photo of her. But I was pleased to read that she was so nice to her fans and that she was so aware of the effect she had on some of them. That last line told me she was no dummy and the whole piece made me realize that just because she was no longer on TV after the Batman show went off, she remained a star forever.
Exactly. I don't think anyone who ever loved her on TV and then got to meet her at a convention ever came away disappointed. That does happen with some celebrities. The wonderfulness they convey on screen is diminished or even contradicted by what they display in person, especially years later. That was not the case with Ms. Craig or for that matter, Julie Newmar. I've gotten to know Julie somewhat better since then and I no longer think of her just as a symbol of glamour. I think of her as glamour plus an awful lot of brains and compassion.
Changing the subject only slightly: It surprises me that some people in this day and age don't seem to understand what a "crush" is or was. Gene (above) gets it but a couple of folks who commented on my piece seem to think it's a euphemism for serious, activist lusting after someone's body and it isn't…or wasn't. If that had been how my friends and I felt about Yvonne Craig (or others on screen or in centerfolds), I wouldn't have used such a passive, innocent word.
I can understand the confusion. Guys at age 15 — where I was when Ms. Craig was first on my radar — can get pretty…well, I'm trying to think of a nicer word than "horny." If you have one, fill it in for me, please. Many of them do some pretty awkward, even destructive things due to peer and/or hormonal pressure but not every interaction is fueled by those motivators. You can desperately want to be near certain members of the opposite sex or even your own, but there's also such a thing as admiring from afar…especially when a person you find so interesting is and is likely to remain unattainable.
True, when I was that age, I was often thinking about carnal knowledge…but with ladies in my class, and I mean "class" as a function of both location and caste. It always seemed to be the height of self-punishment (not to be confused with self-abuse) to fantasize about women I would never meet, let alone know intimately. At that age, you have enough probable disappointments in life that you don't need to set yourself up for certain ones. It's pretty much the same reason I always wanted to be a professional writer as opposed to, say, President of the United States or The First Man on Mars or something. Set your dreams high but don't make them wholly unreachable.
A crush — the kind I had on many unmeetable women in my teens — was just an interest, just a desire to see more of them even if it was only on TV. It was kind of a way of defining for myself what I thought was attractive…like window-shopping the new 2015 Ferrari 458 Speciale when one is destined to forever be a couple hundred grand shy of the purchase price.
I didn't expect to ever be in the same room as Yvonne Craig even for a minute — and if I had, she was fifteen years older than I was (twice my age!) and probably married or involved with someone. Had I fantasized about anything regarding her, it would have been talking with her and not making a total ninny of myself. When I was fifteen, even that didn't seem possible so there was no point in imagining the naughty stuff.
On the other hand, I was in the same math class as a girl named Becky who was just about as cute. Fantasizing about her seemed like a much better investment and…
Well, okay. That one didn't pay off…but I didn't feel too foolish when it didn't. It was a high dream but it was not unreachable. I just didn't reach it.