TV Trivia
by Michael Karol
& Craig Hamrick

The Bionic Woman Aired: 1976-78 Star: Lindsay Wagner as Jamie Sommers Premise: After a near-fatal skydiving accident, former tennis star Jamie is fitted with a super-powered, "bionic" arm, legs, and an ear. She divides her time between working as a teacher and working undercover for the OSI (though once a famous tennis star, she's never recognized).

Jamie Sommers was introduced on The Six Million Dollar Man as lead character Steve Austin's childhood sweetheart. Steve, played by Lee Majors, was an astronaut who was severely injured in a rocket crash, then was fitted with bionic parts. When his girlfriend Jamie had a devastating accident, she was given bionics as well. Jamie's body rejected the parts, and she died.

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When Jamie became popular, Universal Studio execs were unhappy to learn Lindsay been released from her studio contract. She agreed to come back, but made demands for a high salary and a portion of merchandising money -- a smart move, as a Bionic Woman doll, playsets, lunchbox, and many more items were popular toys of the mid '70s. With Lindsay back on board, suddenly Jamie was alive again.

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Lindsay's spinoff, The Bionic Woman, premiered January 14, 1976.

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Jamie lived in an apartment over the coach house at a farm owned by Steve Austin's mother and stepfather. Though working as a schoolteacher, Jamie agreed to take on occasional secret missions, which meant going undercover as everything from a beauty pageant contestant to a nun.

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Jamie Sommers and Steve Austin both worked for the OSI: the U.S. Office of Scientific Information.

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Starting at age 13, Lindsay Wagner worked as a model. The money ($50 an hour) was a help at home, because her parents had divorced when she was quite young, and she lived with her mother and grandparents.

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An auto accident, shortly after BW started, left Lindsay with two scars -- one on her forehead, easily concealed by her hair, and another on her lip, not as easy to hide.The actress crashed her car into a tree in Coldwater Canyon.

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Bert Parks guest starred on an episode in which Jamie competed in a beauty pageant. For her part of the talent competition, Jamie warbled the "classic" '70s tune Feelings. (Parks was the longtime host of The Miss America Pageant.)

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Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors once told TV Guide that he learned valuable lessons from Barbara Stanwyck on The Big Valley: "Be on time, know your words, hit your mark."

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Lindsay wasn't always happy on the set. She wanted Jamie to be a spiritually enlightened, sophisticated character, but, she once told TV Guide, "The network wanted Steve Austin with cleavage."

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Dr. Rudy Wells (Martin E. Brooks) was the doctor who kept Jamie's bionic parts in working order. He was also featured on The Six Million Dollar Man. In 1972, Brooks had a recurring role as Deputy D.A. Chapman on Rock Hudson's detective show, McMillan & Wife.

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Throughout the Bionic Woman series, Jamie/Lindsay had a distracting habit of running her hand through her hair when perplexed (which was often). Facing an unruly class on her first day as a school teacher, Jamie casually ripped in half a thick phonebook and gained the students' fear/respect, etc

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Richard Anderson, as Oscar Goldman, starred in both The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman -- as the government agent who doled out assignments to the bionic duo. When asked by the Washington Post what the doll based on Oscar's character would do, Universal Studios exec Kenneth Johnson, said, "Oh, it'll be the the typical bureaucratic doll. It doesn't do anything."

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The Six Million Dollar Man was based loosely on Cyborg, a novel by Martin Caiden.

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Dennis Patrick played a ruthless industrialist named Carlton Harris in the first episode of The Bionic Woman. His character's son was played by David Niven's son, Kip.

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Lindsay won an Emmy for her Bionic Woman work in 1977.

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Evel Knievel guested in 1977, doing a 50-foot motorcycle mump across a river basin, fleeing, with Jamie, from a band of dastardly East German agents...

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Jamie wasn't all-powerful. Her vulnerability was part of the show's appeal. Unlike, say, Superman, her powers had limitations. Also,unlike Steve, Jamie was fairly reluctant to use her bionics.

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When Jamie asked OSI doctors how much she cost, they told her, "not quite six million; your parts were smaller (than Steve's)."

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There have been several reunion specials, including The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (1987) and Bionic Everafter? (1994).

Before becoming a movie star, Sandra Bullock appeared in the TV movie Bionic Showdown (1989) as a young bionic woman training with Jamie Sommers.

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In the 1980s, Lindsay became the Queen of the Miniseries, starring in such camp classics as Princess Daisy (1983) and Scruples (1980).

In Scruples, she played Billie Ikehorn, a social climbing secretary who marries her boss and ends up owning her own ritzy fashion boutique. One of my favorite elements of this miniseries: Billie sports a different hairstyle in just about every scene.

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Craig Hamrick has written several books about Dark Shadows. The two most recent, Big Lou and Barnabas & Company, are currently available on Amazon.com. Big Lou is the biography of Louis Edmonds, who starred on Dark Shadows and All My Children. Barnabas & Company is a comprehensive look at the cast of DS.