The Six Million Dollar Man spinoff was a success.

Soon there will be a super-heroic woman on the tube every week in the person of Lindsay Wagner starting in The Bionic Woman.

ABC couldn't very well have titled the show The Six Million Dollar Woman without making Lindsay sound as if she were an extraordinarily expensive hooker.
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Lee Majors, who stars in the male version, has two bionic legs, a bionic right arm and eye. Miss Wagner fea­tures some of the same equipment but will have a bionic ear instead of an x-ray eye.

Bionic means these parts of her body are electronic re­placements for the originals, allowing her to run faster and hit harder than any human on earth. Her ear can pick up a whisper a mile away.

Happily, Miss Wagner is all flesh and blood in the flesh. She is also blonde. hazel-eyed and bright as a new penny. Bright because she hired a personal manager who swung a deal for her that would make Howard Hughes envious.

Lindsay was under contract to Universal Studios for S50.000 a year, appearing in such shows as Marcus Welby, M.D., Night Gallery, Owen Marshall and The Rock­ford Files.
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Earlier this year the studio dropped her option. Why pay $50.000 for an unknown young actress year in and year out?

Then Universal decided it wanted her to play apposite Majors in a two-part version of The Six Million Dollar Man. Her manager turned a deaf ear - something The Bionic Wom­an would never do -saying Lindsay was saving herself for movies.

After much dickering, a bargain was struck. Lindsay would be paid $25,000 for the two-parter. The series, deep in the bottom half of the ratings, soared out of sight when Lindsay appeared in the double dip episode.

Now Universal wanted her to star in The Bionic Woman.

Okay, said the manager, but it will cost you.

After much more dickering, Lindsay settled for 10 times ~ her previous salary, plus a guarantee of at least one movie a year for the next fire yars.

If the studio hadn't dropped her contract in the first place, they could have had the little darling for the orig­inal $50.000 per annum.

"Before the new contract was signed I wanted to stick strictly to movies," Lindsay said. "Now I can do both, so I won't be locked into the series.

"I'm flattered to be playing the lead in a dramatic tele­vision series. Except for Angie Dickinson, the other ac­tresses are starring in situation comedies. And there's a difference between the character I play and Angie's. She's surrounded by an entourage of men who help her get out of trouble.

"I play a school teacher who is called upon by the government for dangerous assignments."

Lindsay, born in Los Angeles 26 years ago, is a poised, confident young woman who did some teaching in a pri­vate school while working as an actress.

"They are letting me incorporate some of my own ideas in the scripts," she said.

I'm making sure Jaime Sommers isn't a fighter. She does have a lot of physical adventures that keep me fit. I'm learning to use the minitrampoline to do as many of my own stunts as possible.
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"The show has been fun so far. I'm a dramatic actress and not really emotionally exhausted at the end of the day like I was in my two movies, 'Second Wind' and 'Two People.'

"But I think it's about time little girls had a heroine of their own. Anyhow, the contract was so inviting an ac­tress could hardly turn it down."

Vernon Scott, UPI Staff Writer