Yvonne Joyce Craig

Yvonne Joyce Craig (May 16 1937 - 17 August 15th, 2015) was an American dancer and actress most well-known for her performance as Batgirl in the 1960s television series Batman and as the green-skinned Orion slave girl Marta in the Star Trek episode "Whom Gods Destroy" (1969). The Huffington Post called her "a pioneer in female superheroes on television." Yvonne Craig was born and raised in Taylorville, Illinois. In 1951, her family moved to the Oak Cliff neighborhood in Dallas, Texas, where she was a student at W. H. Adamson High School and then Sunset High School, from which she was not able to finish her education due to the absence of "a single PE credit". Craig was discovered by Alexandra Danilova (a ballerina and teacher) and was accepted into the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and became its youngest member of the corps de ballet. In the role of Batgirl, this training proved very beneficial. In 1957, she resigned from the ballet company "over a dispute on casting changes". She relocated to Los Angeles in hopes of getting back into dance. However, she soon found herself in film roles. Her first television role was on the TV series Perry Mason ("The Case of the Lazy Lover") in the year 1958 with Neil Hamilton. Hamilton later was the Batgirl's stepfather, police Commissioner James Gordon. In the following years, she was in three films: The Young Land, The Gene Krupa Story, and Gidget (all 1959)--and also guest-starred in the TV series Mr. Lucky as Beverly Mills in the episode "Little Miss Wow" (also 1959). Craig appeared in films with Bing Crosby (1960), and Seven Women from Hell (1961) that starred Cesar Romero. In 1962, she appeared in the television show Western Laramie in the episode "The Long Road Back".Craig appeared in roles with Elvis Presley in two films The other was It Happened at the World's Fair (1963) and Kissin' Cousins (1964). She also appeared as an Russian dancer alongside James Coburn in Mars Needs Women (1966).