The Celebrity Collector - Yvonne Craig - Batgirl

Yvonne Craig, from ballet to Batgirl

Yvonne Craig is best remembered as Batgirl on the live-action Batman television series of the 1960s. She also guest starred in more than 150 episodes of other shows, among them Star Trek, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Dobie Gillis, The Wild Wild West, 77 Sunset Strip, Dr. Kildare, My Three Sons, McHale’s Navy, Starsky and Hutch and Fantasy Island. On film she acted with Elvis Presley in Kissing Cousins and It Happened at the World’s Fair, and opposite Bing Crosby, James Coburn, George Hamilton, Sal Mineo, Robert Vaughn and Don Knotts.

She was born in Taylorville, Illinois, on May 16, 1937, to Maurice and Pauline Craig, and started out in ballet, joining the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1954. After she moved to Los Angeles, Hollywood producers asked her to act. Content as a dancer, she said no. When they asked a second time she agreed, but only until she joined another ballet company, which never happened. Her first film was the western The Young Land with Patrick Wayne, John Wayne’s son.

By 2000 she had added author to her credits with From Ballet to the Batcave and Beyond, a book about her career and the people she worked with. She was also a keen world traveler, and her travels are where her collection came from.

How Yvonne Craig started collecting African masks

“They are just so primitive and primal,” Craig said of the masks. She and her husband went to Africa in about 1972, and she brought one home. The trip through customs became a favorite story. “At the airport, the customs agent asked if those were turkey feathers on it. Obviously, they were not turkey feathers, so I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘If you want to bring that into the country, those are turkey feathers.’ And I said, ‘That’s what they are.’” It was the 1970s, she added, and the rules were a little slack.

“Each time we went back to Africa, I would pick up another mask,” she said. By 2000 she owned eight or nine African masks, including a fanged mask she described as hard to find and one carved from ebony.

Her collection reached beyond Africa as well. She had a mask from Ecuador trimmed with parrot feathers and one made of armadillo skin from Oaxaca, Mexico.

What it means when an African mask has been “danced”

Most of Craig’s masks had been “danced.” “Being ‘danced’ means they were made for a ceremonial purpose and not for tourists,” she explained. The distinction is central for collectors of African art. A mask made for ritual use was worn by a dancer, often many times, while a mask made for sale to visitors may look similar but has never been used.

Her test was simple. Asked how to tell whether a mask had been danced, she answered: “By the wear marks.” Use leaves traces that a mask carved only for sale does not have.

She also saw why such masks were getting scarce. “In the ’80s, collecting primitive items became popular so danced masks are hard to find unless someone sells their collection,” she said. “Also, Africa has changed. People are moving to the cities and away from ritual life.” Fewer ceremonies meant fewer new masks made for them, while demand from collectors kept rising.

That makes provenance, the documented history of who owned an object and where it came from, especially important. Masks bought directly by a traveler on repeated trips, as Craig’s were, at least come with a known starting point.

Ceramic frogs, and no Batgirl memorabilia

Craig’s second collection was ceramic frogs, and it started with a mishap. While she was touring with the Ballet Russe, her 12-year-old sister mailed her a tiny frog, “about the size of your cuticle,” with a note saying she had found this cute frog and knew Yvonne would like it. “Of course, it had been through a postal stamping machine, so it was flat when I got it,” Craig said, laughing.

What she did not collect was her own past. Asked about memorabilia from her career, she said, “No. I haven’t collected memorabilia. I am not a person who lives in the past. The book was difficult to write because I had to look in the past. I don’t keep anything. I don’t take pictures, but I do have the photos fans have sent me.” For a Batgirl, whose costume and props are prized by television collectors, that is a striking choice. Other screen actresses with very different habits include Lana Wood and Lynn Borden.

The Batcycle and the Batmobile

The Batcycle she rode on the show was a customized Yamaha 180. After the series ended, it was torn down and turned into a street bike. “After the show, they didn’t need it anymore,” Craig said. “No one knew in those days that memorabilia would be important.”

She already rode motorcycles before she got the part, “because it was fun,” though by 2000 she said she would not do it in Los Angeles traffic. Watching the old Batman opening, she found it tame next to modern stunt work: “It looked like I was just putting along.”

The Batmobile, she said, “was a mess. It didn’t run well.” It would break down while being driven around at shows and conventions, and the Monkees’ car, booked at the same events, would “drive circles around the Batmobile.”

Working with Elvis and turning green for Star Trek

Craig made two movies with Elvis and remembered both fondly. “He was extremely professional, always on time, knew his lines, and was very much a part of the cast, never pulling rank as the ‘star,’” she said. He had a self-deprecating sense of humor and the manners of a Southern gentleman, and with his friends from Memphis around, “it was like always having about 10 playful, but protective big brothers on the set.” Another actress who worked with him, Ursula Andress, also became a serious collector.

On Star Trek she played Marta, painted green from head to toe. Nobody warned her. She read for the part and choreographed the dance, and when she showed up to film, they painted her. “It wasn’t that strange. They had other characters on the show who were blue,” she said. The villain, Lord Garth, blew her up at the end of the episode.

Her sister finally talked her into writing the book, mainly because Craig was tired of answering the same questions in every interview. A poor typist, she bought voice recognition software. “The faster you talk, the better it likes it,” she said. The book has chapters on Elvis, Howard Hughes, Batman and Robin, Star Trek (titled “Beam Me Out of Here”), women she worked with and admired, and a whole chapter on animals.