Yvonne Joyce Craig

Yvonne Joyce Craig, May 16, 1937 - August 17, 2015. Craig was an American actor and ballet dancer popular for her performances as Batgirl on the 1960s TV series Batman and Marta who played Marta, the Orion slave girl Marta, in Star Trek's episode "Whom Gods Deceive" (1969). The Huffington Post called her "a pioneer of female superheroes" for television. Yvonne Craig was raised in Columbus and was born in Taylorville in Illinois. Her family in 1951 relocated to the Oak Cliff neighborhood in Dallas, Texas, where she was a student at W. H. Adamson High School as well as Sunset High School, from where she failed to be able to graduate 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 as its youngest corps de ballet member. It was a wonderful experience that enabled her to do stunts in the role of Batgirl. She left the ballet company in 1957 "over disagreements over casting decisions" and relocated to Los Angeles in the hopes of pursuing her dance career, but she was cast in film roles. Her first appearance was in a TV episode of Perry Mason ("The Case of the Lazy Lover"), alongside Neil Hamilton. Hamilton later was appointed Batgirl's 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 was seen in the films Bing Crosby and Seven Women from Hell (1960), where she was in a duet with Cesar Romero. In 1962, she appeared in the television show Western Laramie in the episode "The Long Road Back".Craig was in roles alongside Elvis Presley in two films: It Happened at the World's Fair (1963) and Kissin Cousins (1964). In the year 1966, she starred in Mars Needs Women. In 1967, she appeared as an Russian dancer on In Like Flint.