The $500,000 Timex

Television's bionic twosome, Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers, seemed made for each other--literally. Like Steve, she had been rebuilt with superhuman powers by space-age engineers. Sure enough, when she made some try-out appearances on ABC's Six Million Dollar Man last year, Austin's all-seeing artificial eye nearly popped out of his head. Who could blame him? Jaime looked smashing, and as Steve's blood pressure climbed, so did the show's ratings. Explains willowy Lindsay Wagner, who plays Jaime: "Viewers tuned in to see whether passion could flow between two people who were part Timex." So many did so, in fact, that Jaime was spun out of Steve's life for a series of her own.

Hot Entry. By the numbers, at least, this forced separation has been a success. Since The Bionic Woman first appeared in mid-January it has become, along with ABC's sitcom Laverne and Shirley, the TV season's hottest late entry. Big with the bubble-gum crowd that also dotes on Lee Majors, it has also drawn a sizable adult audience stuck on Lindsay Wagner's sexy looks. Her show has consistently been among the top 15 in the ratings, although Majors' program often edges it out by a point or two.

Wagner plays a latter-day Wonder Woman who became the world's first bionic woman after she was nearly killed in a skydiving accident; doctors rebuilt her, piece by voluptuous piece, with 80-m.p.h. legs, a right arm that can shatter trees and an ear capable of hearing leaves rustle in the next county. Between classes at a military base in Ojai, Calif., where she is a schoolteacher, she moonlights as an intelligence agent.

Unlike Steve Austin, who regularly uses his brawn to brain villains, Jaime seldom uses her strength to do more than defensively trip or trick her opponents. ABC also seems to have decided that she can get along without a coherent plot. The typical show seems to be a collection of barely related episodes intended mainly to display Jaime's powers: she stops a rampaging elephant by tugging on its chain; uses her foot to brake an out-of-control car; leaps onto a second-story fire escape to avoid danger.

The Bionic Woman's most impressive feat may have been the deal she wrung out of Universal, the show's producer. Her contract gives her $500,000 a year for five years, a guarantee of one film role annually and 12 1/2% of the take from sales of Bionic dolls, T shirts and other spinoffs, which her agent insists could total as much as $2 million. Only last fall, Wagner, 26, was having trouble at Universal, which decided not to renew a $50,000-a-year contract she then had with the studio. Although she was considered "promising," her credits included only a few mixed-review films (Two People, The Paper Chase) and occasional one-shot appearances on TV shows. ABC vetoed her for a TV movie role because she was not well known.

But that was before her tryout on Six Million Dollar Man. Following her appearance, ABC received an avalanche of mail on Wagner. Universal approached Ron Samuels, 30, her new manager, about a series of her own. The frenetic, woolly-haired Samuels, then little known in the manager's trade, ticked off Wagner's demands, including the $500,000-a-year guarantee. Says Samuels: "When I told them what we wanted, there was absolute silence in the room. They simply couldn't talk." A few days later, Universal accepted the terms.

But the money, Wagner claims, is not important. Says she: "I'm a serious actress, and I'm trying like hell not to become Wonder Woman. I've been so busy I haven't had a chance to spend a dime--not even a new pair of jeans." The daughter of a Portland, Ore., school-portrait photographer, she looks somewhat like a Pepsi-generation version of Lauren Bacall--Betty's sharp features and curling mouth combined with a tall (5 ft. 8 in.), lean Malibu beach girl's body. She began fashion modeling at 13, then at 18 joined an L.A. rock group as a singer and moved in with one of the musicians. Later she took acting lessons, and in 1971 signed her first contract with Universal. She was married for two years to a record executive, but now lives in an apartment in Benedict Canyon with Actor Michael Brandon.

Wagner manages to play her role with a certain necessary wry humor, sometimes shrugging or smirking at the camera before or after performing one of her preposterous feats. Same goes for her manager. The day after Universal agreed to Wagner's fat contract, he toured the studio, wearing a crash helmet as a gag, and was applauded on several sound stages. One actor who did not cheer was the Six Million Dollar Man. Majors was piqued because his own contract (since renegotiated) paid him a mere $300,000, give or take a few Gs, and included no royalties for spinoffs. The $500,000 woman, he groused, was "a bionic rip-off."

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