NEW YORK — Yvonne Craig, who played the crime-fighting Batgirl in the 1960s TV hit “Batman,” has died. She was 78.
Craig, who died Monday at her Los Angeles home, began her career as a ballet dancer, the youngest member of The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, with which she toured for three years. Then she was discovered by Hollywood, appearing in a 1958 episode of “Perry Mason.”
After that, she won dozens of roles in TV shows, as well as co-starring in two 1960s Elvis Presley films, “It Happened at the World’s Fair” and “Kissin’ Cousins.”
But she was best known as Batgirl (and her alter ego, librarian Barbara Gordon, Commissioner Gordon’s daughter) in the 1967-68 season of ABC’s “Batman.” Another memorable TV role, from an episode of the original “Star Trek”: a green Orion slave girl who wanted to kill Captain Kirk.
