io9 gives us a wonderful history lesson of Wonder Woman on the big and small screen.
From the piece...
The 1950s
Wonder Woman first appeared in comics in 1941, and there were attempts as early as the 1950s to get Hollywood to create a live-action Wonder Woman serial, according to The Superhero Book by Gina Renée Misiroglu. But the tide was probably against Diana Prince — in the 1950s, anti-comic crusader Fredric Wertham accused Wonder Woman of being a lesbian with a "a sadistic hatred of all men." Plus people sort of noticed how full of weirdly sexy bondage her comics were in the early days, something creator William Moulton Marston admitted to openly.
Also, after World War II, Wonder Woman was retooled in the comics to make her less of a war hero and more of a traditional woman — she worked as a fashion model, movie star, and a "lonely hearts" columnist in the newspaper, according to the book Female Action Heroes by Gladys L. Knight. She spent more time on romance, and less time fighting bad guys — and at one point, she actually married a monster. So Hollywood producers may well have looked at the 1950s comics and seen less potential for a live-action adaptation — until the popularity of Emma Peel and other similar heroines changed their minds in the 1960s.
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