What Happened to Dyna Girl After ‘Electra Woman and Dyna Girl’?
What To Know
- Judy Strangis began her entertainment career as a child, making early TV appearances thanks to her family connections.
- She gained fame as Helen Loomis on Room 222 and as Dyna Girl on Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.
- After decades in Hollywood, Strangis gradually left the spotlight.
Sid & Marty Krofft‘s Electra Woman and Dyna Girl co-starred Deidre Hall as the titular superheroine, and Judy Strangis was her younger sidekick, a female Boy Wonder, if you will. The show was patterned after the Batman TV series from the late ’60s, and just like that show, it was a whole heck of a lot of fun. By the time this show debuted on Saturday mornings in 1976, Strangis had already been working in the entertainment industry for a very long time.
How far back, one might ask? Well, how about all the way back to Spike Jones? The legendary band leader was actually Strangis’s uncle, and his TV show from the early ’60s allowed his young niece to make a handful of appearances. This wasn’t her first gig, however. She had actually guest-starred in a few other TV shows and even made a movie earlier than that.
Uncle Spike’s fame and notoriety helped other family members, including Strangis, make important connections within the industry. In fact, Strangis’s brother worked behind the scenes on the aforementioned Batman TV series from the ’60s, and Strangis, looking very much like Dyna Girl undercover, made an appearance on a couple of episodes early on. In a 2024 interview with Rossiter Castinado found on YouTube, Strangis said this about working on that classic TV show: “Everybody wanted to be on Batman, so I think I did it just to have fun.”
Credit: 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. /Everett Collection
After that, numerous guest appearances on many other TV shows followed, but it was on ABC’s Room 222 where Strangis’s star really took off. From 1969 to 1974, Strangis co-starred in that show as one of the students, Helen Loomis. As Room 222 was winding down, Strangis discovered that she was also a talented vocal actress, and she started getting steady work doing that kind of stuff. She lent her talents to cartoons like Hanna-Barbera’s The Roman Holidays, as well as another fun show, Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch.
Feeling comfortable on Saturday mornings, Strangis jumped at the chance to work for Sid and Marty Krofft as Dyna Girl. In an episode of The Comic Book Central Podcast, she mentioned that all 16 episodes were filmed over the course of just a couple of weeks. According to Strangis, they would complete an entire episode almost every day. It turns out that making Electra Woman and Dyna Girl was really just a tiny, teeny blip in Strangis’s life, and yet, decades later, fans are still talking about it.
After hanging up the cape and tights, Strangis found work on TV shows like CHiPs, where she made a couple of appearances, and also on The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo. She also provided the voice for the title character in the Ruby-Spears Saturday morning show Goldie Gold and Action Jack.
Strangis’s last live-action appearance on TV was in a 1984 episode of Matt Houston, in which her character was, interestingly, billed as Judith Strangis. In 1987, she helped write the story for a CBS Schoolbreak Special about bulimia titled Little Miss Perfect, which earned her an Emmy nomination.
In a fitting nod to one of her earliest roles, Strangis once again worked on a Batman-related project, this time doing voice work on a 1994 episode of Batman: The Animated Series, which would turn out to be her swan song within the entertainment industry.
So, what happened and where did she go? In that same podcast episode referred to earlier, Strangis noted that she is a pretty private person, so there isn’t much information to go on. There are numerous internet message boards filled with unverified rumors about an experience with a stalker causing Strangis to seek less time in the public eye. However, it is also entirely possible that, after three decades working in Hollywood, she simply decided to call it quits.
Whatever the reason, Strangis is not a recluse by any means. Although her time in front of the camera and behind the microphone appears to have come to an end, Strangis occasionally attends Comic-Cons (Pictured above with Diedre Hall at a 2024 Hollywood Show) and has made appearances at other various events honoring her past work. Whether she’s playing a spunky high schooler navigating Room 222, voicing a Saturday morning adventure heiress, or fighting crime with Electra Woman, without a doubt, Strangis brought a unique charm and energy to every role she touched.
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