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Trek guest actors in maybe surprising roles

Not in topic, but I remembered "Demon With A Glass Hand" starring Robert Culp in an Outer Limits episode. It was memorable. I think he was searching for his missing fingers which he plugged into the hand.
glass-hand.jpg
 
Not in topic, but I remembered "Demon With A Glass Hand" starring Robert Culp in an Outer Limits episode. It was memorable. I think he was searching for his missing fingers which he plugged into the hand.
glass-hand.jpg
Well, to get it back to Trek for you: Demon was written by Harlan Ellison who also gave us City on the Edge of Forever.
 
Well, to get it back to Trek for you: Demon was written by Harlan Ellison who also gave us City on the Edge of Forever.

And the associate producer was Bob Justman, later of TOS. Indeed, it's because of Justman that "Demon" was filmed at all. Ellison's script, as with "City," was far too elaborate to be affordable on a TV budget; he had a chase taking place all over Los Angeles, which would've blown their location budget. Justman had the brainstorm to set the entire chase within the Bradbury Building, which made it both doable and distinctive.
 
And the associate producer was Bob Justman, later of TOS.

A small point of correction.

Justman didn't move up to being an associate producer until "Where No Man Has Gone Before," Star Trek's second pilot. IMDb says he was an associate producer on The Adventures of Superman without credit, but that information is incorrect.

On The Outer Limits, he served as an assistant director and unit production manager (depending on the episode). For "Demon with a Glass Hand," he was the assistant director.
 
This one has probably been mentioned before, but Robert Lansing and Lee Merriweather are on tonight's episode of Svengoolie, 'The 4-D Man'.
 
A UPM or AD is unlikely to perform the task of getting a writer to change a script, which is the one bit of Justman’s story that always struck me as “huh”.
 
A UPM or AD is unlikely to perform the task of getting a writer to change a script, which is the one bit of Justman’s story that always struck me as “huh”.

Smart producers will use good ideas from anyone in the staff, even if it's not their area of expertise or authority. If the solution to an intractable story problem comes from the assistant hairdresser, if the ideal casting suggestion for a guest role comes from the lighting supervisor, then you go with it. It's a team effort. The producers of TOL couldn't figure out how to afford filming "Demon," Justman had a great idea that made it affordable, problem solved. It doesn't matter what his specific job responsibilities were, just that he had the solution that the rest of the team needed.
 
I THINK that’s a Japanese made Teisco guitar.
I've been trying to figure out just what that is, and at this point I'm still stumped.

I find some features which look like Goya, others which look like Greco (both Japanese brands) and some which look like EKO from Italy (which did produce some instruments for Teisco, I think,) but I've yet to find anything which has all those features together in a single model. There were a lot of weird guitars made around the time that show was produced, but this particular one doesn't seem to be documented anywhere.

Edit:
This one's close, though:

grassi_customguitar.jpg

grassi_custom_4pickup_1960s.jpg (click image to enlarge)
 
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Ken Lynch, Jason Wingreen, Bill Zuckert and Charlie Picerni in Angels Travel On Lonely Roads:Part 1, an episode of The Fugitive!
JB
 
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That looks like it, in a four pickup configuration. Who made that?
This identifies it as a "Grassi Custom" — mostly, I think, because there's a label on the headstock which says so. There's also an amplifier bearing the "Grassi Custom" badge which was made circa 1965 by Univox, but whether they're the same folks who made the guitar is not certain.

I thought Googling "all time ugliest guitar headstock" would find it in seconds, but no such luck.
Any 1960s-vintage guitar wanting to make that claim might find it had a fair amount of competition. Between the Japanese companies, the Italian ones, and a few others elsewhere, there were some very imaginative designs produced.
 
^Cool, thanks!

Any 1960s-vintage guitar wanting to make that claim might find it had a fair amount of competition. Between the Japanese companies, the Italian ones, and a few others elsewhere, there were some very imaginative designs produced.

Yeah, but usually with the tuners in fairly conventional arrangements. The way the strings have to spread to meet that inward curve just looks... stupid.
 
I've been trying to figure out just what that is, and at this point I'm still stumped.

I find some features which look like Goya, others which look like Greco (both Japanese brands) and some which look like EKO from Italy (which did produce some instruments for Teisco, I think,) but I've yet to find anything which has all those features together in a single model. There were a lot of weird guitars made around the time that show was produced, but this particular one doesn't seem to be documented anywhere.

Edit:
This one's close, though:

View attachment 11277

View attachment 11278 (click image to enlarge)

Great detective work!
There were so many weird shapes back then!
And interesting brands!
 
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