Trek guest actors in maybe surprising roles

Here's a snippet of a rejected 1959 Nero Wolfe pilot with a very familiar actor playing Archie Goodwin opposite Land of the Giants' Kurt Kasznar as Wolfe:

 

I'm watching the video for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers 'You Got Lucky' - the one that's a 'Mad Max' type with Tom and the rest of the band playing scavengers finding an abandoned boom box in the desert; and what's there in background, you guessed it, the Vasquez Rocks.

 

PT 109, the 1963 movie about John F. Kennedy’s wartime exploits, has Paul Baxley in a minor role AND a brief shot of George Takei as the helmsman on a Japanese destroyer.

 

someone in another group brought up the classic giant ant movie "THEM" and posted a still, and sure enough, there was William Schallert as a doctor.

 

There must have been some sort of Congressionally mandated William Schallert Full Employment Act or something, I swear.

 

I Spy, season 3, "Apollo". Nancy Kovack lends her dazzling beauty to an industrial espionage caper, as a rival aerospace company tries to sabotage the Apollo program. A big plus for us 60s kids was location filming at the command module assembly plant, and the Saturn 2nd stage booster test facility.







The episode aired Nov 20, 1967. 10 months after the Apollo 1 fire, and 11 months before the first manned mission.

 

Whit Bissell ("Tribbles") as evil psychologist, and Joseph Mell ("Cage") as his assistant in I Was a Teenage Werewolf

 

Spotted Bissell in the the original 1960 version of THE TIME MACHINE the other night.

 

Bissell was also in the really bad 1978 TV movie version of same, appearing in the demonstration scene parallel to the one in which he participated in the '60 film, and basically playing the "Filby" role. The movie starred future DS9 guest John Beck, and also featured TOS guests Bill Zuckert and Julie Parrish and VGR guest Parley Baer. It also had a brief appearance by Bissell's Time Tunnel co-star John Zaremba.

 

Cool! Where was the booster test stand? I believe the command modules would be in Downey CA (which also gave us the Carpenters!)

Whit Bissell (again) as a doctor (again) in the 1962 MGM classic The Birdman of Alcatraz.

 

Just watched the movie "Torpedo Run" last night. Sure enough, who do you think was the companion submarine's captain? Yep, William Schallert.

 

Oh gawd I remember that POS.

 

^The version in that link is incomplete -- it leaves off the opening titles and main cast list, which were part of the Classics Illustrated intro. It's also got a fuzzier image quality than the other YouTube edition. This version is fuller:



I was going to say I recommended watching that one instead, but in fact, I recommend avoiding the movie altogether, so that you don't have to live with the memory of it as I'm cursed to do.

 

If you're good, professional, and not a jerk, you tend to work a lot.

I watched Whit Bissell in the original 1954 Creature From the Black Lagoon on TCM just a couple of nights ago. That guy was in everything!

I also realized that Bissell could've easily starred in a biopic of comic book artist Gil Kane.

 

The post with which I started this thread 7 years ago this month was this:

And it keeps going and going...

 

Whit Bissell was in all of Irwin Allen's shows except Lost in Space! He was in The Trouble With Tribbles for Star Trek! He was in The Outer Limits, The Fugitive, Wagon Train (many times as different characters) The Virginian (as different characters) Perry Mason (as different characters) The Invaders, City Beneath The Sea, The Bionic Woman, Two versions of The Time Machine, The Incredible Hulk (as different characters) plus numerous other stuff and a couple of fifties horror films too! Boy could he get about and the son of a Doctor too! Whitner Nutting Bissell was a staple part of our growing up with television!
JB

 

Facially it would have worked, but they would have had to put him on a box, like they had to do with Bogart all the time. Gil Kane was 6'4".

 

Yes, but he was always sitting down drawing stuff, so it MAY have worked!

 

He also plays a prominent role in the classic film Seven Days in May:

 

I doubt that too many people seeing such a film would know exactly how tall Gil Kane was.