What William Windom thought of working on "Star Trek"

[Kryton]

Professor Moriarty said:

Proximity_Phaser said:
Perhaps Windom should be thrown in the maw of a giant planet killer for not worshiping at the altar of Trekdom.

Feed him to Vaal!

Hah! Vaal! What a total lameass! Who did HE kill? Mallory? Ha! I'm sayin'! (He DID get Scotty fired, though. )

 

[Mallory]

Along with my friends Hendorf, Kaplan and Marple. Bastard!

 

[DataRules]

Noname Given said:

Commander Cavit said:
Cute.

You essentially called Nichols a liar. I just suggest you have the honesty to write it straight out and stop winking.

My opinion on that: "If the shoe fits..."

I didn't write the post you refer to, but given her gift at exaggeration (Her various MLK stories; and her relating of the depth of her relationship with GR, etc.); I take a lot her 30+ year after the fact recollections worth a grain of salt.


And while it's possible someone told her that she got the most fan mail (sorry don't buy it that she recieved more fan mail than any other character, especially Spock); I don't see any reson the production offie would bother to hide/destroy such mail just addressed to her - which is what she also claims.

Regarding your last point about not understanding why the production office would hide her mail - I believe Nichols and I have a personal story to illustrate why. Sorry if this seems too long:

I once was a docent for a big museum in NY (part of a graduate program and I was the only Black person in the group) and for a while it seemed that all of the other docents were receiving compliments for the thoroughness of their tours and the level of knowledge they were able to impart to their guests. Of the entire group, I was the only one not receiving any. As you can imagine, it's pretty demoralizing when all of your colleagues are receiving praise for their work and you're not. Turns out, not only were visitors happy with my tours, some were also bothering to write letters to the Curator of Education about me - which is pretty unheard of in the museum world. One of the cleaning ladies found a letter on the curator's desk and did a little snooping and discovered about five others. Why didn't they tell me? Who knows for sure? But if the point was to make me feel lousy and think I wasn't as good as my white colleagues, then it worked for awhile. As you can imagine, I was pretty pissed, but the knowledge of the real deal was the biggest ego boost I could get - which is why I'm in the same field today.

This happened to me in 1999, so if Nichols says this happened back in the 1960s, I believe it easily. No doubt, someone wanted her gone, even if her part was a small one.

Sorry for the long, off-topic post, but I felt Noname Given's comment needed a response. These things do happen.

Peace.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

^^^ That's pretty suck ass. Good for you for your stick-to-it-iveness! :thumbsup:

 

[MikeH92467]

Professor Moriarty said:
^^^ That's pretty suck ass. Good for you for your stick-to-it-iveness! :thumbsup:

Everything else aside, I'd like to add my :thumbsup: as well. Sometimes a little determination and/or stubborness can clear big hurdles.

 

[Commander Cavit]

DataRules said:
This happened to me in 1999, so if Nichols says this happened back in the 1960s, I believe it easily. No doubt, someone wanted her gone, even if her part was a small one.

Far too many people around here are ready to dismiss anything she says that doesn't fit their worldview, irrespective of it's veracity. It's been like that since I got here and undoubtedly before. I can't do anything about it, but when I see it, I generally like to make sure people understand what's going on and put it in context.

Thanks for sharing, and I echo Mike and the good Professor.

 

[James Wright]

How did William Windom get the part of Matt Decker to begin with?
I've always like "The Doomsday Machine".

JDW

 

[Hambone]

http://www.trektoday.com/news/280607_01.shtml

*snicker* "Willie the Weeper" *snicker*

 

[Nebusj]

Commander Cavit said:
You essentially called Nichols a liar. I just suggest you have the honesty to write it straight out and stop winking.

I don't assume she's lying, actually; lying, as I see it, requires a deliberate and a malicious intent to deceive that I just don't know exists. I think she's unreliable in stories about Uhura's popularity or importance. Partly this is because she does seem to remember things as bigger than they started -- see how the Martin Luther King story expanded in the retelling. (I don't think there's a deliberate intent to mislead there, just the natural tendency of people to remember stories as better than they started.)

Partly she's apparently passed on things which weren't particularly true that she was told by other people -- for example, where have we got the idea that Uhura was fourth in command? I could easily believe Roddenberry had told her that at some point; this is the person, remember, who'd offer promotions to characters so the actors would accept not getting pay raises. She may be passing on accurately information she's gotten, but that source information may not be right.

So when it comes to a remarkable claim -- that Nichelle Nichols was receiving more fan mail the first season than any of the other actors -- we have to be a bit skeptical. Nichols had a prominent and somewhat attention-attracting role, certainly; but ... did she have more scenes to endear someone from the audience than did DeForest Kelly? Or George Takei? More than Leonard Nimoy and more than William Shatner, who averaged several really good scenes each episode, not just each season?

Well, it's possible, I admit, but it's remarkable that a person who wasn't even in every episode, and who only a couple times had a scene where she had some actual dialogue instead of Hamburger Helper lines of ``all decks, report status'' or ``intruder alert, all decks'' would get more mail than the guy who played Spock. I'd like to know how Nichols got this information.

 

[Plum]

DataRules said:

Noname Given said:

Commander Cavit said:
Cute.

You essentially called Nichols a liar. I just suggest you have the honesty to write it straight out and stop winking.

My opinion on that: "If the shoe fits..."

I didn't write the post you refer to, but given her gift at exaggeration (Her various MLK stories; and her relating of the depth of her relationship with GR, etc.); I take a lot her 30+ year after the fact recollections worth a grain of salt.


And while it's possible someone told her that she got the most fan mail (sorry don't buy it that she recieved more fan mail than any other character, especially Spock); I don't see any reson the production offie would bother to hide/destroy such mail just addressed to her - which is what she also claims.

Regarding your last point about not understanding why the production office would hide her mail - I believe Nichols and I have a personal story to illustrate why. Sorry if this seems too long:

I once was a docent for a big museum in NY (part of a graduate program and I was the only Black person in the group) and for a while it seemed that all of the other docents were receiving compliments for the thoroughness of their tours and the level of knowledge they were able to impart to their guests. Of the entire group, I was the only one not receiving any. As you can imagine, it's pretty demoralizing when all of your colleagues are receiving praise for their work and you're not. Turns out, not only were visitors happy with my tours, some were also bothering to write letters to the Curator of Education about me - which is pretty unheard of in the museum world. One of the cleaning ladies found a letter on the curator's desk and did a little snooping and discovered about five others. Why didn't they tell me? Who knows for sure? But if the point was to make me feel lousy and think I wasn't as good as my white colleagues, then it worked for awhile. As you can imagine, I was pretty pissed, but the knowledge of the real deal was the biggest ego boost I could get - which is why I'm in the same field today.

This happened to me in 1999, so if Nichols says this happened back in the 1960s, I believe it easily. No doubt, someone wanted her gone, even if her part was a small one.

Sorry for the long, off-topic post, but I felt Noname Given's comment needed a response. These things do happen.

Peace.

Why would they do this? I've heard this sort of story before. You know, it's not the overt racism and bigotry so much as the subtle, unseen, racism that truly is hurtful.

Very glad you're successful despite this, and Nichelle too. I've heard her story and the discrepancies but man, my ole Mum does that all the time. I got over it.

 

[jayrath]

Please.

If she was getting so awfully-much fan mail, don't you think GR or the studio would have jacked up her part?

This was (and is) a business. Lord, they brought in Chekov just to appeal to the teenyboppers. If Uhura was so gosh-darned popular, they would have increased her part -- not cut it down over three seasons.

 

[Good Will Riker]

jayrath said:
Please.

If she was getting so awfully-much fan mail, don't you think GR or the studio would have jacked up her part?

This was (and is) a business. Lord, they brought in Chekov just to appeal to the teenyboppers. If Uhura was so gosh-darned popular, they would have increased her part -- not cut it down over three seasons.

Nichelle Nichols's part was never cut down. It was never developed to start with, thanks in large part to The Shat and his notorious line-cuttings.

And Nichelle, unlike James Doohan and George Takei, did not have season long contracts. She was hired on an episode-to-episode basis by Gene Roddenberry.

It is Nichell in her autobiography "Beyond Uhura" who claims that it was racism (such as the guard who told her "They should have fired you instead of that pretty blonde." in regards to Grace Lee Whitney) and such practices in Hollywood -- and in this instance, some people at Desilu Studios mail department that deliberately concealed her fan mail until the end of the 1st season.

The mail department gave her "very few mails" when there were piles and piles of it deliberately hidden from her in the mail department.

 

[Commander Cavit]

Nebusj said:

Commander Cavit said:
You essentially called Nichols a liar. I just suggest you have the honesty to write it straight out and stop winking.

I don't assume she's lying, actually; lying, as I see it, requires a deliberate and a malicious intent to deceive that I just don't know exists. I think she's unreliable in stories about Uhura's popularity or importance. Partly this is because she does seem to remember things as bigger than they started -- see how the Martin Luther King story expanded in the retelling. (I don't think there's a deliberate intent to mislead there, just the natural tendency of people to remember stories as better than they started.)

Partly she's apparently passed on things which weren't particularly true that she was told by other people -- for example, where have we got the idea that Uhura was fourth in command? I could easily believe Roddenberry had told her that at some point; this is the person, remember, who'd offer promotions to characters so the actors would accept not getting pay raises. She may be passing on accurately information she's gotten, but that source information may not be right.

So when it comes to a remarkable claim -- that Nichelle Nichols was receiving more fan mail the first season than any of the other actors -- we have to be a bit skeptical. Nichols had a prominent and somewhat attention-attracting role, certainly; but ... did she have more scenes to endear someone from the audience than did DeForest Kelly? Or George Takei? More than Leonard Nimoy and more than William Shatner, who averaged several really good scenes each episode, not just each season?

Well, it's possible, I admit, but it's remarkable that a person who wasn't even in every episode, and who only a couple times had a scene where she had some actual dialogue instead of Hamburger Helper lines of ``all decks, report status'' or ``intruder alert, all decks'' would get more mail than the guy who played Spock. I'd like to know how Nichols got this information.

If you had written this post at first, instead of that rather smug and smarmy one you did, you would have never heard a peep from me.

In all honesty, I don't know the story here. Unlike the Ellison stuff about City On The Edge and Gene's comments about it over the years, I don't have a definitive opinion.

I'm just tired of seeing Nichelle routinely slandered around here by a group of people who have one major thing against her. (Takei inevitably gets similar treatment from the same bunch.)

You don't seem to be among them, so I apologize for associating you with them in the first place.

 

[DataRules]

Commander Cavit said:
I'm just tired of seeing Nichelle routinely slandered around here by a group of people who have one major thing against her. (Takei inevitably gets similar treatment from the same bunch.)

You don't seem to be among them, so I apologize for associating you with them in the first place.

And that's the only reason I offered my own story. I can accept that Nichols might have exaggerated, but to call her a liar, well I had a problem with that.

So, Com. Cavit, Prof. M, Mike, and Plum, thanks for the backup, and let's hope I don't have to come out of my shell like this again.

Back to the Windom discussion.....

Peace.

 

[DataRules]

Commander Cavit said:

I'm just tired of seeing Nichelle routinely slandered around here by a group of people who have one major thing against her. (Takei inevitably gets similar treatment from the same bunch.)

You don't seem to be among them, so I apologize for associating you with them in the first place.

And that's the only reason I offered my own story. I can accept that Nichols might have exaggerated, but to call her a liar, well I had a problem with that.

So, Com. Cavit, Prof. M, Mike, and Plum, thanks for the backup, and let's hope I don't have to come out of my shell like this again.

Back to the Windom discussion.....

Peace.

 

[Mallory]

DataRules said:
Back to the Windom discussion....

Sounds good to me! :thumbsup:

 

[TiberiusK]

Was it this episode that Shatner made sure Spock nodded so that he would have more lines?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Mallory said:
Along with my friends Hendorf, Kaplan and Marple. Bastard!

Marple was never your friend.

 

[pookha]

Mallory said:
Along with my friends Hendorf, Kaplan and Marple. Bastard!

killed by ligthing, a plant and well a little tiny rock
shakes head ... so sad

 

[Woulfe]

There should of been warning signs on that path....
"Beware of rolling exploding rocks !"
- OR -
" Rolling exploding rock crossing, watch your step !"
We loose more red shirts that way yanno ?

- W -
* Captain of the U.S.S. NotTonightIHaveAHaddakThisBig *