Would the series have worked with Hunter?

According to Herb Solow:

HERB: We had an option on Jeff Hunter for a series, but not for another pilot... the lights came up, Jeff Hunter's wife [actress Sandy Bartlett] gave us our answer: "This is not the kind of show Jeff wants to do, and besides, it wouldn't be good for his career. Jeff Hunter is a movie star."
--Inside Star Trek (hardcover), p. 63​

I don't recall her being mentioned elsewhere. If she was, someone find the quote?

 

I might have gotten the rest from Star Trek Memories by Shatner and Kreski. I definitely read that she was a meddler they wanted no more to do with. Of course, Shatner would be passing on what he'd been told after Hunter was gone, but it read as very credible.

 

Shatner's books are not known for their accuracy, so caveat emptor.

 

Solow/Justman and Shatner/Kreski's two versions examined at
http://startrekfactcheck.blogspot.com/2013/06/exit-jeffrey-hunter-stage-left.html

 

I always liked Hunter as an actor. Sad that he died at 42, seemingly as a result of an on-set accident while filming a movie. It's interesting to consider that had he continued as Pike in the series, he likely wouldn't have died in 1969.

By the way, his wife at the time was Joan Bartlett. (Was Sandy a nickname??)

 

I thought he died from a fall at home? The stairs or near to it but I've also read that it was an accident on the set of a film and that he later died from his unseen injuries at home!
JB

 

Actually, after doing a little googling, it's ....interesting. yes, he fell at home and hit his head. However, prior to that he suffered a head injury while on-set of a movie. I've read that he had a brain hemorrhage at home, causing the fall and another head injury. I've read that he had a stroke. Could the on-set head injury caused him to collapse later at home? I suppose it could. Don't really know. I guess he was pretty heavy into alcohol too at the time so maybe that played a factor?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Hunter#Death

 

Not a series, but definitely a movie trilogy. In fact, in my dream scenario, I would have had STAR TREK start out as a movie series, then go to a television series, with the "The Cage" being the 2nd movie.

 

What would have been nice is to have worked out a deal with Hunter so that he could have gotten promoted to admiral after the pilot and then appear periodically. It was a shame for him to be written completely out of the show.

 

What would have been the first movie?

 

Star Trek still would have been good, but not as good.

 

No one can know what was "likely" for a person's life had it gone a different direction.

 

Yeah, point taken. "May" not have died would have been a better way to put it

 

Could they have done a good show with him? Absolutely. So the series would've worked, yes. Would it have been the show that became the so beloved one that we all know? I doubt it. Hunter is a very good actor, & traditionally more handsome than Shatner. The Spock of that show was a very jarring sight, & the doctor was an interesting guy too, but there’s a certain chemistry between Shatner, Nimoy & Kelley, that is much more endearing than anything I saw in the pilot. Adding Doohan & the others added to it further.

Maybe it’s the actors, or the character dynamics, but they were a much more likable bunch, that meshed better. They were more audience friendly, & I’m sure that was deliberate. More than any other reason, that’s why the show thrived in reruns for a decade, before they began the film franchise that paved the way for its legacy. People loved those characters, enough to make them household names, even after the show got canceled.

 

His filmography, seen directly below this paragraph, is informative. For years I've heard that he had appeared in Gone With The Wind, released in 1939, and has been described as one of the twins, the other played by George Reeves. Obviously, that cannot have been true, as he would have been about 13.

Makes for an interesting story, though. If an actor's roles are all connected, and his character's relationships the same with each cast regardless, then the story went that Superman and Jesus were twins.