Along with Leonard Nimoy and writer-producer Nat Segaloff, de Lancie formed and recorded Alien Voices, a collection of audio dramas based on classic science fiction and fantasy stories, such as The Time Machine and The Lost World.
(I once had a small part in ‘The Lost World’ when our community theater group performed it as a live-from-stage radio broadcast)
-“BB”-
Comments — good trivia, @knoodler !
FYI, the town of Milan, Indiana is pronounced “MY-lin”.
Also, in Indianapolis’s Broad Ripple district, Bobby Plump has a bar called Plump’s Last Shot. Lots of memorabilia in it, it’s worth a stop.
Thanks Bullitt!
During and following Star Trek, Nimoy released five albums of musical vocal recordings on Dot Records. The first, Mister Spock’s Music From Outer Space, was filled with songs by “Mister Spock”, Nimoy’s character on the show. The second, Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy, was split into songs by Mister Spock (A-side) and songs covered by Leonard Nimoy (B-side), including “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins.” His final three albums are popular folk songs of the era and cover versions of popular songs, sung as himself.
Dr. Benjamin Spock (1903-1998), a pediatrician whose 1946 book Baby and Child Care is one of the best-selling books of the 20th century, won an Olympic gold medal in 1924 in rowing. Spock was a student at Yale at the time.
I’m playing off of audio dramas.
The first talkies, or motion pictures with sounds, started in 1900, but decades passed before sound motion pictures became commercially practical. Reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve. The first commercial screening of short motion pictures using sound-on-film technology took place in 1923.
The last silent feature film was The Poor Millionaire in 1930. It was produced by Richard Talmadge (1892-1981), who also starred as both the hero and the villain in the film.
Ninja’d - badly! Leonard Nimoy was born in 1931, so, after the final silent movie.
Silent Movie is a comedy film from 1976, directed by and starring Mel Brooks. A parody of silent film comedies, the film contains only one line of spoken dialogue: the word “Non!”, uttered by French mime artist Marcel Marceau.
Marcel Marceau appeared in the 1968 sexploitation film Barbarella as Professor Ping. He speaks several lines of dialogue.
The Stanley Kubrick-directed sf drama 2001: A Space Odyssey, released in 1968, depicted Clavius Base, a major American base on the Moon, a year before the actual landing of the Apollo 11 astronauts.
Clavius Crater is a key plotpoint in the Asimov short story, “The Key”, a puzzle mystery involving Wendall Urth.
Tom Hanks has long been into sf and the space program; his production company, named after the facility in 2001: A Space Odyssey, is called Clavius Base.
In the movie Apollo 13 the crew plays “Spirit in the Sky” after their successful launch, but in reality the crew played the theme from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey— which had just come out in 1968 and also inspired the name of their command module, Odyssey (also so named for its Homeric significance).
Stanley Kubrick nominated himself alone for the Oscar for the visual effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and won, irritating those who had actually done the groundbreaking work, including Douglas Trumbull.
The preview for the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “The Jem’Hadar” made it appear as if TNG’s USS Enterprise was going to be destroyed in that episode, but it turned out to be another ship of the same class: The USS Odyssey.
Actors Alexander Siddig and Nana Visitor, who both co-starred on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, began dating, and then got married, during the show’s run. The two of them had a son together in 1996; Visitor’s pregnancy was written into her character’s storyline in the series.
Alexander Siddig played the role of the Angel Gabriel in the film The Nativity Story.
Jon Hamm plays the Angel Gabriel in the second season of Good Omens.
NFL quarterback Roman Gabriel was the second overall draft pick out of North Carolina State University in the 1962 NFL draft. Number one overall was Ernie Davis, a running back out of Syracuse.
Ernie Davis was diagnosed with leukemia that same year, and he died shortly after at age 23 without ever playing in a professional game.
Roman Gabriel is notable for being the first NFL quarterback of Filipino-American descent. In 1969 he was the MVP of the NFL, and in 1970 he was the MVP of the Pro Bowl.
Comment only:
I’m part Filipino, I was born there, and as a young kid I thought that Roman Gabriel being Filipino was pretty cool. My favorite color as a kid was blue, and he played for the LA Rams who wore blue and white in the early 1970s. The Rams were a winning team in the 1970s.
And for those reasons that’s how I, a kid living in Upstate New York, became a Rams fan. I lived and died with my beloved Rams (mostly, I died).
In 1979 I moved to San Francisco, and lived within a mile of Candlestick Park. The San Francisco 49ers were a winning team in the 1980s. And the Rams, then owned by Georgia Frontiere, were making terrible organization-wide decisions (like the way they released Fred Dryer).
That’s why, as a kid in 1984, I jumped ship and became a Niners fan.
Here’s a nice bit of trivia: Fred Dryer originally auditioned for the role of Sam Malone in Cheers. Dryer was one of three finalists to play Cheers barman Sam Malone, alongside William Devane and Ted Danson. Malone was originally conceived as a former New England Patriots wide receiver, which is why Dryer was considered for the role.
I’ll include that last bit in my play.
Cheers aired for 11 seasons, and earned a top-ten Nielsen rating in 8 of those 11 years. It was the #1 rated show in its ninth season. Its series finale in 1993 was the most watched single TV episode of the 1990s.
However, the show was almost cancelled after its first season, when it finished 74th out of 77 in the ratings.
In 2011, in a readers poll in Rolling Stone magazine, the theme song from Cheers was voted the best theme song ever created.
The song was written by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart-Angelo, and performed by Portnoy in 1982. On www.garyportnoy.com, you can find the final NBC Thursday Night Cheers Theme that was recorded at Paramount Studios on August 13, 1982. (To find it, search for “This is the final NBC Thursday Night Cheers Theme”). You can also find the full-length version of the “Cheers” theme as well as other songs considered for the theme song.
“Cheers” premiered on NBC on September 30, 1982. It was launched to tremendous critical acclaim, although it got off to a very slow start in the ratings. In the end, Cheers ended up running for 11 seasons and is among the longest-running TV sitcoms, by duration. The list includes:
236 episodes; 10 years/seasons: Friends
259 episodes; 10 years/seasons: Married with Children
253 episodes; 10 years/seasons: The Jeffersons
275 episodes; 11 years/seasons: Cheers
264 episodes; 11 years/seasons: Frasier
256 episodes; 11 years/seasons: MASH
246 episodes; 11 years/seasons: Will & Grace
250 episodes; 11 years/seasons: Modern Family
260 episodes; 11 years/seasons: Murphy Brown
260+ episodes; 12+ years/seasons: Bob’s Burgers
262 episodes; 12 years/seasons: Two and a Half Men
259 episodes; 13 years/seasons: King of the Hill
279 episodes; 13 years/seasons: The Big Bang Theory
250 episodes; 13 years/seasons: The Love Boat
353+ episodes; 18+ years/seasons: American Dad!
166 episodes; 18+ years/seasons: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
110+ episodes; 23+ years/seasons: Curb Your Enthusiasm
409+ episodes; 24+ years/seasons: Family Guy
325+ episodes; 26+ years/seasons: South Park
750+ episodes; 33+ years/seasons: The Simpsons
1982 marked the first full calendar year of the Reagan Administration. Ronald Reagan, Republican of California, defeated incumbent President Jimmy Carter, Democrat of Georgia, in the 1980 U.S. presidential election.