| Posted: 22 October 2025 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | 1
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Today (October 22) would have been my Dad's 100th birthday! My Dad was a nice guy and a good guy, with some interesting things in his past. He fought in World War II, infantry in Germany; at the end of the war (he told us), he captured a whole squad of Nazis single-handedly...well, they were starving and he was the guy they surrendered to! At some point, he lied to Patton...he neglected to salute him and got in trouble and Patton demanded his name, and he gave him a fake one. He went through a ton of jobs after the war (including art) and ended up driving a cheese truck...for the Mob. He thought it would be a good idea to get his own cheese truck and stole his old route's customers...then the Mob drove him off the road! When I was a kid in the 70's and 80's, in Hollywood, my Dad worked for a small studio that did a lot of commercials and that's when I met people like Adam West, Burt Ward, Don Adams, and more.
But in the 60's, before I was born or when I was a baby, he worked for Paramount Studios (or Desilu, which was at Paramount), painting sets for shows like STAR TREK and MISSION IMPOSSIBLE. (Later, he worked on HERE'S LUCY...and he had some less than flattering things to say about Lucille Ball!)
He didn't talk much about his past, but every so often when a STAR TREK episode was on, he would point out some things he painted, like sets on the O.K. Corral episode, or the episode where Kirk was fighting a green-haired girl in a "gladiator ring" painted on the ground. (Too bad I wasn't interested in STAR TREK until I was older! I would have asked a ton of questions!) One story I remember him telling is how he almost interrupted a take with the characters sitting at a table talking because he thought the actors were just taking a break! My Dad was a friendly guy who people liked to talk to.
The other big story he told me was how he was talking to Leonard Nimoy, and Nimoy told him that Spock was inspired by the Sub-Mariner! (I assume he got that from Gene Roddenberry directly.) I don't know how that jibes with what I read about how Spock was originally going to have red skin, but you can really see it in the initial pilot. Spock was always a pointy-eared hybrid with extra strength, but in "The Cage," you can see that he was more emotional and they really tried to cut his hair closer to Namor's.
So, that's my inside info! From Leonard Nimoy himself, my Dad learned that Spock was initially based on the Sub-Mariner!
Anybody have any other cool "inside info"?
Edited by Eric Jansen on 23 October 2025 at 10:47am
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