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TF01 3,William Campbell at Archon 4,by Tim Smith William Campbell at Archon '94 -------------------------------- Edwardian International Hotel, London --------------------------------------- Saturday, August 27th 1994 ---------------------------- William Campbell, familiar to Trekkers everywhere as Trelane from the Classic Trek episode "The Squire Of Gothos" and the Klingon Koloth from Classic Trek's "The Trouble With Tribbles" and Deep Space Nine's "Blood Oath", made a guest appearance at Archon in 1994. Tim Smith was there to report on the talk... "Ladies and gentlemen, I can't tell you how happy I am to be here with you today. I can only thank Pam Clarke and her group for inviting me. I was here in England 30 years ago doing a picture called 'Sheriff Of Fractured Jaw' with Kenneth Moore and had some marvellous moments with him. He has passed on, and of course Jayne Mansfield has gone, and many many of my colleagues, and I'll talk to you alot about that today." "It's true that I was born in Newark, New Jersey. My father worked for the water department. My mother was houseproud. I have a brilliant brother who is now one of the great mystery writers of the world, but he also wrote "Man Of A Thousand Faces". You remember that. It was the story of Lon Chaney with Jimmy Cagney. He was an Academy Award nominee writer, and he did many other things." "But we're here to talk about myself and my relationship to Star Trek. I didn't come into this acting business easily. I didn't know what I was going to do. I was certain because of my academic negatives that I was going to end up working in the water department in some sort of plumber inspectors job, but fate led me to other fields. And the way that happened was I went through the marvellous teenage years with a loving family, and all of a sudden the war hit. I was 16 and I was finished with high school. I took a brief job with the RCA radio company as an office boy for about six months, then I enlisted. My mother signed for me. Just before the age of seventeen I went in the Navy and ended up on a minesweeper in the Pacific. I went to Hiroshima, Nagasaki and started to see a little bit of the world." "As luck would have it on board my ship was an officer who planned to become an actor. And indeed he did become an actor. His name id Leonard Stone and he's a character actor but he never went too far with it. We used to sit up on the bridge en route to Japan, that was before the bomb dropped, and we would talk about his desire to become an actor. I told him that I thought it was interesting, but didn't know how a boy from Newark, New Jersey could do that." "The war ends, I get my points, and back home I come, and we had in America what we used to call the 52-20 Club. They gave you $20 a week for 52 weeks. I gave my father and mother $10 dollars of that. That was my room and board. With the other $10 I clothed myself, etc. and I just hung around the quarter with the boys for a year. Then my dad said to me one day 'Do you plan to go to school or got to work?'; 'Well, I'm planning to go to school.'. He said, 'Well you better choose something Bill because you're not going to stay in this house unless you're working.' So I went down to my high school and I went to a drama teacher whom I knew. She said, 'Have you ever thought of going into showbusiness?' I said, 'After the experience I had?'" "The experience I had was when I was in the drama club we did a play called 'The Patsy' and I was kind on the leading teenager. I had a scene with a girl on a sofa, and I'm trying to get her to profess her love to me, and she won't do it. I had the expression, 'Well, I guess nobody loves me.' One of my school mates yells out from the balcony 'Your mother does!' Well that nearly sunk my acting career right there. I lost the lines and it took me about 5 minutes to get back on." "But I went home and I thought about it and called her back and she said she knew a drama school in New York, and I ended up there on a two year college acredited course. But I wasn't doing it because I thought I was going to be an actor. I was doing it because I was lazy and I didn't want to go to work right away, and the government was paying for this so why not? What happened was suddenly I saw I was getting some, shall we call it special treatment. Then I saw that it wasn't difficult, and I'd hear all the marvellous things about how you get paid for doing things you like, and the bug got me." "I finish the two year course and I end up auditioning for a school called the Theatre Wing, which would be like the Royal Academy. At Theatre Wing I worked with Oota Haagen who did a play on Broadway called Angel Street and her husband Herbert Berghof who was not only an actor but one of the great coaches in New York, and any other number of people who were teaching at the Theatre Wing, and I was doing summer stock." "The second time I nearly threw in the towel was when I did a play in summer stock at Newport Casina Theatre. I was the juvenile of the company and I was working with an actor by the name of Neil Hamilton who had been a movie star. I got nervous and as I went out the door on my exit scene I forgot my coat So I thought 'What do I do? Well I guess I'll go back in and just pick up my coat brusquely.' as it was just after an arguement. As I walked through the door he throws the coat, it hit me in the face and the flat came down with me in the middle of the door. I thought that I was going to go home and forget all of this, but of course, I didn't." "I did four years of stock, and you know something? I thought that I was going to be a stock actor all my life. I liked it. I kept going to school, and one day my father said 'When are you going to get a job?'. I said, 'Get a job? I never thought of that.' I was doing Tennessee Williams at the Wing, and a representative of the William Morris agency came to me afterwards and said they'd like to represent me and I became a member of their stable. And within a few days I got a call from a fellow by the name of Nate Peters, one of the agents. He said 'Mr. Campbell, I want you to go over to Dakota,' that's where John Lennon was killed, 'and I want you to see a casting agent there by the name of Irene Selznick.'. I said 'Irene Selznick? What play?'. 'Streetcar Named Desire.'. I said, 'Who put me up to that?'. He said 'Herbert Berghof.'" "So I call Mr Berghof. I said, 'Herbert, did you tell William Morris to have me go over to Irene Selznick for the part of Stanley Kawalski?'. I weighed about 135 pounds soaking wet with my knapsack! He said, 'No Bill, I want you to go over there because you'll be perfect for the part.'. I said 'How can I be perfect for the part. Marlon Brando plays that. This is supposed to be a guy whose neck is as wide as his head. I can't do that, he's all muscle.'. He said 'Yes you can.'. I said, 'How will I portray that?'. He said 'Be natural boy.'" "Well, I go over to see Irene Selznick, and she opens the door and looks at me, and before I have time to say 'Hello, Miss Selznick' she says 'You know you're not right for the part?'. I say, 'No, I know I'm not.'. She says 'Come in anyway and sit down.'. She ended up giving me the Western Union telegraph boy. I said 'How long would this last?'. She said 'Two years.'. I said 'Can I think this one over?'. My heart wasn't really in doing that job. When I got home, Nate Peters had rung. I called him back and he said 'Bill, you didn't take that job did you? Because they have a roadshow of 'The Man Who Came To Dinner' and we've got a hell of a good part for you.'. That part led me to Hollywood." "This is the classic story of coming to Hollywood in a play, looking in my box the day after the opening night and finding two cards. One from 20th Century Fox from the talent scout who had seen the play, and one from Warner Brothers. I'm living at the Cecil Hotel in Hollywood for a dollar a night. I used to have my luggage and I would wait until all the other actors went to their fancy hotels, never telling them where I was living. Frequently, this is the part of suffering you always hear about, I would have to con people to get me breakfast. I contacted one of the actors and I said, 'I've got two cards. What'll I do?'. He said 'Call your agent.'. I said 'Who's my agent?'. He said 'You have an agent don't you?'. I said 'Yes, William Morris.'. He said 'They're a big agency. They're all over the world.' I thought it was one guy in New York and an assistant." "I call William Morris. A girl answers the phone, 'Who are you, Sir?'. 'I'm Bill Campbell.'. She puts me onto a fellow by the name of Joe Scheinfeld. He gets on and doesn't know me from a born. And he says 'What's it about Mr. Campbell? Why are you calling?'. I said 'I had two tickets in my mail box at the theatre.'. He said 'From who?'. I said '20th Century Fox...'. 'Stay right there, Mr. Campbell. I'll be right back to you!'. And of course he was. He said 'Mr Campbell, tomorrow there'll be a limousine picking you up at your hotel.'. I said 'A limousine?'. Of course there was a limousine the next morning." "I arrive at 20th Century Fox, the talent scout brings me into her office and says 'You're going to meet Mr. Billy Gordon, head of new faces. He's going to love you. You were so good in the play, Mr. Campbell.'. I go up and there's this fellow with a big desk. He greets me. As we're chatting he asks me where I came from, and my training, and my background. People would come in from different exits to his office. I would be introduced, so I would get up and shake hands. The person would look at me quizzically, and then he would move out and another would come in, and this kept happening. Finally he speaks to me, and he says, 'Mr. Campbell drop by anytime you're in town.'. I said 'That's it?'. I bowed out, went down the stairs, went over where the limousine was. There's no limousine. I went over to a kiosk and said to the fellow, 'Did you see a limousine here? I have to get back downtown to the theatre.'. 'No limousine there, sir. There's a bus over there. Why don't you get it? Make sure you get a transfer on Western.'. So I bused my way back. As I'm on the bus I'm thinking 'How rude!'. That was the next time I thought of quitting this business." "I went back and raised hell with my agent and he said 'Bill, I'll meet you and take you up Warner Brothers.'. Of course, that's what got me into the business, because the gentleman that I met was Bill Law who was the son-in-law of Jack Warner. He immediately took me around the studio, and I met a great director by the name of Michael Curtiz. He was the picture of a director with a beret and a riding crop. He says after we've chatted for awhile, 'He's got a good face, but I don't have for him a screen test.'. What they would do with a screen test is test you with a full crew, and then they would attach the cost of the screen test to a picture that was currently in the making. They told me that I would be coming back for tests. I didn't believe it and went on with the show. I arrived in San Francisco and get the word that they're going to test me. I come back. I still have the telegram that Monty Woolley, who was a great, great character actor, sent me saying good luck on your screen test. I tested, and within a week or two I receive a call, and the option was exercised. So I went back, and so that was the beginning of a film career." "The first picture I did was with John Garfield in 'The Breaking Point', and he was very kind to me. I worked with some of the greatest stars in my business. People often ask me what it is about this business when I look back that is most intriguing. I say the greatest thing is the people you meet. I met some phenomenal people. It's a business where you're meeting people constantly. The bigger they were, the greater they were. Some of them were just so sweet. Great stories came out of my association with various people." "One that comes to mind all the time is my association with Elvis Presley. I didn't like Elvis Presley's music at the beginning. I recognised that he was a phenom. I get a call from my agent, 'Mr. Campbell, they want you for an Elvis Presley movie.'. This is 1956 and they're going to offer me the co-star in an Elvis Presley picture, $15,000 dollars. I said 'I'll take it.'. I'm called up. We're going to have an audience with the King. I go up to the projection room. I arrived a little late and they were already showing screen tests of other actors that were going to be in it. I hear this twangy accent behind me, and I realise that I'm sitting right in front of Elvis. Elvis was a sweet kid. I hear him saying, when he saw the picture of Debra Paget. He said to the Colonel, 'Is she good looking! Am I going to kiss her in this picture?'." "Now they show all the tests and the light go up. Colonel Parker comes down and he says, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to Elvis Presley.'. We're all invited to have a sandwich and drink, and Richard Egan and I are chatting, and all of a sudden I get a tap on my shoulder. It's Elvis. He says, 'Mr. Campbell, you're in my favourite picture.'. I said, 'Really, what is that?'. He said 'Man Without A Star'. I've seen that picture 11 times. I love westerns. Mr Campbell, I've never done any acting, will you watch me, and if I do anything that you think could be improved upon, would you tell me?'. Well, the fact of the matter was I took that as almost a job. I would watch him, and his biggest problem was what to do with his hands. He would stand like a soldier, and I would go over and take him aside and say, 'Look, why don't you do what Humphrey Bogart does? Put your thumbs in the loops of your pants, put them in your pockets, cross your arms, put on arm behind you, get a little loose you know.'. And he would do it. He had tremendous sense." "Colonel Parker walks upto me one day and he said, 'You know Bill, we can't get out of the main gate at daytime. There's so many people.'. They couldn't get the limousine out to take him to the hotel. So he said to me, 'Would you do us a favour? Could you drive Elvis home?'. So I go out the back gate, and they have the limousine go out the front gate, and everybody thought Elvis was going out there. First day we go out Elvis says to me, 'Do we have to go right back to the hotel?'. I said 'No, what do you want to do?'. He said, 'I've never seen the Pacific Ocean. Can we go down there?'. I said 'Sure.'. He said 'Can I ride your car?', because he was a racing car driver." "He took my little car, and I'm white knuckled. We're going down Olympic Boulevard to the beach. He said, 'You know what I'd like to have? I'd like to have a greasy hamburger.'. Sure enough there's this hamburger stand. He parks up there, and he goes in. There's this guy with five days of his cooking on his apron, and a belly hanging over his belt. 'What d'ya want?'. Elvis said 'Give me a big, greasy hamburger and I want some chips!'. The guy brings him this beautiful big, greasy hamburger. Elvis loved anything with a lot of grease. Now everyday when I'd take him home, he'd want to go down there. I said to him, 'I can take you to the best hamburger place in Los Angeles, why do we keep going down to this greasy spoon? This guy's nasty.'. He said 'That's what I like about him. He doesn't know who I am, so he doesn't bug me.'." "Well, the picture carries on. We're two weeks into the picture and the director says 'Bill, I want you to bone up on that song on the porch.'. I said 'Really? Why?'. He says 'You're going to sing with Elvis.'. First of all, I couldn't stomach the music - I was for the big band era. I said, 'Look, I was hired as an actor. Nobody told me anything about singing. I'm going to be embarrassed. I'll never work again. I'm not doing it.'. Now Elvis is hearing this. The director said 'Look, I can't have Richard Egan singing with him, because Elvis is married to Richard Egan's fiance, so I can't have that. I can't have Jim Durie. He's from Texas, he doesn't have any rhythm. You're from New York. You've got rhythm!'. I did everything I could, tears, it wouldn't work. Elvis came over, and he said 'Bill, come on. Let's go to my dressing room.'. So we get in the dressing room. He gives me a very sly look and he says 'Bill, remember what you did for me when I asked you to help me with acting?'. I say 'Yes, and I enjoyed it.'. He said 'Well, I don't know a damn thing about acting, but I know alot about singing. We're going to rehearse for a couple of days.'. And we did, and I felt more comfortable. I was still embarrassed to hell when I saw the picture. However now I'm very proud of that moment. It was a great moment. He was a great guy, and when I became the director of fundraising for the motion picture home and hospital, he gave me a million dollars for the organisation, which I thought was just superb." "I did a picture with John Wayne, and as a matter of fact I got fired from Warner Brothers because of that picture. When I went there I thought I was going to have one major career immediately, because the first picture I did was 'The Breaking Point' with John Garfield. I played a gangster. I didn't have a problem with that being from New Jersey. I go right from that to 'Breakthrough' with a co-starring role as a soldier, and I'm getting great reviews for my second picture, and I'm believing it. The along comes a picture called 'Operation Pacific', and I was absolutely elated because it was a John Wayne picture. I'm going to tell you something. There have been lots of movies stars, however, when Wayne walked through a door, you are in awe! He was bigger than life, and yet he was a great family guy." "My part in the picture is the talker. It was the easy part because I was always around John Wayne who was the captain of the submarine. He'd say 'Come to course 270.'. I'd say 'Coming to course 270, Sir.'. Well, evidently the producer didn't think I was putting my best foot forward. I might have looked a little dower. We had a fight and I said, 'I'm not only disturbed at the insult of having me do this role, but I don't have any lines to say. I just repeat what Mr. Wayne says. You don't even give me a name. Why don't you give me a name? John Doe, anything. I mean I'm the talker.'. Well, the next thing I know, I'm getting a call from Jack Warner to come up to his office. I got up to his office, and he said to me 'I understand you're not happy about your role.'. I said 'Yes sir, I am.'. He said 'Are you unhappy about your contract?'. I said 'I'm getting unhappier sir'. He said 'Well then, we're going to let you go.'. I said 'Really? Well okay, if that's the you want it sir.'. He worked me to death over the next four months. Threw me into two extra pictures, and of course dropped my option." "I was a Broadway kid. I'm going back to New York. This is the way Hollywood is, and I'm getting prepared to drive back, and I get a call for a little anthology show called 'Biglow Theatre'." "The sixth time I nearly walked out was when I was working on a picture with Spencer Tracey. I looked upon him as a bit of a god. We sat around chairs and we did a chair rehearsal. The only thing he said to me, he greeted me of course, 'Does anthing seem stilted Mr. Campbell? Are there any changes you'd like made?'. I said 'No, sir.'. We get ready for a scene, and it's fourteen pages of a courtroom sequence with Spencer Tracey, and I panicked. I couldn't remember my first line which I think was 'Yes'. I seriously, and I mean seriously, thought 'Do I kill myself or leave and get lost in Kentucky somewhere?'. To make it worse the assistant finds me and kind of drags me to where I'm sitting on the witness stand, and when I get there Mr Tracey come over and says, 'Mr. Campbell, we're going to do the first take without rehearsal.'. I said 'Is there a reason for that sir?'. And he gave me the greatest reason in the world. He said 'Yes, the first take the adrenalin is flowing, and many times that is the best take of the picture. Let's do it that way. If it doesn't work, for whatever reason, then it's a good rehearsal and we'll just go over it again.'." "As it turned out, we started getting into the scene. We get through the first five pages, and in my senses I'm thinking 'I got through the first five.'. I see that Tracey's in it with me, and he's getting angry, and I'm laying it on him. By the time I get to the tenth page I'm thinking 'I've really got him!'. When I got into the twelfth page I'm thinking 'Wow! I'm really socking it to him!'. The scene ends and it was only then that fear really grasped me, because I thought 'We really did it!'. I see him walk over to me slowly. He leaned on me and said 'Are you under contract?'. I said 'No sir.'. He said 'Would you like to be?'. I said 'Yes sir.'. He grabs me by the hand and takes me over to a telephone and makes a call. He says 'Danny, I've got a kid here who wants you to put him under contract.'. Talks to him for a few seconds and hangs up. He says, 'Bill when we're finished for the day, go on upto Mr. Thaw's office.'." "You can imagine, my feet were off the ground. Boom! Upto Mr. Thaws office. I'm led right into this typically Hollywood moguls office. I sit down and he pushed the contract in front of me and says 'Read that Mr Campbell, and if you like it, sign it.'. I look at it, and a funny thing comes to my mind. My salary was going to be $750 a week. He said 'Is there something wrong?'. I said 'No sir, there's nothing wrong.'. He said 'Well what's funny about the contract?'. I said 'Do you realise, sir, that I'm going to start here making ten time as much as my dad does?'. He smiled, and I signed it. I called my agent the next day and said 'We're under contract!'. It was just a sensational experience." "John Wayne was a phenomenal guy, and a true movie star. He hated baseball, just hated it. You see he was a football player. John Wayne says to his son, 'We're going to have to buy tickets for the Dodgers.'. They used them for business. He would give these tickets away. He went to one game, and when he got to the game, at about the seventh inning he was bored to tears. He starts hearing the fans yell 'WE WANT DUKE! WE WANT DUKE!'. This happened three or four times. His son finally tells him, 'Dad, will you stop standing up every time they say 'We want Duke'?'. He said 'Well what the hell are they yelling it for?'. He said 'No, that's for Duke Snyder. He's a famous player!'. Wayne said 'There's a guy on this team called Duke? Go tell him he's going to have to change his name when I come to the stadium!'." "When he came home, John liked a few to drink. He would always stop at an Italian restaurant, and he would have a couple of drinks with the bartender. One night he goes and asks for a couple of double shots, and there's some guy singing in the back. He said 'Who the hell is that?'. The bartender said 'That's Mr. David Bryant.'. He said 'Well you go back and tell him that John Wayne's here, and I want to relax over a drink or two, and his singing is lousy!'. So the bartender goes over to the dark of this room where David Bryant is bombed and he says 'Mr. Bryant, John Wayne's out at the bar. He says you sing lousy and he wants you to stop.'. David Bryant says 'He does, does he? You tell Mr. Wayne to **** ** ***!'. The bartender goes over and tells Wayne this. Wayne, who was 6'6" and in good shape, comings walking through the door. David Bryant saw the silhouette and starts thinking, 'Who does he know, that I know?'. He happened to have known a make up man that Wayne likes. So as Wayne goes towards him, David Bryant says 'Oh - hi Duke! I was just talking to John about you yesterday.'. They get down and they get bombed together." "Now the first one to pass out is David Bryant. Wayne gets up and takes David Bryant home. Wayne gets out of the car and knocks on the door; no one's home. No key. He decides to take Bryant and put him in the cabana next to the pool. He gets him on his shoulder, carries him down these stairs to the swimming pool area, and sees that there is a couch there. He lays him on it, and goes back up. Then it occurs to him that Bryant may fall in the pool and drown. So he finds a broom clost and puts David Bryant in it, locks the door and leaves. When David Bryant comes to, he thought he was dead. He flails about and goes through the door, not knowing what happened. Later, David Bryant would tell this story constantly because he was so proud to have been taken home by John Wayne." "When I got Star Trek, I got a call from Gene Coon. I didn't get a call from an agent. Gene Coon was the heart and soul of the original Star Trek. Roddenberry was the creator, the concept, the idea. There were some changes, you've all read about, but Gene Coon had a true sense of the morality play, the concept, and this business of togetherness that you all describe, and that's the way they wanted to gear their show. I get on the phone and he says 'My name is Gene Coon, and I'd like to chat to you about Star Trek.'. I knew of Star Trek. I wasn't particularly into science fiction, or anything else. If I were to say I were into anything it was that which influenced me most in my life, and that was the western. He said 'Let me explain. We've got a casting agent by the name of Joe Degasta. He doesn't think you can do this part.'. Well that's all he had to say to me. I said 'What do you mean, he doesn't think I can it? What's the role?'. He said, 'Well, it's kind of an English fop.'. I said 'Of course I can do and English fop. I am an English fop!'. He said 'Well I know you can do it. Would you be willing to read for Joe Degasta?'. I said 'Sure, I'll read for Joe Degasta.'. I was scared to death!" "He said 'Let me give you an advantage. I'm going to send the script over to you. I want you to read it, and you can break it down so that when you see Degasta...'. I said 'I'll read it for you.'. So sure enough, 20 minutes later the script came. I read through it - it was a barn burner! I said 'I always wanted to be a ham, and here's my chance!' It was somewhere I could be completely out of myself. As I was looking through it I was worried, because they'd marked down the various scenes, and I see that the three scenes are where I'm talking to people, quick one line retorts. As said 'Oh, this is dangerous.' because I was going to be reading with Joe Degasta's gopher who wasn't an actor. I thought 'I gotta find something.'. So if you remember in 'The Squire of Gothos' where he makes them all come to the planet, and he greets them. He's going to have them to dinner. It's a monologue, and all I have to say is one line that I have to contend with, and it cues me in." "The next days I arrive and Degasta hugs me and makes a little joke about how he didn't think the role was for me, and then he finally says 'Shall we get to it?'. I told him that I wanted to change things a little bit and do this scene. We got through a paragraph, and he said 'Let's go to wardrobe.'." "My feeling at that particular time was simply pleasure at having a show in which I could tell Bill Shatner 'This is my show.'. Of course along comes the costume, [at this point, William CAmpbell actually shows the Squire's jacket to the audience!] and this is the Squire's jacket. This jacket was given to me by the fans. They went to Western Costume and purchased the whole outfit for me. More than that, this jacket was made for Michael Rennie in 'Desiree', the Marlon Brando picture." "People have different views of Bill Shatner, and most of them are true. I am a good friend of Jimmy Doohan and George Takei, and today I do not know what the deep chasm is between the two. I asked Jimmy one day, and he was reluctant. I said 'Jimmy, I'm not asking you to reveal an atomic bomb secret. What the hell is it?' and he really didn't give me an answer. As you know Bill Shatner wrote a book, and I'm in that book, talking about Gene Coon who became my dearest friend. I never asked Gene for a job, although he would constantly comment about my working in Star Trek. I had a verbal agreement for 13 shows as Captain Koloth, but it was at that time that they called it a day." "The thing about the Shatner situation was that he made a fatal mistake when he brought up the subject about get a life. I cannot tell you the impact that had in the States with the Star Trek fans. It's not one that you can excuse away easily, because get a life is an expression in the States that means pretty harsh. At lunch, I bought that up. He said 'How come I was never invited to any of the parties that you and Jimmy, Roddenberry and Coon had?'. I said 'Bill, I don't know. Maybe you should search your problem.'." "Now there were alot of things I talked to Bill about on that given occasion in regard to the fans, I said to a few people the other day at the newcomers party I was invited to 'I've always been distrubed about some actors attitudes towards fans.' and I'm not even part of Star Trek in the sense that I was not a regular, who really was beholden to Star Trek for my living. For these guys some of them owe everything, beyond just a living wage, to you people." "I remember when the first show went out, and the move was on by the fans to get them to come back, and they did come back in a horrible picture. The first one, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and I said 'They've just had the coupe de grace. It's over.' but you, and those fans in the States put life into it. Paramount couldn't care less. It's all dollars, and that's where the ball game is. But the fans kept it up. There was a gal by the name of Bjo Trimble, and she just absolutely kept punching. almost to the point of getting ill over it, it got that intense." "Bill would have made a living, but to say to people 'Get a life.'. I said 'Bill, let me tell you something, for the majority of fans it's a hobby. It's part of their life just like the rest of us who used to watch 'The Honeymooners'. There are vast conventions where everybody looks like Art Carney and Jackie Gleason. Desilu, and I'm talking about Desie and Lucy. They have conventions where 15000 people all look like the two of them, but that's the fun!'." "I had a big debate with someone the other day about Woodstock. They talk about Woodstack as if I was born after Woodstock. The first Woodstock was an atrocity! It was vulgar! I mean we try all these years to become civilised, and we're still doing it. Star Trek fans, I've never seen dope, I've never seen children that were snotty to you, people get along. Woodstock, they're in the mud, they're blowing pot, the people who are singing overdose and die. I mean it was a disgusting display, and everybody said 'It's a new way. It's love!' Love, my ***! This is love [indicates to the audience] and friendship, and getting together, and hope. That's what Star Trek meant to me." "I'm going to tell you one story before I leave. There was a great director by the name of Raol Walsh, and he told me a story about Cheyenne Billy. In the old days they didn't use stuntmen, they got real cowboys for the westerns they were doing. Cheyene was 85 years old and wore a buckskin hat. Raol said that everytime he did a film he would hire him, and he liked him because they would get drunk together. When he got drunk, Cheyene would cry and say 'Mr. Walsh, when I die, I want you to send me back to Wyoming and give me a cowboy burial.'. One day he comes on set, and Raol says 'You look bad. Take this man to a doctor.'. He goes to a doctor, and comes back. Raol says 'What the doctor say about you?'. Cheyene says 'I've got ferocious of the liver!'. Raol says 'You ought to have ferocious of the liver. Go back to your apartment, and I'll see you next week.'. Next week comes, no Cheyene. Raol sends someone over to his apartment. He opens up the door, and Cheyene's on the bed, dead. Raol feels pangs of remorse. Raol rents a ranch house, puts food in there, gets a pine box, puts Cheyene in it, calls an undertaker in Wyoming and gets him to say he'll bury him and arranges his trip back. He calls all this cowboys up there, and they're all crying. Pretty soon he's gotta go. Upon the stage coach they put his casket, down the hill they go, and Raol starts counting up the money this cost. This 1919, and that funeral cost him $800! He was making good money, and he figured he did a good deed for his old friend Cheyene. Three weeks went by, and there's a letter in the mail box, from the Attorney General of the state of Wyoming. He opens it up, and there's a $2,500 cheque. Cheyenne was wanted dead or alive, and it was the reward!"