A Delightful Confluence of B-Star Eddies

(Repost from August 29, 2011 over at my OldTimeRadioDiner blog, no longer active. I started that back when I thought I could keep two going at the same time.)

Ever see a couple actors from different shows appear on a new one together? It's like watching a family reunion. When it's intentional, like The Love Boat or Fantasy Island, it can be enjoyable, but when it's coincidental, it's magic.

Set aside for a moment everything you know about personalities off the set. In fact, forget that these people have any life outside the small screen at all (which is after all the goal of most TV).

What you have is thousands of little worlds, which otherwise stand alone but on this occasion briefly overlap.

Click to enlarge: Big B stars from my childhood: Top to bottom and left to right: Michael J Pollard, Lou Antonio, Alfred Ryder, and Glenn Corbett. When you're a kid and you see actors like this reappear frequently, they assume a place that is often more important than the bigger stars they acted with.

As it happens, four guest stars from Star Trek The Original Series all appeared in a 1963 episode of Route 66, "and make thunder his tribute." (Route 66 put the opening show title in lower case, common today but avant-garde for its time.)

Pollard is incredible. I remember him from so many roles, including Andy Griffith and Steve Martin's Roxanne. He was often is the most entertaining person on the screen.

[2011-08-29]

 

 

 

c0