Star Pick with William Ragsdale

Sometimes, you need luck on your side. As you can probably imagine, many of the celebrity interviews I conduct are arranged well in advance. . . though, not always. A prime example of said luck, as I attended a National Hockey League game a few months back, I just happened to bump into the one and only Alex Trebek. A man who definitely does not need an introduction, he has hosted one of the most popular game shows in the history of television – Jeopardy, since its revival in 1984 (when it became a daily syndicated show). . . he has also emceed many others, including High Rollers and Classic Concentration, to name but a few. So popular in fact, Trebek was spoofed for years by Will Ferrell on Saturday Night Live (always the butt end of one of Darrell Hammond’s Sean Connery puns/gags about his mother).

It was an absolute pleasure sitting down with Lee Meriwether at Trekonderoga, the Ticonderoga, New York, convention that is all things Star Trek, this past August. An icon in the industry for the sixty plus years, Meriwether won Miss California in 1954, following it up by winning the Miss America pageant in 1955, the first year it was televised. Joining the Today Show soon after, it did not take long for her to nab her first major role in the 1959 sci fi horror flick 4D Man. Splitting time between television and the silver screen, she made guest appearances or had recurring roles on shows such as Dragnet, Leave It to Beaver, The Jack Benny Program, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Perry Mason, The Fugitive, The Time Tunnel (all thirty episodes), Mission: Impossible, and of course, Star Trek – playing the mysterious Losira in the 1969 episode, “That Which Survives”. On the film front, Meriwether took over the role of Catwoman from Julie Newmar for Batman: The Movie (the first feature film, though there were two serial features created in the 1940s), also making two appearances as Lisa Carson soon after on the Batman series, she also starred opposite Andy Griffith in Angel in My Pocket, as well as John Wayne and Rock Hudson in the western The Undefeated, both motion pictures were released in 1969.

It was an absolute pleasure sitting down with Guy Boucher just prior to the beginning of the 2017-2018 National Hockey League season. At a charitable event for The Children’s Treatment Centre, he was one of the roasters of Ottawa Senators’ assistant coach Marc Crawford, in what can only be termed a hilarious evening. With an impressive start to his coaching career, Boucher began in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, capping it off by winning the Paul Dumont Trophy in 2009 – awarded to the personality of the year, while with the Drummondville Voltigeurs. The success brought with it a head coaching job with the Hamilton Bulldogs in the American Hockey League, the affiliate of the Montreal Canadiens, where he took home the Louis A. R. Pieri Memorial Award (coach of the year) in 2010.

The last few years have been a dream for fans of films and television series of the 1980s and 90s, as it seems like more and more are getting sequels (often after many long years), usually with at least a portion of the original cast (and often the director back in either the same role or that of producer) returning to play a part left behind long ago. Think, in no particular order, Dumb and Dumber, Full House, Mad Max, Rocky (Creed), Star Wars, Wet Hot American Summer (actually early 2000s), Jurassic Park, and, as of this Friday, add Blade Runner to the list. Returning to the silver screen thirty-five years after the original, Ridley Scott this time puts his executive producer cap on, with Denis Villeneuve taking over directorial efforts, while Harrison Ford delves into the Rick Deckard character once again. . . though, you’ll have to wait to hear more on that. As a lead-in to the long awaited sequel, the original 1982 picture is the focus today.

It was lovely sitting down with veteran actor Michael Dante at Trekonderoga this past August. In the business for more than sixty years, it was not his original path in life. A top baseball player, he was signed by the Boston Braves out of high school. As fate would have it, he travelled a less expected path, finding his way, through interesting circumstances, into his first feature film, Robert Wise’s Somebody Up There Likes Me, in 1956 (with legendary names like Newman, Duvall and McQueen). Leading to an impressive career, Dante has graced the silver screen in such films as Westbound, Seven Thieves (Edward G. Robinson, Rod Steiger, Joan Collins, Eli Wallach), Kid Galahad (Elvis), The Naked Kiss (with famed director Samuel Fuller), Apache Rifles, Willard, as well as playing the title character in Winterhawk. . . this is just a small sampling of his work.

It is rare to find a character so iconic that by simply uttering their last name, everyone is on point. One such case is Uhura. Brought to vivid life on the original Star Trek series (1966-1969) by the great Nichelle Nichols who developed an engaging, multi-faceted and wholly inspiring persona at a time when African American women were portrayed as maids or in other lowly servile positions on television. The fourth most powerful person on the USS Enterprise, Nichols was a part of a multicultural cast that was more than unusual for the era. The crew was comprised of African American, Asian American, Scottish, Russian (during The Cold War), half-alien, and white – symbolic that in the future, we, as human beings, would be able to come together to achieve something special, or as it was so aptly put: “Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship, Enterprise. Its five year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before”.