Here’s some videos of the famous week of appearances by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy on Dick Clark’s $20,000 Pyramid in 1977! (I’m guessing the Pyramid amount doubled for inflation!)
As I mentioned in today’s Daily Scrapbook, Nimoy was a great player and had played this several times, Bill was…well, Bill, and he famously throws a chair at one point! I’m very grateful to the videographer Hondo, who resuscitated these. The quality isn’t great, but they’re still enjoyable!
Warning, Shatner wears some eye-scarring 70’s qiana shirts! Nimoy is ever cool, of course 😉 The first clip begins with a flashback of Nimoy hugging an ecstatic contestant 🙂
An analysis about why Shatner’s 70’s show The Barbary Coast failed –probably because it was an awful show? (It basically was a 70’s version of The Wild Wild West, with Shatner in the Artemis Gordon-style role) Also a mention of that British import Space 1999, and TV listings of Nimoy’s movie The Alpha Caper, and the crazy week when William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy appeared opposite each other on Dick Clark’s $20,ooo Pyramid! Those appearances were pretty funny; at one point they pitted Shatner against himself at the pyramid, and amazingly, he LOST! I remember he was sitting there giving clues to an empty chair and Clark had to yell out something like “Switch seats, you dope!”
Why did Shatner and Nimoy do this? I’m guessing they needed the money, but it looks like they really enjoyed it -(Nimoy played to win and was especially good!) See the link to these episodes in today’s Wideo Wednesday – (the quality isn’t great but it’s a miracle that someone saved these!) Thank you Hondo!
Here’s today’s flashback: July 1977, more clippings from TV Guide. My parents had a subscription, so I was on top of every listing, paragraph, and blurb about anything related to Trek–definitely not what other 16 year old girls were doing at that age! (Geez, no wonder I never had a date in High School!) More news about the proposed new Star Trek TV series (it was titled Star Trek Phase II), Gene Roddenberry admits concern over how Trekkies may take the new improved special effects, Nimoy appears on an episode of the syndicated afternoon talk show The Mike Douglas Show (my Mom watched this almost every day), and Nimoy makes another appearance on Dick Clark’s The $20,000 Pyramid. But the most exciting thing for me in this month was that Nimoy was (finally) featured in a 5 page article in People magazine! (Now, if they had only put him on the cover as he deserved!) It’s a fine article about Nimoy and his family in NYC during Equus, his struggle to be seen as something other than Mr. Spock, and a great study on his take as Dr. Dysart in the Broadway production. A bonus is definitely the photo of him riding a horse and clowning in a Mr. Spock Tee-shirt that reads “Leonard Who?” (I must say, for a man of 46, which seemed so old to me at the time, he was remarkably trim!) The final quote in the article defines Nimoy even as he is today: “The day I’m satisfied, I’m finished!”
