TO THE BATPOLES #205: Batman - Star Trek ACT-OFF, pt. 2

[bat-rss]

We’re joined again by our childhood friend Kyle for the second installment of our comparison of actors who appeared on both Batman and Star Trek. On which show did Grace Lee Whitney (King Tut moll Neila vs. Yeoman Janice Rand), Lee Meriwether (Tut kidnapee Lisa Carson vs. planetary security system Losira), Frank Gorshin (the Riddler vs. traitor-tracker Bele), and Sherry Jackson (Riddler moll Pauline vs. improbably sexy android Andrea) turn in the better performance? Then, having pitted two of the same actor’s roles against each other, we compare that actor’s better performance to that of one of the other actors. Just call us “The Gamesters of Gotham”!

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[Kamdan]

I felt compelled to write this response after your first round of discussions concerning Grace Lee Whitney. All three of you grossly overlooked her role on Star Trek and your lack of fair research once again came back to bite you hard.

It wasn’t fair of all three of you to simply observe compilation videos of Whitney as Yeoman Rand, which was admitted to mainly feature her role in the films and not the bulk of the episodes she appeared in. I cringed hard when the “look at my legs” scene from Miri was mainly cited with only a causal reference to her part in the episodes The Enemy Within and Charlie X. The assault Rand’s character endured in Enemy was extremely daring for 60’s audiences at that time and is really an uncomfortable moment in this series. You take a causal viewer who only knows Star Trek from The Trouble with Tribbles and show them that scene and you’ll certainly get a reaction out of them. Whitney’s performance when she’s confessing what happen is what makes it so memorable to those who watched it.

There’s also more to Charlie X than the title guest character asking if she’s a “girl” (not woman, as you incorrectly stated). That’s another derogatory sense of the times where a professional woman like Rand is being called a “girl” and has to deal with a teenager at one point declaring his lust for her. On top of that, this “spoiled brat” has a power that literally kills her when his unwanted advances gets him a slap to the face. Again, Whitney handles these scenes with believable frustration and vulnerability with the objectification of her gender and as member of the Enterprise crew.

It’s a shame that the solution to dealing with her character was to just write her out of the series and not attempt to develop her into a more administrative role, with her rank as the captain’s yeoman. That’s mainly at the fault of the staff of the show who had a very narrow viewpoint, thinking that just seeing someone like Rand or even Nichelle Nichols as Uhura was enough. Along with your after mentioned drinking problem Whitney dealt with, there was also an alleged sexual assault from a staff member that Whitney suffered from that led to her termination from the show. Scripts that had her character written into them had to be revised with various other yeomans and was a rather unceremoniously way to exit a series that she was sold on as being the female lead that could have developed further to make her just as much of a confident as Spock and McCoy were to Kirk.

If you still feel that Whitney’s performance in the Batman episodes were superior, I will embrace your opinion, but I didn’t feel that all of the after mentioned points were considered in your initial evaluation.

[BATWINGED HORNET]

The assault Rand’s character endured in Enemy was extremely daring for 60’s audiences at that time and is really an uncomfortable moment in this series. You take a causal viewer who only knows Star Trek from The Trouble with Tribbles and show them that scene and you’ll certainly get a reaction out of them. Whitney’s performance when she’s confessing what happen is what makes it so memorable to those who watched it.

I agree with this assessment; in "The Enemy Within", Whitney's performance in the scene where she's trying to explain that Kirk assaulted her was extremely powerful for two reasons: one, the what she was revealing was extremely disturbing, especially if you knew anyone who ever suffered from that kind of assault. Two, viewers were hearing her say this about THE hero of the series, our strong good-guy Kirk. By this point in the episode, we knew about the transporter accident, but it was still incredibly distressing to hear anyone accuse him of such a barbaric act. That makes Whitney's TOS performance stand head and shoulders above her turn as the spiteful, jealous moll to King Tut.

It’s a shame that the solution to dealing with her character was to just write her out of the series and not attempt to develop her into a more administrative role, with her rank as the captain’s yeoman. That’s mainly at the fault of the staff of the show who had a very narrow viewpoint, thinking that just seeing someone like Rand or even Nichelle Nichols as Uhura was enough. Along with your after mentioned drinking problem Whitney dealt with, there was also an alleged sexual assault from a staff member that Whitney suffered from that led to her termination from the show.

Whitney has said she believed her alcoholism was the reason she was fired, as opposed to Roddenberry, et al., claiming Rand was written out to allow Kirk to have more romantic encounters with other women. If Whitney is to be taken at her word, then there was really no way she was going to endure a very ambitious, very demanding weekly TV series while dealing with alcoholism, a disease which only grows in its severity over time. One way or the other, she was going to end up cut from Star Trek.

Its no surprise that addiction crushes careers; Bewitched's Dick York (Darrin #1) suffered a serious back injury while shooting 1959's They Came to Cordura, and was on painkillers until he quit cold-turkey in the 1970s. His back pain was so horrendous that he was constantly on and increasing his use of drugs while shooting Bewitched, often "out of it" during production. Once his back caused him to be taken to the hospital (after missing several episodes of the show), he asked producer Bill Asher if he would not mind if he called it quits. He knew he was not going to survive the addiction, pain and the grind of weekly TV production, so he bowed out, opening the door for Dick Sargent (actually, the 1st choice for the Darrin part).

The point being addiction ultimately ruins a life to the degree that no amount of TV production write-around and accommodating schedules would allow Whitney to continue as a recurring character.


About Gorshin: you know, I love his Riddler as much as anyone, but TOS' Commissioner Bele was a stunning, breakout performance for Gorshin, which should have been his ticket to take on other serious roles. Bele goes from uncompromising racist hunter of Lokai, to switching on his "reasonable" representative of Cheron act, then making astoundingly racist, slurred "ape" comments about humankind's theories regarding their origin. The episode was excellent in having both men state their views in ways some might see as reasonable (within limits), yet Bele's position was merely a mask that peeled off when his hatred for Lokai and his people resurfaced.

In 1969, next to no one ever expected Frank "The Riddler" Gorshin to be capable of delivering such a dark, vile character to the screen, but he knocked it out of the park.

Over the decades of watching "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" I did not think of The Riddler or Batman while watching the TOS episode, and that's the mark of a versatile actor. That said, Gorshin's stronger performance was on Star Trek.

[Kamdan]

About Gorshin: you know, I love his Riddler as much as anyone, but TOS' Commissioner Bele was a stunning, breakout performance for Gorshin, which should have been his ticket to take on other serious roles. Bele goes from uncompromising racist hunter of Lokai, to switching on his "reasonable" representative of Cheron act, then making astoundingly racist, slurred "ape" comments about humankind's theories regarding their origin. The episode was excellent in having both men state their views in ways some might see as reasonable (within limits), yet Bele's position was merely a mask that peeled off when his hatred for Lokai and his people resurfaced.

In 1969, next to no one ever expected Frank "The Riddler" Gorshin to be capable of delivering such a dark, vile character to the screen, but he knocked it out of the park.

Over the decades of watching "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" did I think of The Riddler or Batman while watching the TOS episode, and that's the mark of a versatile actor. That said, Gorshin's stronger performance was on Star Trek.

I also agree with this assessment. I feel that Gorshin’s reputation as an impressionist was both his blessing and a curse. I realize now how much he emulated Kirk Douglas and Richard Widmark in his performances when I started to see the bulk of their work via Turner Classic Movies. There’s a lot of that Douglas intensity that fueled his Emmy nominated performance as The Riddler pumping through his performance as Bele. I do wonder if audiences were more aware of this back when they first saw it. As someone who grew up watching Batman reruns as a part of children’s programming, I can definitely confirm how much of an impact Gorshin’s Riddler had on me with that quiet intensity of his that could erupt into full blown madness. I’ve found myself doing just that in the few acting jobs I’ve done and people always complement me on it and I always cite Gorshin as my model.

It is a shame Gorshin is considered to be underrated and didn’t achieve megastar status like Jerry Lewis or Jim Carrey who had similar career starts, but it’s always a pleasure to see him do his thing in Star Trek. Even Lewis and Carrey had to deal with negative reactions to when they wanted to turn their careers into more serious roles. Gorshin in Star Trek can be easily dismissed as he’s wearing a similar tight costume like The Riddler’s, but his seething performance really sells his performance. I too was bothered by the rather poor attempts at showing the characters chase each other through the Enterprise corridors, but I didn’t let that one flub ruin the entire show upon my various rewatches of the series. It also resulted in one of the funniest bloopers from the series where Bele and Lokai collide with each other:

[epaddon]

Whitney has said she believed her alcoholism was the reason she was fired, as opposed to Roddenberry, et al., claiming Rand was written out to allow Kirk to have more romantic encounters with other women. If Whitney is to be taken at her word, then there was really no way she was going to endure a very ambitious, very demanding weekly TV series while dealing with alcoholism, a disease which only grows in its severity over time. One way or the other, she was going to end up cut from Star Trek.

Grace Lee Whitney took the secret of who the "Executive" that attempted a sexual assault on her was to her grave, but there are a couple hidden clues that indicate she was referring to someone everyone in Trekdom would know (and I won't mention it in an open forum) but let's just say that when she makes a reference to the "Executive" attempting to make amends the next day with a polished rock, that's a giveaway when juxtaposed with what's also noted in Robert Justman's memoir.

Her taking the "Batman" role was something that probably felt demeaning to her because before Trek, she was frequently typecast as a "brassy blonde" in things like her "Outer Limits" episode or the movie "Irma La Douce." In Trek she was getting her chance to show a different side and unfortunately it got yanked away from her after barely a half season. The "Batman" role, fun as it is, was a return to what she'd been typecast as before (later that year she had an uncredited part as a stripper in the pilot film for "Ironside").