re: Star Trek: TOS Watchers - Season 1 Wrapup *Page 25*

Bump for Wednesday

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*THE SQUIRE OF GOTHOS*

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Supposedly William Campbell got the role of Trelane b/c he was a poker game buddy of ST producer Gene Coon.

I always thought Campbell was a very theatrical actor. That works for a flamboyant character like Trelane but with more more down to earth types like gangsters and cowboys -- the sort of roles he generally played on TV -- it didn't work so well. In the movie Cell 2455 Death Row (1955) Campbell plays the infamous convict Caryl Chessman and does kind of a Cagney/Bogart number, coming off as rather silly in what is otherwise a well-made if low-budget real-crime noir. Campbell is actually pretty forgettable in his other ST role, "The Trouble with Tribbles".

Oddest ST trivia ever?: Campbell's first wife was Judith Campbell Exner, who claimed to be the mistress of U.S. president John F. Kennedy and Mafia leaders Sam Giancana and John Roselli.

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In a 1988 interview with Kitty Kelley of People magazine, Exner told a very different story about Giancana and Kennedy. She said that she had lied to the Church Committee and in her memoir out of fear of Mafia retaliation. She said Kennedy had asked her to contact Giancana, and she helped set up a meeting between them during the 1960 presidential election. For about 18 months in 1960–1961, "Exner claimed she served as the president's link with the Mob. She crisscrossed the nation carrying envelopes between the president and Giancana, and arranged about 10 meetings between the two." She later claimed these messages concerned plans to assassinate the Cuban president Fidel Castro.

In 1997, Exner added more details and changed her story, in separate interviews with Liz Smith of Vanity Fair and Seymour Hersh. She said Kennedy told her of his plans related to Cuba, and used her to carry money to Giancana, as well as to arrange numerous meetings between him, Giancana and Roselli. She also claimed to Smith to have terminated a pregnancy resulting from a last encounter in 1962 with Kennedy. She also said that she had carried payoffs from California defense contractors to the Kennedys, including Robert F. Kennedy. A witness of Hersh's who appeared to support Exner's story of carrying money to Giancana later dropped his story.

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