Star Trek’s “The Doomsday Machine” premiered October 20, 1967.

This Date In Nerd History: October 20, 1967 – One of the arguably best episodes of the original Star Trek series, “The Doomsday Machine” by Norman Spinrad, airs for the first time.

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Lev Mailer was born October 20, 1933.

Ralph Maurer (also known as his stage name Lev Mailer) is an actor and voice artist, who made two appearances in Star Trek: The Original Series. He first played Bilar in the first season episode “The Return of the Archons” and portrayed an Ekosian SS lieutenant in the second season episode “Patterns of Force”.

Mailer’s career has spanned several occupations, including acting, directing, voice performance, and teaching acting classes. He taught for the American Film Institute and campaigned along with several other actors for greater opportunities for older actors in Hollywood. Mailer was a classmate of Desilu casting director Joseph D’Agosta, who got him his first acting jobs in The Lucy Show and Star Trek.

Among Mailer’s first television appearances are series such as The Lucy Show (1967), Mission: Impossible (1967, alongside Mark Lenard, Jack Donner, and Dick Dial), Daniel Boone (1967, with Michael Forest and Morgan Jones), and It Takes a Thief (1968, with Malachi Throne, Steve Ihnat, and Lawrence Montaigne). He also appeared in the western A Man Called Gannon (1968, with Susan Oliver and John Anderson) and the thriller Jigsaw (1968, with Michael J. Pollard and James Doohan). Also in the late ’60s he has started his career as a voice artist, performing in the short film The Great Escapo (1967).

Mailer continued with appearances in the television series Hogan’s Heroes (1970, with Chuck Hicks), Mannix (1970), Quincy M.E. (1977, with regulars Garry Walberg and John S. Ragin), Mrs. Columbo (1979, starring Kate Mulgrew and with Michael Durrell and Allan Miller), Dallas (1979, with Mary Crosby), and Brooklyn Bridge (1991, alongside Natalia Nogulich and Jeffrey Nordling), beside supporting roles in the television special The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978, with Mickey Morton) and in Clint Eastwood’s science fiction film Firefox (1982).

Beginning in the ’80s, Mailer concentrated more into his voice work and provided background voices and voice-overs for films such as the thriller The Seventh Sign (1988), the drama Avalon (1990, with Ronald Guttman), the crime drama Mobsters (1991, starring Christian Slater, F. Murray Abraham, and Seymour Cassel), the animated An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991, with the voice of Nehemiah Persoff), the science fiction thriller RoboCop 3 (1993), the comedy The Flintstones (1994), the science fiction blockbuster Stargate (1994, with Leon Rippy and Erick Avari), the action sequel Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995), Roland Emmerich’s blockbuster Independence Day (1996, with Brent Spiner), the television drama Lansky (1999), and the comedy Keeping the Faith (2000).

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Michael Dunn was born October 20, 1934.

Michael Dunn was born October 20, 1934 and passed away on August 29, 1973.

Michael Dunn was the Academy Award-nominated, Tony Award-nominated American actor who portrayed Alexander in the original Star Trek series episode “Plato’s Stepchildren”. He was a dwarf, the result of spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia, but he refused to let this disorder hinder his goals and managed to avoid the typecasting commonly associated with actors of short stature. Dunn was originally considered for the role of Balok in “The Corbomite Maneuver”, but that part eventually went to Clint Howard.

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George Wyner was born October 20, 1945.

George Wyner is an American film and television actor. He is probably best known for his role as ADA Bernstein on the series Hill Street Blues. Wyner graduated from Syracuse University in 1968 as a drama major, and was an in-demand character actor by the early 1970s. To date, Wyner has made guest appearances in over 100 television series and co-starred in nine. He is also noted for memorable turns in cult classics such as Spaceballs, American Pie 2 and Fletch.

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Viggo Mortensen was born October 20, 1958.

Viggo Peter Mortensen, Jr. is a Danish–American actor, poet, musician, photographer and painter. He made his film debut in Peter Weir’s 1985 thriller Witness, and subsequently appeared in many notable films of the 1990s, including The Indian Runner (1991), Carlito’s Way (1993), Crimson Tide (1995), Daylight (1996), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), G.I. Jane (1997), A Perfect Murder (1998), A Walk on the Moon (1999) and 28 Days (2000).

Mortensen grew in prominence in the early 2000s with his role as Aragorn in the epic film trilogy The Lord of the Rings. In 2005, Mortensen won critical acclaim for David Cronenberg’s crime thriller A History of Violence. Two years later, another Cronenberg film Eastern Promises (2007) earned him further critical acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role. A third teaming with Cronenberg in A Dangerous Method (2011) resulted in a Golden Globe Best Supporting Actor nomination. Other well-received films in recent years have included Appaloosa (2008) and the 2009 film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road.

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John Anderson was born October 20, 1922.

John Anderson was born October 20, 1922 and passed away on August 7, 1992.

Anderson was born and raised in Quincy, Illinois. Anderson served in the United States Coast Guard during World War II. Anderson held a master’s degree in drama from the University of Iowa.
An accomplished actor, Anderson started out on Broadway, including an appearance in the musical Paint Your Wagon in 1951. He later worked primarily in film and television.
Standing 6 ft 5½ in tall, he bore a strong resemblance to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, whom he portrayed three times. He appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) as “California Charlie”, the used car salesman who helps Marion Crane (Janet Leigh). On television, he appeared in such series as Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, Laramie, Have Gun – Will Travel , The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Virginian, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, The Californians, Johnny Ringo, Trackdown, The Big Valley, Emergency!, and Outlaws.
Anderson appeared in The Rat Patrol (four times, three as the same character). He made three guest appearances on Perry Mason, including in the role of defendant George Andrews in the 1959 episode “The Case of the Calendar Girl” and as murderer Dan O’Malley in the 1963 episode “The Case of the Greek Goddess”. He also appeared in Overland Trail, The Tall Man, and The Legend of Jesse James. He played an eccentric farmer who jealously guarded his prize watermelon with a shotgun in “For the Love of Willadean: A Taste of Melon”, part of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.
Anderson had a recurring role in MacGyver as Harry Jackson, MacGyver’s grandfather. Other credits include: Man Without a Gun, Hawaii Five-O, M*A*S*H, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Once an Eagle, Rich Man, Poor Man Book II, Backstairs at the White House, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Dallas. A recurring Twilight Zone actor, he appeared in four different episodes: “The Old Man in the Cave”, “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville”, “The Odyssey of Flight 33”, and “A Passage for Trumpet”. He was also The Interrogator on an episode of The Outer Limits titled “Nightmare”.
Anderson suffered a fatal heart attack at his home in Sherman Oaks, California. He was survived by two children, seven grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and two sisters. He was cremated and his ashes were taken out to sea as part of his membership in the Neptune Society.

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Bela Lugosi was born October 20, 1882.

Bela Lugosi was born October 20, 1882 and passed away on August 16, 1956.

Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó, better known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian-American actor, famous for portraying Count Dracula in the original 1931 film and for his roles in various other horror films.

He had been playing small parts on the stage in his native Hungary before making his first film in 1917, but had to leave the country after the failed Hungarian Communist Revolution of 1919. He had roles in several films in Weimar Germany before arriving in the United States as a seaman on a merchant ship.

In 1927, he appeared as Count Dracula in a Broadway adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel. He later appeared in the classic 1931 film Dracula by Universal Pictures. Through the 1930s, he occupied an important niche in popular horror films, with their East European setting, but his Hungarian accent limited his repertoire, and he tried unsuccessfully to avoid typecasting.

Meanwhile, he was often paired with Boris Karloff, who was able to demand top billing. To his frustration, Lugosi was increasingly restricted to minor parts, kept employed by the studio principally for the sake of his name on the posters. Among his pairings with Karloff, only in The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939) did he perform major roles again, and, even in The Raven, Karloff received top billing despite Lugosi performing the lead role. By this time, Lugosi had been receiving regular medication for sciatic neuritis, and he became addicted to morphine and methadone. This drug dependence was noted by producers, and the offers eventually dwindled down to a few parts in Ed Wood’s low-budget movies, most notably Plan 9 from Outer Space.

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