Autobiography Pt. 15

SPACE 1999

       I was at Continuity the Summer-Friday Gray Morrow showed up. As I recall it was about 4:30 in the afternoon. He’d nailed the SPACE 1999, EMERGENCY, and MILLION DOLLAR MAN account at Charlton to produce them both as black and white magazines, and needed help. The studio was abuzz with the prospect of lots of new work, and the young bucks were about to get a very good break by working on the books for him.

       “Look! I’m in print!”

       Gray was in a bind, however, as Charlton was only able to come up with, get this, THREE stills from the unaired SPACE 1999 series. Talk about spinning gold from straw!

       Everyone faded to the rear offices, except for Neal, who asked me to make multiple Xerox copies of the photos for the studio. As I was doing so, I noticed on the backs that the distributor, I.T.C. was located two blocks away. Taking the initiative, I called the promotional director from the phone number on the back, and told him I was coming over. Once there I explained our situation and he chuckled, walked to a storage closet and produced a large box.

       It contained sixty or seventy stills, all of the promo materials, bios, plot lines for all of the first season shows, a 16mm promo reel, and....proof sheets from every episode. Perhaps 1,000 images from the show. He also gave me a wonderful over-sized promo book, which was laminated!

       Wow! Laminated! Important!

       I returned to the studio with the goodies and when Morrow and Adams saw the loot they almost peed their pants.

       Turns out, while I was gone, Morrow had divided all of the work between the young bucks, and I wasn’t going to be working on these projects.

       Some reward.

       “No good deed goes unpunished.”

       As a reward for my effort, I decided to keep the laminated promo book.

       A couple of weeks later I was at a NYC con with the book. I'd planned to swap it to Doug Murray for...well, whatever. As I was weaving through the crowd at the con, three fan boys appeared and hollered "Stop! Thief!" They were looking at me. "Gimmie that!" one demanded. "You stole that! How could you do that to a CRIPPLE?!"

       OK, this was all pretty weird. "I got this from I.T.C." I countered, and one of them boomed "NOBODY has those. You stole it!"

       At that moment, some woman in a wheelchair rolled up with a copy of the promo book in her lap. Seems she had wrangled an assignment to be the fandom contact for the show, and was there promoting it.

       I don't recall if I got much of an apology. Probably not.

       Thinking back, no, certainly.