He was 20 years into an acting career when Star Trek was on and nearly 50 years old when it ended. Hell, he was Morgan Earp in the 1957 “Gunfight at the OK Corral.” Not a star, but a working actor.
If you’re regularly somewhere in the credits of TV shows and films, you’ve got steady work and don’t have to worry too much about fans turning away because you lost your matinee-idol looks. Steady work in Hollywood can beat being a fleeting star.
Here he is in the pre-Trek, 1965, Marriage on the Rocks, getting in Sinatra’s face with a “Dammit, Sinat’, I’m gonna be a doctor on a spaceship” proclamation.
Not exactly homeless
He was earning between 2 and 3 grand per Star Trek episode when the average U.S. salary was about 7 grand annually. There were almost 80 episodes.
If you don’t have a gambling or drug habit, or a bad stock broker, you’d have to be fairly incompetent to reach 50 years of age with that earnings history and not be able to sustain yourself with bit roles until that first Social Security check arrives.
So while none of that is going to let you live a Johnny Depp lifestyle, you’re doing better than most Americans. It’s all relative.
Easy money
With the reborn love affair for Star Trek a few years after the show went off the air, he lived the phrase, “Half of life is showing up.”
All he had to do was appear at various Trek-themed conventions to keep paying his gardener.
Likely, he received some small amount of residual money from Star Trek and some other work from his past.
No matter how small the checks, when you get them for just strolling to the mailbox in you slippers, it’s a good day.
Even if you take away the very lucrative paydays from the Star Trek films, he was doing OK.