Hornet Love

Babcock has fond memories of Kirk and Spock. "Shatner himself had an incredible amount of energy. When we were doing 'Plato,' it was the last or the second to the last show of the entire series. He liked to play jokes on people. Shatner always kept everybody alert through his energy.
"Leonard Nimoy is quite opposite to that. He was closer to the character that he played than Shatner was to Kirk, I think. William is a fun-loving kind of person, and in terms of the character he was playing, James Kirk was a very serious, controlled leader. Nimoy's character was closer to his own personality in terms of what I could observe, and that was only on the set." she states. "How much do we really exhibit of ourselves even when we're on the set" ? Just as an actor watching another actor, there was a quality about Nimoy. He is a highly intelligent, thoughtful, man and that came across.

"Doing Star Trek was an absolute joy because I was a science-fiction addict from the time I was eight years old," Babcock confides. "I used to write SF stories as a child and read all tile science fiction I could get my hands on, so just becoming a part of this show was so exciting. Their research department was really phenomenal: everything that was there was something that was foreseeable from NASA's point-of-view. Even beaming up was something that was seen as a conceivable possibility.

"The wardrobes left something to be desired," she announces, smiling about her exotic outfits. "Like 'Plato's Stepchildren" It wasn't just Greek, it had to be scienc fiction Greek. The hairdos and wardrobes were always a little over the edge. The roles themselves were fun to do!"

Babcock had another fantasy romance when she played Elaine, the girl friend of The Green Hornet. "Good Lord. I don't helieve it! I was his girl friend and it was a recurring role. Thank you for reminding me of my life," she giggles. "I had completely forgotten it! That was the first recurring role I ever had.

"I worked with a pit bull or a bulldog on that show. Bruce Lee, of course got his American start on that show (as the Hornet's sidekick Kato). I liked Bruce very much. I got to see him practice his Kung Fu because he was also the show's fighting instructor. He was a martial arts teacher and was hired in both capacities. I didn't know him too well, but he was highly professional and had enormous charisma. I remember him as someone who gave off an awful lot of power."

Babcock found the Green Hornet himself', Van Williams (STARLOG #135), "perfectly pleasant. 'He was nice and actually had a good sense of humor. It wasn't an acting role as much as it was a personality role for him. I didn't have too many complex scenes with Van. It was a very straightforward 'boy friend/girl friend' sort of thing. Still," she says with a laugh, "you're bringing up a past to me that I had completely forgotten-I had forgotten that I had even done The Green Hornet!"

Doom Survivor

Something Babcock would like to forget is her role in 'Chosen Survivors ( 1974), where she's placed underground with a group of people to simulate a doomsday scenario. Unfortunately. vampire bats enter through an unlocked electrical vent. "If I remember correctly, I was playing a scientist (Dr. Lenore Chrisman). Lenore was my favorite name and I was the token female scientist who was rescued," she smiles.

"I ended up in Chosen Survivors because I had worked with the director, Sutton Roley, prior to that on several TV shows and it was his first feature. He wanted me for the role. so I joined the cast and we shot the entire film down in and around Mexico City.

"The original script was really interesting," she notes. -It was based on fact. There was a plan, which was this movie's plot, to save key people in the event of a nuclear war. They would be kidnapped and not told in advance. They would be taken into underground areas that were supposedly safe from radiation and kept down there.

"In the event of humanity being wiped out, they wanted young, fertile males and females to propagate the planet again. The writers of this movie had done an enormous amount of research, so it was a really interesting script when I first got it," she says with a grin. "What ended up making it a grade-Z~film was the insertion of this threat of vampire bats. Once these 'chosen survivors' had been put into this underground habitat, they brought in bats!"

Did Babcock have any trouble with the flying mammals? "Because of my interest in animals, I knew a bit about bats. Jackie Cooper and I were the only actors who refused to get rabies shots. They were planning to shoot scenes with no screens or barricades between us and the bats! That would make it much easier for them to shoot.

"Because we refused the shots, they had to put up `invisible screens.' At one point, I had a close-up where I was supposed to be observing the bats. A bat got through the barricade, and started climbing up my leg! My close-up started at the shoulders and went up to my face. The director obviously what was going, on and kept shooting I could feel it because bats have a very strange way of walking she explains.

" When bats fly they're beautiful, but when they're crawling, they're awkward and very tentative. They dig their hands into you as they climb. I felt it working its way up my body. When it reached my shoulder, I yelled cut, not the director. I was afraid if it got to my head, it would get tangled in my hair, panic, and bite me. Since I didn't have the rabies shots, I didn't want to get bitten. That was my only real contact with a bat!"

The bats prompted various other problems. " Unfortunately they had to trap bats for the film," Babock reveals. " Every dusk, they put nets across caves because there were a lot of bats around Mexico City. They would use them on the set the next day but only for 24 hours, otherwise they would die. Many of them did die. Cooper and I spoke to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences about universalizing the methods of treating animals.

"In our country. we have rules on how animals are treated. When you did a film in Europe or Mexico,there were no rules. so they could kill animals it they wanted to. We were responsible, Jackie Cooper and I, for making a change because we testified. Now there's a law stating that any American motion picture company going abroad must follow the (American) rules and regulations so that animals are to be treated humanely and not killed.