1972 "Nostalgia Special" article

(Click on images to enlarge!)

Clipped from the December 1972 issue of Movie Life, the above article's category of "Nostalgia Special" is somewhat funny to read today, over 40 years after the series premiered. They were waxing nostalgic about a show that had only been off the air for three years! But Trek was only really just starting to emerge in the public consciousness as the cultural phenomenon it was destined to become.

Each month, for about 7 issues or so in '72 and '73, the "Movie Life" magazine would publish another in the series of photos of characters from the show, which made it a priority for me to get. Fortunately, a used bookstore in downtown Macon, GA where I lived at the time made it possible for me to get most of them if I missed them on the stands. It was these monthly black and white photos that really made me begin my first scrapbook and caused it to grow. Each item added was done so with excitement and pride.

Bonus photo: Another black and white publicity shot, from a glossy in my collection. Uhura seems as if hearing Kirk speak is giving her a good feeling, doesn't she? Or maybe she just bumped into Spock behind her and realised he was enjoying looking at her! :)

"Look, Captain... I can write what you're saying with my eyes closed!"

Bonus: Below, the scanned cover of the first Trek calendar, published in the fall of 1975. This was really a big deal to me, so much so that when I learned it was coming out, I made a special trek by bus across town (Ft. Lauderdale) to a large mall where Walden Books had it in stock. I was one happy camper when I came out of that bookstore with the calendar in it's cardboard holder, which I still have it stored in today. All the way home on the bus ride, I gazed at each of the twelve months, and soaked in the montage image created for the middle poster, which I plan on scanning in and posting on a later entry. It is hard to scan large items such as these, and I have to do it in sections then use Photoshop to put them back together in one image.

That is one awesome publicity photo used on the cover there. They've never made a calendar to match that first one. The black and white pictures inside each unused date's oval for the month added to the visual interest and they've never done it like that since.

The one regret I have about it is that I used it as a journal for the episodes I was able to tape from the weekday afternoon showings on TV. In the little oval shapes for each day, I wrote IN PEN (what was I thinking?) the episode title I watched and recorded on cassette. But, what it lacks in collectable resale value, thanks to my writing in it, it makes up for in memories that it invokes as I open it up and look at it occasionally. Most of the time I saw an episode then, it was for my first time, so I have a record of when I initially viewed many of them.