As all Star Trek fans know, Captain Kirk was quite a stud in the intergalactic romance department, and if there’s any alien woman we all remember, whether you’re a Trekkie or not, it’s the woman with the green skin.
And even though she was green, she was still very beautiful, and looking back at photos of her online, time hasn’t diminished her beauty at all.
So who was the green woman from Star Trek? If you’re a Trekkie we’re sure you know the answer, but if you’re a casual Trek fan, she was Susan Oliver, and she’s now the subject of a documentary, The Green Girl. Like a lot of documentaries these days, the director, George Pappy, is going to Kickstarter for help.
As the Facebook page for the movie tells us, Susan Oliver was a prolific actress who worked regularly from the ‘50s to the ‘80s, and she was an original member of the AFI Directing Workshop For Women. Among her noted movie credits are Butterfield 8, and the Jerry Lewis comedy The Disorderly Orderly. Along with playing the green woman on Trek, Oliver also appeared in the pilot episode as Vina. (As Wikipedia reminds us, footage from this episode was later used in the two-parter The Menagerie).
In addition to her famous Star Trek appearance, Oliver starred in many of the popular shows of her time including Father Knows Best, Bonanza, Rawhide, The Twilight Zone and more. Ultimately Oliver appeared in over 120 acting roles, and she also directed television in the eighties.
In addition to her acting and directing accomplishments, Oliver was also an aviator who broke a number of records. According to the Green Lady Kickstarter pages, Oliver flew across the Atlantic Ocean in a single engine plane in 1967, and she was also one of the first women to pilot a Lear Jet. (Oliver died tragically of cancer at the age of 58 at the Motion Picture home in Woodland Hills, CA, where many in Hollywood wind up in their old age).
As this story was being finalized, it looked like Pappy reached his goal of raising $80,000 for the movie, and this could indeed be a really interesting story, especially considering it’s from a minor player in the phenomenon of Star Trek.
Often times, the soldiers in an army can tell more interesting stories than the generals, like we saw in GoodFellas. It’s also nice to see that Susan Oliver is not going forgotten, and we hope we’ll be able to see her story fully retold in The Green Girl soon. Director Pappy hopes to have the film completed by June, with a final cut by October, and film festival submissions in late August.
