Saturday, February 1, 2014

Happy Birthday, Bill Mumy

Actor Bill Mumy turns sixty today. Perhaps you know him better as Lost in Space's Will Robinson, Lennier of Babylon 5 or that scary-ass kid who wished people into the cornfield in The Twilight Zone.

I, of course, knew him as my best friend when I was a kid—not that we've ever met, of course, but you can't spend as much time as I did following the exploits of Will Robinson and the Robot without thinking of him as your bestest pal. I imagine a lot of kids thought of him as a pal.


Mumy still acts, and he gets credit for nailing the science fiction trifecta: Lost in Space, The Twilight Zone and, with a guest appearance on Deep Space Nine, the Star Trek franchise. Hey, and if you ever get a chance, look up the sequel to that Twilight Zone episode I mentioned—Mumy, now a grown man, has spawned a daughter (played by Mumy's real-life daughter, Liliana) three times as scary as he ever was.

Check out his website here—he's a very busy man.


In addition to acting, he's also a musician and singer-songwriter, and here's something I'll bet you didn't know: remember the novelty hit "Fish Heads" back in 1979? He and Robert Haimer wrote, performed and released that as the duo Barnes & Barnes. Rolling Stone magazine once chose it #57 on the list of the greatest videos of all time. Eat 'em up, yum! (The song kicks in around the 2:18 mark:)



Mr. Mumy, for all the good times (and no bad ones that I can recall), we here at the Monkey wish you the happiest of happy birthdays.

2 comments:

Maggie said...

As with Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed, I cannot watch Bill Mumy in the, Twilight Zone. They both scare the bejesus out of me. Glad he did so well.

Who Am Us Anyway? said...

The most satisfying of many satisfying parts in the Fish Head song video was the way, when you're following the bouncing fish head over the lyrics, the head is always always off, but never by the same beat, sometimes it's off by 1 beat sometimes 1.5 beats. If only the fish head song guy had used his evil genius for niceness we'd be in a saccharine sweet world.