William Shatner with Walt and John Grogan I was going to tell him how much I loved his starring turn on the short-lived 1975 TV series The Barbary Coast, his first series following Star Trek. Rather, Mike was going to say how great Bill was in the 1958 movie, The Brothers Karamazov. Shatner being somewhat of a curmudgeon but to cut the ice, my friend and I decided that we would not say how much we loved him as Captain Kirk in Star Trek because we knew that’s what everybody was going to tell him. So my friend, Mike Elsey, and my younger brother, John, decided to attend the show just to meet Bill Shatner!Īt that time, I had already heard stories about Mr. So after seeing the cars, you could wait in line to meet the featured star and get an autograph or photo, if you brought your own Instamatic camera, at no extra charge (unlike today’s autograph shows). To sweeten the draw, the promoters would bring in celebrities. It’s a custom car show held annually at McCormick Place Convention Center along Chicago’s lakefront.īack then, after paying the price of admission, you could walk around and take in the custom cars, sometimes including the 1966 Batmobile and K.I.T.T. One of his stops was Chicago’s World of Wheels in the early 1980s. After Star Trek ended and between guest-star gigs on other TV series, Bill would appear at car shows (the precursor to the autograph conventions of today).

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