Here’s a trivia question for everyone: What’s the connection between Star Trek: The Original Series and the movies The Goonies, Throw Momma from the Train, and Scrooged? The answer is… Logan Ramsey, the late, great character actor whose career spanned from 1948 to 1999 and who would have turned 104 on March 21, 2025.
Star Trek fans will recall that Ramsey low-key chewed the scenery as Proconsul Claudius Marcus in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Bread and Circuses.” He’s the character who gave his slave, Drusilla (Lois Jewell), to Captain Kirk (William Shatner), so that Kirk could enjoy “some last hours as a man” before his execution. Sadly, Ramsey died of a heart attack at the age of 79 in 2000.
In addition to Star Trek, he counted among his many theater, movie, and television credits The Devil’s Disciple and The Great Indoors, both on stage; the films Head, Walking Tall, Any Which Way You Can, The Beast Within (a horror film that also starred Star Trek veterans Ronny Cox and Bibi Besch), Scrooged, and Fat Man and Little Boy.
Ramsey was married to the actress Anne Ramsey from 1952 until her death at age 59 in 1988. Much like her husband, Anne was a veteran character actor. Anne was most famous for her roles as Mama Fratelli in The Goonies and Mrs. Lift in Throw Momma from the Train, (which co-starred future Star Trek: Voyager lead Kate Mulgrew), earning an Oscar nomination for the latter. Her other credits included The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, Any Which Way You Can (with her husband), Deadly Friend, and Scrooged, which was released a few months after she died. She and Logan appeared together as an elderly, homeless couple in their Scrooged scenes.
Oddly enough, Anne’s other final projects, which were also released posthumously, in 1999, featured an array of familiar Star Trek talents. Meet the Hollowheads, a sci-fi film, was co-written by Lisa Morton, who worked as a model maker on Star Trek: The Motion Picture and one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Co-stars included Logan Ramsey, as well as John Glover, who played Verad Dax in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Invasive Procedures,” and Matt Shakman, a child actor turned director. Shakman was announced in 2021 as the director of the next Star Trek feature film, but later exited the project. Also in the movie was Lee Arenberg, who guest starred on The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise, and Barney Burman, an actor and makeup artist who worked (as a makeup artist) on Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and Star Trek (2009), for which he shared an Oscar.
Then there’s Another Chance, a thriller that starred Bruce Greenwood, who played Christopher Pike in both Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness., Lastly, the comedy Homer and Eddie starred Star Trek’s Guinan, Whoopi Goldberg, and also featured Tracey Walter, who played two different Ferengi on The Next Generation, and Vincent Schiavelli, who guest starred as The Peddler in the Next Generation episode “The Arsenal of Freedom.”
If that’s not enough Six Degrees of Separation for you, check out Logan Ramsey’s IMDB credits. He intersected with a whole other galaxy of Star Trek figures, from Jeri Taylor, John Larroquette, Dwight Schultz, James Sloyan, Brock Peters, Paul Winfield, and Cliff Bole, to Leo Penn, Louise Sorel, Roger C. Carmel, Leonard Nimoy, Lee Meriwether, Marc Daniels, and Marsha Hunt, among many others.