Brent Spiner was an impostor on To Tell The Truth

[Matt Ottinger]

The actor best known as Data on Star Trek says so in the preface to an otherwise fictional mystery story he published last year:

"The only acting job I had in that first year was as an impostor on the game show To Tell the Truth. I pretended to be a cabdriver from Denver who played trumpet requests for his customers. No one on the panel of celebrities voted for me; hence I made no money. But I did meet Nipsey Russell, so it wasn’t a total loss."

This would have been 1972 or 1973.  I imagine it hasn't repeated or else somebody in one of our two large fandoms would have become aware of it by now.  But man, I'd love to find it!

[thomas_meighan]

The description sounds approximately like Jack Kaufman on episode #1213, though he played cornet rather than trumpet. And Nipsey was a panelist that week.
https://www.ttttontheweb.com/tttt69s4guide.html

If this is the correct episode, GSN is known to have aired it at least once, but perhaps only in WinTV format. The logs at matchgame.org show a VTR date of 3-21-1972 (they were given on WinTV showings) and a GSN airing on 11-5-1999.
https://web.archive.org/web/20030416015836/http://www.matchgame.org/episodeguides/tttt/tttt3.html

(Explanation for the season discrepancy: matchgame.org assigned 13 weeks too many to 1970-71 and later seasons are thus divided incorrectly. Nonetheless, its “sequential” episode numbers seem to be correct. The official episode numbers used the week + day system, as catalogued at Marshall Akers’ indispensable www.ttttontheweb.com.)

[parliboy]

No one on the panel of celebrities voted for me; hence I made no money.

Is that really how the show works, or is this a case of false memories on his part?

[SuperMatch93]

Is that really how the show works, or is this a case of false memories on his part?

False memories. The players split the money evenly based on the total of incorrect votes.

[snowpeck]

Somebody transcribed the segment on a Brent Spiner newsgroup back in 1998.

[Matt Ottinger]

The description sounds approximately like Jack Kaufman on episode #1213, though he played cornet rather than trumpet. And Nipsey was a panelist that week.
https://www.ttttontheweb.com/tttt69s4guide.html

Oh, that's absolutely gotta be it.  I was searching Marshall's site, but for some reason that eluded me.

Now to find it!

[jjman920]

Is that really how the show works, or is this a case of false memories on his part?

False memories. The players split the money evenly based on the total of incorrect votes.

I was going to say partially bad memories. Because the point of being an impostor *is* to get the panel to vote for you because you'd get more money for those incorrect votes. So, it's possible that what he didn't mention was that no one voted for him *or* his fellow impostor. There were no incorrect votes to award money for. However, actually reading the transcript, it looks like his memory is just faulty on that part as his fellow impostor got three votes.

[BillCullen1]

At that time, payment was $50 for each wrong vote, $500 if all the panelists voted wrong. This was split three ways. So three wrong votes would have gotten Brent a whopping $50 bucks. On the current version, they get no money at all.

[Matt Ottinger]

Marshall Akers for the win!

I think The Bill Cullen Archive is about to be invaded by a whole new fandom.

[ChrisLambert!]

Indeed, Night Court stans are legion ;-)