Bill Boyd, now an executive with large West Coast brokerage Kidder Mathews, didn't always work in real estate. As a forward standing 6 feet, 7 inches tall for the University of Southern California basketball team, he turned out to be perfect casting for the role of a lizard-like "sleestak" in “Land of the Lost,” a staple of mid-1970s Saturday morning television.

Sid and Marty Krofft, producers of the live-action NBC show about a scientist and his two children who get plunged through a time warp into a pre-historic era filled with dinosaurs and other threats, wanted the hissing, upright creatures called sleestaks to look not only menacing but much taller than the starring cast.

Several of Boyd’s USC basketball teammates, along with others at rival UCLA, would also join the ranks of sleestaks, including future NBA stars Bill Laimbeer and David Greenwood. For Boyd, it was one of several nonspeaking TV gigs of that era capitalizing more on his height than his thespian skills.

“This was my part — roles that called for ‘tall with no talent’ that only a few of us could play,” said Boyd, an executive vice president at the real estate firm in Pasadena, California. His stint in show biz preceded what has been a 40-year career in commercial real estate.

Boyd’s current role is an established broker for office landlords and tenants, especially those such as law firms, credit unions and other financial services companies navigating an area including the growing northeastern suburban cities of Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena.

He's been recognized several times over the years for high volumes of leasing deals, and Boyd estimates he’s managed transactions totaling more than 6.5 million square feet. Now 69, he finds himself increasingly called upon by clients for guidance on relocations, expansions and space reductions during a pandemic that has significantly shaken up office demand fundamentals across the country.

But all these years later, he says people are still interested in hearing about his brief, early career in front of the camera. Boyd recalled that the sleestak job entailed dressing up on taping days in a tight rubberized suit with scale-like projections attached.

A matching rubber head mask completed an ensemble that got so hot under the bright soundstage lights of Hollywood’s Samuel Goldwyn Studios that actors would have to take them off for an occasional breather. He said that created an odd-looking result when "we would be walking along Santa Monica Boulevard to go get lunch, and "people would be gawking like crazy at these half-human, half-sleestak creatures coming toward them.”

Boyd appeared in nonspeaking parts in multiple sleestak-focused episodes of “Land of the Lost,” most of them airing during the show’s third and final season in 1976. That work led to similar gigs in side roles, including as a background extra in a restaurant sketch for an episode of “The Captain and Tennille,” a TV variety show starring the musical duo that aired on ABC during the 1976-77 season.

Sometimes, he came out of the background. At about the three-minute mark in a YouTube clip from a Dick Clark-produced ABC TV music special circa 1978, viewers can see Boyd playing a soda fountain worker at an old-style drive-in restaurant where 1950s pop icon Annette Funicello, playing a waitress, locks arms with him for a line dance as she sings “My Boyfriend’s Back.”

After graduating from USC where he studied public relations and journalism, Boyd left the Hollywood glitter for a more 9-to-5 role with less downtime that would also pay more than minimum union-scale day wages. He took a full-time job in 1978 handling investor and public relations at Beverly Hills-based defense contracting firm Litton Industries, which today is part of Northrop Grumman.

After discussions with friends and associates who had already ventured into Los Angeles’ fast-growing suburban commercial real estate world, Boyd himself made the switch in 1981. Putting together skills garnered as a performer and media relations specialist, he found a satisfying niche as he settled into the real estate business, first in the Los Angeles and then Glendale office of CBRE.

Much of his brokerage work kept him in the Pasadena area, where he was raised, and his knowledge of the region has often given him a leg up with national clients through his later work with brokerages Grubb & Ellis and Charles Dunn, before he joined Kidder Mathews in 2018. While he still attends occasional "Land of the Lost" fan conventions, he said he "ultimately chose a career like commercial real estate because it’s the kind of work where if you really want to put in the extra time and effort and initiative, the rewards will also be greater in proportion."