To the Stars

by George Takei

  And gallingly, he always managed to keep up that smiling, charming facade; as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, he joked and giggled and bantered. Always that sunny, oblivious smile, that smile as bright, as hard, and as relentless as the headlights of an oncoming car. You just had to get out of its way.

  * * *

  Hollywood is located in a region of geologic instability. The earth moves periodically. The big seismic shake-up is followed by a series of smaller quakes called aftershocks that keep things unstable, and people on edge.

  Hollywood is also a place of great corporate instability that keeps people on edge. During our second season, Desilu Studios went through another one of these periodic corporate shake-ups. The studio that was started up as RKO Radio Pictures, then bought and sold by Howard Hughes, and then bought and built up by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz as Desilu, was again bought—this time by a giant conglomerate called Gulf and Western, led by financier Charles Bluhdorn.

  The studio next door on Melrose Avenue, Paramount Pictures, was also acquired by Gulf and Western at the same time; there was only a high wall separating the two film factories. An aftershock of this corporate commotion brought that wall tumbling down in a huge cloud of dust, and when the air finally cleared, it left one gigantic studio lot. This combined facility was rechristened Paramount Studios. The name Desilu was now a part of the dust of Hollywood history.

  The big boon for us on the old Desilu side was that, with the wall down, we now had access to the legendary Paramount commissary for lunch. With our blue terry-cloth robes covering our Starfleet uniforms, Nichelle, Jimmy, Walter, and I would march over to enjoy our newly acquired perk. The high-ceilinged art deco room was redolent with the glamorous history of the studio. And the food was much better than at the old Desilu greasy spoon. We could just imagine Gloria Swanson dining in a room of such suave elegance.

  In fact, we didn’t have to imagine one personification of Hollywood history who dined there regularly, the ninety-one-year-old founder of Paramount Pictures, Adolph Zukor. Thin, bald, and frail, he still turned heads, and his name was still spoken in whispers when he entered the room. The founder of old Hollywood was still watching over his factory and his flock. But a year after we got access to the Paramount commissary, another corporate aftershock brought this elegant building tumbling down. The commissary, too, was now only a memory.

  One afternoon following lunch at that commissary, Nichelle and I were walking back to the set. Even with our plain blue terry robes on, people could tell that we were doing an unusual episode. I was wearing a savage fencing scar over my right eyebrow, and she was made up with intense severity that gave her soft beauty a barbaric look. We were filming the parallel universe sequences from “Mirror, Mirror.” But our appearances were deceptive. Our conversation was schmaltzy with nostalgia.

  We were discovering that our own lives had faint parallels. She was telling me about her early days as a singer with Duke Ellington, and I shared with her the fact that the father of my opponent for student body president in junior high school was a musician in Duke Ellington’s band. She told me she had understudied Diahann Carroll in the musical No Strings, and I told her that Josie and I had bought standing room tickets to see that musical in New York—but alas, not with her performing. We tantalized ourselves with the poetic “ifs” of life. It was while we were walking back from that lunch break that something flashed on me.

  I had been putting together a Japanese-community benefit dinner at the Biltmore Hotel and was searching for a headline performer for the event. Here was Nichelle, a friend and a colleague, who had been a singer with Duke Ellington, whom I had almost seen in a Broadway musical! What a great coincidence! I asked and she graciously agreed. During this dinner at the Biltmore I was to discover an even more personal connection to Nichelle.

  Daddy and Mama were to be at my table, as would Nichelle and her husband and accompanist, Duke Munday. I was the master of ceremonies of the dinner and knew I would be getting up and down a lot, with little time to be with them to ease the flow of conversation. I worried that there might be awkward stretches of silence and uncomfortableness.

  My mother has all the outward behavior of a proper Japanese lady. She bows on meeting people and punctuates conversations with small, refined nods. Polite Japanese discussion is one of subtlety and indirection. Everything lies in the nuance.

  Nichelle is a grandly glamorous lady of overflowing affection for the people around her. She enchants with her openhearted love and unconcealed emotions. She can be luxuriantly demonstrative, at times, exaggeratedly so. To me, the combination of Nichelle and my mother was perturbing. I loved them both, but the thought of leaving them together filled me with anxiety.

  On the night of the dinner, I was in the foyer of the Biltmore with my parents, greeting the arriving guests. Suddenly there was a flurry of excitement and a ripple of whispers. “That’s her.” “She’s here.” “That’s Uhura from STAR TREK.”

  I looked toward the commotion just as the crowd parted to reveal Nichelle and her husband approaching us. She was resplendent in a midnight blue velvet gown glittery with sequins and partially covered by a full-length mink coat draped off her shoulders—the very picture of a glamorous movie star.

  “Nichelle. Thanks for coming,” I greeted her. “Nichelle and Duke, I’d like you to meet my parents.” My father shook hands with Duke, and Mama bowed. Quite unexpectedly, Nichelle bowed also.

  “I’m so pleased to meet you, Mrs. Takei,” Nichelle murmured delicately. Then Mama offered her hand! When Nichelle took it, Mama clasped with both hands and bowed again still clutching Nichelle’s hand. Then she looked up and said to Nichelle, “You so pretty! Your face so pretty.” Mama let go and discreetly covered her giggling mouth.

  “Oh, Mrs. Takei, you’re so sweet.” Nichelle blushed modestly. She reached over and gently kissed my mother’s cheek. Then, as I watched with astounded eyes, my mother reached over and hugged Nichelle in a cheek-to-cheek embrace! Mama and Nichelle! I couldn’t believe it. How little we know the people we love. How little we trust those we think we know. Mama took Nichelle by the hand and led everyone over to our table.

  During the course of the dinner, Mama inspected the construction of Nichelle’s gown and Nichelle explained the complexity of getting into it. Mama and Nichelle carried on like soul sisters. When Nichelle took the stage and dazzled everyone with her artistry, Mama led the applause of a wildly ecstatic audience. By the end of the evening, they were on first-name basis. “Ni-shalu,” Mama called her. And Nichelle was calling her “Mama.”

  * * *

  It was subtle. Quietly, almost unconsciously, Daddy’s sense of financial prudence had seeped into me. I was in the midst of a steady, regular career “feast,” but my thoughts were on the potential “famine” that might follow. I had lived through my struggle in New York and knew what that could be like. Now, while STAR TREK was providing a stable cash flow, was the time to prepare for that contingency again.

  My apartment building near the hospital had appreciated in value, at least on paper. Now might be a good time to turn it around again for a bigger property. I began a search for the next investment. I found it near the fabled Brown Derby Restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard. It was a twenty-unit luxury apartment building. What had started out as an investment in a few cemetery plots, with a boost from STAR TREK was turning into a sturdy shelter against any famine that might blow across my career.

  * * *

  Life is impermanence, philosophers have said. But Hollywood is impermanence at twenty-four frames per second. And the set of STAR TREK was Hollywood at warp speed. We felt highly impermanent. The insecurity was rampant.

  My contract guaranteed seven shows out of thirteen, barely more than half. In the last season, out of twenty-six episodes filmed, I did eighteen—better than the guarantee, but still I had missed eight shows. It really wasn’t a consolation that I did two more than Jimmy. Nichelle had five more episodes than I did. And th
is season, we had Walter in the mix to make the situation worse. I had already lost five shows to him because of my absence filming The Green Berets on location in Georgia. But we all had an even greater, collective insecurity.

  The nervousness we felt was not because of the corporate reverberations from the New York offices of Gulf and Western. Ours came from the Rockefeller Center headquarters of NBC. The ratings for STAR TREK were not what the programming executives considered acceptable. Our future was in jeopardy. On the set, rumors began to fly that we were about to be canceled. My prediction of two seasons seemed to be coming true.

  But Gene Roddenberry, I discovered, was not just an artist and a visionary. He was a fighter. A former Los Angeles police officer, he could become as fierce as an enraged lion protecting his cubs, as cunning and full of guile as a fox scheming to outwit a pack of baying hounds. He had to convince the powers-that-be that the so-called ratings were not truly representative of the viewership. He decided to discreetly launch a plan to save STAR TREK with a letter campaign. Critical to this scheme was an Oakland, California, couple who had become ardent fans of the show, John and Bjo Trimble. Gene had befriended them and extended periodic invitations for them to visit the set.

  I first met Bjo and John during the hurly-burly between setups on one of their periodic visits. She was vivacious, enthusiastic, and full of curiosity. He was quiet and composed with a scholarly air. They reminded me of the truism, opposites attract. I didn’t realize then what a dynamic combination this set of opposites was.

  Gene confided to them the threat that STAR TREK faced. But to avoid the obvious conflict of interest, he couldn’t be seen as the spearhead of the effort to generate the letter-writing support. Just the suggestion of the urgency was all Bjo needed to get going. She was galvanized. The Trimbles moved down to Los Angeles and bought a home not too far from the studio. With the surreptitious support that Gene was able to provide, she gathered mailing lists, contacted science fiction organizations, organized a telephone network to spread the word, and literally became the national campaign manager of the “Save STAR TREK” crusade. If her passion had been politics, I’m sure she could have gotten a United States President elected.

  The result was astounding. It was immediate, and it was massive. The mail rooms of NBC on both coasts were inundated. The letters were passionate; they were literate; and some were angry. But all recognized STAR TREK as an extraordinary oasis of engaging, intelligent science fiction on television. The fans of STAR TREK, we discovered, were not people who merely sat back and absorbed entertainment. They were activists who took what they got from their television sets as stimuli for action. And when they were alerted to the threat, they acted. We received letters of support from an amazing diversity of people, ranging from engineers, architects, university professors and students, all the way to housewives. The response was enormous—and the letters continued to pour in.

  Among them was a letter from my father. Daddy was honest about his personal interest in seeing the show renewed. But he also talked of his pride in seeing his son on the screen as a part of a larger picture. At a time when people were identifying themselves with smaller social units, with ethnicity, with class, with gender, when society seemed to be breaking down into a new tribalism, he wrote that he took more than parental pride in seeing the greater human family so glowingly depicted. With STAR TREK, he observed, television was making a vital cultural contribution. He urged NBC to keep this positive picture continuing on the air.

  Many, many such letters came in to NBC. The numbers alone, not considering the content, were persuasive. NBC capitulated. The executives decided to renew STAR TREK for a third season. But the letters continued to stream in; the fans were relentless. Finally, NBC was forced to announce the renewal of STAR TREK over the end-title crawl of the show in order to put a halt to the flood of letters.

  STAR TREK was boldly going on to another season, a third season. Thankfully, my prediction was proved wrong. And the time slot was great! Monday nights at 7:30. An ideal time for college students, our primary base of viewership. Everything augured well for the future of our show. And I was determined to make this a good season for Sulu, as well.

  17

  Mission: Impossible

  IT WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE like this. Star trek was supposed to be slotted for Monday night at 7:30, not Friday night at 10:00 P.M. That was the morgue hour! All the college kids would be out being college kids that late on Friday nights. Hardly anyone would be watching television.

  Gene Roddenberry dickered with the NBC executives to regain the promised slot. He was the executive producer, but had offered to return to the line producer position he had held during the first season if the Monday night slot would be reinstated. With Gene in that position, we could recapture the first-season magic.

  They refused. This betrayal by NBC was the last straw for Gene. To have the ideal time slot snatched away and replaced with the worst possible one was a double cross that he could not take without a dramatic display of outrage. He announced that he was keeping the title of executive producer but that he was leaving STAR TREK. He was going off to another office at M-G-M Studio to work on a feature film project starring Rock Hudson. He would be available to us only sporadically, he stated. And Dorothy Fontana, our story editor, was also leaving.

  Their departure was a serious loss for our show, but for me, it was dismaying. Gene and Dorothy were the ones who knew of and understood my ideas and aspirations for Sulu. This was the season I had hoped would see Sulu come into some prominence. Again, all the work I had done to develop the character and enhance my role was washed away. I would have to start all over again with our new line producer, Fred Freiberger.

  What reenergized me, however, was the professionalism of my colleagues. Despite our setback, despite the poor time slot, and despite the low rating numbers that started to come in confirming our worst fears, the cast members threw themselves into each script with the same dedication as before. The scripts may not have been what they were the previous two seasons, but the integrity of the performances remained unchanged, episode after stressful episode. If anything, we worked harder under this more arduous condition. I felt proud to be a part of this cast.

  Though we worked hard, we also managed to squeeze some pleasure into the crowded shooting schedule. One night, after a particularly long day, Jimmy and I were walking back to our cars.

  “What’re you doing for dinner?” he asked.

  “I didn’t have anything particular in mind,” I responded, too exhausted to feel really hungry. “Do you feel like sushi? It’s light.”

  “What? What’s light? What’s this . . . su—su . . . ? What’d you say?”

  “Sushi. It’s a light Japanese delicacy that you eat at a bar. Or if you want, you can make a more substantial meal of it.”

  “Okay, let’s try this . . . su—su. What’d you call it?” Jimmy seemed to have an enthusiastic appetite . . . for whatever it may have been.

  “Sushi,” I repeated as I got in my car. “Follow me down the Hollywood Freeway to Little Tokyo.”

  As I drove, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror to make sure Jimmy’s car was with me, it slowly dawned on me that sushi was not a well-known Japanese dish like teriyaki. Maybe I should have described it more fully to him, I thought. I hadn’t told Jimmy that sushi was made with slices of raw fish. It was probably the idea of eating at a bar that caught Jimmy’s fancy. I wondered if Jimmy might be drinking more than eating his dinner tonight.

  As we stepped into the small, convivial restaurant, we were immediately greeted by a chorus of loud shouts. “Irashaimase! Irashaimase!” Jimmy seemed startled by the assault of good cheers, but when I told him that it was a traditional greeting of Japanese restaurants that meant “welcome,” he relaxed. Instantly, he was smiling and beaming as if he were in his favorite neighborhood pub. The air was rich with the aroma of good whiskey.

  “What’s all this decoration in the glass case?” Jimmy asked
as we sidled into our seats at the sushi bar.

  “Well, Jimmy,” I began confessing tentatively, “it’s not decoration. It’s actually our menu. They’re chunks of raw fish.” I was prepared for Jimmy’s eyes to pop wide with shock.

  “Okay, let’s try some then,” he chortled eagerly. “You order for me.” Now the shocked one was me; I didn’t know that Jimmy had an intrepid palate. First I ordered the least exotic of sushi for him, the hybrid California roll. Surely avocado and cooked crab on rice balls wouldn’t challenge his taste too much. He lapped the two tidbits up in a breath. I next ordered raw tuna. Jimmy loved it! My shock grew with each new morsel I ordered for him. Raw yellowtail. Vinegared mackerel. Sea eel. Salmon egg roe. He gobbled them all up! Jimmy’s appetite seemed to be more than hunger. He had a connoisseur’s eagerness for new sensations, a palate as curious and venturesome as his inquiring mind. Jimmy ate up practically the whole glass case of raw flavors.

  The following morning around the coffee urn, Jimmy was unstoppable. He waxed rhapsodic on the exotic delights of sushi, transporting himself by reliving each delectable discovery of the night before. If some crew person overhearing his ecstatic ravings had not known that sushi was a food, he might have thought that Jimmy was describing some obscene act. Jimmy carried on like the poet laureate of sushi. His sensuous descriptions made the experience absolutely irresistable to Majel and Nichelle. A few of the guys on the crew also wanted to try it.

  That Friday night after work, a caravan of cars headed down the Hollywood Freeway to Little Tokyo. The Paramount party took over the entire sushi bar. It was a raucous and ravenous party, and when we left, it was because the restaurant had run out of fish. We had eaten them out of house and business for the night. By the end Nichelle and Majel were new converts.