Gerald Fried, a third man who was Star Trek bound (besides Nimoy and Forest), wrote the score.
By mid-1964, Nimoy had over 50 TV episodes and films to his credit, but he was still struggling and needed a break-through role. It was clear Mr. Spock could bring him what he wanted, but as Jeffrey Hunter had found with the misfired Temple Houston, the wrong TV series could also do an acting career irrevocable harm.
Nimoy said, “I wasn’t sure about doing the role because one of the first things [Gene] said was this was going to be an alien, ‘a rather bizarre, exotic character, and he’s going to wear pointed ears and have some other strange makeup which has yet to be determined.’ And, not knowing the caliber the series was going to be or the caliber of the character, I had some reservations, because I had a rather serious acting career in the works and I didn’t want to be playing the fool.” (128-26)
The final character cast was the ship’s second in command, Number One. Roddenberry had someone in mind from the very day he wrote the part: Majel Barrett. They had met when he was producing pilots for Screen Gems and, as an aspiring actress, she was making the rounds to casting calls. She made an impression on Roddenberry, even though he had no roles that suited her. In 1963, he did, and cast her in an episode of The Lieutenant. It was then that the two became lovers. Just as Star Trek was getting ready to launch, Roddenberry’s marriage was disintegrating.
The stress on the marriage had started much earlier. Sam Rolfe, Roddenberry’s former boss on Have Gun -- Will Travel, put it bluntly: “Eileen hated Gene’s writing career.” Rolfe and his wife, while socializing with the Roddenberrys, had seen firsthand the change in the couple’s relationship. Rolfe said, “She loved the money -- all the perks -- but she couldn’t keep up with it. She never understood it. She once told my wife, ‘I wish he had never started writing.’ She didn’t comprehend the society in which he was moving. Eileen is of the world that is more natural, more Middle America. So, increasingly, she got left out of it.” (146)
Gary Lockwood saw this as well. He sensed that there was no common ground in the lifestyles the two Roddenberrys wanted to pursue. They had, he observed, “an incredible home up in the hills, in Mandeville Canyon,” but he also noticed how his producer’s wife seemed to be out of place: “He had a very proper wife -- she was very attractive but appeared to be a rather straight-laced type.” (109-3)
Robert Justman said, “I think she feared the sort of life that Gene was getting into. She feared for their marriage, for their family, for their financial future. The people that Gene was now associating with represented an industry that disgusted her and threatened her. That, I think, is what made her cold.” (94-5)
Justman also felt that Roddenberry had become somewhat cruel to his wife, saying, “From time to time, he would make remarks in front of her and I would feel terribly embarrassed. There was a lot of heartbreak for her, because he would mess around.” (94-5)
Headshot used by Majel Barrett when she met Roddenberry (L.A. Times file photo)
Roddenberry did little to disguise his affairs. Majel Barrett, his primary romantic interest, lived near Desilu. This had been arranged so that she could be close to her lover. Justman said, “Gene made no bones about the fact that he was keeping Majel. He even invited me over one evening to the apartment for drinks -you know, sort of a party. I said, ‘Gene, I don’t want to know about it.’ I tried to talk him out of continuing their relationship. She was his mistress. I was afraid that someone might find out. Little did I know that he enjoyed that sort of illicitness.” (94-5)
“Let's face it, Gene played around a lot after that,” Sam Rolfe said of one of the consequences of Roddenberry's move from TV writer to TV producer. “He had all these openings, and he took them.” (146)
Majel Barrett was Roddenberry’s fantasy girl come true -- dark, mysterious, intellectual, sensual. But NBC would want a marquee player for such an important part as Number One, and Barrett was mostly unknown -- except to those who worked with Roddenberry. Now he relentlessly pushed the issue with Solow. “You'll like her, Herb,” he insisted. ‘She's solid.” (161-3)
Solow tried to sell Barrett to the network. He looked for a spin. He told them that the producer believed in the actress’s ability, but he mostly tried to sell them on the idea that, because Barrett was a new face on television, she would add believability to the role. NBC’s Jerry Stanley and Grant Tinker were no fools. Solow remembered them exchanging looks, then Stanley saying, “Christ, Herb, this is madness. She's his girlfriend. I remember her hanging around Gene's office at MGM when he was doing The Lieutenant for us.” (161-3)
Solow believed the NBC execs resented being put in such an awkward position, but Tinker and Stanley didn’t want to rock the boat with Roddenberry -- at least not on this point. In television, you choose your battles and there were plenty of bigger ones ahead. So NBC blinked again, and Barrett became TV’s first woman to serve in outer space and, more importantly, in a position of command. Roddenberry had gotten his way. Or so it seemed. For those at the network who were keeping score, this was already “Strike Four.”
Roddenberry wasn’t worried about the disapproval of others. In his affection for Barrett, he was blind to the negative thinking. Robert Justman said, “Gene loved [Majel]. He loved her and he was proud of her.... He would light up when she was around.” (94-6)
And Roddenberry didn’t have to wait long to light up. Test footage needed to be shot of the green dancing girl. Barrett agreed to do it for free. Justman recalled that she was a good sport and allowed herself to be covered with various shades of "bilious green makeup," then would stand near naked in front of a neutral background as a series of test films were made.
It's a famous Star Trek story now. The day after the test shots were made, the footage was screened. Barrett looked normal, and quite in the pink. Fred Phillips was told to mix more green into his makeup. More footage was shot. The results were very nearly the same. In the flesh, Barrett had been extremely green, yet once the film had been returned from the lab, she merely looked like a woman who was somewhat seasick. Another test was scheduled. The makeup was made greener still. Then the footage was returned from the lab. Still not green enough; still very nearly a normal-but-not-very-healthy-looking Caucasian woman. This tale is not folklore. Fred Phillips, quoted in 1968 while working on Star Trek, said, “We did this three days in a row. We had her so green you couldn’t believe it, and she still kept coming back pink!” (142-2)
Eventually the mystery was unraveled. The lab technicians, believing the green was a mistake, had been color-correcting the film to return Barrett’s skin to as close to normal as possible. Who, after all, would paint a woman green?
It was an innocent time. People looked alike back then. Same skin, same hair, same clothes. Only The Beatles looked different and it had only been nine months since they first landed in America from another world -- England. For the moment, Star Trek was charting unknown waters.
The race to begin production continued. Matt Jefferies focused on working out all the details concerning the bridge, while Franz Bachelin proceeded to design the rest of the sets for the pilot. The location was Desilu Culver City Studio, stages 14, 15 and 16. The bridge alone took six weeks and, in 1964 money, a whopping $60,000 to construct.
Meanwhile, back on the Desilu-Gower Street lot, Fred Phillips was asked to try his hand at creating the pointed ears. Already busy trying to come up with an acceptable solution for Spock’s makeup, primarily that reddish complexion described in the script, Phillips passed the ear job on to Lee Greenway, a Desilu makeup artist.
This idea of red-toned skin, by the way, was quickly vetoed in favor of a yellowish hue. Red, on the black-and-white television sets most Americans owned at this time, came off looking dark and muddy. Yellow, however, would lighten Spock’s face, giving him a paler appearance than his Earthling comrades. Buster Keaton and Stan Laurel had proven decades earlier that a pale complexion in photography helped enhance deadpan expressions.<
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Nimoy, with reddish complexion, poses for makeup test alongside an actress resembling Susan Oliver, her wearing an early prototype for the Star Fleet uniform (Courtesy William Krewson)
Greenway had been told there was no time or money to build the ears properly and, for the first “test,” he had to come up with a “down and dirty” version. Nimoy, already nervous about his Spock role, was appalled. In an interview for this book, he said, “I was called in to one of the soundstages where they were shooting The Lucy Show. And Lee Greenway tried to patch on some kind of a rough mock up of what they thought my ears might look like. He did it with papier-mache and glue and what-have-you. It was looking pretty bad. Herb Solow stuck his head in the door and saw what was going on and jokingly said over his shoulder to Gene Roddenberry, ‘Gene, this poor guy needs help.’ And my heart sank. I thought, ‘My God, I’m so trepidatious about this whole ear issue and the first thing I hear is a joke about it. They stood me in front of a video camera on the Lucy set and shot some footage. I hope it’s been destroyed. It was dreadful.” (128)
Roddenberry, during the time Star Trek was in production, said, “As always happens with high-spirited crew, they began making jokes about ‘Pixie’ and ‘Jackrabbit.’ Now, Leonard is a very serious actor, and these remarks finally began to get to him. So one day Leonard came into my office, sat down, and began to explain his doubts about the ‘Pointed Ears’ role. He explained his desire to be known as a serious actor, the hopes and dreams he had for the future. This Spock part was beginning to look to him like he’d be playing a freak with ears. He wound up saying, ‘I’ve decided I don’t want the part.’ Well, after all that we had gone through, and with only a few days left before shooting, and I’m certain Spock can be a meaningful and challenging role, now comes the problem of talking Leonard out of this. We must have argued for at least half an hour.” (145-4)
Around this time, Nimoy confided to a reporter, “Playing some monster or freak can be the kiss of death for an actor, and this emotionless guy with pointy ears from another planet didn’t appeal to me.... [Gene and I] talked it over and agreed that I wouldn’t just be a walking computer who gives scientific data. I trusted Roddenberry’s tastes.” (128-17)
Nimoy agreed to tolerate more experimentation. But someone else was needed to come up with the now famous Vulcan ears. Many sources wrongly credit famed Hollywood makeup artist and prosthetics maker John Chambers with the creation. Chambers himself fueled the rumor mill when he admitted to a reporter: “Fred brought me a set of ear molds but they had been damaged so I couldn’t use those… I had to remake the whole thing. The molds I devised were technically functional…. I devised molds that you could get nice ears out of.” (31-1)
From this, it was easy to assume that Chambers was there from the first day. To set the record straight, Leonard Nimoy told this author: “The next thing I hear, I was to go to the studio to meet Freddy Phillips, who was going to be the makeup man on the show. Freddy sat me down in a chair and pulled out a set of ears that had been made from a mold of my ears by this time, put them on, and he hated them. I wasn’t that sophisticated in this area at that time, but he told me the material they were made out of was rough and would never match the look of human skin. And it was ‘goo’ material for things like creature faces and creature heads and creature feet, and had been made in fact by a company that Desilu had contracted to do appliance work for creatures for the show. He complained to the management that these wouldn’t work, and they said, ‘Well, work with the company that we’re working with because they’re being paid. The contract includes Leonard’s ears, so just work with them until they get it right.’ Well, we tried two or three more times, back to the studio and back to the company and then back to the studio, over a period of two or three weeks, and they came back just unacceptable as far as anyone was concerned.” (128)
Roddenberry said, “We had to try a lot of different types of ears on Leonard to get the right ones, ones that looked real. We had them too big, too flat, too pointed and so forth.” (145-4)
Nimoy said, “The problem was that contract. To have them made by an outside appliance maker who really knew how to do them was going to cost -- can you believe this? -about $600. So, the last time out, Freddy worked with them and put plaster on, and did all kinds of things to them. It was just totally frustrating. He finally took them off of my ears, and called a man at MGM named Charlie Schram. I never will forget this. Charlie Schram was the head of the makeup department at MGM.” (128)
Phillips knew Schram from The Wizard of Oz, the first major motion picture to use foam latex prosthetics on a large scale. Phillips handled the more humanlike characters, while Schram took on the outrageous ones, including Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion, which required orange-toned makeup, false eyebrows, whiskers, fur, a bald cap, a wig with rubber ears, and other rubber appliances. He also saw to the hooked rubber nose, warts and all, for Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch.
Nimoy recalled, “Freddy said, ‘Charlie, I need a favor. I’ve got a guy who has to wear a pair of devilish ears and I need them by Friday.’ Then Freddy hung up and said, ‘Come with me.’ We got into his car and drove to MGM, on the spot. We went to this guy’s department, he laid me on a slab and made a mold of my ears and on Friday morning, or whatever the day was -- I’m saying Friday -- but whatever day it was, in the morning when we were to begin shooting the first pilot, the ears arrived and of course they were perfect because Charlie Schram knew exactly what to do and he used the right kind of material.
According to Nimoy, Fred Phillips created the look of the Vulcan (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
“Now the story goes a little bit further. Freddy put them on me and he was satisfied. He did my eyebrows and my hair was already cut appropriately. I walked out on the stage where Bob Justman took a look at me. He was concerned how my ears stood out a little bit farther from my skull, and when Freddy put these extensions on, it accentuated the problem, so my ears were out there sort of flapping in the wind. Bobby Justman said, ‘I wonder if we can do something to pin those ears back.’ We go back in the makeup department. Freddy put some glue behind my ears, gluing my ears back to my skull so I had a very compact, very tight, clean look. And that was finally the way it was done, except for one minor modification. After that day, Freddy used a piece of what we called ‘two-face tape’ -- tape that sticks on both sides. He put a little piece of that on my skull and pressed the ear against it. And that’s the way the ears were finally accomplished. From that point on, Freddy used the mold Charlie Schram had made. Each day he’d make them at home, overnight, until he got so overloaded with work that he couldn’t do it anymore and he turned the making over to John Chambers. John had more of a reputation around town because he had done a lot of prosthetics work and was known for it so people assumed that he had done the job. Which he did -- he made ears -- but not until Charlie Schram and Freddy Phillips came up with it.” (128)
One other phase of the production had to be arranged: choosing who would handle the innovative and complex photographic effects.
The Howard Anderson Company, an optical effects house in business since the 1920s and recently passed from father to sons Darrell and Howard, Jr., was now providing photographic effects for B-movies such as Phantom from Space, Invasion of the Saucer Men and 12 to the Moon. Anderson was a tenant on the Desilu lot and it was a short walk to the Star Trek offices. Better still, the Anderson brothers had a close association with the studio, having created the opening animated title sequence for I Love Lucy on a tight deadline.
Howard Anderson, Jr. and Darrell Anderson were enthusiastic and confident they could deliver. On August 24, 1964, Roddenberry sent a memo to Argyle Nelson, head of Desilu Business Affairs, saying:
I am delighted Anderson and others find the project interesting and fascinating. It will take a lot of cooperation and creative thinking to bring this in exciting and on budget.
The Andersons had no idea of the challenge awaiting them.
4
Test Flight – Filming “The Cage”
Susan Oliver in Desilu publicity photo taken during the filming of “The Cage” (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
Friday, November 27, 1964. It was the day after Thanksgiving. America was into its ninth month of Beatlemania, but “Leader of the Pack” by The ShangriLas was the song getting the highest amount of airplay on U.S. radio stations. The most watched TV shows the night before were Bewitched and My Three Sons on ABC, followed by The Munsters on CBS. The Ford Mustang had been introduced a couple months earlier with a sticker price of $2,395, and you could fill the tank for 30 cents a gallon. A first class stamp cost a nickel. And principal photography commenced at Desilu-Culver on “The Cage.”
The interior of the Enterprise had been built at great expense into Stage 16 -a gigantic space for a gigantic spaceship. But the stage had gone mostly unused for years. Desilu was a TV company and this was a big screen movie stage, built for epic silent films by Cecil B. DeMille, including 1927’s King of Kings. DeMille needed space to tell his story of Christ. He did not need quiet. Star Trek needed both.
The scene between Captain Pike and Dr. Boyce in the Captain’s quarters was first up, to be followed by all transporter room scenes as well as those in the ship’s corridors and in the briefing room. On paper, it seemed an achievable goal for one day of filming. In reality, the production company didn’t even come close.
Sound issues began immediately. The first delay came from pigeons that had nested in the ancient rafters above. With the commotion below, and heat rising from the bright lights, the pigeons became anxious and tended to coo whenever Jeffrey Hunter or John Hoyt delivered their lines. Unhappy pigeons soon made for unhappy actors.
These Are The Voyages, TOS, Season One Page 12
