These Are The Voyages, TOS, Season One

by Cushman, Marc

  Stanley G. Robertson

  Finally, there was NBC’s contribution to the creative staff. The title is Network Production Manager. The job is to oversee every aspect of the making of a series and to be sure that everything is to the absolute liking of the network. Stan Robertson was NBC’s choice to watch Roddenberry and his people like a hawk.

  Stanley G. Robertson was born November 20, 1925. He was visually handicapped and had 14 eye surgeries by the time he was 20. Despite his difficulties seeing, Robertson read constantly. And he also had a passion for writing. He graduated from Los Angeles City College in 1949 and shortly thereafter went to work as a reporter for The Los Angeles Sentinel, the leading African-American newspaper in the city. Two years later, Robertson accepted a job at Ebony magazine as an associate editor. In 1954 he left Ebony to study telecommunications at the University of Southern California, then, in 1957, embarked on a new career with NBC. Despite his college degree, Robertson started at the bottom, as a page. Both ambitious and efficient, he steadily climbed his way up the ladder and eventually landed a job in the network’s music clearance department. By the mid-1960s, Robertson was transferred from New York to Los Angeles where NBC-Burbank was experiencing growing pains. He was now 40 and was in the right place at the right time for the next step in his career. The network needed production managers, each to be assigned a handful of series to oversee. Robertson applied for one of the positions, at the very time Star Trek was added to the schedule. He got the job to manage the series no one else in the department seemed to want.

  Roddenberry met with Robertson and was duly impressed. He liked the sharp junior network man because, primarily, Robertson didn’t resemble a network man. Being black and having once worked as a writer, Roddenberry felt Robertson would “get” what Star Trek and its interracial cast was all about. Before long, however, the two men would be at odds.

  DeForest Kelley, 1947 headshot

  On March 22, 1966, Ed Perlstein of Desilu Business Affairs sent a certified letter to William Shatner, reading, “Dear Bill: This is to advise you that the Star Trek series has been sold and that we intend to commence production on or about May 23, 1966, and that we require your service on or about that date.”

  It was exceptionally good news -- albeit expressed in a very understated way. Leonard Nimoy was sent a similar letter of this type, as was George Takei. No one else who appeared in the second pilot film was. Roddenberry, after discussions with both the studio financial officers and the network, had decided to make some cast changes, including that of the ship’s doctor.

  DeForest Kelley, born in Atlanta, Georgia, got a taste for show business when singing in the choir of a Baptist church where his father was minister. It was a strict upbringing, with Kelley describing his father’s sermons as “Earthquakes of fire and brimstone,” then adding, “My father believed sincerely that smoking, drinking, dancing, going to the movies were all sinful.” (98-15)

  At 17, Kelley was itching to smoke, drink, dance and go to the movies. He was also yearning to get out of Georgia. He travelled to California to visit an uncle in Long Beach and this led to a decision to give up his earlier notion of one day becoming, ironically, a doctor. He now preferred to be an actor. Kelley gave his father the bad news, later saying, “When I told him I had decided to become an actor, he was sure my soul was lost forever. I was going straight to hell.” (98-1a)

  While day-lighting at menial jobs, including short-order cook, janitor and hospital orderly, Kelley took stage work where he could find it. He also studied film making at the Long Beach Cinema Club.

  In 1941, William Meiklejohn, Paramount’s head of casting, was searching for an unknown to play a baby-faced killer in a new movie, and this led to several meetings with Kelley. Meiklejohn seemed set not only on signing the young actor to the sizable role but also a studio contract. Kelley remembered, “While I was waiting for the producer in his office, I happened to glance over at his desk. There I saw a slip of paper and a penciled line through my name. Underneath was written another name -- Alan Ladd. The picture was This Gun for Hire and it made Ladd a star, and I went back to Long Beach.” (98-15)

  At the end of November, Kelley was cast as the lead in the Long Beach Playhouse’s production of Skylark. Also in the cast was a young actress named Carolyn Dowling. The two became friends, then sweethearts, beginning a lifelong romance.

  On December 7, life in America changed with the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Community Playhouse did its part in the war effort, cancelling further performances of Skylark and heading out to entertain the troops. Kelley stayed behind. With many of his friends being drafted, he had decided to enlist in the Army Air Corps. After basic training, and because of his ability as an actor to speak clearly and calmly, he was assigned to work as a control tower operator at Roswell Air Base in New Mexico. In early January 1945, he was transferred to the 18th Army Air Force Base Unit, also known as the First Motion Picture Unit, located at the Hal Roach Studios in Hollywood. There he would aid in the making of military training films. Also stationed at “Camp Roach” was George Reeves, later to be TV’s Superman. Kelley and Reeves became good friends and appeared together in numerous short-subject films, such as How to Clean Your Gun and How to Act if Captured, as well as countless Armed Forces radio broadcasts. Another film featuring Reeves and Kelley, made for the Navy, was the 40-minute Time to Kill, released to theaters in 1945 on the bottom-half of a double bill. Bill Meiklejohn saw it and was reminded of the contract he had almost given Kelley four years before.

  Within a month, on August 15, the nation celebrated V-J Day, marking the end of the war. Three weeks later, Kelley and Carolyn Dowling married. Kelley requested his Army discharge and, just before the orders came through, he got some surprising news. He said, “I was sitting on a bunk when a telegram came through from Bill Meiklejohn at Paramount and it said, ‘We’re prepared to offer you a seven-year contract,’ and I almost fell off my bunk.” (981b)

  He later quipped, “I had to join the Army to make a Navy picture to become an actor.” (98-14)

  Kelley was discharged in January 1946, and soon after signed with Paramount. The contract was for one year, with the studio having the option to renew six more times. The starting pay was $150 per week -- nearly $2,000 today. Kelley was making excellent money to spend most of his day studying film technique at the Paramount Acting School.

  Two months later, Kelley stepped before the cameras to make his first Paramount movie, sharing the lead with Paul Kelly in Fear in the Night. He played a young man who dreams he commits murder and then wakes to find it may be true. By December, Kelley was filming a second movie: Variety Girl. One day before Christmas, before Fear in the Night had even been released, Paramount renewed his contract and raised him up to $200 a week. While celebrating the renewal at a party, Kelley, as a lark, had his fortune told by a palm reader. Despite the promising start in Hollywood, he was told nothing of real importance would happen in his career until he was past 40. Kelley later told TV Guide, “I was prepared to hear about how marvelous I’d be. Instead I got what turned out to be a very prophetic statement.” (98-15)

  In February 1947, Daily Variety called Fear in the Night “one of the better features of the year.” Motion Picture Daily said, “Guaranteed to raise the short hairs on the nape of your neck.” Boxoffice called it “A definite standout.” Weekly Variety said, “It’s a good psychological melodrama unfolded at fast clip and will please the whodunit-and-how fans.... DeForest Kelley is good as bewildered man.”

  Kelley had every reason to believe he was on the road to stardom. His second Paramount picture, the extravagant Variety Girl, with a storyline involving a “nameless waif” getting discovered by a talent scout (Kelley) and signed to a Hollywood contract, was out in October. Variety said, “DeForest Kelley looms as a good new juvenile potential.” The problem for him was that Variety Girl was an all-star event and had dozens of the studio’s biggest marquee names appearing as themselves. Even with a prominent rol
e and a nod from Hollywood’s top trade paper, all the famous faces making cameos -- Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Gary Cooper, Alan Ladd, William Holden, Barbara Stanwyk, Veronica Lake, Dorothy Lamour, and Burt Lancaster -- kept Kelley’s face from making a memorable impression. A short time later, he told a reporter, “The other day I met actor John Lund near the studio, and he cracked, ‘De, they sure must have been worried about your acting, putting in all those stars to help you out.’ He sure had me there, didn’t he?” (98-1a)

  Kelley’s fortunes were about to change. The big Hollywood studios were rethinking their long-standing policies of signing promising young talent and training them to be stars. Kelley remarked, “The way they are laying people off these days makes one stop and think. At one time, they had 30 young actors [at Paramount], but now I’m one of three newcomers left. So I’m not buying any Beverly Hills mansions. In fact, there is an automobile salesman’s job waiting, just in case.” (98-1a)

  A short time later, Kelley was informed that Paramount would not be renewing his contract.

  As a free agent, he quickly picked up sixth billing in Cannon City, a factual depiction of a large-scale breakout from Colorado State Prison that was a hot news story six months earlier. Next, some TV work trickled in, including three episodes of The Lone Ranger, with Kelley playing a rancher, then a sheriff, then a doctor. He also found himself small roles on several of the anthologies of the day, but the jobs were few and far between. He later quipped, “There was a time when I was ready to change my name to DeForest Lawn.” (98-15)

  With the minor paychecks that went along with TV work from this period, the Kelleys were barely able to afford their one-bedroom apartment. Fortunately, an old friend was now writing and directing for You Are There, a half-hour series hosted by Walter Cronkite which took viewers back in time, in the form of live news reports with Cronkite interviewing the participants of historical events. In Kelley’s first appearance, he played a Union officer in “The Capture of John Wilkes Booth.” He stepped back into history eight more times over the next few years. He also won small roles in shows that would find their way into syndicated reruns, earning him much-needed residual payments from shows such as Gunsmoke, Zane Grey Theater and The Millionaire. In an episode of Science Fiction Theatre, entitled “Y.O.R.D.,” which Daily Variety called, “One of the better [in] the series… a well-done yarn about space ships from another planet, magnetic waves, etc.,” Kelley was mentioned for his good performance. For “Inside Out,” a second episode of Your Favorite Story, Kelley had the lead as an American correspondent held prisoner behind the Iron Curtain. A month later, for “Storm Signal” on Studio 57, the trade paper’s critic wrote “DeForest Kelley is okay in his appearance as the meanie.” The “meanie” roles were starting to come his way and this, more than anything else, would bring him financial security.

  “When I was much younger and just starting out I thought that I had to have success,” Kelley told a tabloid writer while doing Star Trek. “It meant glamour and stardom. But I soon learned that I was a success almost from the very beginning. For one thing I had Carolyn, my wife.... For another, I was doing just what I wanted to do -- act.... When I got a role -- big or small -- I had the chance to create a living, believable human being out of a one-dimensional character who had previously only existed in a few lines in a script.” (98-13)

  In 1956, with another appearance on You Are There, Kelley was cast as another meanie, this time Ike Clanton, in a news-style video report on the “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.” This in itself got him back onto the big screen, in an A-picture, no less. At the time of the You Are There episode’s airing, film producer Hal Wallis was preparing a big-budget movie about the famous gunfight to star Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. Paul Nathan, a casting director, wrote to Wallis, “For Ike Clanton you saw on TV and liked DeForest Kelly [sic], and when you catch your breath, I want to bring him in.” Wallis had been so taken by Kelley’s Ike Clanton that he wanted him to play the same part in the big screen treatment. But another producer noticed Kelley in that TV role and had just cast him in the big screen western Tension at Table Rock, playing the heavy. With a scheduling conflict, someone else had to be hired to play Clanton, but Wallis was sold on Kelley being in the cast and offered him a smaller part that could be shot later in the production. He would play Morgan Earp to Lancaster’s Wyatt Earp.

  DeForest Kelley, western villain

  Kelley was injured during the filming of O.K. Corral. He later said, “I was doing a scene with Kirk Douglas. We were approaching the corral and the shooting starts, and we jump into this ditch.... I was carrying this rifle, and when I jumped into the ditch, I fell the wrong way and the rifle jammed my ribs…. I awakened with Burt Lancaster sitting there with a brass spittoon, and I was throwing up.” (98-1)

  Kelley had hit the big time, with a movie star holding his head as he vomited.

  In 1957, Kelley was back on the big screen in the epic three-hour long Raintree County, as a Confederate Officer who gallops into battle against star Montgomery Clift and his Union soldier colleague Lee Marvin. Mustached and looking both gallant and dashing, Kelley is shot from a charging stallion and captured by the Yankees. Later, he kills Marvin and then is killed by Clift in a scene that is both compelling and tragic.

  On the small screen in 1957 and 1958, Kelley had more than two dozen guest spots, including episodes of Steve Canyon, M Squad, The Adventures of Jim Bowie, and Boots and Saddles (in an episode written by Gene Roddenberry). He also had the lead in “Kill and Run,” an episode of The Web, playing a police detective trying to prove a juvenile (James Darren) was innocent of a hit and run accident that killed a young girl. Daily Variety said, “Kelley is especially good as the cop, with scruples as well as brains.”

  Kelley was also back on the big screen in 1958 in another well-received A-picture, The Law of Jake Wade, starring Robert Taylor and Richard Widmark. Of the film’s star, the Variety critic wrote:

  Widmark is the more interesting of the two men, he is thoroughly amoral, but such an engaging villain that when he is finally shot you are sorry to see him go.

  Kelley later said, “If I do say so, I’m quite a good heavy. Maybe not as good as Richard Widmark -- when Widmark turns nasty, it’s like looking into the face of death -- but [I’m] still pretty good.” He credited his inspiration to a small-town Georgia sheriff he knew as a kid, recalling, “He had the look of a cobra. He talked very quietly, and before doing some act of cruelty, his lips would purse into a thin, mean smile.” (98-15)

  Kelley worked with Widmark again the following year, for Warlock, which costarred Henry Fonda and Anthony Quinn.

  Back on TV, he made the rounds on all the westerns, making trouble for good guys Robert Culp (Trackdown), Steve McQueen (Wanted: Dead or Alive), Clint Eastwood (Rawhide), Peter Breck (The Black Saddle), Henry Fonda (The Deputy), Richard Boone (Have Gun -- Will Travel), Lorne Green and Pernell Roberts (Bonanza), Dale Robertson (Tales of Wells Fargo), Gene Barry (Bat Masterson), and Darren McGavin (this time on Riverboat). Other stopovers on westerns of the day included Stagecoach West, Lawman, and Two Faces West.

  In a letter Carolyn Kelley wrote to a friend from this time, she said:

  Seems all westerns this year. This last week was not a western but he shot someone even in that one. I don’t know how anyone so sweet could act so mean; he is just a good actor. (98-1)

  With all these high profile guest shots, Kelley was now a very familiar face in television. William Dozier and Robert Sparks of Screen Gems were well aware of his recognition factor and believed he might do well to play Jake Ehrlich, the San Francisco defense attorney who had written a dozen books on law and served as the model for Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason. A pilot film based on Ehrlich was about to be made and the Screen Gems men recommended Kelley to the writer/producer they had on the assignment. The actor recalled, “I walked up this little flight of stairs and [into] a tiny office with a desk, and here was this bear of a man sitting there. So we had a lo
ng talk about this particular show, and [he] told me... ‘We have no trouble with you. We’ll take you to San Francisco and have you meet Jake Ehrlich -- who you’re going to portray -- this famous criminal lawyer.’” (98-1c)

  The bear of a man was Gene Roddenberry. The pilot was “333 Montgomery Street.” Roddenberry of course was familiar with Kelley, who had acted in an episode the former had written for Boots and Saddles, as well as having been featured prominently in so many other TV programs and films. Ehrlich knew who he was, too, and sent a telegram on February 5 inviting the Screen Gems people to a cocktail party at his apartment at 333 Montgomery Street, in San Francisco, saying that he was particularly interested in meeting “the menacing heavy who is to portray me -- DeForest Kelley.” (57a)

  The pilot film “333 Montgomery Street” received a test airing as an episode of Alcoa Theatre. The critic for Daily Variety, on June 15, 1960, praised the production in general, then, regarding its star, wrote:

  A strong argument which may weigh in favor of a series is the central character as delineated by DeForest Kelley; he makes him human and creditable out of court and vivid when defending a client.

  The critic for the New York Journal-American, on June 24, asked, “How can it miss? Not nearly as dreadful as most TV trash.”

  Regardless, the pilot failed to sell as a series. Kelley remarked, “Like everything Gene did, it was ahead of its time. I was defending a guy who was guilty, and I got him off, and the networks didn’t like that.” (98-1c)

  For 1963, Kelley was given fourth billing in the big-screen western Gunfight at Comanche Street, starring Audie Murphy. Back on TV, among other series: another episode of Laramie, then a pair of 90-minute Virginians. In 1964 and 1965, he was back in the movie houses in the westerns Apache Uprising, starring Rory Calhoun and Jane Russell, Black Spurs, again under Calhoun, and Town Tamer, starring Dana Andrews. After nearly two decades of playing mostly cowboy bad guys, Kelley said, “I thoroughly enjoyed those years. I liked westerns for two reasons: First, it took the actor outside. They were all very physical at that time and not limited to a stage. Second, they paid my rent an awful lot.” (98-12)