Before production began, first-time director of photography Jerry Finnerman had a talk with his mentor, Harry Stradling, Sr.. Finnerman had screened the pilot and felt it looked “a little lush.” He later said, “In those days, NBC and, I presume, all of the networks felt better if everything was bright and bubbly. But this wasn’t that kind of show.” (63-1)
“Bright and bubbly,” the result of flat over-lighting where everything in the picture is bathed in equally balanced light, translated to a sharper, cleaner broadcast image. Of the three networks, NBC was especially fond of this approach, with its series from this period beaming across America looking sharp but lacking visual texture and mood, so much so that filmed prime time series often looked more like video-taped daytime soap operas.
Finnerman, who had great admiration for Harry Stradling, Sr., wanted to recreate the look his former boss had achieved with The Picture of Dorian Gray. He said, “I loved it and wondered how he accomplished those beautiful half-tones. And he told me, ‘Jerry, when you take the lights down so far that they scare you, that’s when it’ll look beautiful, that’s when you get the half-tones’.... So we went into those definitions, the types of things like people turning into shadow, the goods and the bads, the darks and the lights, the message being in the story and the photography.” (63-1)
Finnerman who, following his mentor’s advice, had quit Stradling’s crew and thereby lost a chance to serve as camera operator on Funny Girl, excitedly threw himself into the pre-production stage for the only Star Trek episode he was guaranteed. If his cinematic vision for Star Trek worked, he would get more episodes -- perhaps the entire season. And then excitement turned to anxiety.
Finnerman recalled, “They gave me the first show and I prepped this show, and two nights before the show was going to start, I went to Herb Solow -- who was a wonderful man; very soft spoken -- and I said, ‘You’d better get somebody else.’ And he said, ‘My God, what’s wrong; are you sick?’ I told him my problems; I knew I was going to fail and, if I failed, I would have to drop back [to camera operator in the cameraman’s union] and, if I dropped back… Harry would be doing Funny Girl and I wouldn’t be doing anything….
“He never raised his voice, but he raised his voice this time, and he said, ‘You’re worried about a year? How would you like it to never work in Hollywood again?… I went out on a limb for you.... And I know you’ll do well. So you’d better be here and be ready to go the first day of shooting.’” (63-3)
Finnerman would be on set that first day. As he recalled it, he would also often be in the men’s bathroom, sick.
Monday, May 23, 1966, was designated as a rehearsal day. In television, only situation comedies have rehearsals, or “table reads,” where the cast sit around a large conference table and read through the script together with the producer, director and writers watching, making notes for possible changes in dialogue. Joseph Sargent had insisted a table reading take place for the first Star Trek. He later said, “It’s shocking how it’s so much part of the film culture where rehearsals have always been looked upon as unnecessary, because you’re shooting out of sequence with your people, and it would cost money, and all the lame excuses that studio’s producers can come up with to avoid rehearsing. They ignore the fact that without rehearsals you are wasting money, in front of a paid crew, in the middle of a production. I would never ever approach a film without some kind of rehearsal and I always made that clear in my contract.” (151)
John D.F. Black said, “We agreed to give him a rehearsal day because it was a new company -- everyone wasn’t settled in yet. There were new people around, both in the cast and on the crew, and he wanted everybody there for a rehearsal. It’s much like a dress rehearsal. I was there, and it went beautifully.” (17)
Production Diary
Filmed May 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, June 1 & 2 (1/2 day), 1966
(Planned as 6 day production; finishing 1/2 day behind; total cost: $190,430).
Tuesday, May 24, 1966. The No. 1 song on U.S. radio was “Monday, Monday” by The Mamas and the Papas. CBS had the top rated TV program from the night before --Desilu’s own The Lucy Show. The Broadway play Mame was opening for the first of 1508 performances at the Winter Garden Theater. And this was kickoff day for production on Star Trek, the original series.
Gene Roddenberry sent a memo to his production staff first thing in the morning, telling them:
On this first day of production, I think it wise we establish certain routines of value to us during the shooting year:
1. Assistant director should convey to my office, or in my absence to the office concerned, at noon and at late afternoon before our office closes, a simple verbal report of pages completed and any problems or information pertinent.
2. John D.F. Black should establish a routine of visiting the set once morning and afternoon, establishing that the tenor and mood of the scenes being photographed are generally in keeping with the script and our discussions with the director. If this is found not to be the case, he and I should confer on the subject immediately.
3. None of the above is meant to replace or supersede R. Justman’s normal production responsibilities and routines.
4. Cameramen and script supervisor have been alerted to flash this office should the director depart appreciably from dialogue, characterization, etc. In my absence or unavailability, John D.F. Black will handle the matter as appears best.
5. Notification from set of deviation from production planning and routine will be handled by R. Justman.
6. Where possible, in order to insulate us from actor problems and maintain our friendly relationship with cast, complaints from actors, unusual or special requests from them, etc., should be passed on to Morris Chapnick of Herb Solow’s office….
In short, for best efficiency and a minimum of anguish, let us of the Star Trek staff start along with the show and the crew with a planned routine and division of responsibility which will have us all drinking champagne and feeling smug a year from now.
This was not Roddenberry’s first time around the block; not his first series; not, for that matter, his first war.
The first scene on schedule was Kirk’s physical in sickbay, accompanied by the verbal sparring with Dr. McCoy. It was also when Roddenberry’s meticulous plan went to hell.
DeForest Kelley recalled, “Gene Roddenberry came down to the set, called the crew to attention, gathered everybody around and made a speech on what we were embarking on, the dedication that had gone into the show, and that he wished it to continue with everyone who was involved -- himself, and everybody from the stars to the man who sweeps the floor.” (98-6)
After the pep talk, Kelley said Roddenberry took him aside and asked that he remove the ring he wore -- the ring that had belonged to his deceased mother. Kelley remembered, “Roddenberry said ‘no jewelry.’ I said, ‘No jewelry, no DeForest.’” (98-1)
Roddenberry, not always willing to bend, relented.
As for the first scene, Kelley said, “[Gene] had this thing all laid out in the medical lab, giving Bill a physical examination. I said something about, ‘I’m a doctor, not a moon shuttle conductor...’ and that was the first scene shot in the series.” (98-6)
For this, William Shatner agreed to allow his chest to be shaved. Shatner, with a moderate amount of hair on his body, did not fit into Roddenberry’s idea that men of the future would have little or no body hair.
The scenes in Kirk’s quarters came next, again with McCoy, and introducing Yeoman Janice Rand who, per McCoy’s instructions, brings Kirk his dietary salad. Of this, NBC’s John Kubichan had instructed:
Please avoid playing this sequence in any manner which might suggest the relationship between Kirk and Janice is anything more intimate than that of Captain and Yeoman. (BS2)
William Theiss was given full credit from Grace Lee Whitney for Rand’s hair … but Whitney came up with the mini (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
Kubichan, one of the network’s watchdogs for programming
and censorship issues, knowing that Roddenberry was pushing for sexual tension between these two characters, felt it inappropriate for a ship’s captain to flirt with a subordinate. Roddenberry and Sargent went for the sexual tension anyway. With Rand’s miniskirt -- the shortest to be seen on TV -- it was hard to take it any other way.
William Theiss designed -- or rather built -- the wig Yeoman Rand wore. Grace Lee Whitney said, “They put a cone on my head, and put the blonde hair [from two separate wigs] on it, and tried to find different ways of weaving it. It was really her signature. Without that hair I am practically unrecognizable. That hair put me on the map…. But that was Bill Theiss all the way. A genius.” (183-3)
Theiss had also rethought the look of the uniforms -- with that “mini” Grace Lee Whitney dared him and Roddenberry to allow her character to wear, and now with the addition of the third primary uniform color, joining the gold and the blue. While Uhura -- for this episode and the next -- was clad in gold, Rand, like Scotty, got an upgrade to the more RCA color TV-friendly red. Bill Theiss said, “The colors were chosen purely for technical reasons. We tried to find three colors for the shirts that would be as different from each other as possible, in black-and-white as well as color.... I think the uniforms’ greatest asset is their simplicity.” (172-2)
And then the company moved to the spectacular -- for its time and medium -- bridge set. George Takei, for his book To the Stars, recalled:
What commanded all eyes and pulled them like some gravitational force to the blazingly lit center of the set was the single most compelling presence there, the unmistakable star of the production, William Shatner. Everything seemed to revolve around him. The camera crew, the light crew, the sound crew were all converged on him. And Shatner fully occupied the epicenter. He commanded the hub of all activity on the set. He radiated energy and a boundless joy in his position. He shouted his opinions out to the director; he sprang up, demonstrating his ideas; he laughed and joked and bounced his wit off the crew. He beamed out an infectious, expansively joyous life force.
Camera tie-down set up for matte shot to include alien spacecraft, to be added during post (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
Joseph Sargent took his last shot at 6:45 p.m., one half-hour into union overtime.
Day 2, Wednesday -- the first of four days on the bridge, with more of that “infectious, expansively joyous life force” of which George Takei spoke. Leonard Nimoy, however, was not projecting the same energy and sense of pleasure. He recalled that Joseph Sargent helped him to “break through” and “realize exactly who the Vulcan was.” Spock was supposed to stare at the giant alien space ship growing on the view screen. His spoken reaction was a single word, for the first time: “Fascinating.”
Nimoy remembered, “I just didn’t have a handle on how to say it. I was still somewhat in ‘first officer’ mode, but it didn’t seem appropriate to shout such a word out. Everyone was reacting in character -- humanly, of course -- but I couldn’t figure out how the Vulcan would respond or how the word should come out.” (128-3)
Sargent said, “Leonard came up to me and he was ready to quit. He said, ‘Joe, I can’t take this. I’m an actor and I don’t know how to play a character that has no emotion.’ As an actor, he was trained to work for an emotional element in his character, and he felt there wasn’t any. Having been trained myself as an actor, I knew exactly what was bothering him. Fortunately, I was able to make a virtue out of something that, for him, seemed awfully negative, and I convinced him that having so-called ‘no emotion’ was just an external aspect of the character’s element. It didn’t have anything to do with the richness of his intellectuality. He was merely able to conquer the emotional distortions that can interfere with reasoning.” (151)
Nimoy remembered, “The director gave me a brilliant note which said: ‘Be different. Be the scientist. Be detached. See it as something that’s a curiosity rather than a threat.’ I said, ‘Fascinating.’ Well, a big chunk of the character was born right there.” (128-18)
Nimoy was not the only one who very nearly quit. Sargent remembered how Jerry Finnerman still wanted to jump ship. Even with the production schedule this relaxed, spending more time on a single set than any other episode, Finnerman was overwhelmed by the pressure of running the camera and lighting units -- an immense responsibility for anyone, especially someone who had never done it before.
Finnerman later said, “The director of photography -- the cinematographer -- creates the look of the show. They create the dimension; they tell a story with their lights, hopefully not overpowering the story so much that you’re looking at the photography and not the story. I’ve always considered cinematographers like composers. You get a real good one on a real good story and you’re listening to Wagner, Tchaikovsky, or Beethoven. You know, people get that emotional feeling. It’s more than just putting the lighting on a face. Anybody can do that. But it takes a special breed to be a good director of photography.” (63-3)
Finnerman just wasn’t sure he was of that breed, and admitted, “I used to get very nervous. And Bob Justman would accompany me to the men’s bathroom when I regurgitated, and tell me how good I was. Really.... It’s terrible to talk about, but I was that nervous... being so young.” (63-3)
Justman stood by Finnerman as the green cinematographer lost his breakfast and lunch. And Sargent gave Finnerman pep talks as a counterpoint to Herb Solow’s threat that he might never work in Hollywood again. All could see the talent their novice cinematographer was bringing to the series, the textures and moods TV lighting rarely saw.
Nichelle Nichols (behind DeForest Kelley), staying in good spirits after a trip to the hospital (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
“I would describe it as classic black-and-white photography of the ’40s,” Finnerman said. “I never thought of it as television. I thought of it as theatrical. If I’d thought of it as television I would have just come in and taken a light and lit everything. That wasn’t what they wanted and it wasn’t what I wanted.... So, when you look at Star Trek, even today, you’re gonna say, ‘Hey, that looks like a feature.’ And it was lit that way.” (63-3)
Fortunately, Finnerman stayed. His work was brilliant, even though his nerves were frayed. He later said, “That continued through my lifespan, unfortunately. I used to get awfully nervous.... But I never regurgitated after that.” (63-3)
The second day’s production stopped at 6:50 p.m.
Day 3, Thursday, began with a bang … on the highway. Production notes reveal Nichelle Nichols had been involved in an “auto accident” on her way to the studio and was “sent to hospital for stitches in lip (inner), returned to work at 9:50 a.m.” Nichols’ call time for makeup had been 6:30 a.m.
Sargent started filming at 8 a.m., shooting around Nichols until she made it to the set at 9:50. He took his last shot at 7:15 (a full hour into overtime pay for the crew).
On The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite this night, America saw startling still images of a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire in front of the U.S. consulate earlier that day, in Hue, South Vietnam.
Day 4, Friday. Another full day on the bridge set, with filming stopping at 7:10 p.m. and the set wrapped by 7:30.
Monday, May 30. While the stage was dark for Memorial Day, the U.S. launched Surveyor 1 to the moon, and 300 U.S. warplanes bombed North Vietnam.
Day 5, Tuesday. On the fifth day of production, as work continued on the bridge, seven-year old Clint Howard was brought in for makeup tests. He remembered, “They asked me -- or, actually, they asked my dad -- if I might be willing to shave my head bald. And I didn’t think that was a good idea at all. I didn’t want to go to school bald, didn’t want to be that kid with the shaved head; I didn’t want any part of that. Neither did my dad, because I was a working actor and that would take me out of the running for parts for a couple months. So we said ‘no’ on the shave. Then they said, ‘Okay, we can put a bald cap on him.’ And I remember really vividly going in and sitting in the makeup chai
r and the one fella, you know, the main guy, the old guy with white hair [Fred Phillips], fitted me for the bald cap. He was really nice. They were all nice. It took the whole afternoon, because they wanted to do a test, to make sure they could get it to look good. And it looked great.” (85)
James Doohan said of Howard in his Balok makeup, “I had never seen anyone as strange as he.” (52-1)
Day 6: Kelley and Shatner waiting “Action!” (Courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
Meanwhile, the grownups continued filming until 6:50 p.m., followed by the removal of makeup and wrapping the set.
Day 6, Wednesday. Work continued for the first half of the day on the bridge set, and then the company moved to the briefing room. Later, this set was redressed for the interior of Balok’s ship.
Clint Howard said, “I certainly appreciated the whole sort of spaceship fantasy thing of being on the Enterprise. I certainly thought it was cool. I had my dad take some snapshots of me sitting in the captain’s chair. But, even at that age, I understood I had a job to do. I knew I was playing a 400-year-old little alien who ran this giant spaceship all by himself. And I knew that I was curious and that I had the power over the Enterprise.
“They called me on the set and William Shatner seemed very professional -everybody did. I liked the costume, I was having fun, and the people were all nice. Of course, they never told me right out of the box that they were going to replace my dialogue, and, in fact, what I remember them telling me is they were going to run my voice through this newfangled gizmo called a synthesizer. They were going to synthesize my voice and then stretch it and bend it and make it like an alien.” (85)
“Clint was a darling kid,” Joseph Sargent said. “But he didn’t have quite the treble or the vocabulary at seven that took care of the kind of authoritarian cadence that was necessary.” (151)
These Are The Voyages, TOS, Season One Page 25
