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EspañolGENE RODDENBERRY
'Eugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberry,' (August 19, 1921 - October 24, 1991) was an American screenwriter and producer. He became best known as the creator of what would become the science fiction universe of ''Star Trek''. He would also become one of the first people to be buried in space. Roddenberry was a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions in the U.S. Army Air Corps in the Pacific Theatre of World War II.
Personal life
Born in El Paso, Texas to Eugene Edward Roddenberry and Caroline Glen, Roddenberry spent his boyhood in Los Angeles, California, where his family had moved so his father could pursue a career with the Los Angeles Police Department. Following in his father's footsteps after high school, Roddenberry took classes in police studies at Los Angeles City College, and headed that school's Police Club. In that role, he was a liaison with the FBI, thanking them for sending speakers and securing copies of the FBI Code and publications for club use, and took fingerprint records of the college community for the FBI's Civil Identification Division.
Following his graduation from Los Angeles City College, Roddenberry attended Columbia University, the University of Miami and the University of Southern California.
He later transferred his academic interest to aeronautical engineering and qualified for a pilot's license. Roddenberry joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1941 and became an aviator. He flew many combat B-17 Flying Fortress missions in the Pacific Theatre with the 394th Bomb Squadron (H), 5th Bomb Group, whose members called themselves the "Bomber Barons." Roddenberry was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal.
After leaving the service, he was a commercial pilot for Pan American World Airways. He received a Civil Aeronautics commendation for his efforts following a June 1947 crash in the Syrian desert, while on a flight to Istanbul from Karachi.
Roddenberry left Pan Am to pursue writing for television in Los Angeles. In order to provide for his growing family, he fell back on his early training and joined the Los Angeles Police Department. He served with them from 1949 to 1956.
The family of Roddenberry
Roddenberry married twice. He had two children, both daughters, by his first wife, the former Eileen Rexroat, to whom he was married 27 years; these were Dawn Roddenberry and the late Darleen Roddenberry. He began having an affair in the 1960s with Majel Barrett whom he cast in various roles in ''Star Trek''. He left his by-then unhappy marriage to his first wife for her, and they were married in Japan in a traditional Shinto ceremony on August 6, 1969. Together they had one child, his only son, Eugene Wesley, Jr.[1]
The beliefs of Roddenberry
Although he had been reared as a Southern Baptist, Roddenberry did not embrace the faith of his parents, coming to blame organized religions for many wars and much suffering in human history. Instead, he became a secular humanist,[2] joining the movement established by Paul Kurtz, a noted skeptic when it came to matters of faith.
His death and funeral
Roddenberry died on October 24, 1991, of heart failure. He was 70 years of age when he died. After his death, a lipstick-sized capsule of his ashes was sent into space to orbit Earth for just over five years, after which they burned up in Earth's atmosphere.
Roddenberry's television and film career
Before ''Star Trek'', Roddenberry wrote scripts for many of the popular television series of the 1950s, such as ''Dragnet'', to which he contributed his scripts, written while still a cop, under the pen name Robert Wesley because of the LAPD's inflexible policy against moonlighting, and ''Have Gun, Will Travel''. His first-season episode "Helen of Abajinian" won a Writers Guild Award.
Norway Corporation is born
Roddenberry's frustrations with his work as a free-lance writer for ''Have Gun, Will Travel'' and the difficulty he faced in adding anything substantial to his stories led him to organize a company called Norway Corporation in 1963. Under this banner, he produced ''The Lieutenant,'' a 1963-1964 ABC and MGM Television series about the United States Marine Corps that starred Gary Lockwood as Lieutenant William Rice. During this period, Roddenberry was also trying to get other science fiction series on the air, mostly without success. Many future cast members of ''Star Trek'' first worked with Roddenberry as regular, or guest, cast members of ''The Lieutenant.'' These formed the backbone of what could be called "Norway Corporation Repertory Company."
But even as an independent producer, Roddenberry continued to have problems; ABC refused to transmit, or even pay for, an installment of ''The Lieutenant'' dealing with racism in the Corps, forcing MGM Television to eat the production costs. Thorougly disgusted, Roddenberry drew the conclusion that he could only get messages across, if he wanted to include them, by disguising them in out-of-the-ordinary situations, as satire, ''a la'' the Reverend Dean Jonathan Swift Jr. in ''Gulliver's Travels.''
''Star Trek''
With this in mind, Roddenberry developed his idea for ''Star Trek'' in 1964 after looking for material to rival Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. The series was finally picked up by Desilu Studios when Gene sold the idea as a "''Wagon Train'' To The Stars". The original $500,000 pilot received only minor support from NBC and its production went over budget, but the network commissioned an unprecedented second pilot. The series, a Norway Corporation production, premiered on September 8, 1966 and ran for three seasons. Although it was canceled due to low ratings, the series gained wide popularity in syndication. In the third and final season of ''Star Trek,'' Roddenberry--who had offered to demote himself to the position of line producer in a final attempt to ensure the show's success if the program was given his desired timeslot--effectively resigned his workload almost entirely when these demands were not met (George Schlatter had demanded that ''Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In'' not be rescheduled from its Monday-night lead-in timeslot, and ''his'' demands were met) and accepted a staff producer position with MGM.
His first project with the studio, ''Pretty Maids All In A Row'', was a sexploitation film adapted from the Francis Pollini novel by Roddenberry and directed by Roger Vadim. With a cast including established stars (Rock Hudson, Angie Dickinson, Telly Savalas, Roddy McDowall) alongside ''Star Trek'' regulars (James Doohan and William Campbell, both of whom were "Norway Corporation Repertory Actors"), and beautiful unknowns (among them Gretchen Burrell, the wife of country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons), the film was expected to be one of the biggest blockbusters of 1971. But even with the support of a ''Playboy'' Magazine pictorial featuring Burrell, the film only managed to break even at the box office. Roddenberry's relationship with MGM was all but terminated because of this, although he did continue to pursue ideas into 1972.
Following the cancellation of ''Star Trek'' and the relative failure of his first feature film, Roddenberry pitched, through Norway Corporation, four sci-fi TV series concepts that all had pilot movies produced but were not picked up: ''The Questor Tapes'', ''Genesis II'', ''Planet Earth'', and ''Strange New World''. (Two of these pilots --''Genesis II'' and ''Planet Earth''-- dealt with the theme of post-apocalyptic societies.) He also co-wrote and was executive producer on the made-for-television movie, ''Spectre'' (1977).
Gene Roddenberry listens to a fan after a lecture at the University of Texas at Austin, in the late 1970s.
Roddenberry's professional lean years
Unable to find work in the television and film industry, facing the possible bankruptcy of Norway Corporation, and fearful that he would be unable to support his family, Roddenberry heeded the advice of his good friend Arthur C. Clarke and began to find steady employment on the college lecture circuit, where contemporaries in a similar predicament, Norway Corporation Repertory Actor William Shatner and Timothy Leary, had both found success. He amused the fandom attendees with anecdotes from the ''Star Trek'' set, spoke of his visions of the future and showed the ''Star Trek Blooper Reels,'' a collection of outtakes from the original series. He also exhibited a black and white print of unaired first series pilot ''The Cage''. The screenings of the blooper reel drew criticism and ire from Norway Corporation Repertory Actor Leonard Nimoy (Spock), who felt that Roddenberry was exploiting his mistakes for money and eventually sued the writer-producer and Paramount for the blooper reel screenings and uncompensated use of his image in a Heineken promotional campaign. The matter would not be resolved till shortly before production of '','' and it was the main reason Nimoy's Spock was not even included in the very first script of that Norway Corporation production.
The ''Enterprise'' is relaunched
Beginning in 1975, go-ahead was given by Paramount for Roddenberry to develop a sequel "Star Trek" television series based around as many of the original cast as could be recruited, which was to be called ''. This series was to be the anchor show of a new network (the ancestor of UPN, which is now part of The CW Television Network), but plans by Paramount for this network were scrapped and plans were changed to do a ''Star Trek'' motion picture.
The resulting '' received a lukewarm critical response, but it performed well at the box office and saved Norway Corporation. As a result, several motion pictures and a new television series, '', were created in the 1980s. Roddenberry was deeply involved with creating and producing ''Star Trek: The Next Generation'', although he ultimately only had full control over the show's first season. The WGA strike of 1988 prevented him from taking an active role in production of the second season, forcing him to hand control of the series to producer Maurice Hurley. While Roddenberry was free to resume work on the third season of the show, his health was in serious decline by this point, and over the course of the season he gradually ceded control to Rick Berman and Michael Piller. ''Star Trek'' also spawned the television series '', '' and '', though none of these programs have been as favorably received as ''Star Trek'' and '' were.
Roddenberry's power is hobbled
When it came time to produce the obligatory sequel, Roddenberry's story submission, in which a time-travelling ''Enterprise'' crew got involved in the John F. Kennedy assassination, was rejected, and he was removed from direct involvement--effectively hobbling the power of Norway Corporation--and replaced by Harve Bennett. Inside Trek: My Secret Life With Star Trek Creator Gene Roddenberry, Susan Sackett, , , HAWK Publishing Group, 2002, ISBN 1-930709-42-0 He continued as executive consultant on the next four motion pictures--'', '', '' and ''. In this position Rodenberry was allowed to view and comment upon all scripts and dailies emanating from the production, although the creative team was free to disregard Roddenberry's advice as Bennett almost always elected to do.
The last film based on the original ''Star Trek'' series, '' was dedicated to Roddenberry's memory; he reportedly viewed a version of the film a few days before his death at the age of 70. [3]
Author! Author!
In addition to his film and TV work, Roddenberry also wrote the novelization for ''Star Trek: The Motion Picture'', which was published in 1979 and was the first of hundreds of ''Star Trek''-based novels to be published by the Pocket Books unit of Simon & Schuster, whose parent company also owned Paramount Pictures Corporation. It has been claimed by some that Alan Dean Foster was the ghostwriter of the book, but this has been debunked by Foster on his personal website and is a classic instance of the broken telephone game, as Foster ''did'' ghostwrite the novelization of George W. Lucas Jr.'s '' and wrote the original treatment of the ''Star Trek'' film. Roddenberry talked of writing a second ''Trek'' novel based upon his original rejected 1975 script for the motion picture, but he died before he was able to do so.
Controversy concerning Roddenberry
Writers on ''Star Trek'' have charged that ideas they developed were later passed off by Roddenberry as his own, or that he lied about their contributions to the show and/or their involvement with Norway Corporation at ''Star Trek'' conventions. Roddenberry was confronted by these writers, and apologized to them, but according to his critics, he would continue the behavior.[4]
In her autobiography, actress Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura in the first ''Star Trek'' series, reported having had a love affair with Roddenberry. She felt that his strong and controversial inclination to get her on the show had a lot to do with their relationship.
Books about the man
Roddenberry's life and work has been chronicled in several works. ''Star Trek Creator: The Authorized Biography of Gene Roddenberry,'' written by friend David Alexander, is a flattering portrayal of Roddenberry's life that was received favorably by most readers, obscuring many of the troubles Roddenberry encountered in his later years. Much more controversial was ''Inside Trek: My Secret Life with Star Trek Creator Gene Roddenberry,'' written by Susan Sackett, his close associate for 17 years. While she displays unwavering affection, respect, and admiration for her employer and apparent lover, Sackett's account is hardly a hagiographic account. Recounted in brutal detail are his elongated dry spells throughout the 1970s, his addiction to cocaine, impotence, inability to finish creative projects, and mental and physical decline from roughly 1989 on.
Despite his reduced management of ''Star Trek'' and the hobbled power of Norway Corporation near the end of his life, Roddenberry was still respected enough that Paramount Pictures, owners of the various ''Star Trek'' series, agreed to his request that the '' be stripped of its official recognition as canon by the studio. According to the reference work ''The Star Trek Chronology'', Roddenberry reportedly considered elements of the fifth and sixth ''Trek'' films to be apocryphal, though there is no indication that he wanted them removed from ''Trek'' canon.
The legacy of Gene Roddenberry
After his death in 1991 in Santa Monica, California, Roddenberry's estate allowed for the creation of two long-running television series based upon some of his previously unfilmed story ideas and concepts. '' and ''Andromeda'' were produced under the guidance of Majel Barrett-Roddenberry. A third Roddenberry storyline was adapted in 1995 as the short-lived comic book ''Gene Roddenberry's Lost Universe''.
The asteroid 4659 Roddenberry, and an Impact crater on Mars are both named in his honor.
On October 4, 2002, the El Paso Independent School District Planetarium was renamed the Gene Roddenberry Planetarium. Eugene W. Roddenberry Jr. cut the ribbon at the dedication ceremony.
Roddenberry's home at birth is at 1907 E. Yandell Street in El Paso where he and his family lived for nearly two years. Now a flower shop in a strip mall, there is a wooden plaque marking the site.
One of the buildings on the CBS Paramount Television studio lot on Beverly Boulevard is the Gene Roddenberry building, housing production and administrative offices.
On June 16, 2007, the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle, Washington inducted Gene Roddenberry into their Science Fiction Hall of Fame, along with director Ridley Scott, artist Ed Emshwiller, and author Gene Wolfe. The presentation was made by actor Wil Wheaton and accepted on behalf of the Roddenberry Family by his son, Eugene W. Roddenberry Jr.
Notes
1. Star Trek Creator: The Authorized Biography of Gene Roddenberry, David Alexander, , , Roc, 1994, ISBN 0-451-45440-5
2. Roddenberry Interview, , , , The Humanist, 1991
3. In ''Star Trek Movie Memories'', which William Shatner dictated and which Chris Kreski transcribed, the chapter in which Shatner told Kreski about the sixth Star Trek motion picture ended with Roddenberry viewing the version in a private screening and promptly drafting a list of changes he wanted made. But by the time his attorney submitted that list, Shatner informed Kreski, Roddenberry himself was dead.
4. Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek, , Joel, Engel, Hyperion Books, 1994,
, books by Star Trek Producer Herb Solow, science-fiction convention talks by Star Trek writer Dorothy C. Fontana, and books and articles by Harlan Ellison.
References
★ ''Star Trek Creator: The Authorized Biography of Gene Roddenberry'', by David Alexander
★ ''Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation'', by Yvonne Fern
★ ''Inside Trek: My Secret Life with Star Trek Creator Gene Roddenberry'', by Susan Sackett
★ ''Great Birds of the Galaxy: Gene Roddenberry and the Creators of Star Trek'', by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman
★ ''The Man Who Created Star Trek: Gene Roddenberry'', by James Van Hise
★ ''Inside Star Trek: The Real Story'', by Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman. ISBN 0671896288.
★ ''Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek'', by Joel Engel
★ ''Star Trek Memories'', dictated by William Shatner and transcribed by Chris Kreski. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-017734-9. Published 1993.
★ ''Star Trek Movie Memories'', dictated by William Shatner and transcribed by Chris Kreski. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-017617-2. Published 1994.
★ ''I Am Not Spock'', by Leonard Nimoy. ISBN 9780890871171. Published 1977.
★ ''I Am Spock'', by Leonard Nimoy. ISBN 9780786861828.
★ ''Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories'', by Nichelle Nichols. ISBN 1572970111. Published 1995.
★ ''To The Stars: The Autobiography of George Takei: Star Trek's Mr Sulu'', by George Takei. ISBN 0-671-89008-5. Published 1994.
★ ''Beam Me Up, Scotty: Star Trek's "Scotty" in his own words'', dictated by James Doohan and transcribed by Peter David. ISBN 0-671-52056-3.
★ ''Warped Factors: A Neurotic's Guide to the Universe'', by Walter Koenig. ISBN-10 0878339914; ISBN-13 978-0878339914.
★ ''The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy'', dictated by Grace Lee Whitney and transcribed by Jim Denney. ISBN-10 188495605X; ISBN-13 978-1884956058. Published
External links
★ Official Roddenberry family website
★ Eugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberry
★ The Museum of Broadcast Communication
★ Roddenberry's original March 1964 pitch outline for Star Trek
★ Originally published in ''The Humanist'', March/April 1991
★ Strange New Worlds: The Humanist Philosophy of Star Trek by Robert Bowman, ''Christian Research Journal'', Fall 1991, pp. 20 ff.
★
★
★
★ Gene Roddenberry Planetarium
★ StarTrek.com biography
★ Website of Susan Sackett
★ Retrovisionmag on Roddenberry's The Questor Tapes.
★ Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda
★ The Official Roddenberry Productions Myspace Maintained by the Roddenberry.Com Team.
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