Drive-In Dream Girls: Star Trek's First and Second Yeoman

Tom Lisanti's Drive-In Dream Girls: A Galaxy of B-Movie Starlets of the Sixties (2012) will primarily be of interest to Star Trek fans for its interviews with Laurel Goodwin and Andrea Dromm, Grace Lee Whitney's predecessors in the role of the Captain's Yeoman in 'The Menagerie' and 'Where No Man Has Gone Before.' The two actresses have rarely been interviewed about their roles on Star Trek, and provide some valuable insight into their experiences on the show. That being said, the book includes a few inaccuracies and some faulty memories in the chapters devoted to these two actresses which should be corrected before they become part of the popular myth of the making of Star Trek.

For example, consider the following passage about Laurel Goodwin, who appeared as Yeoman Colt in the first pilot episode:

After the pilot was complete, it was shown to all three networks, who passed on it. NBC, though, thought it had potential, but they felt it was too surreal and that the audience would not accept a woman as second in command. NBC commissioned a second pilot. All the actors were dropped except for Leonard Nimoy and Goodwin. Two weeks before filming began, Goodwin learned that she too was being let go. 'I was not replaced--the role was just dropped. I was mad because I missed out on other work during the pilot season from the previous year.'

--Tom Lisanti, Drive-In Dream Girls: A Galaxy of B-Movie Starlets of the Sixties (2012), p.41

The phrasing here suggests that Desilu produced Star Trek and then tried to sell it to one of the three networks, but that's not what happened. Desilu knew going into Star Trek that the series would be an expensive venture (indeed, the final cost of 'The Menagerie' was $615,781.56), and couldn't have afforded the series pilot without the financial backing of one of the networks. Luckily, after CBS turned down the program, NBC decided gave Star Trek a pilot commitment. Although the end result wasn't what they were looking for, NBC saw enough potential that they agreed to finance a second pilot episode, which became 'Where No Man Has Gone Before.' It's unlikely that ABC or CBS were ever screened either pilot, since it was an NBC program from early on in the development process.

Moreover, the claim that NBC "would not accept a woman as second in command" has been disputed, most notably in Herb Solow and Bob Justman's Inside Star Trek: The Real Story (1996). Solow and Justman maintain that NBC were perfectly happy with a strong female lead -- they just didn't like Majel Barrett. Roddenberry, not wanting to re-cast the role he had written for his mistress, chose to drop Number One entirely -- although he would later blame the network for this decision.

Laurel Goodwin as Yeoman Colt in "The Menagerie (1964)

The claim that "All the actors were dropped except for Leonard Nimoy and Goodwin" is simply false. None of the actors who worked on the first pilot had options for a second pilot in their contracts. When NBC ordered a second pilot rather than a series, the entire cast became free agents. Even Leonard Nimoy, who continued on with the series, had to negotiate a new contract, dated June 2, 1965 (read more about this in the post and comments here).

When it comes to Goodwin's statement that she wasn't told about being dropped from the series until two weeks before the second pilot went before the cameras (which would have been sometime in early July 1965, since photography of 'Where No Man Has Gone Before' commenced on July 19, 1965), I have to view this with some skepticism. Although Roddenberry was notorious for putting off the delivery of bad news, Colt had already been replaced by Yeoman Smith in the earliest teleplay of 'Where No Man Has Gone' Before (dated May 27, 1965).

Secondly, Goodwin's claim that she couldn't find work because of her commitment to Star Trek is at least partially incorrect. In the UCLA files there is an April 8, 1965 letter from Goodwin's agent to Ed Perlstein at Desilu which establishes terms in which Desilu agreed to take "second position" to Revue Studios (a subsidiary of Universal) while Goodwin auditioned for a Revue pilot. Goodwin didn't get the part (an unspecified role on the series Tammy, which was broadcast for one season from 1965-66), but that shouldn't be blamed on Star Trek.

Andrea Dromm as Yeoman Smith in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (1965)

The chapter on Andrea Dromm has less to say about Star Trek, and only one claim worth examining here. Explaining why she didn't stick with the series, the book offers the following:

The character of Yeoman Smith was to become a regular on the series, but Dromm passed on it. Explaining her decision, Andrea Dromm says matter-of-factly, 'I was offered a role in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. They told me that you either do the film or the series. I chose the film, but if I had known that Star Trek would become such a phenomenon, I probably would have opted for the series.'

--Tom Lisanti, Drive-In Dream Girls: A Galaxy of B-Movie Starlets of the Sixties (2012), p.16

It's been nearly fifty years, so it's possible Dromm's memory is a bit fuzzy, but her account doesn't line up with the archival record. The following excerpt (dated April 11, 1966) of a letter from Roddenberry to Dromm (via her agent) can be found in the Roddenberry collection at UCLA:

Due to changes in format, budget structure, and character concepts, we cannot pick up a number of options, including yours. But we do hope that "Yeoman Smith" will reappear in future stories and hope we will be fortunate enough to find you interested and available at that time.

Roddenberry's suggestion that Yeoman Smith might appear in future stories was probably an empty gesture. He used the same boilerplate languages in the letters releasing Paul Fix and James Doohan from their contracts, which were sent on the same day (read more about James Doohan's fight to stay on Star Trek here).

Despite these mistakes, this post should not be interpreted too negatively. Lisanti's book presents interviews with a number of actresses who have never been asked to speak about their careers in detail. Laurel Goodwin's account of Majel Barrett's on-set relationship with Gene Roddenberry and Andrea Dromm's appraisal of the executive producer (which contradicts James Goldstone's account, from Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, that Gene Roddenberry only cast Dromm because he wanted to "score" with her) will be of interest to any Star Trek fans who want to know more about the production history of the series. Additionally, other actresses who appeared on the program, including Angelique Pettyjohn ('Gamesters of Triskelion'), Arlene Martel ('Amok Time'), Venita Wolf ('The Squire of Gothos'), Beverly Washburn ('The Deadly Years'), Sharyn Hillyer ('A Piece of the Action'), and Valora Noland ('Patterns of Force') are profiled by the book as well.

Author's Note: I recently signed on as a contributor to the pop culture website What Culture. My first post (a Star Trek-themed list, of course) is now online. Don't worry, though -- I'm not about to abandon Star Trek Fact Check. In fact, real life permitting, my research for this year is just getting started. Be seeing you.

Images courtesy of Trek Core.

Sources:

The Gene Roddenberry Star Trek Television Series Collection (1964-1969)

Inside Star Trek : The Real Story (Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman, 1996)

Drive-In Dream Girls: A Galaxy of B-Movie Starlets of the Sixties (Tom Lisanti, 2012)

A Few Thoughts on These Are The Voyages, TOS, Season One (Revised and Expanded Edition)

Three months ago, I published a less than enthusiastic review of Marc Cushman’s These Are The Voyages, TOS, Season One, which quickly became the most read item on this blog. In that review, I advised readers to wait for a second edition, and hoped that it would address the book’s many problems. Less than six months after These Are The Voyages was first published, a “revised and expanded” second edition hasbeen made available.

I can’t publish a review of this revised volume, because I haven’t picked it up. Thanks to a lengthy sample which can be read on Amazon, however, I can express a few thoughts about the second edition and the book in general.

In my review of the first edition, I criticized These Are The Voyages for being sloppily proofread. Cushman downplays this issue in his revised author’s note, writing, “Some errors were also found in regards to copy editing.” This is quite the understatement, but I can happily report that the sample pages from the second edition have been much more thoroughly proofread than the first edition. A few typos can be found (e.g. “Mr. Distract Attorney” instead of Mr. District Attorney or “Line-Up” instead of The Lineup), but they are few and far between.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the book’s more serious problems appear to be fully intact. Minor factual errors still abound, the author continues to conflate his own speculation with verified fact, the editing remains lackluster, and the book is still illustrated with fan-restored photographs that were taken without permission.

Consider, for example, the number of factual errors that slip into Cushman’s account of NBC and Desilu before Star Trek. In one passage, he writes:

Los Angeles contributed the filmed series, with The Lone Ranger being the first western, Dragnet the first cop show, and I Love Lucy the first sitcom, all shot on film.

Cushman is right about The Lone Ranger and Dragnet, but he’s wrong about I Love Lucy. The earliest sitcom to be shot on film was actually The Amos ‘n Andy Show, which was piloted a full month before I Love Lucy, and went to air on June 28, 1951, four months ahead of Lucy Ricardo’s debut in ‘The Girls Want to Go to a Nightclub,’ which was broadcast on October 15, 1951.

Discussing the early days of Desilu, Cushman mangles the facts and repeats a popular myth about Desi Arnaz and I Love Lucy, writing:

Desi [Arnaz] had a better idea. He had watched the way live sitcoms from New York, such as The Honeymooners, were being shot before studio audiences with three video cameras running at once, each aimed at a range of wide and close-up shots. His idea was to use the same approach but substitute film cameras for those which fed out a live video signal.

Desi Arnaz couldn’t have been influenced by The Honeymooners. The show didn’t exist as a standalone sitcom until 1955, and as a recurring sketch on Cavalcade of Stars, it didn’t debut until October 5, 1951. By that point, there were already five episodes of I Love Lucy in the can, along with the unaired pilot, which had been made more than seven months earlier.

Moreover, Arnaz shouldn’t be credited with the three-camera filming system. The first television series to shoot on 35mm film, using multiple cameras, in front of a live studio audience, and on a regular basis was Truth or Consequences, a game show which debuted in 1950. The three-camera system on Truth or Consequences was set up by associate producer Al Simon, who later worked with cinematographer Karl Freund to set up the three-camera system used on I Love Lucy.

Writing about the sale of I Love Lucy’s rerun rights to CBS in 1956, Cushman writes:

Desi sold the I Love Lucy rerun rights to CBS for a cool million and then set out to buy a studio, ending Desilu’s need to rent space and materials.

In actuality, Arnaz sold the rights to rebroadcast I Love Lucy to CBS for five million dollars.

Later, when describing the history of NBC, where Star Trek eventually landed, Cushman writes:

In 20 years of broadcasting, the network [NBC] had never aired anything even remotely resembling science fiction

The author’s larger point is that a sf program like Star Trek was unlike anything else on NBC’s broadcasting schedule in the middle of the 1960s, which is certainly correct, but his hyperbolic assertion that NBC had never show “anything even remotely resembling science fiction” until Star Trek is simply false. Indeed, sf programs broadcast on NBC during this period include:

Tom Corbett, Space Cadet (aired on NBC, 1951)
Operation Neptune (aired on NBC, 1953)
Atom Squad (aired on NBC, 1953 - 1954)
Commander Cody (theatrical serial syndicated on NBC, 1955)
Fireball XL5 (aired on NBC, 1963 - 1965)

These programs, of course, don’t account for any of the feature films that NBC broadcast in the 1950s and early 1960s. I don’t have a listing of these titles, but I would be willing to be that at least one resembled science fiction.

This is far from the only time that Cushman exaggerates in the book. Elsewhere in the sample pages, he claims that Gene Roddenberry “change[d] the course of network television.” Star Trek has become a cultural touchstone, and has influenced a number of subsequent television programs, but I’d be hard-pressed to explain how it changed the course of network television.

Beyond hyperbole, These Are The Voyages continues to have the problem of conflating the author’s speculation with established fact. For example, he writes:

James Goldstone, a well-regarded TV director, was offered the job [of directing the first pilot]. Roddenberry knew him from The Lieutenant. Solow, on behalf of Desilu, approved of the choice. So did the network. But Goldstone had a ‘scheduling conflict.’ A man with no reputation could find one at Star Trek. An established reputation, however, could be ruined with a job like this.

It is unclear where Cushman got the idea that Goldstone’s scheduling conflict was disingenuous, since he doesn’t cite a source. Even if he did, however, the idea makes little sense. If Goldstone was worried about working on an expensive science fiction show which would stretch a network television budget, why did he direct episodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and The Outer Limits? If he was worried about being blamed for the failure of an expensive pilot, why did he agree to direct ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before,’ less than a year after passing on ‘The Menagerie?’

Elsewhere in the sample pages, when discussing Roddenberry’s affairs, Cushman writes:

Even before any of the lovers went public, the rumors were rampant and quite a few made it back to the network. It was a touchy subject in 1963, so much so that executives at MGM and NBC were nervously not seeing, not hearing and, except behind closed doors, not speaking about these matters.

Once again, without a source, it’s hard to figure out how Cushman knows what happened behind closed doors at MGM and NBC in 1963.

Lastly, there’s the subject of the photographs used to illustrate the book. Cushman downplays the controversy in his revised author’s note:

On the few instances when two fan sites either claimed credit for the restoration of an image or legal justification to contribute the image to this work, both sites have been listed.

Contrary to this note, the issue was not isolated to a “few instances,” but was rampant throughout the first edition. I cannot speak to the extent of the changes to the photo credits in the revised and expanded edition of These Are The Voyages, since I have only seen the sample pages, although it is odd that the source of the cover image (probably taken from here) is not credited. I can, however, speak to the fact that neither the publisher , nor the author, have bothered to contact Star Trek History or birdofthegalaxy to try and sort out the controversy. Their behavior in this matter has been and continues to be unethical. I cannot in good conscience recommend the book because of it.

Thanks to TrekBBS users Maurice (who helped me revise this post considerably) and plynch (who has provided me with a lot of information about self-publishing, which has been particularly helpful in evaluating These Are The Voyages; he is the author of the book Live Like Louis!, which is available for purchase here).