by George Takei
Jack and I watched, paralyzed. Before our eyes, we saw the wrenching spectacle of our city in rampage, bloodied people shaking angry fists at the camera, wild-eyed faces lit up by the flame of burning buildings. We felt the searing rage that blasted out from the screen.
But we were also watching a larger horror—we were witnessing the cataclysmic collapse of the great American illusion. The illusion that separation and equality can be maintained with doled-out tokens, that hope can be sustained on propped-up ideals, that order can be kept with assuaging promises. We were watching the terrible failure of promises too long delayed; despair could no longer be repressed. The full incendiary weight of this history was exploding before our eyes and burning up in flames.
I looked over to Jack. The blue light of the screen flickered wildly across his stoic face, staring fixed at the chaos. And I saw tears streaming down his cheeks. A paralyzing anguish gripped me. My friend was in pain, in silent, excruciating torment, and there was nothing I could do. Everything we had struggled for was going up in flames. Jack was in agony, and all I could do was sit there with him. I reached out and embraced him gently as our world was lit by the fires of chaos. And Jack broke.
“I’m angry, George,” he sobbed. “I’m so angry I could be out there with them right now. I’m so angry I could pick up a brick and throw it at anything.”
Jack was trembling with uncontrollable despair. This was a man of achievement, a man who moved as easily among academicians as among the power elite of New York. And yet, at his very core, I could feel the anger of a black man in America. I felt Jack’s anguish break and shake through my own body, the pent-up anguish of a lifetime of subtle but penetrating slights, of deaf ears turned against whispered affronts, of exquisitely refined devaluations for no discernible reason but color. Jack’s anger was no longer containable, no more than the rage pouring out on the streets of the city. I felt it break and convulse through me. And I heard my sobs joining with his.
Throughout the night, Los Angeles continued to be mangled and broken and set aflame. My beloved hometown was going up in smoke. And with it went the innocence of an America that believed it could change with moral suasion.
The country passed from a time of demonstrations and protests to a period of radicalism and nihilism. Idealists disillusioned transmogrify into harrowing creatures. They become deadly zealots. My dim memory of the militant pro-Japan radicals of Tule Lake internment camp began taking on denser shape as I watched the emergence of the Black Panthers, the Weathermen, and the Simbionese Liberation Army.
The most remarkable phenomenon I watched, however, occurred with my dearest friends. Josie and Jack picked themselves up and got to work building the idea of a theater of the people. At a time of horrifying extremism—kidnappings, bombings, and radical racial nationalism—they held their original vision intact. They intensified their determination to turn an ideal into reality, to create a truly multiethnic American theater. They were joined in this effort by two Asian-American women, Elaine Kashiki and Jeanne Joe. They named the project the Inner City Cultural Center.
I wanted to throw myself into this challenge with them. I shared the vision and the goal. The idea of an American culture, strengthened by its diversity instead of balkanized by it, must not become just another experiment that was tried and then discarded as a failed notion. I was convinced that unity in diversity was at the very core of America’s future. The struggle for a multiethnic theater would be hard, but nothing of worth is easily won. We had to redouble our efforts. This was the continuation of our Fly Blackbird! dream.
But at this point, another dream entered my life. It was a vision of that same pluralistic world, but situated in, of all places, a spaceship and shot up to the stars. This fantastical dream came into my life on a telephone call and sent me soaring into the galaxy.
THE TREK BEGINS
13
Meeting Mr. Rosenbury
THERE IS A COMMON, EVERYDAY sound as ordinary as a ringing doorbell or a percolating coffeepot. But this simple noise seems to have as many disguises as a ventriloquist’s voice. It can become a golden trumpet or a shrill alarum. It can chill with dread or sparkle with excitement. This same sound can signal an end as well as a beginning. The turning points in my life have been heralded by this multifarious noise. It is the sound of a ringing telephone. STAR TREK began for me with that chameleon ringing.
As a matter of fact, I almost missed it. Another sound intruded. I had just come in from my morning run around my Wilshire district neighborhood and was under the shower. There is something about the resonance of the shower stall and the dreamy caress of the steam that invariably gets me to crooning like Sinatra. Thankfully, the water’s rush keeps me from really hearing myself. But that morning, it also kept me from hearing the phone. It must have been ringing for quite some time when I thought I heard a distant ringing. I listened. It sure sounded like the phone. I turned off the water. It was.
Dripping wet and a little annoyed, I picked up the receiver. It was my agent, Fred Ishimoto.
“Oh, you’re there,” he greeted with surprise in his voice. Of course I’m here, I thought to myself. Why else would he be talking to me. An irksome way to begin a conversation.
“George, I’ve got an interview for you tomorrow morning at Desilu Studios. Can you make it?” Fred is direct and very businesslike.
“Tell me something about it,” I asked. The droplets running down my body were starting to turn cold. It was a pilot for a series, he explained. A space thing, something about the future. My part would be great. I was to meet the creator/producer, a Gene Roddenberry. I took down the information on a notepad that quickly turned wet and messy.
“Can you make it, George?” he repeated. I told him I would.
“Good, good, good. And how are things otherwise?” he added. It sounded more perfunctory than concerned.
I explained to him that I was wet, naked, and getting a little bit uncomfortable.
“Oh, that’s what took you so long to answer your phone,” he chuckled. “Well then, back to your beauty bath.” I thanked him, hung up, and tiptoed back to the shower. The warm spray felt good. Then it occurred to me. I had forgotten to ask Fred the name of the series.
* * *
Desilu Studios was the old RKO Studios. Those letters R, K, and O stood for Radio-Keith-Orpheum, a company that started out operating a circuit of vaudeville theaters. In a town not noted for stability, this lot had seen more ups and downs than almost any other studio in Hollywood. It was in decline when Howard Hughes, the legendary billionaire, bought it in 1948 for a little less than nine million dollars. He then built it up, created stars like Jane Russell, and, true to legend, sold it a few years later to General Tire and Rubber Corporation for twenty-five million dollars.
Under this new management, inexperienced in the vagaries of show business, the studio’s fortunes again ebbed. It wasn’t until Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz hit it big with their spectacularly popular comedy series, I Love Lucy, that this misused and frequently dispossessed film factory found a happier existence. Lucy and Desi had decided to go into the operation of a studio themselves, and the old lot got another lease on life. They had picked it up for a mere five million dollars. Fifteen soundstages and fourteen acres of prime Hollywood real estate. This was the studio where Lucille Ball had once been under contract back in the 1930s at fifty dollars a week, where Desi Arnaz had been looked upon only as another Latin singer-musician useful mainly for musical numbers. This was the studio where they had toiled as mere hired talent. Now, they were the lord and lady of their own motion picture domain—history, legend, dusty backlot, and all.
One of the first things they did was to completely repaint the great studio walls that surrounded the lot; and high above, near the corner of Melrose Avenue and Gower Street, in bright, bold letters, they painted the word Desilu, an acronym formed by their two names.
I looked up at that word as I walked toward the bungalow office of the man I was
to meet. It can really happen in this unpredictable business, I thought. A chorus-line redhead from Jamestown, New York, and an immigrant Cuban conga drum player can rise to become modern-day movie moguls giving their own names to a studio. It’s a crazy business, I thought, where dreams still come true.
I wondered what this interview with this producer could mean to my career. Fred said it was a pilot film. That meant if it sold, it would be steady employment. And I was to meet the man who could make me a regular working actor. What was his name? I pulled out the water-crinkled sheet that I had torn off the notepad by the telephone. It had gotten crumpled in my pocket, but the handwriting was pretty illegible to begin with, and the water smears on it didn’t help much, either. I just couldn’t make out for sure what I had written down. I tried to recall how it had sounded on the phone in my conversation with Fred the previous morning. I seemed to remember the sound better than I was able to decipher this sorry-looking squiggle I had written down. Before I knew it, I had reached the producer’s bungalow. The number on the door confirmed I had reached the right place, but there was no name to go with it. So, name or no name, I walked into the receptionist’s office.
A lady with a soft, welcoming smile was sitting behind a desk plate that read D. C. Fontana.
“Morning,” I said. “George Takei here to see Mr. Rosenbury, please.”
She smiled gently and corrected, “That’s Gene Roddenberry,” with careful emphasis on the pronunciation of his last name. “Please have a seat.”
Oh, great, I thought, I’m really starting off right on this one. I’m blowing the producer’s name even before I meet the man. And this could mean a series, too. At that moment, I started to feel the first wave of nervousness.
I leafed through a few copies of Daily Variety and Hollywood Reporter lying on the coffee table. But I couldn’t read a word. The possibility of regular employment in a series was increasingly tantalizing. Guest roles in episodic shows were fine, but the long, frustrating stretches of unemployment in between were killers. A running role in a series—that’s nirvana in Hollywood! The more my imagination teased me, the more my nervousness increased. I flipped a page quickly, a fidgety attempt at nonchalance.
I looked up at the receptionist and smiled casually. She smiled back. Immediately, I was convinced she saw through my cover. I knew she knew. Otherwise, why would her smile seem so solicitously reassuring, so exaggeratedly encouraging. Be cool, I told myself. Be cool. I tried a wink on her. She smiled back ever so gently. This time it seemed touched with downright concern. Did she think I had a nervous twitch? I’d better stay with smiling. I smiled. “He won’t be too long,” she reassured. Her smile looked even sunnier and doubly unnerving. There were a lot of tense smiles exchanged before the intercom finally, mercifully buzzed. What a beautiful sound. What a relief! She pointed to the big door. “Mr. Roddenberry can see you now.” She smiled that smile again.
“Hi. I’m Gene Roddenberry.” The voice had the heartiness of a host welcoming a dinner guest. The large, genial man who rose up from behind a desk and came forward to greet me had the affability of a country squire. “Why don’t we sit down over there,” he said, indicating a comfortable sofa in the corner of the office.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting. I hope it wasn’t too long.”
“Oh, no, not at all,” I lied. “Had a chance to get caught up on the trade papers.” My palms were sweaty.
“Oh good, I’m glad. By the way, George, how do you pronounce that last name of yours? Is it Takai?” He pronounced it “Tah-kah-ee.” It is a frequent mispronunciation of my name.
“No, it is pronounced Takei,” I corrected. “It rhymes with okay.”
“Oh, okay. Takei as in okay. Takei is okay,” he laughed.
“I might tell you, however,” I added, “that Takai, as you pronounced it, is a legitimate Japanese word.”
“Oh, really? What does it mean?” he asked.
“Well, it translates into English as ‘expensive.’ ”
“Oh my God!” he roared. “I’d better make sure I call you Takei. Takei is definitely okay.”
I instantly liked this man. He was unlike any other producer I had met—spontaneous, unaffected. He was comfortable. I hadn’t intended to, but I found myself telling him about the problem I had with his name.
“Rosenbury!” he guffawed. “I had a feeling it might happen to me sooner or later in this business, but I never expected a Japanese to make me Jewish. Please call me Gene,” he said, underscoring his folksy approach to business meetings.
He then began to sketch out for me the proposal series concept. Time: the twenty-third century. Place: aboard a huge spaceship, larger than the largest oceanliner, populated with personnel representative of the many racial groups on this planet. A spaceship earth. Format: the adventure of exploration and discovery, mankind’s eternal frontier projected into the galaxies. The drama would encompass not only encounters and confrontations with alien beings and civilizations but with ourselves and our own civilizations. It would examine the familiar from fresh perspectives and explore the unfamiliar, not with fear or territorial imperative, but with open curiosity and an appetite for knowledge.
In his disarmingly amiable way, he had me dazzled. I was swept away, not just by the images but by his soaring ideas.
Then he began on the character for which I was being considered. His name was Sulu, a bright, young officer on board this ship. He was to be of pan-Asian heritage representative of that huge part of the world. There was a profile sketch of this character, but he was not yet fully defined. “What is sure is that he will be a strong, sharp, and likable character,” Gene was quick to add. He seemed almost apologetic. “Believe me,” he reassured, “he will be an officer carrying his weight on this ship.”
I was astounded. Did he think I was somehow disappointed that the character was not yet complete? As sketched already, this character was a breakthrough role for Asian Americans. Hollywood, and especially television, had a long history of stereotypical depictions of Asian men as buffoons, menials, or menaces. I, who had agonized over taking some parts and who had lost work because I would not play certain roles, could not believe what I was hearing. This producer was sheepishly apologizing for the best opportunity I had yet come across. Then he added, “The actor who plays Sulu will certainly help fill out the character.” This unassuming man was actually inviting the actor’s participation in his project. It took everything in me to control my excitement.
Then, he shifted the conversation to books we had read, current events, and recent movies we had seen. As we talked some more, I tried as gracefully as I could to veneer my excitement with some semblance of professionalism. I shared with him my interest in his project and my hope that I might be on board with it; I wished him well, shook hands, and left.
This was unbelievable. This project was a quantum leap ahead of anything on the air, the role, a real trailblazer. And this was really happening to me! At twenty-seven years old, did I at last have my chance at the brass ring? I was lightheaded. As I almost dance-walked between the soundstages of this studio once owned by Howard Hughes, now owned by performers who once toiled here as hirelings, the electric charge of my excitement tingled uncontrollably. It can happen in this crazy business. I can get that role.
It wasn’t until I had walked back across the studio lot almost to the Desilu sign again that it struck me. I had forgotten to ask Gene the title of the project. I still didn’t know what the series was going to be called.
* * *
“Fred, what is this science fiction pilot called, anyway?” I asked my agent over lunch.
I had rushed over to Fred’s office directly from the studio, just in time for him to invite me out. An unemployed actor develops an impeccable sense of timing. The Beverly Hills Hamburger Hamlet was a short stroll down Sunset Boulevard from his office. It was a new place that Fred favored for relaxing as well as for doing business. The lunchtime rush there was so crushed and noisy with people
table-hopping and waving to each other that I don’t know how anyone got anything done, much less relaxed. But they did serve great lobster bisque. It was while eating this savory soup that I learned the series was called STAR TREK.
“It’s a good title,” Fred pronounced. “STAR TREK. It’s short, it sings, and, most of all, it’s easy to remember.”
I agreed, trying to maintain some aura of professional cool. With all the suspense involved in my finally learning the title, I told him it wasn’t likely I would forget it.
“Well, let me tell you,” Fred warned, “the suspense isn’t over yet. As a matter of fact, it’s only beginning. First, you have to cinch the part. That’s still a question mark.” Fred was not intentionally tactless. He was just by nature artlessly direct. He simply did not believe in dressing up an unpalatable truth. “Then the pilot’s got to sell. That’s a toughie anyway,” he continued. “But for something as far out as this space thing, it’s really shooting craps. So maybe it sells. That’s when the pins-and-needles suspense really begins.”
He noticed that I didn’t appear uplifted by this line of conversation. Quickly he added, “But you’re lucky, George. Don’t worry about it. I have good vibes about this one for you.”
I knew he meant well. But I remembered he had had good vibes about the last television pilot I made, as well, a project titled House on K Street, about a master criminologist played by Academy Award-winner Dean Jagger. I played his “brilliant and trusty young assistant,” according to the script. Fred had great vibes on that one too. It never sold.
“Who are some of the other actors being interviewed besides me for STAR TREK?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But I would say you have a good, good chance at it.” Fred was trying to be encouraging. It sounded too glib and much too on cue. I knew he knew, and I knew he wasn’t telling. And he knew I knew.