There was much more Justman didn’t like. He wrote:
I think all dialogue and usage of such terms such as “Roger,” “Wilco,” “over and out,” etc., should be gone over and brought up to date with the terminology we have established in the series. (RJ17-5)
Roger that. Coon made the changes.
Justman continued:
Bailey sees a full-grown Bengal Tiger. Whatever beast he sees, he will have to see it in CUTAWAY. Unless, of course, you want to screw around working with a full-grown Bengal tiger on location or on stage. In which case, include me out. (RJ17-5)
Bailey was changed to Rodriguez. Other than that, Coon did want to screw around with a full-grown Bengal tiger on location. Justman would be proven right -- it went terribly wrong (see “Production Diary”).
Sturgeon was still determined to show the workings of the factory underground, where all the manifestations of the crew’s fantasies were brought to life. Justman was equally determined that this would not happen, and wrote:
I definitely feel we cannot afford to build the set as indicated. Couldn’t we just DISSOLVE IN the Custodian on location and have done with the enormous expense of building the special rock set and all the special effects routines needed to operate it? (RJ17-5)
This too would be changed by Coon.
Kellam de Forest gave notes, as well. He was adamant that this planet could not look as described, which was devoid of both animals and insects. He wrote:
Lush and complete vegetation is ecologically impossible without insect life. (KDF17)
Coon changed a couple lines of dialogue. The planet was now devoid of only “animal life.” De Forest continued:
The “White Knight” is currently an advertising gimmick of AJAX. To avoid commercial identification and possible derogation, suggest White Knight used not be similar to White Knight of the commercials, e. g. have him on a black horse. (KDF17)
The White Knight, then, became the Black Knight. Not only was his horse changed from white to black but so were his staff and much of the body armor he wore. At this time, Coon was not about to debate the issue -- Ajax was a much more powerful force in television than Star Trek.
Roddenberry had notes for Coon, too, writing:
I like the fantasy of this show. We don’t have anything else like it. LET’S DO IT -- with revisions.... We wind up the script very quickly - all the answers pat. But there are strings dangling -- Ruth for one. And… Finnegan for another. Kirk is [still] not so active in this show -- except he keeps getting beat up by Finnegan. I’d like to see him moving and doing and solving.... Why are all these pleasant fancies by our people getting to be pretty darn destructive to them? Is this our Theme?...Why is Kirk taking all this time over fighting with Finnegan? What about Ruth -- wouldn’t he rather wrestle with her? What is Kirk proving with Finnegan anyway? He keeps getting clobbered by the guy. (GR17-6)
Roddenberry and Coon put their heads together, came up with answers they both liked -- Kirk wants to get back to Ruth and he will get back to Ruth, but Finnegan teases him with riddles and seems to have answers and this keeps our Captain chasing after him. And while Kirk does take a beating from Finnegan, in the end it is Kirk who beats the tar out of his fantasy, something he always wanted to do. As for the theme, it was sharpened to make the statement that fantasies can prove to be harmful if not kept in check. And this would now be revealed in the end.
Coon took a turn at the writing, with the Yellow Cover 1st Draft from October 3 and the Final Draft from October 14, with revised pages dated October 17.
Stan Robertson read Coon’s handling of the script. Many of the NBC man’s previous reservations had been resolved but one still remained. In a phone call to Roddenberry, not Coon, Robertson expressed his concerns over the more fantastic elements of the story. To receive network acceptance, those elements had to be toned down.
Roddenberry agreed to the terms. There was just one problem: he forgot to tell Coon.
Pre-Production
October 11-14 & 17-18, 1966 (6 days prep).
While the rewriting process continued, Robert Justman was arranging locations for “Shore Leave.” This was only the second episode to shoot on location rather than on a soundstage (“Miri” being the first). The primary site was Africa USA, a wildlife preserve 40 miles north of Los Angeles. The secondary location, Vasquez Rocks, was less than a half-hour’s drive from the first. Both properties were owned and operated by Ralph Helfer, a highly proficient animal trainer for film and TV, and his wife Toni.
Robert Sparr, hired to direct, had begun his career on TV’s Lassie. He then moved to Warner Bros. where he was assigned episodes of Cheyenne, Bronco, 77 Sunset Strip, and Hawaiian Eye. He was also a film editor, having cut several episodes of The Wild, Wild West in 1965, as well as directing for that series. In 1966, he proved good at fast-paced action sequences with The Rat Patrol.
Joe D’Agosta, with input from Sparr, booked the supporting cast.
Emily Banks on Bewitched (Screen Gems Television, 1972) (From cosmicduckling.com)
Emily Banks, selected to play Yeoman Tonia Barrows, began taking modeling jobs to help pay the tuition for her schooling in Boston. Business Administration was her planned vocation, but those modeling jobs brought unexpected dividends. In 1960, Banks won the title of “Miss Rheingold” and appeared in advertisements for the beer maker, and that led to steady work in both print and TV ads. She said, “I was living in New York by then. I guess I had the right look for that time. I did, like, 16 Alcoa [vinyl flooring] commercials -- ‘Dancing through your kitchen’ -- and about 17 or 18 Salem [cigarettes] commercials. I did Pepsodent [toothpaste] and every Proctor and Gamble thing you could imagine. I used to get hired to do some of the new fashions, too, when they would do a showing, because they wanted an All-American Girl. Eventually, I had to leave New York because I had 38 commercials on the air and I was so saturated that I couldn’t do any more. So, I came out here and signed with Universal in ’66.” (9a)
Universal got its money out of Banks, putting her to work in five productions in a single year, including The Plainsman, starring Don Murray, and Gunfight in Abilene, with second billing to lead Bobby Darin (and a screenplay by Star Trek’s John D.F. Black).
Once free of her studio contract, Banks picked a slew of Los Angeles TV ads before getting a reading at Star Trek. She said, “I came in for an audition and all I got to see were just a couple pages of the script. I really didn’t know anything about the show, and I knew nothing about the script; I just knew my part; that I was supposed to be Dr. McCoy’s love interest. I read with Joe D’Agosta [who did McCoy’s lines]. He was a doll, and so nice. Gene Roddenberry and Gene Coon were there, and I remember that I didn’t have to go back for a second reading. I knew I got the job.” (9a)
Bruce Mars as a rascal named Finnegan (Unaired film trim courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
Bruce Mars, who played Finnegan, one of three turns on Star Trek, said, “I came from New York, as every other actor did, where I’d appeared in summer stock and off Broadway things, then showed up in California with those credits behind me and a few numbers for people to call. And for some reason, the karma was good and I went to work now and then, in between starving and trying to feed my dog. I’d known Joe D’Agosta from when he was casting Rawhide and we just hit it off and he gave me a little role there. He was a super, super guy. We kept in touch and he got me the meeting at Star Trek.” (113a)
Mars tried out for the role of Lt. Bailey in “The Corbomite Maneuver” but director Joseph Sargent preferred Anthony Call for that part. To help keep Mars and his dog from starving, D’Agosta gave the struggling actor a day’s work as a background extra playing a crewman. D’Agosta was determined to find something worthy of Mars’ talents. “And then up came this character,” Mars recalled, “and Joe said, ‘Come on in; do a reading for this.’ So I went in and just nailed that baby. And I got the job right on the spot.” (113a)
Mars did indeed nail Finnegan, and D’Agost
a would bring him back as a bewildered 20th Century New York City cop in the second-season episode “Assignment: Earth.”
Oliver McGowan, the Caretaker, was 59. He had over 100 filmed appearances between 1957 and 1970, usually as doctors, military officers, sheriffs, and governors.
Perry Lopez, as Esteban Rodriguez, was 35. He would amass around 100 credits in both film and on TV, starting in 1954. Along with Zorro and Wagon Train, he had noticeable parts in features such as 1962's Taras Bulba. From here, he went on to play the prominent role of Lt. Escobar in Chinatown and its sequel, The Two Jakes.
Barbara Baldavin first played Angela Martine, the grieving bride-to-be in “Balance of Terror.” This time, she is the one who dies -- at least, temporarily. After being repaired by the Caretaker, her real-life husband, Joe D’Agosta, booked her in two more Star Trek episodes (“Space Seed” and “Turnabout Intruder”).
Shirley Bonne, as Ruth, looked older than 20, the age Kirk remembered his former flame to have been. Bonne was actually 31. She made the rounds on TV between 1960 and ‘69, with stops including That Girl and Mannix.
Production Diary
Filmed October 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26 & 27, 1966
(Planned 6 day production, ran one day over; total cost: $199,654).
As the production dates approached, Roddenberry, having suffered from a bout of exhaustion, took a break. He left behind a memo telling Gene Coon how Stan Robertson felt the script still leaned too much toward fantasy and wanted a few of the more fantastic sequences reined in. In his haste to leave for his own shore leave, Roddenberry failed to have the memo delivered to Coon.
Production began on Wednesday, October 19, 1966. Roddenberry returned from his R & R that morning and found the memo he intended for Coon still on his own desk. A copy of the shooting script was next to it. In the opening teaser, as it had been in all the previous drafts, was the giant white rabbit ... who can tell time ... and who can talk. “Oh my paws and whiskers! I shall be late!”
As cell phones, or their equivalent, were still just props on Star Trek, Roddenberry high-tailed it for Africa USA, over an hour’s drive from Desilu. William Shatner recalled, “I can still remember him roaring up to our production vehicles in a cloud of dust.” (156-8)
It was too late to nix the talking white rabbit -- that had been the first sequence filmed this day -- but other story elements from Theodore Sturgeon’s fertile imagination were soon altered. Roddenberry found a shady tree and began rewriting the script on a yellow legal pad. The changes had to be driven to Desilu for typing, copying by the mimeo department, and then driven back to location. Fax machines, like cell phones, were also still in the future.
“I recall we had a lot of script problems,” George Takei said. “There was one point where we actually shut down production and waited for the rewrites to be driven out. I had my running shoes, so I went out and got a good run in. Some people took their shirts off and worked on their suntan. But once the pages arrived, we had to do quick study.” (171-1)
Also on location this day, William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, Emily Banks, Percy Lopez, Barbara Baldavin, and Bruce Mars, all for sequences in the lush “Ext. Glade #1” area. Emily Banks said, “I still hadn’t seen any more of the script until I got out to [Africa USA]; that’s when I started to see more pages and I asked, ‘Oh, what is this?’ and ‘What is that?’ I hadn’t had much exposure to this sort of show, and had yet to see any episodes. But my part made sense; the love interest with McCoy. And he was just a doll. I really loved working with him -- such a nice man and a real gentleman.” (9a)
Bruce Mars recalled, “Theodore Sturgeon had written the Finnegan character so he was a little nasty and moody, and I read that thing and I thought, ‘This could be better. I’d like to make this guy fun, not nasty but just a bit annoying and bring him to life in a fun way.’ And so I had a good talk with Bob Sparr and he said, ‘You’ll have to go a little higher to make those kind of changes.’” (113a)
This meant Mars would have to run his ideas by one of the producers, something that was not likely to happen.
“Little did I know that there were a lot of problems with the way the script was written,” Mars said. “So, I’ll be darned, but on that first day out on location, there’s our boss [Roddenberry] sitting there on the set rewriting everything. And Theodore Sturgeon shows up too, and I introduced myself and he looked me over and said, ‘Yeah, you could be that Irish rascal.’ We talked a little bit and I said, ‘I’ve got a couple ideas for the character, which Bob Sparr liked,’ and I gave Sturgeon my ideas about making Finnegan a bit more charming, more playful. And he said, ‘You know what, do it.’ So Gene Roddenberry was sitting under a big tree and one of the sound men said, ‘Good God, Gene is rewriting the whole script.’ I said, ‘You’re kidding, what’s up?’ He said, ‘Well, there have been some complications with the network and he’s rewriting all these sequences for the next two days.’ So I went up and said, ‘Mr. Roddenberry, my God, I know you’re a writer, but you’re rewriting everything we’re doing today?’ He said, ‘Yeah, and I’m going to make Finnegan more important in this. I just got a feeling that character is going to light up things.’ So I told him my idea about the character, and said, ‘I’m ready, and I’m athletic and coordinated and I want to do all the fight stuff myself.’ He said, ‘Well, we do have a stunt man that will take part in that. But there will be plenty in there for you to do.’ And he fleshed the fight out and added all those scenes in that made it so much better.” (113a)
As for that scene already shot with a girl named Alice and a giant white rabbit, Bill Blackburn, seen frequently on Star Trek in nonspeaking parts, including often sitting at the helm as the navigation officer, was chosen to be the man in the rabbit suit. He later blamed this job for giving him a lifelong case of claustrophobia, saying, “Bill Theiss always sewed everything on. No matter what it was, he sewed it. I never had claustrophobia before, but we were out on location, and it was warm, and I could only see out of the mouth. They didn’t have any screening where my eyes would have seen it, so I had to tilt my head back to see out of the rabbits’ mouth.... I had this mask on for about 45 minutes while Bill was sewing, because he wanted to blend this thing in from underneath. And when they put the bowtie on, it not only closed off my air but it closed off where I could see. And it hit. It was like a feeling that I never had before. I said, ‘Bill, can I get out of this -- Now!’ And I heard, ‘Oh, just a few more minutes.’ And then there were a few more minutes, and then a few more, and then, finally, I ripped the whole head off. It didn’t wreck the suit, but the head came completely off. And I said, ‘I can’t put this on like this unless you have a way in which I can lift it up.’ And he grumbled, and one of the ladies with him said, ‘I can put Velcro on it.’ And I thought, ‘Well, why didn’t you think of that in the first place!’ And so they put Velcro on it. But that was me in that suit. [Laughing] That was my big claim to fame.” (17a)
Day 2, with Emily Banks and DeForest Kelley (Unaired film trim courtesy of Gerald Gurian)
On Day 2, Thursday, filming continued on the “Ext. Glade” location for the attack of Don Juan and the Black Knight. For this, Leonard Nimoy joined the cast for McCoy’s death scene and the gunning down of the knight. Next, Kirk chasing Finnegan. Mars recalled, “Everybody was worrying about the budget and how long the filming was taking, and Bob Sparr says, ‘Hey, listen, Bruce, we’re losing light and I want to do everything in one take.’ And so we only had one shot at a lot of that stuff, with Shatner chasing me -- one take, one take, and one take. We just nailed it. I of course had my fingers crossed and everything, but I knew the character; I had him down. And so it all worked out and it really helped them to catch up a little bit.” (113a)
There were problems, of course. Mars, despite being athletic and having played semi-pro baseball, twisted his ankle. He said, “It started to swell up pretty bad and I didn’t take off the boot. If I had, I would have been dead. So, we continued shooting and, with all tha
t action that was needed, my mind just rose above it, even though I could hardly walk. And when all the shooting was over, my foot was black and blue.” (113a)
Day 2. Bill McGovern slates a shot at Africa USA (from startrekhistory.com and startrekpropauthority.com)
Mars was driven back to Hollywood and taken to Citizens Emergency Hospital for x-rays and treatment. As a result, the shooting schedule went through yet another of many revisions.
Filming continued without Mars until 9 p.m. with large arc lights being used to simulate daylight for the remaining close angle shots. Many in the cast and all of the crew were unable to make it home for the premiere of “What Are Little Girls Made Of?,” the seventh episode to air on NBC.
Day 3, Friday. More filming in the area of “Ext. Glade #1” took place, filming the airplane strafing scene and the tag scene featuring the Caretaker and his “Two Beauties.” Emily Banks said, “I remember one thing, there was the lovely older gentleman who was the caretaker of the planet. He was such a nice man; so gracious and so handsome, but he had this one line that he kept forgetting. And they’d do it again. And then they’d do it again. And when I finally saw it, he had started to say the line and you could see he was starting to forget it, but the way it came out of him, when he caught up with the line, it looked absolutely like stunning acting. His expression was just so precious.” (9a)
Also shot this day: the scene with the tiger which Robert Justman was so against.
William Shatner, unlike Justman, saw no need for concern and was even hot on the idea of Kirk wrestling the cat. He felt the action sequence would be good for the episode ... until he saw the 150 pound animal tearing into its midday snack -- a chunk of uncooked meat on a large bone just about the size of a man’s thigh. And then the tiger got loose.
These Are The Voyages, TOS, Season One Page 70