Lucy Loves Star Trek?


Lucy and Star Trek

All-time known as the wacky concrete comédienne who starred in iv successive series, Lucille Ball was also a Hollywood powerhouse and the force behind Desilu studios, where everything from
The Andy Griffith Prove
to
I Spy
were filmed, and where
Star Expedition
was born. Merely simply how much did Lucy have to practise with launching the starship
Enterprise
into the concluding frontier?

This topic arrived to us by way of an Baronial 6, 2020 tweet that has been widely shared (including attracting the attention of both William Shatner and George Takei’s twitter accounts):


The tweet that launched six thousand retweets.[1]

The tweet that launched 6 thousand retweets.[one]

It’s a great story.  It’s wonderful clickbait. Only, as we always like to inquire: is it true?

First things first—Star Expedition
every bit we know it would non exist without Lucille Ball. On November nine, 1962, she purchased Desi Arnaz’s stock involvement in Desilu Productions and, with 52% of the visitor’s stock, became the majority owner of the studio.[2] With her ex-husband’s deviation, Ball also became the company’due south president. She was still in that position when Gene Roddenberry made a deal to develop pilots for Desilu in the spring of 1964—including a science fiction format he called
Star Trek.


Example of printing the legends: Screen Rant.

Example of printing the legends: Screen Rant.

To get a sense of just how many unlike versions of these events have been told over the years, all you have to do is search online for articles virtually how “Lucille Ball saved Star Trek.” Many of these accounts portray Lucy heroically swooping in to relieve one of the two pilots or the series itself from antagonists ranging from Desilu’due south own lath of directors to the NBC television network. Yous might fifty-fifty accept heard that she used her ascendancy on NBC, or opened her own wallet to finance a pilot.

Every i of the accounts we’ve seen manages to mangle some or all of the facts. Let’s examine the most prevalent claims, one by i.

Did Lucille Ball personally arbitrate with NBC to go them to society a second pilot?

According to Bernie Weitzman, quoted in
Desilu: The Story Of Lucille Ball And Desi Arnaz
(1993) past Coyne Steven Sanders and Tom Gilbert, Lucille Ball
did
personally intervene with a tv network to ensure that one of her pilots would exist picked upwardly. Still, the network in question was CBS and the pilot was
Mannix
(1967–1975):

                      We went to Lucy and said, ‘Look, this show is very important to the visitor’s future. We want you to call upward CBS. Tell them you lot experience nosotros have a terrific plan, and nosotros want you lot to buy our testify.’ She said, ‘I can’t exercise that. I’ve never washed that before.’ We answered, ‘But, Lucy, our whole future may depend on this. CBS will listen to you.’ She didn’t really believe information technology. She picked up the phone and called CBS. She said, ‘This show is a good show. I’m calling you because I hear this testify may not become on the air. And I want you to know I’thousand supporting this show one hundred percent—and I would exist personally unhappy if CBS passed on this bear witness.’ 9 years it was on the air.[3]
                    

Note that, according to Weitzman, Lucille Brawl had
never
called a network to ensure a Desilu pilot was picked up before
Mannix,
which was developed well afterward
Star Trek.

Even so, we’ve found another source that disputes that merits. Co-ordinate to the book
The Complete
Mission: Impossible
Dossier

(1991) by Patrick J. White, Ball exerted pressure on CBS the season before
Mannix
to ensure that
Mission: Incommunicable
(1966–73) made it to the airwaves, besides. Gary Morton, Ball’s second husband, told White that when word came down that the network had decided not to buy
Mission, Lucy called upwards CBS Chairman William Paley and told him “It’south the best pilot of the season.”[iv] Other sources told White that Lucy threatened to walk away from
The Lucy Evidence
if CBS didn’t option up
Mission: Impossible.[5] Whatever the circumstances behind the scenes, the network picked up
Mission: Impossible
and it ran for seven years.

If Ball personally intervened to save both
Mission: Impossible
and
Mannix, what about
Star Trek? According to the book
Inside
Star Trek: The Real Story

(1996) by Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman, Lucille Brawl was not involved with NBC’s decision to order a second
Star Trek
pilot later NBC rejected the first attempt. In the book, Solow recounts an early on 1965 coming together with several NBC executives after they had rejected the first
Trek
pilot:

                      [NBC Vice President of Programs and Talent] Mort [Werner], Grant [Tinker], and Jerry [Stanley] were still taken by what we'd accomplished. And Mort had a complaint: 'Herb, you guys gave usa a problem.'
                    
                      'Sorry, Mort, we tried our all-time.'
                    
                      'That'south the problem. I didn't call back Desilu was capable of making Star Expedition, so when we looked over the pilot stories you gave us, we chose the most complicated and most difficult of the agglomeration. We recognize now it wasn't necessarily a story that properly showcased Star Trek's serial potential. So the reason the airplane pilot didn't sell was my fault, not yours. You guys only did your job besides well. And I screwed up.'
                    
                      I shook my head in awe. No, no, this wasn't a network executive talking to me. This was the Practiced Witch of the East come up to lay golden at our feet. I conjured up all my good thoughts. 'So let's do another airplane pilot.'
                    
                      'That's exactly why nosotros're here. Nosotros'll hold on some mutual story and script approval, and then, if the scripts are good, nosotros'll give yous some more than money for another pilot.'[6]
                    

So, why might Lucille Ball have been less involved with NBC over
Star Expedition
than she reportedly had been with CBS over
Mannix
and
Mission: Impossible?

For one thing, Lucille Ball had a sure corporeality of leverage with CBS that she did not have with NBC. (CBS passed on
Star Trek
afterwards a notorious pitch past Gene Roddenberry and Oscar Katz, but that is a topic for some other fourth dimension.)

Ball had a long history with CBS—going at least as far back every bit her starring role on the CBS radio comedy
My Favorite Husband
in 1948, and, of course, the archetype
I Love Lucy
starting in 1951. By 1965 CBS had been home to twelve Desilu-produced shows, many of them hits—and Lucy was all the same one of the network’southward height stars. While it may non have had the impact and longevity of
I Beloved Lucy,
The Lucy Evidence
(1962–68) was in the Nielsen top x every twelvemonth information technology was on the air. CBS wanted to stay in the Lucy business for as long as her popularity continued. To practise that, the network fabricated a number of concessions to Desilu—including, by the mid-60s, a generous pilot development fund of $600,000 a year.[vii] That fund largely paid for the expensive
Mission: Incommunicable
and
Mannix
pilots, but it didn’t comprehend any of the costs for
Star Expedition.[viii]

When information technology came to NBC, notwithstanding, the network had long been a tough nut for Desilu to crack. Indeed, when
Star Expedition
made its U.South. debut on September 8, 1966, it was but the 2nd evidence in Desilu history to air on NBC (a Desilu-produced game show called
Yous Don’t Say
ran on the network from 1963–69).

This all suggests that Lucy could exist very involved with Desilu’s shows, especially if they were on CBS, but if at that place’southward any evidence that Lucy pushed NBC to approve or finance
Star Expedition’s second pilot, nosotros haven’t seen it.


Desilu watertower.jpg

Did Lucille Brawl support
Star Expedition
because she was personally invested in “Factor’south vision”?

We’ve struggled to find any information most Lucille Ball’s opinion of
Star Trek. If she ever discussed the series in an interview—either during the making of the series or afterwards—we oasis’t seen it.

Just one piece of correspondence from Ball survives in the
Star Expedition
papers at UCLA—a note sent to Gene Roddenberry, Herb Solow, and others involved with the series congratulating them for the show’s early (and short-lived) ratings success, sent on Oct five, 1966 (a few weeks later the series showtime aired):

                      Beloved Factor and the residuum of your difficult-working people. . .
                    
                      Just heard the good news, and desire you to know how proud and happy I am.
                    
                      Looks like y'all really have a striking on your easily, and we all appreciate your efforts.
                    
                      Love,Lucy[9]
                    

(This is also the only slice of correspondence from Brawl that’s quoted in David Alexander’s authorized biography of Gene Roddenberry from 1994, and the simply ane shared past Roddenberry Amusement every bit role of their Roddenberry 366 initiative from 2016. Nosotros doubtable that the currently private Roddenberry archives don’t take any other substantial correspondence from the Desilu President—although we’d love to exist proven incorrect on that forepart.)

Gary Morton—who in add-on to existence Ball’s 2d husband, became Desilu’s Vice President in charge of live tv set production in 1966—describes how he and Lucy would read many scripts under pilot consideration in the Sanders/Gilbert
Desilu
volume, but says that “Star Trek
was never a script brought to united states.”[10]

Herb Solow claims that the
Star Trek
script
was
brought to Lucille Ball, but says she had no comments and speculates that she never even read it:

                      I personally walked the Star Trek pilot script into Lucy’s dressing room and handed it to her. ‘Lucy, this is the Star Trek pilot script. There’ll be lots of changes, so if yous take whatsoever comments, let me have them, because there’ll be ample time to implement them.’ Lucy never mentioned the script, and the day the completed airplane pilot was screened for NBC on the West Coast, I walked into Lucy’south dressing room to tell her NBC’s reaction. The pilot script was even so there, apparently untouched.[xi]
                    

In short, we haven’t seen any bear witness that Ball had an opinion on
Star Trek
beyond hoping for a long and successful run. It’s possible she never even read the script before the pilot was made. Unless farther evidence emerges, this claim seems to be completely unfounded.

Did Lucille Brawl personally finance either Star Trek pilot?

Both
Star Trek
pilots were partially financed by NBC, but the network did non embrace i hundred percent of those costs. And so—how much was the balance and who paid it?

According to financial records in the
Star Trek
papers at UCLA, NBC paid $185,000 for the kickoff
Star Trek
pilot, which was initially budgeted at $323,281, a figure increased to $451,503 a few days before filming began.[12] Despite that increase, the first pilot went significantly over budget, costing $615,751. That left Desilu on the hook for almost a half a meg dollars ($430,751, to be exact). The second pilot toll $354,974 to produce and NBC paid for $209,000, or about 59% of the total cost.[13]

Still, there’southward simply no evidence that Lucille Ball spent her personal fortune financing either pilot. Desilu’s annual and acting financial reporting from this period (publicly accessible at the Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills) betoken that the studio absorbed the extra costs of these and other pilots (the studio produced a full of five pilots during the 1964–65 fiscal twelvemonth) and wrote off the costs for the pilots that the networks turned down.[14]

Did
Star Trek’s
expense force Lucille Ball to sell Desilu?

This is 1 of the major claims made past author Marc Cushman in his self-published
These Are The Voyages

books, which he reiterated in an interview with Marker A. Altman and Edward Gross for the book
The Fifty Year Mission: The Consummate, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The Kickoff 25 Years
(2016):

                      Lucy’s instincts were right most Star Trek, that it would get one of the biggest shows in syndication e'er. The trouble was that her pockets weren’t deep enough. They were losing 15 thousand dollars an episode, which would exist like five hundred yard dollars per episode today. […] You know, if she could have hung on just vi months longer, it would have worked out, because by the cease of the second season, in one case they had enough episodes, Star Trek was playing in, I believe, threescore different countries around the world. And all of that money is flowing in. It’s simply that she couldn’t last those actress six months.[fifteen]
                    

Cushman speaks to Lucy’due south instincts, but cites no evidence equally to how he knows what she thought about the potential longevity of
Star Trek. Without that, it is pure speculation on his part. (Furthermore, he overstates what those 1960s dollars would equal in modernistic times past a factor of 5).

When it comes to the claim that
Star Expedition
was losing $15,000 an episode when Lucille Brawl sold Desilu to Gulf+Western, that figure is actually
too low. According to a financial analysis done past Paramount in 1968, excluding pilot costs,
Star Trek
had been losing an average of $28,354 per episode before the Desilu acquisition. During the same period (and also excluding pilot costs),
Mission: Impossible
had been losing an average of $26,470 per episode while
Mannix
lost an impressive average of $32,306 per episode.[16]

However, focusing on these losses overlooks the fact that arrears financing was the standard practise for tv production going back to the early 1950s, and that
Star Trek,
Mission: Impossible, and
Mannix
were planned and budgeted to be arrears-financed from the beginning.[17]

Every bit to how deep Desilu’s pockets were, according to the visitor’southward financial reporting to its shareholders from 1954 to 1967 (we practise not have access to earlier financial reporting), Desilu reported a loss in net revenue only one time, in 1963 (a loss of $655,387). In 1967, the aforementioned year Lucille Ball decided to sell the studio, Desilu reported internet revenues of $1,269,196 (the virtually cyberspace acquirement the company had reported to shareholders in
a decade).[eighteen]


President Lucille Ball & Executive Vice President in Charge of Production, Oscar Katz at the August 18, 1964 Desilu Board Meeting. (Los Angeles Times Photographs Collection, UCLA)

President Lucille Brawl & Executive Vice President in Accuse of Production, Oscar Katz at the August 18, 1964 Desilu Board Meeting. (Los Angeles Times Photographs Collection, UCLA)

Did Lucille Brawl overrule her unabridged board of directors to produce either
Star Trek
pilot and/or the weekly serial itself?

By far the most common anecdote nigh Lucille Ball and
Star Expedition
is that Desilu’s board was unanimous in its vote to cancel the project, and Lucy overruled them and ordered
Star Trek
to proceed. Exactly
when
this vote took place varies widely depending on the account. Sometimes it’s before the
first
pilot was filmed, sometimes it’due south before the
2d
pilot was filmed, sometimes it’s after the network made a series commitment, and sometimes information technology falls in the midst of the show’southward network run.

We doubtable that part of the reason the timing of the coming together is so fungible is that it is derived from 2 separate firsthand accounts, one from Edwin “Ed” Holly and 1 from Herb Solow, and those 2 accounts exercise not agree when the meeting took place.

Kickoff, there’s the version described by Edwin (“Ed”) Holly in the Sanders/Gilbert
Desilu
book:

                      Co-ordinate to Ed Holly, Lucy demonstrated item courage in clinching the Mission: Impossible deal with CBS. “One of the biggest decisions that had to be fabricated was when she went against my recommendation and Argyle Nelson’s recommendation that had to do with Star Expedition and Mission: Incommunicable. [...] According to our estimates, nosotros would lose sixty-five thousand dollars per episode on each serial. We didn’t take the fiscal strength to beget that type of show. And nosotros recommended to Lucy and the board that we not do the pilots, much less the series. I told Lucy, ‘If nosotros exercise these and are unfortunate enough to sell them to serial, we’re going to accept to sell the company or become bankrupt.’ Lucy deliberated for a scrap and and so made the decision she wanted to practice them.” He adds, “It if were not for Lucy, in that location would be no Star Expedition today.”[nineteen]
                    

Holly describes this board meeting as taking identify when both the
Mission: Impossible
and
Star Trek
pilots were still being prepared,
prior
to shooting. Withal, that’s incommunicable.
Star Trek’s first airplane pilot was filmed Nov 27–December 18, 1964. The
Mission: Impossible
pilot did not go before the cameras until December of 1965—a total year afterwards—and wasn’t being adult until after
Star Trek’due south first pilot was completed.

It’s possible that Holly (who died in 2010) was recalling a board meeting that happened in the early summertime of 1965, when the
second Expedition
pilot was being prepared for filming (it shot July xix–29, 1965) and the
Mission
pilot was in early evolution. Only it’s hard to believe that a reasonable financial judge could have been fabricated about the potential losses of
Mission
at that point, since a first draft script would not be delivered until October of 1965.

The 2nd version, by Herb Solow in
Inside
Star Expedition: The Real Story
, describes a similar lath coming together but states that information technology took place
later
NBC made its series delivery to
Star Trek, which would place information technology in tardily February of 1966:[20]

                      
                        I had the serial order from NBC. I had a die-hard group of professionals to brand the series. I had a lot of sleepless nights. Now all I needed was the fiscal back up of the studio elders, the very conservative Desilu loyalists. This would all start, and end, with America'southward favorite redhead, Lucille Ball herself [...]
                    
                      
                        The onetime guard fabricated its position quite articulate. It wasn’t a hard position for them to take, considering the high costs of both pilots. And their position was, but put, “Don’t allow Solow and the balance of the crazies loose. Things are skillful. Things could become worse. If it ain’t broke, don’t set up it. Don’t requite the inmates the keys to the asylum.”
                    
                      
                        Before the board meeting I’d laid information technology out to the possessor of Desilu: “You’ll always have a prove, Lucy, with the same actors, the aforementioned staff, the aforementioned people to write and straight. Everyone will be happy. The studio will keep renting space to other shows. And so fame isn’t a trouble, and money isn’t a problem. Only wouldn’t y'all like to rebuild Desilu’s prestige, importance, and value as a major player? Wouldn’t information technology exist dandy to accept two heady and successful Desilu television set shows on the air?”
                    
                      
                        [...] “Say ‘yes,’ Lucy, and we’ll all go to piece of work.”
                    
                      
                        Lucy nodded. And we all went to work. The inmates had the fundamental to the asylum.[21]
                    

Our suspicion is that Ed Holly’southward memory of the meeting’due south timing is incorrect and that it took identify after, after CBS and NBC had made series commitments for
Mission: Impossible
and
Star Expedition, just before those commitments had been announced in the trades.

Of notation—neither Solow nor Holly draw a unanimous vote on behalf of the board to kill
Star Trek
and
Mission: Impossible
before Lucy weighed in. Holly says that he and Argyle Nelson advised confronting proceeding with either serial; Solow says that “the erstwhile guard” brash against the same. But at that place were 6 members of the board at the time of this meeting in addition to Lucille Brawl: Oscar Katz, Edwin Due east. Holly, Arthur Manella, Due west. Argyle Nelson, Sr., Curtis Palmer, and Milton A. Rudin.[22] Of the names on that list, we know at least one who supported
Star Expedition
and
Mission: Impossible: Oscar Katz, so Herb Solow’s boss.

It was literally Katz’s chore to become more Desilu produced shows on the network airwaves. When he was hired away from CBS to work at Desilu, the find in
Variety
made the articulate, stating:

                      Desilu Productions was once an important furnisher of prime time programming, but today the Lucille Ball establish has only one serial left, the one-half-hour show starring the boss [i.e. The Lucy Bear witness]. […] Desilu has brought in Oscar Katz as production veepee, [sic] and he is now aligning creative talent in an attempt to restore Desilu to the place it in one case held in the network sun.[23]
                    


Desilu board of directors and officers (June 30, 1965 Annual Report)

Desilu board of directors and officers (June xxx, 1965 Annual Report)

So, where’south the truth?

The memes and various self-appointed Trek experts affirm that Ball was some sort of guardian angel saving the show from brusk-sighted penny pinchers, simply that doesn’t seem to be the case. Yes, as the majority shareholder on the board she had the power to kill any project, including
Star Trek. That she didn’t isn’t quite the aforementioned matter as actively going to bat for the show against NBC, the balance of the lath, and whatever newly imagined obstacle is posited for her to knock down.

Herb Solow’southward contention was that Desilu needed to make pilots like
Star Trek
and
Mission: Impossible
to prove its capabilities to networks who might have considered them an too-ran production company. Where the rubber actually met the road was when both NBC and CBS picked up such costly series. A airplane pilot could be expensive but it was a former cost. The real business concern was if the studio could afford to deficit finance such shows week afterward week. Plain Lucy thought and so, merely information technology appears she wasn’t alone. And the numbers prove that decision sound.

Either mode, while she might not have swooped in and saved the day, Brawl clearly had a significant say in what happened to
Star Trek, and we’ll always Love Lucy for that.

—30—


1024px-I_Love_Lucy_title.png

Appendix: Lucy Saves Star Trek—The Many Different Versions

  • A 2013 SyFy Wire commodity claimed “The story goes that she still thought the Star Trek idea had legs, and used her considerable influence in television to button for NBC to give Roddenberry a second chance [and society a second pilot].”

  • A 2014 issue of CBS Sentry Magazine claimed “Using her pull as a studio head…Ball was able to convince the higher ups [at NBC] to give Star Expedition a 2d take chances.”

  • A 2016 EW article claimed Lucy’s “support for [Trek] was necessary as it became clear how expensive the airplane pilot would exist. Lucy overruled her board of directors to make certain the episode was produced.”

  • A 2016 Business Insider article repeated the merits about Ball overruling the board to produce the pilot and so went on to claim that, “Ball agreed to finance this reshoot [the second airplane pilot], once more over the preferences of her board of directors.”

  • A 2016 MeTV commodity claimed that Lucy “ordered Desilu Productions to create the rare 2nd pilot episode, ‘Where No Human being Has Gone Before.’ The movement was unheard of at the time, just the studio desparately [sic] needed new content.”

  • A 2016 book excerpt in Smithsonian Mag includes comments from writer Marc Cushman, who claimed, “Lucille Brawl lost her studio because of ‘Star Trek.’ She had gambled on the show, and you can read the memos where her board of directors is saying, ‘Don’t do this show, it’s going to impale united states.’ But she believed in it. She moved forward with it, and during the 2nd season she had to sell Desilu to Paramount Pictures.”

  • A 2019 StarTrek.com article claimed that “NBC could have passed on
    Expedition
    overall, but Ball, who believed in the project, stepped in and saved the solar day…Her belief in Star Trek is why nosotros have Star Trek as it stands today.”

  • A 2020 article at Screen Rant credited Ball with overruling the lath on both plots and claimed “Ball believed in Roddenberry’due south vision, and personally convinced the NBC executives to consider that 2nd airplane pilot.”

  • A 2020 We Are The Mighty article said the Desilu board objected to the 2nd pilot and that Ball overruled them. It also claims the second pilot episode “was financed in part by Ball herself.”

  • A 2020 Newsweek article stated, “Ball later overruled the studio’s board to finance the testify. She also went over the board a 2d time, when the studio ordered another pilot for the series.”

Cease Notes & Sources

[one] The BlakeLinton tweet that inspired this piece.

[2] “Lucille Brawl Buying Out Desi Arnaz In Desilu,”
The Hollywood Reporter, November 9, 1962, p.one

[three] Coyne Steven Sanders and Tom Gilbert,
Desilu: The Story Of Lucille Ball And Desi Arnaz
(1993), p.295 (new and expanded edition, 2001)

[four] Patrick J. White,
The Complete Mission: Impossible Dossier
(1991), p.50

[5] Patrick J. White,
The Complete Mission: Impossible Dossier
(1991), p.50–51

[6] Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman,
Inside
Star Expedition: The Real Story

(1996), p.60

[7] Coyne Steven Sanders and Tom Gilbert,
Desilu: The Story Of Lucille Brawl And Desi Arnaz
(1993), p.279 (new and expanded edition, 2001)

[eight] Paramount Goggle box cost comparison for
Star Expedition,
Mannix, and
Mission: Impossible
(1968, but undated). UCLA, Gene Roddenberry
Star Trek
goggle box serial collection, 1966–1969 (This cost comparison indicates that large portions of the production budget for the
Mission: Impossible
and
Mannix
pilots were paid by the CBS development fund. However, neither
Star Trek
pilot was the recipient of those funds.)

[9] Note from Lucille Ball to Cistron Roddenberry, Herb Solow, and others, October 5, 1966. UCLA, Cistron Roddenberry
Star Trek
television series collection, 1966-1969

[10] Coyne Steven Sanders and Tom Gilbert,
Desilu: The Story Of Lucille Ball And Desi Arnaz
(1993), p.294 (new and expanded edition, 2001)

[11] Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman,
Inside
Star Expedition: The Real Story

(1996), p.22

[12] First airplane pilot product budget, June 30, 1964. First pilot terminal revised product budget, November 25, 1964. UCLA, Gene Roddenberry
Star Trek
television serial collection, 1966–1969

[13] Paramount Television cost comparison for
Star Trek,
Mannix, and
Mission: Impossible
(1968, but undated). UCLA, Gene Roddenberry
Star Trek
tv set series drove, 1966–1969 (This documentation shows the final costs of both pilots, besides as the portion of the cost that was paid for by NBC.)

[14] Edwin Holly collection of Desilu and Offset Artists reports, AMPAS Margaret Herrick library

[15] Edward Gross and Marking A. Altman,
The Fifty-Twelvemonth Mission: The Consummate, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The Offset 25 Years
(2016), p.177–178

[16] Paramount Television cost comparing for
Star Trek,
Mannix, and
Mission: Incommunicable
(1968, but undated). UCLA, Gene Roddenberry
Star Expedition
tv set series drove, 1966–1969

[17] According to
Hollywood TV: The Studio System in the Fifties
(1994) by Christopher Anderson, “Network tv set programs did not have to be produced on a fixed upkeep if the production visitor was willing to gamble on future revenue from syndication and merchandising. Deficit financing of this sort had become standard practise for telefilm producers every bit early as 1951…” (p.173)

[xviii] Edwin Holly collection of Desilu and First Artists reports, AMPAS library

[19] Coyne Steven Sanders and Tom Gilbert,
Desilu: The Story Of Lucille Brawl And Desi Arnaz
(1993), p.284 (new and expanded edition, 2001)

[xx] NBC’s pickup of
Star Trek
was appear in
Daily Variety
on March ane, 1966. This was known at to the lowest degree a few days earlier; on Feb 27, 1966, for example, Gene Roddenberry was sent a telegram which read, in role, “Have PERSONAL Balls FROM NBC WE ARE FIRMLY SCHEDULED TUESDAY 730.” UCLA, Cistron Roddenberry
Star Trek
idiot box series drove, 1966–1969.

[21] Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman,
Inside
Star Trek: The Existent Story

(1996), p.102–105

[22] Desilu Annual report, 1965. Attainable in the Edwin Holly collection of Desilu and Start Artists reports, AMPAS library.

[23] “H’wood Vidpix Industry: Monument To Instability, Where Yous’re Only As Good as Your Electric current Rating,”
Weekly Multifariousness, July 29, 1964, p.38.

See Likewise…

The
Here’s Lucy
(1968-74) opening titles on YouTube (the basis of our championship epitome)