Why Gene Roddenberry became a Cop and How It Helped Launch His TV Writing Career

From the forthcoming biography RODDENBERRY: The Man Who Created Star Trek by James Van Hise.

Throughout the late 1940s Gene continued to write for flying magazines. In 1949 the writing bug led him to quit his airline job and move to Los Angeles, "where I knew television eventually would be based. But I was a little early, and to make ends meet I joined the Los Angeles police department." He had come out from New York in 1949, "to see my dear and old friend, who was then Inspector William Parker in the Wilshire Division. He wasn't very enthusiastic about my plans. In fact, he did his best to talk me out of it." But Gene disregarded Parker's advice and joined the LAPD, following in his father's footsteps.

Looking back on that time, Gene stated that he didn't think he made a very good policeman himself because he hated writing tickets. He was probably the only policeman in Los Angeles who was a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union. Yet he never regretted the five and a half years he spent with the Los Angeles Police Department. "It gave me a good look at life and death. Policemen see things that you just don't ordinarily run into during your life. In a few years in police work you see life really stripped bare. It's awfully good experience for a writer."

Since he had come to Los Angeles to write for television, he knew he needed an agent and soon hatched a scheme to secure one. Gene also knew that a well-known writer's agent drove through his beat each day, so he just patiently waited until the man committed a traffic violation. Instead of writing a ticket, he got the agent to arrange an interview at Four Star Productions.

Gene dressed casually for the interview, and as he became more involved in disclosing his concepts and story ideas, he removed his sports coat. After that the executives were really hanging on his every word. It was only later that he realized that under his coat, he'd been wearing his shoulder holster and .38 police special.

He sold his first script to television in 1951. At the time he wrote under the name "Robert Wesley" (a combination of his brother's first name and his own middle name) because the Los Angeles Police Department frowned on its officers moonlighting.

Falling back on his ongoing experience as a police officer, Gene Roddenberry sold a script to Dragnet. He also applied his experience to scripts for such shows as Mr. District Attorney.

Gene said, "Then one day my wife, Eileen, said, 'Look, Gene, your job as a policeman brings you $435 a month but your writing hobby is earning $1100 a month. Why don't you stick to your hobby?' We went to dinner, to a Chinese restaurant, to talk it over. I opened a fortune cookie and it read: 'A change of name will bring you fame.'"

Gene had been selling his scripts under the name Robert Wesley. "I opened another one and it read, 'Tomorrow is an excellent time to change jobs.' Intrigued and amazed, I opened still another one and this message read, 'You may be sure of it.'

"That did it!" he recalled. "I quit as a policeman the next day. I still have those fortune cookies framed and on my desk."

Look for the forthcoming biography RODDENBERRY: The Man Who Created Star Trek by James Van Hise coming in April 2025.

First Look at Cover for James Van Hise Bio - Roddenberry: The Man who Created Star Trek

Cover design: Frankie Hill

First book in our new series reprinting James Van Hise's classic books on TOS. We call the series, The Unauthorized Guide to Trek. Due out April 15, 2015.

James Van Hise is a well-known journalist specializing in film, television, and comic history. A long-time fan turned media historian, Van Hise’s credentials as both writer and editor are extensive. He was the editor of the pivotal comix zine Rocket Blast Comic Collector (1974-8) and the pioneering Enterprise Incidents: The Magazine for Star Trek Fans (1976-85). In the comic field he has written stories for Dread of Night, Green Hornet, Ray Bradbury Comics, and Real Ghostbusters, among others. As a journalist Van Hise has authored books on Batman, Dune, Conan, Star Wars, The Lone Ranger, Dick Tracy, Stephen King, and Star Trek.

Read Free How Star Trek Developed from Gene Roddenberry's Roots as a Young SciFi Fan - Excerpt from Unauthorized Roddenberry Bio Out in June 2015

From media journalist James Van Hise's forthcoming Gene Roddenberry: The Man who Created Star Trek, first book in his The Unauthorized Guide to Trek series. Due out June 2015.

Eugene Wesley Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, was born in El Paso, Texas on August 19,

1921. The young Roddenberry, who spent his formative years in Los Angeles, was a science fiction aficionado from the word go. It started with a battered copy of Astounding Stories magazine, and took off from there. Of course, he never considered writing in any genre or medium until much later in life, after college.

When he did, there would be no denying that he had a certain knack for it! Young Gene was a sickly boy whose parents often worried about his developmental problems. They failed to realize he had a vividly active imagination which made the trials of reality easier to bear. His discovery of science fiction, including Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars books, actually led him back to reality, demonstrating the possibilities of existence. Adolescence brought improvement in Gene's health, and he soon became a highly active youth. "I was somewhat handicapped as a child," Gene freely admitted. "I had the good fortune to lose most of it. I was a science fiction reader from the time I was about eleven years old. Since the age of four I've been reading everything in sight. I suspect if you gave me a telephone book I would read it. At the age of fourteen I read Days of Our Years by Pierre Van Paassen, which is a story that is sort of outmoded now, but it was the first statement I read about the evil of war and that wars are often manipulated for reasons other than the ones offered. I should say the whole range of reading through school, I could think of fifty-five writers, but not [only] one or two [that have influenced him.]"

As a child, Gene had radio (the home entertainment system of the day), but television didn't exist yet. He became a reader. He'd go to the library every week on the W-Line streetcar and then home again. "I remember getting some peanut butter and crackers and falling into the dream world of books." He noted, "If something comes out by Arthur C. Clarke, I grab it immediately."

[The book then identifies the surprising magazine that may have inspired basic elements of Star Trek TOS.]

George Clayton Johnson, who wrote the first episode of ST ever aired, "Man Trap." once said, "I remember having an argument with Gene Roddenberry, the great speckled bird of the universe himself, in which I said to him, 'I'm unhappy about this.' And he said to me, 'Look, George, it may well be, and I don't argue with you. You know one hell of a lot more about science fiction than I do. ...However, I know more about this show because I created this show.'
    "Whereupon I started to remind him that he created this show by reading Captain Future." Captain Future featured a handsome hero with three sidekicks, one of whom was an android, another a robot, and a third a brilliant emotionless scientist, Simon Wright, who existed only as a brain in a transparent floating case. George felt that elements of these characters were ancestral influences on Star Trek.

This may be true. Captain Future was very popular in the 1940s in a vein of science fiction very similar to E.E. Smith, another science fiction writer whom Gene named as a definite influence on his own work.

 

Read the press release. Click here.

READ "THE FAR FRONTIER" SF NOVEL BY STAR TREK TOS WRITER WHO CHRONICLED THE “FINAL FRONTIER” IN FIVE BESTSELLING BOOKS

THE HUGO & NEBULA FINALIST & ST: TOS WRITER WHO CHRONICLED THE “FINAL FRONTIER” IN FIVE BESTSELLING BOOKS ... AN ENTHRALLING NOVEL OF THE MEN AND WOMEN OF THE FAR FRONTIER!

From the authorized Star Trek TOS biographer who gave Uhura her official first name (Nyota, Swahili for “star”) comes this thought-provoking tale of a weary star voyager who finds Paradise, only to discover a nest of vipers planning its destruction. Using the classic TOS trope of a planet with parallels to Earth history, the late William Rotsler makes sharply observed comments on human proclivities and foibles. A novel sure to please all science fiction fans, and especially Star Trek enthusiasts.

“A vivid, fast-paced story, rich with color, insight and passion.” —Robert Silverberg

Raider had wandered for years from world to world through the voids of the final frontier. Now, at last, in its farthest realms, he had found a world he wanted to call home. To a war-weary starman like Rader, the planet Zikkala was paradise. Unfortunately, Zikkala had two drawbacks: The indigenous stone age level population had a long tradition of proving their mettle by attacking each other in duels to the death; and with the arrival of Terrans, they had transferred that tradition to attacking outworlders. Meanwhile, a megacorporation from the Earth had targeted Zikkala for acquisition. They had their own army — and if they couldn't buy they planet, they planned to conquer it. And, if that weren't bad enough, Alena, the one woman he cared for, ran the best cathouse in town, and the megacorp had targeted it for a take over. Raider wanted to help, but he was outnumbered, out gunned — and on the wrong side of the law. Failure meant a quick trip to an interplanetary boothill!

“Rotsler takes that idea and runs with it ... A lot of fun. Rotsler was a fine writer.” —Randy Johnson

“Good, fast space opera. What science fiction is supposed to do.” —Larry Niven

Bonus: An interview with William Rotsler about writing science fiction, Star Trek books & media-tie-ins.

Buy The Far Frontiers - only $2.99 in Kindle at Amazon.