Customer Reviews

From Sawdust to Stardust: The Biography of DeForest Kelley, Star Trek's Dr. McCoy

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When you finish reading a really well done biography, you are left feeling as if you have gotten to `know' the subject of the book. As if you have not only gained insight into the person, but also the era in which they lived and the factors that helped shape their life. Based on that criterion, From Sawdust to Stardust: The Biography of DeForest Kelley, Star Trek's Dr. McCoy by Terry Lee Rioux is better than well done; it is excellent.

For most of us, when we think of DeForest Kelley, we think of "Bones" McCoy but Jackson DeForest Kelley already had over 20 years in Hollywood under his belt before Gene Roddenberry tapped him to play the crusty southern doctor on Star Trek. Terry Lee Rioux traces that career through its ups and downs, all the while building a portrait of a gentle, caring man of deep beliefs and strong convictions. Meticulous research and countless hours of interviews with numerous friends and collegues who were close to the Kelley's have enabled Rioux to provide a revealing narrative that is rich with previously unknown details about DeForest Kelley's life and career.

Despite his humble beginnings in Conyers, Georgia, De Kelley had big dreams. He took his first steps toward realizing those dreams as a member of the Long Beach Community Players and gradually learned his craft under the ever looming shadow of war. His service in World War II, his marriage to Carolyn, the years of struggle as a contract player at Paramount and the failure of the studio system are all covered in the first two parts of the four parts that make up the book.

A fortune teller once predicted that De's real success would come after he turned 40, and indeed DeForest Kelley was contemplating retirement when Gene Roddenberry came calling. At 46 years of age he reported for work on Star Trek on May 23, 1966 hoping the show would last the seven episodes he had contracted for. The rest, as they say, is history.

From Sawadust to Stardust is not your typical Hollywood biography. It is an impressive piece of scholarship and writing that has broad appeal beyond the obvious allure it will hold for Star Trek fans. Inspirational and moving, it is an outstanding portrait of a true gentleman, Jackson DeForest Kelley, the kind of person you would be proud to know, and if you read From Sawdust to Stardust, you will `know' DeForest Kelley.

He did not write his own biography, unlike everybody else on the Enterprise. But he left his papers and memorabilia organized so that somebody else could. Terry Lee Rioux has done a commendable job drawing together details from Kelley's papers and interviews with people who worked with him in TV and movies, or were his friends during his early years in Long Beach.

Our crusty Dr. McCoy isn't someone you can really imagine having a dewy-cheeked youth. He was the Star Trek character we knew the least about, and Kelley was the most private of all the cast. So this book does a great service in opening up his life to us, in a remarkably tender and sensitive way. In fact, Rioux does something daring for an actor's biography: she acknowledges that humans have spiritual lives, and that Kelley's upbringing as a poor preacher's son in Conyers, Georgia gave him a faith and a spirituality that both protected and haunted him.

The other remarkable accomplishment of the book is that, in following Kelley's development as a young Georgia boy coming of age in Long Beach, California (beaches, surfing, racial diversity, gambling, drink, tobacco, and girls), rapidly discovering himself as an actor with real talent, Rioux recreates the energy and atmosphere of a sunny Navy port town just before World War II breaks out - and how it all changes after Pearl Harbor. She works the same magic with the crumbling of the Hollywood studio system, the blossoming of television, and the rise and fall of TV westerns, all seen from the POV of a struggling actor who seems to keep missing the big break.

The book's verbal failings - such as rushed, cliché'd sketching of world events - can be attributed to editorial pressure to get the word count down. More glaring is the lack of photographs. There are no portraits of Kelley as a boy, nor of his family: the Reverend David Kelley, mother Clora, and older brother Casey, who became a successful businessman. Nor are there stills from Kelley's work: the early movie break, Fear In the Night, or TV episodes from Bonanza, You Are There, and Gene Roddenberry's lawyer series pilot starring Kelley, 333 Montgomery. Rioux gives such careful attention to the development of Kelley's craft and his struggle to get work, it's shocking to not have visual proof of that effort.

Rioux' theme of spiritual strength, often embodied in Kelley's 57-year love affair with his wife, Carolyn, can take on a tone that slides into worship. But as a theme, it pays off. After Star Trek ended, Kelley's encounter with a dying child whose one wish was to meet "Dr. McCoy" apparently changed the actor's attitude about his iconic role and his purpose in forever being "Bones."

There's another connection that Rioux doesn't make, but jumps out at any reader who has done time in therapy. She makes the arresting statement that when soldiers (Kelley among them) returned from World War II, they wanted to get back to living and "forget the war ever happened. " It's telling, then, that the Western had phenomenal popularity in the late 40s and all through the 50s. Westerns are morality tales about good and evil, right and wrong, choices with life-and death consequences, men with guns and the bonds that form between them in desperate situations. This kind of morality play became the foundation of "Star Trek," and Gene Roddenberry even described his idea as "Wagon Train to the stars" so TV executives would understand what he was talking about. Cheap, B-movie Westerns on screen and TV were Kelley's bread and butter in the 50s and early 60s, his face and voice were recognized as part of that imaginary world. In a way, these morality plays helped expose and heal the soul-wounds of war. One can say that Kelley's familiar humanity helped carry a world's wounded consciousness forward to a hopeful future, in Star Trek.

I closed this book feeling that DeForest Kelley, actor, was truly a healer. Not a doctor - but thank God he played one on TV.

Okay, I admit I'm biased. I was vice president of his fan club for years. But for those who are shooting this book down because it doesn't cover enough Star Trek for you.. a subtle reminder. Star Trek was NOT De Kelley's career. Star Trek came at a time near the end of De's career. Yes, it is what caused fans to love him and recognize him, but it was not his career. His career started long before Star Trek was a glimmer in Roddenberry's mind.

And as a person who was very fortunate enough to call the Kelleys friends, I can assure you that this book does let you in on the quiet nature of his life and the special person he indeed was. De was about the little stuff, not the big stuff. And that is how this book is written. He wasn't out for the publicity or the acknowledgement. He just did things because they were "the right things to do"... not because he would gain stardom, press, publicity or attention. In fact, he hated attention. He hated talking in front of people. So why did he go to conventions? Because he did love his fans. He loved hearing from them. And he wanted to acknowledge THEM. Not get the attention for himself.

Anyway.. if you want a biography that is factual with a bunch of dates and such.. no this perhaps isn't the book for you. But it was never meant to be that type of book.

But if you want a book that delves into the life of a very quiet, charming "county boy from Georgia" who just happened to become one of most beloved doctors on television, then please, read this and share it with friends.

He deserves nothing less.

FROM SAWDUST TO STARDUST The Biography of DeForest Kelley is the biography all of Kelley's most ardent fans hoped for and never thought they'd see. Highest possible recommendation!

The research is impeccable; the effect will be life-long to the reader.

You will love Dr. McCoy even more after you have discovered the actor whose genius and compassion brought him to life!

Kristine M Smith, Author DeForest Kelley: A Harvest of Memories : My Life and Times With a Remarkable Gentleman Actor

I am the former president of DeForest Kelley's Australian fan club. I am very sorry to read reviews that seem dedicated to kicking the author of FROM SAWDAUST TO STARDUST in the teeth. I read and enjoyed the book immensely. I feel it is an essential compliment to Kristine M Smith's captivating personal history with DeForest Kelley (DeFOREST KELLEY: A HARVEST OF MEMORIES). Any true Kelley fan will need BOTH books to fully encapsulate a three-dimensional picture of the man, and redundancy of material is non-existent between the two books except in instances where Smith's book is quoted by Rioux's. The two books cannot be compared - they are like apples and oranges - but they enhance each other wonderfully and both enchanted me, but in different ways.

SAWDUST is very well researched - I found out something about De I did not know before the title page! It is also thoughtful and methodical and tells so much of Kelley's earlier history that it reveals a different man behind the one that I, along with so many others, knew and loved. I enjoyed Smith's book "more" only because it detailed De personally, as a friend, mentor and morale booster during the days that we STAR TREK people knew him. Of the two books HARVEST was the "I can't put this down" page-turner adventure. Rioux's book is more scholarly and reveals the fact that not only McCoy, but Kelley himself, was a Healer of true mythological proportions. I agree with Harve Bennett's appraisal of SAWDUST, which is found in the foreword. With this book we see the mosiac from which came McCoy.And so came many, many other Kelley characters. I know De better and love him even more as a result of having read SAWDUST and HARVEST.

Those wishing for a perponderance of STAR TREK reflections may be disappointed, as seems to be the case in some of the other reviews. But anyone wishing to know the man himself, aside from TREK - how he lived, interacted with others and what kind of legacy he left to friends and fans alike should find these books to be "just what the doctor ordered".

I have been a Star Trek fan since around 1974, and often describe myself as "a McCoy fan from way back". I always thought it was a shame that DeForest Kelley was the only one of the Star Trek regulars who never published an autobiography. I've always wanted to know more about his background, his early career as an actor, and so on. This book does a pretty good job of filling in the gaps in the pre-Star Trek time period, but the second half of the book is very disappointing.

You get the feeling that the author is not, after all, really a Star Trek fan, or at least that she's not very familiar with the original series. Referring to Gene Roddenberry -- repeatedly -- as the "Big Bird of the Galaxy" (instead of "Great Bird") is one glaring error. There's no mention of McCoy's big love story in the episode "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky." What did Kelley think of the fact that McCoy finally managed to get the girl in that episode? We don't know. Why wasn't Majel Barrett, Roddenberry's widow and the actress who played Nurse Chapel, interviewed for this book? Instead we get a lengthy interview with, of all people, William Campbell, an actor who appeared in just two Star Trek episodes.

A remarkable amount of space in this book is taken up with anecdotes that don't have anything directly to do with DeForest Kelley at all -- Nichelle Nichols' meeting with Martin Luther King Jr., for example. I would have liked to see a little more exploration of De and Carolyn's marriage. Did they ever regret not being able to have children? What did she think of the whole Star Trek phenomenon? Etc.

Longtime ST fans will no doubt enjoy this book, but I think it could have been done better.

I'm not sure what sort of book this is supposed to be. Clearly, Rioux absolutely adored DeForest Kelley. I suspect Riuox was torn between writing a fawning homage and a serious biography. However, Rioux's writing is occasionaly overwrought and there are several obvious omissions, the biggest being the lack of a filmography: a particularly glaring error in what is, after all, a book about an actor.

But the biggest problem of all is central and unavoidable: DeForest Kelley the man was just not all that interesting. That's not meant to be a criticism of Kelley either, I'm just saying that he was an extremely private man who never shared his thoughts on anything with anyone, so the Rioux was simply unable to offer any insight into what made Kelley tick.

On the other hand, Star Trek aside, Kelley spent most of his career in obscure character roles, mostly in low budget westerns, and this is a fairly interesting look at life on the fringes of showbusiness, where actors like Kelley struggle just to make the rent and are constantly frustrated by their inability to make the big score. For that portrait of Hollywood alone, I'd recommend this book.

Perhaps because I was one of those who deeply admired Dr. Leonard McCoy, and followed him into the helping professions, I greatly enjoyed reading "From Sawdust to Stardust". It painted a broad and detailed picture of the man who created, and in many ways was, my favorite "country doctor". Having first read Kristine M. Smith's "DeForest Kelley: A Harvest of Memories", Terry Lee Rioux's "Stardust" gave me the biographical/historical context into which that earlier very personal memoir fit. Read together, I felt that I had gotten to meet one of the role models of my youth, and the experience was very satisfying. Learning who DeForest Kelley really was helped me to understand why Dr. McCoy seemed so very real......He was real. These two books taken together give an in depth picture of a very special human being [and, no, I didn't belong to any fan clubs]....a man who had a quiet kind of courage, and who inspired many of us to follow him into future. I'd recommend reading "Harvest"[a heartfelt memoir] and then "Sawdust"[a well researched biography], but either way it's a great trip. And in entering the very private world of a very private man, you really do get to "go where no one has gone before."

A warm, charming and poignant biography about a beloved actor who brought to life one of STAR TREK's most beloved characters.

Even though I've had the privilege of telling stories about Dr. McCoy in the various STAR TREK novels and comic books I've written, and had the pleasure of meeting DeForest Kelley on a few occasions, he was so private during his life that I really didn't know much about him.

Author Terry Rioux does an especially nice job evoking De's roots and those early days before, during and just after the war. She also conveys a real sense of the long love story between De and his wife Carolyn. It's a shame DeForest Kelley never wrote his own book, but this labor of love is the next best thing!

I purchased a copy of DeForest Kelley's biography by Terry Lee Rioux expecting the usual Hollywood expose or the adoring, see-no-fault, larger than life creative writing myth. Neither was to be found.

Granted, the biographer is a FAN, but it is a well-grounded, well-researched biography of a man, no more no less. De was man of nobility and flaws, a principled man but not a hero as the American public sees its heroes.

He was a working actor who came through very hard times at the hands of the Studio machine and yet he endured. He found a level of respect among his fellow actors long before he found a level of recognition among the viewing public. Fame came late but it came. His enduring love for his wife, Carolyn, was a thing of rare beauty.

The book was slow in places but so was his life. I was brought to tears when the full spectrum of fame focused on the aging star. His life-changing encounter with the ailing boy and De's love of animals reflects a healer's heart. His realization that his life was on purpose when he discovered the impact Dr. Leonard McCoy had on future medical professionals, the space program, and a culture of young (and not so young) people to walk the road less traveled. DeForest Kelley lived the healer's oath: Do No Harm.

Rioux stood unequivocal in the truth of his final days. It could have been so easy to gloss over the rawness of his mental and physical condition. Tears again flowed, and rightly so. It was the death of an icon.

A good read? You bet!