Gilbert Ralston

Gilbert Alexander Ralston (1912, Newcastle, County Down Ireland – 1999, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina) was an American screenwriter, journalist and author. He often wrote under pseudonym Stephen Gilbert. He worked as a reporter for "The Northern Whig" newspaper. In the 1950s and 1960s he worked as a television writer. Fact|date=January 2008

Wild Wild West

Ralston helped create the television series "The Wild Wild West" and scripted the pilot episode, "The Night of the Inferno". In 1997, aged 85, Ralston sued Warner Brothers over the upcoming motion picture based on the series. (Wild Wild West was released in 1999.) In a deposition, Ralston explained that in 1964 he was approached by producer Michael Garrison who '"said he had an idea for a series, good commercial idea, and wanted to know if I could glue the idea of a western hero and a James Bond type together in the same show." [The New York Times, 8 July 1999]

Ralston said he then created the Civil War characters, the format, the story outline and nine drafts of the script that was the basis for the television series. It was his idea, for example, to have a secret agent named Jim West who would perform secret missions for President Ulysses S. Grant.

Ralston's experience brought to light a common Hollywood practice of the 1950s and 60s when television writers who helped create popular series allowed producers or studios to take credit for a show, thus cheating the writers out of millions of dollars in royalties.

Outcome of court case

Ralston died in 1999, before his suit was settled. Warner Brothers ended up paying Ralston's family between $600,000 and $1.5 million. [The Wall Street Journal, 15 July 2005]

References

External links

*imdb name|id=0707804|name=Gilbert Ralston