Gilbert Ralston

Gilbert Alexander Ralston (January 5, 1912 – March 18, 1999) was a British-American performer, screenwriter, journalist, and author born in Newcastle, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. His career spanned multiple decades and disciplines, beginning with stage work and extending into television production and screenwriting in the United States.

Ralston appeared on Broadway in 1936 in Lady Precious Stream. In the 1950s, he transitioned into television production in the United States, and by the 1960s he had established himself as a screenwriter for some of the most prominent American television series of the era, including Gunsmoke, Ben Casey, I Spy, Hawaii Five-O, The Naked City, The Big Valley, Laredo, and Combat. He also wrote the 1967 Star Trek episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?", a title drawn from Adonais, the 1821 elegiac poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Among his most significant contributions to television was his role in creating The Wild Wild West. In 1964, producer Michael Garrison approached Ralston with a concept and asked whether he could combine a western hero with a James Bond-type character in a single series. Ralston subsequently developed the Civil War characters, the format, the story outline, and nine drafts of the script that formed the basis of the show, including the idea of a secret agent named Jim West carrying out missions for U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant. Ralston also wrote the pilot episode, "The Night of the Inferno."

In 1997, at the age of 85, Ralston filed a lawsuit against Warner Brothers over the forthcoming theatrical film adaptation of the series. He died on March 18, 1999, in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, of congestive heart failure, before the case reached a settlement. Warner Brothers subsequently paid Ralston's family between $600,000 and $1.5 million. His lawsuit drew attention to a widespread Hollywood practice of the 1950s and 1960s in which television writers who contributed to the creation of popular series allowed producers or studios to claim credit, forfeiting any royalties in the process.

Ralston also worked in film, writing the screenplay for the 1971 movie Willard, which was adapted from the 1968 novel Ratman's Notebooks by Stephen Gilbert. The screenplay received a nomination for an Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture in 1972. In addition to his screen work, Ralston wrote short stories throughout his career.