Don Ingalls

Donald George Ingalls (July 29, 1918 – March 10, 2014) was an American screenwriter and television producer. During his 35-year career Ingalls wrote scripts for more than 70 episodes of network television, including Adam-12, Bonanza, The Big Valley, Fantasy Island, Gunsmoke, Have Gun-Will Travel, Honey West, Marcus Welby M.D., Police Story, Serpico, Star Trek, and The Virginian.^[1] Ingalls also wrote the script for the movie Airport 1975.

He was a lifelong friend of Gene Roddenberry, having served in the Los Angeles Police Department with him.

Ingalls was born in Humboldt, Nebraska on July 29, 1918, the third of Park Louis and Lulu Grace (née Morris) Ingalls' three children.^[2][3][4][5] Ingalls spent his childhood living in Stafford, Kansas. The family moved in the 1930s to Los Angeles, California. Ingalls attended North Hollywood High School,^[1] and was a reporter for the high school newspaper Blue & Gray.^[6]

Ingalls joined the United States Army Air Forces on December 12, 1942 while working as an accountant at the U.S. Civil Service Commission in Washington, DC.^[7]

Ingalls served during the Second World War in Europe as a pilot, flying Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses.^[8] Following the war, he became a test pilot for North American Aviation.^[2]

Ingalls became a police officer and worked under Chief William H. Parker in the Los Angeles Police Department within the Public Information department. Ingalls said "It was a great job. I got to write a lot of different things. It was definitely an exciting field".^[9]

Ingalls said the job gave him the experience necessary to excel at writing. “I had never spoken in public before, and here I was writing speeches for the police brass and acting as a spokesman for the department. It really gave me confidence that would later help make me a better writer... I definitely think my experience in the department helped me. I worked on a lot of police shows over the years, and I used my own experiences in my writing".^[9]

It was in the police that he met lifelong friend Gene Roddenberry. Both of them transitioned from the Newspaper Unit within the Traffic Department to the new section when Parker was made chief. The pair shared a common background, both of them having been B-17 pilots during the war.^[10] Sharing a desire to become writers, they worked together in a single office on the 27th floor of the Los Angeles City Hall.^[8] Ingalls was the first to resign from the LAPD to pursue a writing career.^[11]

In 1957 Ingalls sold his first script for the ZIV TV show Harbor Command.

Roddenberry and Ingalls had drifted apart following Ingalls' resignation, but reunited early on in their writing careers. Roddenberry was initially the more successful of the two, and recommended Ingalls as story editor to Sam Rolfe on the television series Have Gun – Will Travel.^[12] Ingalls' 1957 scripts for Have Gun - Will Travel earned him the position of associate producer. Ingalls became the show's producer in 1962.^[13] Roddenberry continued to recommend Ingalls for other screenwriting jobs.^[14]

Roddenberry began to develop Star Trek and sent Ingalls a series outline, asking him to keep it "very, very confidential".^[15]

Ingalls wrote two scripts for Star Trek, the first, "The Alternative Factor". His second script, "A Private Little War", was intended to be a criticism piece on the Vietnam War, but was heavily re-written by Roddenberry. Ingalls was angry at him for a year and insisted on being credited only under the pseudonym "Jud Crucis", Latin for "Justice of the Cross".^[16]

He wrote episodes for a variety of television series, and was a producer on shows including T.J. Hooker and Kingston: Confidential. Starting as a writer, then script editor, he became the producer of the ABC network's Fantasy Island. Ingalls said "I started as a writer, became script editor and then producer. I ended up writing more than 30 episodes in seven years".^[9]

Ingalls also wrote a handful of television movies such as the 1979 Captain America film. He has a single theatrical film credit, Airport 1975 (1974).

His final work was the novel, Watchers on the Mountain (2005) a fictional work about the Navajo Nation.^[2]

He died in 2014 after a long illness at his home in Olympia, Washington.^[2]

• Don Ingalls at IMDb
• Don Ingalls at Memory Alpha