Laurence Luckinbill, Sybok in Star-Trek V

Laurence Luckinbill, husband to Lucie Arnaz, daughter of Lucille Ball recently had an extensive write-up in The Lewisboro Ledger by J.D. Piro. It provided an interesting read for Lucy Fans.

Mr. Luckinbill provides an adversary to Captain Kirk, played by William Shatner, in the movie Star-Trek V as Sybok, the renegade Vulcan who hijacks the Enterprise and takes it on an interstellar quest to the end of the galaxy. His goal — a planet where God himself is rumored to reside.

Below are excerpts from the story:

On a Friday evening last month {July 2006}, the audience in the Ridgefield Playhouse discovered that Lewisboro has a local connection to the long-running Star Trek series. The Ridgefield Playhouse’s Lost and Found Film Series provided a forum for acknowledging the many contributions to stage, screen and television of Lewisboro’s Laurence Luckinbill — actor, writer, producer, and star of that evening’s feature presentation, the 1989 movie Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

Mr. Luckinbill’s résumé suggests a lifetime of creativity. He is the author and star of four one-man plays on the lives of such diverse figures as Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Roosevelt, Clarence Darrow, and Lyndon Johnson.

Mr. Luckinbill can trace his Star Trek roots back to the show’s inception. He is married to Lucie Arnaz, daughter of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Ms. Ball’s production company, Desilu Studios, produced the original Star Trek TV series in the 1960s. Mr. Luckinbill recounted his mother-in-law’s story of the sale of Star Trek to the brass at Desilu Studios: “Gene Roddenberry came into Desilu and gave one of the shortest and greatest sales pitches ever. He stood up and said, ‘It’s Wagon Train to the stars,’ and sat down. They bought it!” Wagon Train was an enormously popular TV western in the 1960s. But it was Mr. Luckinbill’s work as Lyndon Johnson that convinced the film’s director, William Shatner, to cast Mr. Luckinbill.

For more, read the story!