The Creator's Story
Wah Ming Chang (Aug. 2,1917 - Dec. 23, 2003) was one of the great unsung heroes of Star Trek. He was not listed in the show's credits, but everyone certainly knows his work: the communicator, tricorder, phaser, the Gorn, the first Romulan ship, tribbles, and more. Wah Chang was an artist, sculptor and animator who worked in Hollywood for decades and left his mark on many a classic film and TV show. His work even won an Oscar for Special Effects, in 1961 for "The Time Machine," though he is not named among the award's recipients due to a clerical error in the submittal form. His first contribution to Trek came when he designed the prosthetic heads of the Talosians for the first pilot "The Cage." When early designs of the phaser were not acceptable to producer Robert Justman, he asked Chang to take a crack at it, and he delivered the perfect prop. There after Chang agreed to design and create the tricorder and the communicator. Justman said, "Wah's work was always of the highest quality and very high creativity, and certainly he made it possible for us to do what we were doing on Star Trek. He made our jobs possible." - edited excerpts like the above from the previous official Star Trek website are in yellow * * * * * The following text is from the 1989 book “The Life and Sculpture of Wah Ming Chang” written by his wife Glen and by a cousin David Barrow. ©1989 Wah Ming Chang, Carmel, CA; used by permission. Since this was written by family, it is Wah’s story as he likely wanted it told. Some revisions have been made to account for changes that have occurred since then. Added material comes from Webster Colcord's (now-closed) StopMotionAnimation.com thread in pink, Wikipedia in blue, Don Colman's "Time Machine"-related Wah tribute in green, the book "Wah Ming Chang - Artist and Master of Special Effects" by Gail Blasser Riley in orange, and from us in grey. Movie and personnel links reference "The Internet Movie Database" (IMDb). |
PART 1 - THE MAKING OF A MASTER |
Wah Chang’s career as an artist, toy designer, special effects technician, filmmaker, and costumer spanned nearly seven decades. Many of the projects to which he devoted his talents over the years are well-known to television and movie audiences, while other work demonstrated his commitment to social, educational, and environmental causes. The bronzes Wah created during his last thirty years reflect both the diversity of his artistic background and the joy and imagination of a man who never lost touch with his sense of play and possibility. The “Ho Ho” became a popular retreat for much of San Francisco’s Bohemia, but above all, it was Sue Chang’s reputation for kindness and generosity among San Francisco’s artists which attracted to her and her family a circle of talented friends. Among the artists and writers who frequented the tea room were Blanding Sloan, a native of Texas, and his wife Mildred Taylor, a newspaper journalist and early advocate of equal rights for women. Blanding was a newcomer to the West Coast from New York where he had designed sets and lighting for a number of Broadway productions, including Flo Ziegfield’s “Follies” and Earl Carroll’s musicals. Sloan's was an eclectic talent. He pursued painting, etching, puppeteering, and the cultivation of other artists. He and Mildred had started on a proposed trip around the world, sketching and writing about their adventures along the way, and had come as far as San Francisco when the spell of that city and a shortage of funds prompted them to stay. Blanding had a studio on Polk Street, and he and Mildred formed the nexus for a group which included such notables as sculptor Ralph Stackpole and painter Maynard Dixon. It was at the "Ho Ho" that Blanding found Wah sketching pictures and portraits on the backs of his mother's menus one afternoon, and he was caught fast by the solemn brown eyes which observed an adult world from beneath a thatch of black hair. The three Changs were soon an integral part of the group of regulars at the Polk Street studio, and Wah spent all of his after-school time there. He was adventurous with the materials given him, and Blanding encouraged him at whatever he wanted to try. Seven‑year‑old Wah was accepted on equal footing with a hard‑working group of serious artists. A regular student in the life-sketching class, Wah learned the techniques of the etcher's craft and was comfortably at home with oils and canvas. Then suddenly in 1928 Sue died after a brief, intense battle for life in a San Francisco hospital. It was Blanding who took the small boy for a walk in Golden Gate Park, and while they rested on a bench in the warm sunshine, he told him he would not see his mother again and tried to comfort him as best he could. In the time that followed, Wah forgot all but the remnants of his Chinese vocabulary. He no longer attended the after-hours Chinese school. Although he now had some responsibility looking after his younger foster brother who shared the attention of his foster parents, there were still hours of delight when he worked silently side-by-side with Blanding in the studio on Polk Street. Every now and then, Blanding would gather enough creditable examples of work from the group to make up an exhibit. Many of these included Wah's work. Eastern galleries asked to show his prints without knowing his age, and bought them for permanent collections. In 1927, one of his prints, submitted to the Annual Exhibition of the Brooklyn Society of Etchers, was shown alongside the works of Frank Duveneck, the elder, and James Whistler. Later that year his work was exhibited at the annual show of the Philadelphia Print Club. The
year after his adoption by the Sloans Wah received a scholarship to
the Peninsula
School (then the Peninsula School of Creative Education) in Menlo
Park, outside of Palo Alto. Each day he rode his bicycle from
Palo Alto out to the old Victorian building in which the In her autobiography, Life On Two Levels, Mrs. Duveneck describes one of the activities of the school's art department. The high white walls of our building offered marvelous backgrounds to carry out large-scale imagery. Equipped with big brushes and jars of poster paint, the youthful artists painted sweeping landscapes and brightly arrayed figures directly on the walls... These pictures were allowed to remain only for a year, and then they were all washed away to allow for fresh inspiration to fill the space. Only one picture in the Assembly Room was allowed to remain for many years. It was by our gifted Chinese pupil, Wah Chang. He painted a life-size portrait of a great buckskin mare with flowing mane and tail, standing with her newborn colt in front of an old wooden barn which everyone recognized as the "Hidden Villa" barn. When this masterpiece had to be washed away, some of us had tears in our eyes.* * Life on Two Levels by Josephine Duveneck, William Kaufmann, Inc. 1978
Wah remembers, "I was sixteen at the time Blanding gave me the job of building the set for 'The Victory Ball Ballet'. The ballet performances followed those of the symphony orchestra and the sets for the ballet had to be either moved into place or assembled in the dark by the dancers themselves; a difficult maneuver." During summer vacation before his last year in high school, Wah worked on a W.P.A. Federal Theater puppet project under Sloan's direction. During that year he also received leave from school to work on a short puppet movie produced and directed by Leroy Prinz. On this job he worked with a puppet maker, Charles Cristadoro, who a few years later would introduce him to the Walt Disney Studios. In
1936, Texas was planning the celebration of its Centennial Fair.
One of the attractions was to be an outdoor spectacular, a portrayal
of one hundred years of Texas' colorful history. "The Cavalcade
of Texas" was two months behind schedule when Blanding was called
to Dallas to For Wah, the most significant development from this experience was that he met a young woman from nearby North Texas State University. In her second year as an art and education major, Glenella ("Glen") Taylor was one of a score of college students recruited from the art and drama departments to serve as members of the cast. During rehearsal breaks, she watched the skilled drafting of the pastel portraits of the play's leading actors which Wah was making for display at the entrance of the amphitheater. The two began a friendship that would lead back to Texas five years later when they would be married. In 1937, Wah, then nineteen, returned to Hollywood and soon heard from his father who had remarried and was on his way to China. Wah met with his father (who lived until 1974) and several aunts and cousin in Honolulu. He stayed on as art instructor for the Honolulu Recreational Department. After a year in the Islands, receiving a letter from an old friend offering him work at the San Francisco World's Fair, Wah returned to do work on two animated commercial advertising films and displays to which he applied his skills as a puppet-maker and animator. Here he learned a great deal about the technique of stop-motion photography. This new skill fitted him perfectly for a job at the Disney Studios which now came his way through his old friend from Federal Theater days, Charles Cristadoro. Wah had been at work at Disney Studios for about a year and a half when one day he fell ill with what the attending doctor diagnosed as a bad case of the flu. Several days later he was checked into the hospital where he was told he had polio. When he was asked to move his legs and found this impossible, he realized the seriousness of his condition. Wah
was kept at the Los Angeles County Hospital for 21 days until the danger
of contagion was past and then was moved to a sanitarium in San Gabriel.
In the sanitarium, he celebrated his twenty-second birthday.
On one of his visits to see Wah, Blanding developed a plan to help with
the rehabilitation. A work bench and art supplies were brought
in and each day Wah would use his wheelchair to convey himself to the
Wah spent that summer of 1941 working and recuperating at the Sloan's house in Eagle Rock, California. He also saw a great deal of Glen Taylor, who was visiting her aunt in near-by Van Nuys, and before the summer was over the two had decided to marry the following spring at the end of her second year of teaching. The bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 dramatically changed their plans as travel within the country became increasingly difficult. They decided to marry in Texas as California law at the time forbade a Caucasian and a Chinese to marry. They then returned to California and got their own apartment. In the meantime, Wah had gone to work for the George Pal Puppetoon Studio as the head of the model department. In addition to producing a number of animated "shorts," the company produced training films for the military. Some of the films required miniature sets and special-effects photography, tools which Wah incorporated into his growing set of skills in the film medium. Wah
spent a year and a half at Pal's. By then, ready to use his skills
in the production of his own films, he and Glen invested their total
savings in camera equipment (primarily a Kodak
16mm "cine special") and struck out on their own.
They made a number of medical films. In 1945 Blanding and Wah collaborated to form a production company called "East-West Studio." Among their projects they made a film of the folk singer, Huddie Leadbetter. "Leadbelly" was the legendary singer and composer of many familiar songs including "Good Night, Irene." The film was never completed but was later re-edited by Pete Seeger, and this rare footage was incorporated into a film with several other folk singers. It has since been called a minor classic. A
major project for Blanding and Wah during the "EastWest Studio"
period was their production of "The
Way of Peace," an animated puppet film commissioned by the
American Lutheran Church at the end of the The film premiered in 1947 at Constitution Hall in Washington D.C. before a distinguished audience, including President Truman and Albert Einstein, invited by the Washington Federation of Churches. In the August, 1948 issue of the Saturday Review of Literature, The Film Forum concluded its review of the 19 minute film stating: “Lew Ayers narrates the story of man's saga through the ages. Presented by means of puppets and miniature sets, a lavish production has been made possible; by sheer artistry budgetary problems have been annihilated. The story opens with the Creation and ends with the earth dissolving into the cosmos. Now man has invented the means of total destruction. There is a scene of full-scale atomic warfare which is brilliant and unforgettable. This is a great picture and should not be overlooked.”* *Saturday Review of Literature, August 8, 1948 In
1948 Wah and Gene Warren, an associate from earlier studio days, were
approached by Norval Krutcher to form a company called
Centaur to do television commercials. Wah recalls, "
We opened up a little studio on Melrose in Hollywood, but most of the
time we sat around the studio waiting for any work to come in.
During this time, I did some free-lance designing. One of these
jobs was working on one of the first models of the 'Barbie' dolls for
the Mattel Toy Company. I also did some designs for a novelty
company and had the idea for doing a small novelty using a bent wire
inside a plastic figure to animate it. The first of these was
a little harem dancing girl seated on a cushion. When you turned
the crank on the bottom of the base she did an exotic dance. We
sold this to "Not only did we design the toys, but we had to design and build the machinery to cast the flexible plastic. We licensed 'Bozo, the Clown' from Capitol Records and made 'Bozo' toys. This was the familiar red-haired clown figure molded around a pipe cleaner armature which you could bend and pose in any position. "Then we attempted to incorporate sound in the animated crank toys by means of a miniature player underneath. The idea was fine, but we ran into a mountain of difficulties with production problems and after spending thousands of dollars the company folded." HC note - we conclude Part 1 around 1956. Next up starts with Wah's ground-breaking work in movies and television...
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