For those of you who have read a Gene Roddenberry Bio, which one would you recommend? I prefer bios that try to stick to the facts and not have too much opinion, and analysis, from the author.
Of the Roddenberry bios, definitely avoid the James Van Hise biography. (Though it's the only one that goes in depth on Roddenberry's Tarzan movie script.) The authorized biography, David Alexander's Star Trek Creator isn't bad, but there are better options. Joel Engel's biography is very good, but it's also quite critical. Major sources, for instance, were D.C. Fontana and David Gerrold, who had obvious axes to grind. Lance Parkin's, The Impossible Has Happened, is very readable. Besides being the most recent (and thus, the easiest to find), it's comprehensive and fair. Yvonne Fern's Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation is often lumped in with the Roddenberry bios in discussion, but it isn't, really. It's an interesting book to read, but it's also controversial in that the conversation described almost certainly did not happen.
I found 90 minute interview taping on YouTube today that shed some light on his personality and he tells about his life. Some of it is very uncensored so I don't want to embed it here.
That it was critical was one of the reasons I liked it. I prefered something that wasn't as rose-colored as the Alexander bio. Oh? Didn't know that. Is there a source for that?
I was a little too brief. I explained my understanding and thinking better in this post from six years ago: Steve Roby elaborates further down:
Inside Trek: My Secret Life with Star Trek Creator Gene Roddenberry by Susan Sackett is not an objective essay on GR, but it does offer a very unique insight into the Man. In the TNG episode "Encounter at Farpoint," we see Susan as the girl who shows Riker how to use the wall panels, on Enterprise, when he first boards. Then she's all checking out his ass, as he walks away. Anyway, as the title of her book implies, she was GR's secret lover (for nearly 20 years). And once she had decided to publish this book -- in Majel Barrett's living years -- she had effectively ostracized herself from STAR TREK's inner circles, which she had so long enjoyed, as GR's personal assistant.
Susan Sackett had a walk-on role as a background performer in "The Neutral Zone." She had no lines and did not receive screen credit. Evelyn Guerrero played the ensign, who, in "Encounter at Farpoint," shows Riker how to use the computer and then checks him out.
As a general rule, any of the Van Hise Star Trek books are crap. Regarding Tarzan, I know that Roddenberry completed a lengthy outline (~100 pages), which can be found buried in the UCLA special collections, but I've never seen a script. David Alexander's biography suggests there was a script, but the only primary source quoted (a June 1968 letter to Isaac Asimov) mentions a "script treatment," not a screenplay. The book's appendix does not have any dates more specific than 1968 for the script, either. David Alexander's book is an exercise in hagiography, and it's not particularly well-written (Alexander will often get facts and even dates wrong to flatter his subject, and will excuse Roddenberry's bad behavior and then criticize others for the exact same actions, etc.). It is useful, however, because it quotes extensively from various correspondence to and from Roddenberry. There are pages and pages where Alexander does nothing but quote lengthy letters in their entirety. Ironically, Alexander's shortcomings as an author make the book more valuable now than it would be otherwise. Joel Engel's biography is mean-spirited (he takes a needless pot shot at how fat Roddenberry was, for instance), and its major sources (Fontana, Gerrold, Solow, Nimoy) all had an axe to grind with Roddenberry. Then again, it speaks volumes that so many major collaborators had major axes to grind with Roddenberry by the end of his life, and Engel did a significant amount of archival research to support his findings, in addition to many interviews. I wish I could recommend Lance Parkin's book (I get cited in print, which is a thrill), but it's not very good. Parkin didn't even bother to use primary sources. It's a readable summary of the Alexander and Engel biographies, but it has almost nothing new to offer (plus, the author reprints a few dubious claims from the Cushman books, which grinds my gears).