The situation was different in 1953, Bill.  He didn't attain godhood for at least a dozen years.

Now this:

While Essex most certainly was not the author of It Came from Outer Space to the extent that he wanted me to believe, he hugely minimized his contributions when he told Bradbury that practically all he did was re-type Bradbury's final treatment.

-- given that Bradbury is clearly mis-remembering everything associated with IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE with regard to submitting Their Crappy Version and His Own Version... gets me to doubting whether Harry Essex ever, ever said what Ray Bradbury has said (and said and said) Essex said, "The other writer told me, 'You're dumb,' huh. He said, 'You wrote a screenplay,' huh, 'and you did all my work for me.  All I had to do is retype it.' " That's a near-verbaitim version of the usual story as told to me on camera by Bradbury.

I think that Bradbury story about Harry Essex is another example of self-serving nonsense.  As Weaver points out, Essex was saying decades later that it was primarily his work (rightly or wrongly).  To attribute BOTH of those statements to Essex does make him sound schizo-- saying one thing to the original writer (which is literary & professional lunacy) and the opposite thing to a writer interviewing him for the record years later.  And considering Essex had been writing professionally about 10 or 15 years longer than Bradbury, why would he defer like that?  If it had been me, I might well say, "That treatment was great.  It made my life a lot easier.  You did a lot of my work for me"  But that is NOT the same as, "Gee, you did everything and all I did was retype your story."

Plus, as Weaver also points out, Essex's restructuring, scene excising, dialogue pruning and character adjustments were a LOT more than just the "re-typing" Bradbury claimed.

Bradbury is not unknown for his hyperbolic adjustments of the past, particularly when he's the star of the anecdote.  A solid example of that his is old wheeze about being on the David Frost Show when the first men walked on the Moon.