Once, at a convention of astronomers, James Doohan was asked what it felt like "to be beamed." The actor who'd abided by the order, "Beam me up, Scotty," countless times on the Star Trek set reported that it was "very pleasurable."
"You end up beaming all over the place," Doohan said, per StarTrek.com.
Doohan, who sweated it out in the engine room of the USS Enterprise as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott on the original Trek TV series and, indeed, found himself beamed all over the world via reruns, videos and DVDs, died Wednesday at his home in Washington state. He was 85 and had been battling Alzheimer's diseaseand, most recently, pneumonia.
Per Doohan's request, said longtime agent Steve Stevens Sr., the sci-fi star will be cremated and his ashes launched into space by the same Houston-based aerospace company that shot the remains of Gene Roddenberry into orbit following the Star Trek creator's 1991 death. Stevens said he didn't know precisely when Doohan's outer space memorial would occur. "As soon as the next flight goes up," he said.
In addition to the trailblazing 1966-69 series, the Canadian-born Doohan affected his Scotty brogue for the first seven Trek feature films and the 1973 animated series. And when he wasn't burring, he was grunting what would become the basis for the native tongue of the villainous Klingons in the big-screen adventures.
It was a year ago last July that Doohan's family disclosed that the Trek star had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. That, combined with Parkinson's and diabetes, led Doohan to sign off from the lucrative convention and college circuit, which he had worked like few other Enterprise alums. But first, there was to be a final farewell.
Last August, Doohan, his longtime costars and fans converged in Hollywood for three days of roasting, toasting and immortalizing the actor on the Walk of Fame. With a nod to the signature phrase that Doohan himself never uttered at the transporter controls, the event was called "Beam Me Up Scotty...One Last Time."
At the time, Walter Koenig, who played the Russian navigator Chekov to Doohan's Scotsman on Trek, called the convention "a beautiful gesture." He told E! Online he wished DeForest Kelley, the starship's venerable Dr. McCoy, had had a similar public goodbye. Kelley died in 1999.
On Wednesday, Stevens said Doohan was very ill during "Beam Me Up Scotty" but that "he sucked it up" to be on the convention floor with the faithful.
"Nobody embraced the fans like James did," Stevens said. "He loved the fans, and they loved him. And he felt that he needed to give back what he got."
With Doohan's passing, the surviving original Trek crew members include Koenig, William Shatner(Captain Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock),
Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant Uhura) and George Takei (Lieutenant Sulu).
Although they played a tight-knit bunch on TV and in the movies, in real life, the actors were not always on speaking terms, with Doohan and Shatner being chief exhibits. But last July, Doohan's son Chris Doohan, told E! Online that the two men had patched up things and "told each other how much they love each other."
In a statement Wednesday, Shatner paid tribute to Doohan's "long and storied career."
"I knew Jim when he started out in Canada and I knew him in his last years in America, so we go way back," Shatner said. "My condolences go out to his family."
Coming to terms--with costars, with fans, with typecasting--is a trick all Trek stars have had to master over the last 30-plus years.
"After he realized that people were going to think of him as Scotty," Stevens said of Doohan, "he decided to embrace it instead of being bitter with it."
If there was any frustration, Stevens said, it was that Paramount, Doohan's longtime Trek employer, never offered him any role other than the one which made its way into the title of his 1996 autobiography, Beam Me Up, Scotty.
Doohan was born on March 3, 1920, in Vancouver, British Columbia, and spent his early years in there and in Sarnia, Ontario. Surviving the anguish of living with an alcoholic father, he left home at age 19 to join the Canadian Forces, fighting with the Allies in World War II. After outscoring his fellow soldiers on an officer's exam, he became Captain in the Royal Canadian Artillery. While leading his men into battle on D-Day, Doohan was wounded in the leg and hand, and eventually lost a finger. For the remainder of the war, he became a pilot observer, and received the dubious distinction of being called the "craziest pilot in the Canadian Air Forces."
After returning home to Canada, Doohan performed a few scenes for the local radio station, and was awarded a two-year scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. Beginning in 1946, he trained at the Playhouse with Sanford Meisner, alongside such future stars as Leslie Nielsen, Tony Randall and Jackie Gleason.
From the 1950s on, Doohan performed on thousands of radio shows, and hundreds of TV shows. While he did his share of Bonanzas and other prime-time Westerns, it was science fiction, in the form of a 1953 Canadian series called Space Command, that brought him his first regular series work.
In 1965, Doohan shot a pilot for a proposed series that NBC had already rejected once on the basis that it was too good, and too smart for TV. The second time around, the network bit. Star Trek premiered on Sept. 8, 1966.
In a story he told countless times, Doohan claimed responsibility for Scotty's ancestry. "I did about eight different accents when I was reading," he told Los Angeles writer Sean Doorly in 1996. "Gene [Roddenberry] asked me which one I liked...I said, 'If you want an engineer, you'll want a Scotsman! He liked it, and I said fine."
Doohan also was responsible for Scotty's given name. At his suggestion, producers lifted Montgomery from the actor's monogram (it was his middle name) and awarded it to the Enterprise engineer.
After Trek was canceled in 1969, Doohan found himself back in outer space in 1978 on the live-action Saturday morning series, Jason of Star Command.
In 1979, Paramount relaunched Trek as a big-screen vehicle. All of the series' regular crew members, Doohan included, were on board for what was then Hollywood's most-expensive movie. While Star Trek: The Motion Picture was not the Star Wars blockbuster that studio chiefs might have envisioned, five movies with the original cast followed--Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. When the feature film franchise shifted focus in 1994 to the people and storylines of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Doohan helped bridge the gap by cameoing in Star Trek: Generations. Earlier, Doohan, cast as always as Scotty, appeared in a 1992 episode of that spinoff series.
To Next Generation executive producer Rick Berman, Doohan was a "gentle and lovely man, as well as an extremely talented actor." "We are all very saddened by this news [of his death]," Berman said in a statement.
Latter-day, non-Scotty roles for Doohan included two stints on the CBS soap, The Bold and the Beautiful, and a starring role on the 1996-97 sitcom, Homeboys in Outer Space.
Survivors include seven children, the youngest of whom was born in 2000, when longtime wife Wende was 43 and Doohan was a spry 80.
Joked Doohan at the time to the Seattle Times: "You never forget how to change diapers."
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On a personal note, I'm not sure if anyone else here in our tiny community was ever fortunate enough to ever meet this man. I did on several occassions and even had the fortune to share a meal and casual conversation with him.
Some of you know this, some of you may have guessed this or even heard it somewhere and others not a clue. I'm a fan of Star Trek. I admit this unabashadly just as I unabashedly admit I sit here typing this while weeping with sorrow at this great man's passing. 22 years ago my parents named me after the character this man brought to life. I was graced with the name of Scottie. My dad has pointed out on multiple occassions that I would have been Scotty if he had realized it was with a 'y' and not an 'ie'. So this is the first part of why this has saddened me so. In a way, I died today as well. A small part of me did at any rate. Call if stupid fanboyism if you wish.
My uncle John is a proficent artist and has made a decent name for himself in several circuts of cons. He happened to be doing a portrait piece of Doohan and after hours of painting arrangements were made, food was had and there was an excellent time for all to be had. I was with my uncle at the time at the convention, one of my first if I recall correctly, and was invited to join in on the festivities.
So that night I got to dine and converse with the man who in a way gave me a name, and for 20 years of my life, gave me a catchphrase that I grew to loathe in it's daily use at my expense. Today, I stand ashamed that I would find in myself anger and hatred for having that used against me so often. I don't really know what else to say about this man other then that he will be missed deeply and he left behind a great legacy as we all know.
So here's to you James. You lived long, you prospered, you went were no man had gone before. We will miss you.
James Doohan
3 March 1920 - 20 July 2005
Beaming up, one last time...
At the request of his agent Steven, and his wife instead in lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Doohan's name to his favorite charity, Cowboys for Kids in Arizona
