Thursday, July 21, 2005
James Doohan, AKA "Scotty" from Star Trek died.
James Doohan, the burly chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the original "Star Trek" TV series and movies who responded to the command "Beam me up, Scotty," died Wednesday. He was 85.Actually, no one ever said, "Beam me up, Scotty" in the series. Nope. Not even once. Captain Kirk said, "Three to beam up, Mr. Scott" and some other similar things, but no one ever said the famous phrase as is. (Similarly, "Play it again, Sam" is never said in "Casablanca" either.)
Doohan died at 5:30 a.m. at his Redmond, Wash., home with his wife of 28 years, Wende, at his side, Los Angeles agent and longtime friend Steve Stevens said. The cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease, he said.
Sometimes we don't really find out about people until after they died. Did you know that James Doohan was a combat veteran?
At 19, James escaped the turmoil at home by joining the Canadian army, becoming a lieutenant in artillery. He was among the Canadian forces that landed on Juno Beach on D-Day. "The sea was rough," he recalled. "We were more afraid of drowning than the Germans."I do remember reading about his children that he had at, shall we say, a very mature age.
The Canadians crossed a minefield laid for tanks; the soldiers weren't heavy enough to detonate the bombs. At 11:30 that night, he was machine-gunned, taking six hits: one that took off his middle right finger (he managed to hide the missing finger on screen), four in his leg and one in the chest. Fortunately the chest bullet was stopped by his silver cigarette case.
Doohan's first marriage to Judy Doohan produced four children. He had two children by his second marriage to Anita Yagel. Both marriages ended in divorce. In 1974 he married Wende Braunberger, and their children were Eric, Thomas and Sarah, who was born in 2000, when Doohan was 80.Sometimes an actor plays a role so well and is so memorable, that's all he's known for. Such was the case here. But apparently, Doohan went from resenting it...to embracing it.
In a 1998 interview, Doohan was asked if he ever got tired of hearing the line "Beam me up, Scotty."
"I'm not tired of it at all," he replied. "Good gracious, it's been said to me for just about 31 years. It's been said to me at 70 miles an hour across four lanes on the freeway. I hear it from just about everybody. It's been fun."