Thank you all for sharing such a moving outpouring of remembrances. I was as shocked by the news as all of you were.
I think it's safe to say that Leonard Nimoy touched all our lives through his portrayal of Spock. His impact on popular culture was profound, and from very humble and obscure origins...
Leonard Nimoy, like many Americans, was the child of immigrants. Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, in fact, an ethnicity he shared with a future friend and co-star of his. He was born in 1931, and raised in his birthplace of Boston, where he sold newspapers on the Boston Common during the Great Depression and World War II. But even as a child, he knew his true calling was to act. As with many children who aspire to a career in the performing arts, his parents warned him against it. But he didn't listen. Hollywood beckoned, as it did to so many people mid-century.
Nimoy struggled as an actor for many years. He eventually caught the attention of a cop-turned-writer/producer, Gene Roddenberry, who cast him in his short-lived USMC series,
The Lieutenant, as a smarmy, cocksure film producer. Roddenberry would remember him when the time came to cast a "half-Martian" character for a science-fiction series he was developing called
Star Trek. Even though NBC rejected the first pilot, they ordered another - and Nimoy was the one constant on-screen presence to carry over into the second.
In many ways, Leonard Nimoy was
Star Trek - his affiliation with the franchise has spanned more than a half-century, longer than anyone else. He was the last living person from the original production staff to remain involved with the franchise prior to his death. His character of Mr. Spock came to eclipse his own persona.
A trope is named for the first of his two autobiographies, decrying this fact - and for good reason. Nimoy brought so much to his character - the nerve pinch and the salute were his creations. His famous breakdown in "The Naked Time" was improvised - in a single take. He poured himself into Spock so completely that it's easy to see why people would conflate them - and why he would grow to resent that.
After
Star Trek was cancelled in 1969, he got a job across the Desilu-turned-Paramount lot at
Mission: Impossible, where he played The Great Paris (a replacement for Martin Landau's departed character of Rollin Hand). He left after two seasons, in 1971, for reasons which are unclear - the show continued running through 1973. Perhaps his alcoholism, a problem he battled during the run of
Star Trek and well into the 1970s, was a factor, but I can only speculate. The autobiography came out around this time, and when talks of a
Star Trek revival emerged, he refused to take part. A transparent ripoff named "Xon" was created to take his place - the first of many, many characters in
Star Trek to bear Spock's influence. Nimoy started hosting an anthology series,
In Search Of..., instead.
When the
Star Trek revival series became a movie in the wake of
Star Wars, he agreed to take part. For someone who wanted nothing to do with
Star Trek, he sure threw himself into that production, mediating on-set between Roddenberry, his co-writer Harold Livingston, and the director, Robert Wise. He even came back to do a
second movie, under the condition that his character be killed off. I think it's safe to say that Spock's death, and his funeral scene, will now play very differently than before, especially since we know that unlike Spock, Nimoy will not be coming back.
However, that great and moving film contains some words of wisdom which I feel sum up this occasion better than any other:
He's really not dead... as long as we remember him.
Leonard Nimoy touched so many lives through Spock that even
he ultimately could not fail to be moved by it. He is not Spock, but at the same time, he
is Spock - his two autobiographies, taken together, collectively got it right. Perhaps the best adjective to describe him is the one which he himself uttered so many times:
fascinating. Although he sadly did not live to see the 50th anniversary of the franchise which he came to define as much as it came to define him, his legacy remains eternal. But at this time, my thoughts go out to all those who knew him and loved him.
May peace be upon him.
).
