Leonard Nimoy R.I.P.

[John F]

Who knew he was Jewish?

Leonard Nimoy, Spock of ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 83
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
FEB. 27, 2015

Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut “Star Trek,” died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83. His wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, confirmed his death, saying the cause was end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Mr. Nimoy announced last year that he had the disease, attributing it to years of smoking, a habit he had given up three decades earlier. He had been hospitalized earlier in the week.

His artistic pursuits — poetry, photography and music in addition to acting — ranged far beyond the United Federation of Planets, but it was as Mr. Spock that Mr. Nimoy became a folk hero, bringing to life one of the most indelible characters of the last half century: a cerebral, unflappable, pointy-eared Vulcan with a signature salute and blessing: “Live long and prosper” (from the Vulcan “Dif-tor heh smusma”).

Mr. Nimoy, who was teaching Method acting at his own studio when he was cast in the original “Star Trek” television series in the mid-1960s, relished playing outsiders, and he developed what he later admitted was a mystical identification with Spock, the lone alien on the starship’s bridge. Yet he also acknowledged ambivalence about being tethered to the character, expressing it most plainly in the titles of two autobiographies: “I Am Not Spock,” published in 1977, and “I Am Spock,” published in 1995. In the first, he wrote, “In Spock, I finally found the best of both worlds: to be widely accepted in public approval and yet be able to continue to play the insulated alien through the Vulcan character.”

“Star Trek,” which had its premiere on NBC on Sept. 8, 1966, made Mr. Nimoy a star. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the franchise, called him “the conscience of ‘Star Trek’ ” — an often earnest, sometimes campy show that employed the distant future (as well as some special effects that appear primitive by today’s standards) to take on social issues of the 1960s.

His stardom would endure. Though the series was canceled after three seasons because of low ratings, a cultlike following — the conference-holding, costume-wearing Trekkies, or Trekkers (the designation Mr. Nimoy preferred) — coalesced soon after “Star Trek” went into syndication. The fans’ devotion only deepened when “Star Trek” was spun off into an animated show, various new series and an uneven parade of movies starring much of the original television cast, including — besides Mr. Nimoy — William Shatner (as Captain Kirk), DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy), George Takei (the helmsman, Sulu), James Doohan (the chief engineer, Scott), Nichelle Nichols (the chief communications officer, Uhura) and Walter Koenig (the navigator, Chekov). When the director J. J. Abrams revived the “Star Trek” film franchise in 2009, with an all-new cast including Zachary Quinto as Spock, he included a cameo part for Mr. Nimoy, as an older version of the same character. Mr. Nimoy also appeared in the 2013 follow-up, “Star Trek Into Darkness.”

His zeal to entertain and enlighten reached beyond “Star Trek” and crossed genres. He had a starring role in the dramatic television series “Mission: Impossible” and frequently performed onstage, notably as Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof.” His poetry was voluminous, and he published books of his photography. He also directed movies, including two from the “Star Trek” franchise, and television shows. And he made records, singing pop songs as well as original songs about “Star Trek,” and gave spoken-word performances — to the delight of his fans and the bewilderment of critics.

But all that was subsidiary to Mr. Spock, the most complex member of the Enterprise crew, who was both one of the gang and a creature apart, engaged at times in a lonely struggle with his warring racial halves. In one of his most memorable “Star Trek” performances, Mr. Nimoy tried to follow in the tradition of two actors he admired, Charles Laughton and Boris Karloff, who each played a monstrous character — Quasimodo and the Frankenstein monster — who is transformed by love.

In Episode 24, which was first shown on March 2, 1967, Mr. Spock is indeed transformed. Under the influence of aphrodisiacal spores he discovers on the planet Omicron Ceti III, he lets free his human side and announces his love for Leila Kalomi (Jill Ireland), a woman he had once known on Earth. In this episode, Mr. Nimoy brought to Spock’s metamorphosis not only warmth, compassion and playfulness, but also a rarefied concept of alienation. “I am what I am, Leila,” Mr. Spock declares after the spores’ effect has worn off and his emotions are again in check. “And if there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them. Mine can be no worse than someone else’s.”

Born in Boston on March 26, 1931, Leonard Simon Nimoy was the second son of Max and Dora Nimoy, Ukrainian immigrants and Orthodox Jews. His father worked as a barber. From the age of 8, Leonard acted in local productions, winning parts at a community college, where he performed through his high school years. In 1949, after taking a summer course at Boston College, he traveled to Hollywood, though it wasn’t until 1951 that he landed small parts in two movies, “Queen for a Day” and “Rhubarb.” He continued to be cast in little-known movies, although he did presciently play an alien invader in a cult serial called “Zombies of the Stratosphere,” and in 1961 he had a minor role on an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” His first starring movie role came in 1952 with “Kid Monk Baroni,” in which he played a disfigured Italian street-gang leader who becomes a boxer.

Mr. Nimoy served in the Army for two years, rising to sergeant and spending 18 months at Fort McPherson in Georgia, where he presided over shows for the Army’s Special Services branch. He also directed and starred as Stanley in the Atlanta Theater Guild’s production of “A Streetcar Named Desire” before receiving his final discharge in November 1955. He then returned to California, where he worked as a soda jerk, movie usher and cabdriver while studying acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. He achieved wide visibility in the late 1950s and early 1960s on television shows like “Wagon Train,” “Rawhide” and “Perry Mason.” Then came “Star Trek.”

Mr. Nimoy returned to college in his 40s and earned a master’s degree in Spanish from Antioch University Austin, an affiliate of Antioch College in Ohio, in 1978. Antioch University later awarded Mr. Nimoy an honorary doctorate.

Mr. Nimoy directed the movies “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock” (1984) and “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” (1986), which he helped write. In 1991, the same year that he resurrected Mr. Spock on two episodes of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Mr. Nimoy was also the executive producer and a writer of the movie “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.”

He then directed the hugely successful comedy “Three Men and a Baby” (1987), a far cry from his science-fiction work, and appeared in made-for-television movies. He received an Emmy nomination for the 1982 movie “A Woman Called Golda,” in which he portrayed the husband of Golda Meir, the prime minister of Israel, who was played by Ingrid Bergman. It was the fourth Emmy nomination of his career — the other three were for his “Star Trek” work — although he never won.

Mr. Nimoy’s marriage to the actress Sandi Zober ended in divorce. Besides his wife, he is survived by his children, Adam and Julie Nimoy; a stepson, Aaron Bay Schuck; six grandchildren and one great-grandchild; and an older brother, Melvin.

Though his speaking voice was among his chief assets as an actor, the critical consensus was that his music was mortifying. Mr. Nimoy, however, was undaunted, and his fans seemed to enjoy the camp of his covers of songs like “If I Had a Hammer.” (His first album was called “Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock’s Music From Outer Space.”)

From 1977 to 1982, Mr. Nimoy hosted the syndicated series “In Search Of ...,” which explored mysteries like the Loch Ness monster and U.F.O.s. He also narrated “Ancient Mysteries” on the History Channel and appeared in commercials, including two with Mr. Shatner for Priceline.com. He provided the voice for animated characters in “Transformers: The Movie,” in 1986, and “The Pagemaster,” in 1994. In 2001 he voiced the king of Atlantis in the Disney animated movie “Atlantis: The Lost Empire,” and in 2005 he furnished voice-overs for the computer game Civilization IV. More recently, he had a recurring role on the science-fiction series “Fringe” and was heard, as the voice of Spock, in an episode of the hit sitcom “The Big Bang Theory.”

Mr. Nimoy was an active supporter of the arts as well. The Thalia, a venerable movie theater on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, now a multi-use hall that is part of Symphony Space, was renamed the Leonard Nimoy Thalia in 2002.

He also found his voice as a writer. Besides his autobiographies, he published “A Lifetime of Love: Poems on the Passages of Life” in 2002. Typical of Mr. Nimoy’s simple free verse are these lines: “In my heart/Is the seed of the tree/Which will be me.”

In later years, he rediscovered his Jewish heritage, and in 1991 he produced and starred in “Never Forget,” a television movie based on the story of a Holocaust survivor who sued a neo-Nazi organization of Holocaust deniers.

In 2002, having illustrated his books of poetry with his photographs, Mr. Nimoy published “Shekhina,” a book devoted to photography with a Jewish theme, that of the feminine aspect of God. His black-and-white photographs of nude and seminude women struck some Orthodox Jewish leaders as heretical, but Mr. Nimoy asserted that his work was consistent with the teachings of the kabbalah.

His religious upbringing also influenced the characterization of Spock. The character’s split-fingered salute, he often explained, had been his idea: He based it on the kohanic blessing, a manual approximation of the Hebrew letter shin, which is the first letter in Shaddai, one of the Hebrew names for God.

“To this day, I sense Vulcan speech patterns, Vulcan social attitudes and even Vulcan patterns of logic and emotional suppression in my behavior,” Mr. Nimoy wrote years after the original series ended. But that wasn’t such a bad thing, he discovered. “Given the choice,” he wrote, “if I had to be someone else, I would be Spock.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/arts/ ... at-83.html

[John F]

For Leonard Nimoy, Spock’s Hold Made Reaching Escape Velocity Futile
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
FEB. 27, 2015

The title of Leonard Nimoy’s autobiography was “I Am Not Spock,” and that so offended some fans that he followed it with a second, “I Am Spock.” The actor who won a permanent place on the altar of pop culture for his portrayal of Mr. Spock on “Star Trek” was almost as famous for wanting to be remembered for other things. And that is, of course, highly illogical.

It’s hard to think of another star who was so closely and affectionately identified with a single role. Even George Reeves, the first television Superman, was also one of the Tarleton twins in “Gone With the Wind.” It’s even harder to think of a television character that so fully embodied and defined a personality type. Just as Scrooge became synonymous with miser, and Peter Pan became a syndrome, Spock was dispassion personified. Crime fiction and the movies offered Sherlock Holmes as the ultimate aloof, brainy hero. But until “Star Trek,” television didn’t really have anyone that distinctively — and irresistibly — coldblooded, cerebral and punctilious. (Mr. Peabody of the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show came close, but he was a beagle and quite affectionate in his fusty way.) Before the word Asperger’s was in common parlance, before Sheldon showed up on “The Big Bang Theory,” there was Spock, the half-Vulcan, half-human science officer on the Starship Enterprise who revered reason and eschewed emotion.

The original “Star Trek” that was created by Gene Roddenberry and went on the air in 1966 lasted only three seasons, but it has never really left the picture: It lives on and on in reruns, remakes, movie adaptations, comedy skits, Halloween costumes, conventions, memorabilia, fan fiction and endless campy parodies on YouTube.

The baby boom generation came of age under the twin pillars of Spock — Doctor and Mister — but it’s the Mister from “Star Trek” that has more resonance now. Even people who have never seen any of the “Star Trek” television series or movies know and use the words “Vulcan” and “Spock.” The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has described President Obama’s detachment as Vulcan-like. Mr. Obama once posed in the Oval Office with Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura, giving the split-fingered Vulcan salute.

“Star Trek” had many beloved characters, but Spock stood out as a prototype: His persona seemed new, but it had classic roots. Spock was mostly impervious to love, but his mother (played by Jane Wyatt) was human, which meant that he couldn’t always suppress his feelings. And that made him the most unattainable and romantic hero imaginable — Hippolytus, Euripides’ chaste and scornful warrior, or a Mr. Rochester for the sci-fi age. Naturally, some of the more memorable episodes revolve around Mr. Spock’s extraterrestrial love life.

In “Amok Time,” Spock suddenly turned erratic and confessed that he was in heat, so to speak: In their mating season, Vulcans return to a primal lust. (He got over it.) While on a mission in the episode “This Side of Paradise,” Spock was infected by mysterious plant spores that made him giddy with happiness and romance. But his strongest bond was with Capt. James T. Kirk, played by William Shatner, and that was a bromance that still resonates.

Mr. Shatner moved on; he even found a new screen buddy, James Spader, on “Boston Legal.” Mr. Nimoy stayed in the game for a while, notably by playing Paris on “Mission Impossible” and doing a lot of theater, but he had a hard time finding roles that eclipsed the éclat of Spock. He turned to philanthropy and art, publishing poetry record albums and several books of poetry and photography, including a collection of nude portraits of overweight women, titled “The Full Body Project.”

A little like Spock struggling between his two sides, Mr. Nimoy was torn between his real self and his “Star Trek” identity, the one fans were so passionate to prolong. And like Spock, Mr. Nimoy was gracious about the pressure, allowing for human weakness even when he didn’t share it. Everyone wanted him to be Spock, forever. Once in a while, Mr. Nimoy complied. He lent his voice to a Spock action figure on a 2012 episode of “The Big Bang Theory,” in which Sheldon (Jim Parsons) dreams that his toy Spock is real. Even that brief cameo alludes to Mr. Nimoy’s ambivalence about his stardom. Sheldon rhapsodizes about what it would be like actually to be on the bridge of the Enterprise. The miniature Spock replies dryly, “Trust me, it gets old after a while.”

Not for his fans. In his later years, Mr. Nimoy took to Twitter and gamely ended his tweets with the abbreviation for the Vulcan adieu, “Live Long and Prosper.” “LLAP” sounds a lot better than R.I.P.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/28/arts/ ... utile.html

[jbuck919]

How on earth did I miss this thread? Of course I knew that Nimoy was Jewish. The vau thing is ancient history. And I am not Spock is not an autobiography, but a memoir which I read first when I was in college. If one wishes to be freaked out by a Nimoy reminiscence, one can watch any clip of his on-set presence out of character. Watching Spock spontaneously laugh or light up a cigarette (he was obviously suffering from emphysema in his last performances in that role) is pretty weird for a Spock fan from childhood like myself.

[John F]

I don't know Nimoy's book, but the Wikipedia article about it begins, "'I Am Not Spock' is Leonard Nimoy's first autobiography." Later it calls the same book a memoir. A memoir of one's own life is an autobiography.

[jbuck919]

I don't know Nimoy's book, but the Wikipedia article about it begins, "'I Am Not Spock' is Leonard Nimoy's first autobiography." Later it calls the same book a memoir. A memoir of one's own life is an autobiography.

Then it is neither. Trust me on this, it is a reminiscence limited to his original Star Trek years that does not qualify as an autobiography in any reasonable sense. If your early career included a role in the movie serial Zombies of the Stratosphere, would you be anxious to share your entire life with the world? I'm sure Nimoy wrote the book strictly to make money (there is a follow-up called I Am Spock), but as Samuel Johnson said, nobody but a blockhead ever wrote for any reason other than to make money.

[John F]

A book need not cover the author's whole life to count as autobiography. Indeed, it can't - who has ever written the story of his life after it's all over? Clive James has written his autobiography in several installments, five so far. He titled the first "Unreliable Memoirs," as a joke (cf. unreliable memory) and as a warning to the reader, but the first sentences of his preface read, "Most first novels are disguised autobiographies. This autobiography is a disguised novel."

As for what genre "I Am Not Spock" is, you and the unnamed authors of the Wikipedia article disagree. I agree with them as a matter of what words mean. But if you tell me that the book isn't a nonfictional account of Leonard Nimoy's life or a significant part of it, then I'll trust you, because I haven't read the book and don't intend to.