James Doohan
James Montgomery Doohan was a Canadian actor, best known for his role as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the television and film series Star Trek. Doohan's characterization of the Scottish chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise has become one of the most recognizable elements in the Star Trek franchise, and inspired many fans to pursue careers in engineering and other technical fields. He also made contributions behind the scenes, such as the initial development of the Klingon and Vulcan languages.
Prior to his acting career, Doohan served in the 14th Field Artillery Regiment of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division. He also served as an Artillery Forward Observation Officer and pilot. He saw combat in Europe during World War II, including the D-Day invasion of Normandy, in which he was wounded, apparently by friendly fire. After the war, he had extensive experience performing in radio and television, which led to his role as Scotty. Following the cancellation of the original Star Trek series, Doohan was typecast and had limited success in finding other roles; he returned to play the character in the animated and film continuations of the series, and made frequent appearances at Star Trek conventions.
Early life
Doohan was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, the youngest of four children of William Patrick Doohan and Sarah Frances, who both emigrated from Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland. His father, William Doohan, was born in Belfast, and was a pharmacist, veterinarian and dentist, and a member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland. William Doohan owned a chemist shop in Main Street in Bangor beside Trinity Presbyterian Church and reportedly invented an early form of high-octane gasoline in 1923. Doohan's 1996 autobiography recounted his father's serious alcoholism.The family moved from Vancouver to Sarnia, Ontario. Doohan attended high school at Sarnia Collegiate Institute and Technical School, where he excelled in mathematics and science. He enrolled in the 102nd Royal Canadian Army Cadet Corps in 1938.
Military service
In 1939, Doohan enlisted in the Canadian Army, joining the Royal Canadian Artillery, 14th Field Battery of the 2nd Canadian Division. From there, he was moved to the 13th Field Regiment of the 3rd Canadian Division in their 22nd Field Battery. By 1940 he was a lieutenant and was sent to train in Britain. He first saw combat on D-Day, landing in the second wave in a reconnaissance party at Juno Beach. The 13th Field Regiment was interspersed with the Regina Rifle Regiment landing at Nan Sector of Juno Beach. After shooting two snipers, Doohan led his men to higher ground through a field of anti-tank mines, where they took defensive positions for the night. Crossing between command posts at 23:30 that night, Doohan was hit by six rounds fired from a Bren gun by a nervous Canadian sentry: four in his leg, one in the chest, and one through his right middle finger. The bullet to his chest was stopped by a silver cigarette case given to him by his brother. His right middle finger had to be amputated, something he would conceal on-screen during most of his career as an actor, sometimes with a flesh-colored glove with a faux finger.Doohan graduated from Air Observation Pilot Course 40 with eleven other Canadian artillery officers and flew Taylorcraft Auster Mark V aircraft for 666 Squadron, RCAF as a Royal Canadian Artillery officer in support of 1st Army Group Royal Canadian Artillery. All three Canadian RCAF squadrons were crewed by artillery officer-pilots and accompanied by non-commissioned RCA and RCAF personnel serving as observers. Although he was never actually a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, Doohan was once labelled the "craziest pilot in the Canadian Air Force". In the late spring of 1945, on Salisbury Plain north of RAF Andover, he slalomed a plane between telegraph poles "to prove it could be done", earning himself a serious reprimand.
Early acting career
After the war, Doohan moved to London, Ontario, for further technical education. After hearing a radio drama and believing he could do better, he recorded his voice at the local radio station, and learned about the Lorne Greene Academy of Radio Arts in Toronto. There he won a two-year scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, where his classmates included Leslie Nielsen, Tony Randall, and Richard Boone.In 1946, he had several roles for CBC radio, starting January 12. For several years, he shuttled between Toronto and New York as work demanded. He made his TV debut as a detective on the show Martin Kane, Private Eye, and appeared in 54 episodes. He estimated he performed in over 4,000 radio programs and 450 television programs during this period, and earned a reputation for versatility.
In the mid-1950s, he appeared as forest ranger Timber Tom in the Canadian version of Howdy Doody. Coincidentally, fellow Star Trek cast member William Shatner appeared simultaneously as Ranger Bill in the American version. Doohan and Shatner both appeared in the 1950s Canadian science fiction series Space Command. Doohan also appeared in several episodes of Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans in 1957–58.
For GM Presents, he played the lead role in the CBC Television drama Flight into Danger by Arthur Hailey, and in others such as Hailey's Shadow of Suspicion, and The Night they Killed Joe Howe.
Doohan's credits included The Twilight Zone, GE True, Hazel. The Outer Limits, The Fugitive, Bewitched, Fantasy Island, Magnum, P.I., The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Bonanza. In the Bonanza episode "Gift of Water", he co-starred with actress Majel Barrett who would later play Star Treks Nurse Christine Chapel. He played an assistant to the United States president in two episodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He had an uncredited role in The Satan Bug, appeared in the Daniel Boone episode "A Perilous Passage", appeared as a state trooper in Roger Vadim's film Pretty Maids All in a Row, and played opposite Richard Harris in the movie Man in the Wilderness.
Doohan also acted on stage, including Every Bed Is Narrow ''Bright Sun at Midnight and King Lear'' on the Crest Theatre in Toronto.
''Star Trek''
Doohan developed a talent for accents as a child. Auditioning for the role of chief engineer of the USS Enterprise, Doohan did several different accents. Producer Gene Roddenberry asked which he preferred, and Doohan replied, "If you want an engineer, in my experience the best engineers are Scotsmen." He chose the name "Montgomery Scott" after his grandfather. In later years, Doohan reenacted the casting process at Star Trek conventions, demonstrating a variety of possible voices and characters.Doohan was quoted as saying, "Scotty is ninety-nine percent James Doohan and one percent accent." The character was originally conceived as semi-regular; but was elevated to be a regular supporting character. Doohan also provided voices for inanimate characters, including Sargon in "Return to Tomorrow", the M-5 in "The Ultimate Computer", the Mission Control Voice in "Assignment: Earth", and the Oracle in "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky".
Doohan returned to the role of Scotty in the early 1970s for Star Trek: The Animated Series. Walter Koenig was not hired for this series due to budget limitations, so Doohan voiced a replacement character: alien navigator Arex. He also voiced most guest male roles, including that of Robert April, the first captain of the Enterprise and around 50 other roles, voicing as many as seven different characters in a single episode.
He rejoined the entire regular cast of Star Trek for the feature film Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He continued in the role of Scotty for sequels The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, The Voyage Home, The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered Country. In 1992, he guest-starred in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Relics", playing an elderly Scotty reminiscing about his time on the Enterprise. He and Walter Koenig appeared briefly with William Shatner in Star Trek Generations, in a scene which transitioned the film series to the newer cast of the first of the later television series in the franchise.
The Klingon language's basic sound, along with a few words, was created by Doohan and producer Jon Povill. Doohan also devised the Vulcan dialogue for the feature film Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Kwantlen journalist Robert Jago has pointed out similarities between Klingon and Halkomelem, a language spoken by the Indigenous people of the area where James Doohan grew up.
After ''Star Trek''
Doohan hoped that Star Trek would benefit his acting career. After the series ended, however, he found himself typecast and had a hard time gaining other roles. After his dentist reminded him he would "always be Scotty", he supported his family with income from personal appearances, speaking at more than 40 colleges in 1977 alone.Most of the roles Doohan subsequently played made at least oblique references to his Star Trek connection and engineering reputation. He was Commander Canarvin in the short-lived Saturday morning live-action kids' show Jason of Star Command, and had a cameo in the made-for-TV movie Knight Rider 2000 as "Jimmy Doohan, the guy who played Scotty on Star Trek". On the television series Homeboys in Outer Space, he was Pippen, a pun on Scotty and basketball star Scottie Pippen. He played himself in an episode of The Ben Stiller Show. He played Damon Warwick, father of James Warwick, on the daytime soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. After learning about cold fusion from technical journals in 1989, he narrated the video "Cold Fusion: Fire from Water", about the physics behind cold fusion.
When the Star Trek franchise was revived, Doohan reprised his role of Scotty in seven Star Trek films. Many of Doohan's film appearances centred on the role of Scotty, such as a cameo in National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1, where he plays a policeman doing repair work who tells his superior officer "I am giving it all she has got, Captain!" in the same accent he used in Star Trek.
Although he continued to work with William Shatner in the Star Trek films, Doohan did not get along well with him and was once quoted in 1998 as saying, "I like Captain Kirk, but I sure don't like Bill." He was the only former Star Trek co-star to decline to be interviewed by Shatner for Shatner's first Star Trek: Memories book about the show, nor did he consent to do so for Shatner's follow-up book, Star Trek: Movie Memories, though Shatner claimed in the latter that the icy relationship between the two started to thaw when both men were working on Star Trek Generations in 1993–94. By Doohan's final August 2004 convention appearance, Doohan and Shatner reportedly had mended their relationship.