[Posted 08.27.04]
Throughout this weekend a very special affair is taking place in the heart of Hollywood honoring the actor behind one of the most familiar icons in science fiction. Few characters in the annals of TV pop culture are as beloved as Montgomery Scott, the Scotsman nicknamed "Scotty" who always managed to give the warp engines that extra boost when the Starship Enterprise needed out of a desperate situation, or find a way to make the transporter work at the last second to pull Captain Kirk out of a life-threatening dilemma. And the man who gave soul and verve to that character so brilliantly is just as beloved the world over — James Montgomery Doohan.

Convention organizer Planet Xpo is hosting James Doohan's Farewell Star Trek Convention & Tribute, the final public appearance for the 84-year-old actor who will then permanently retire from the convention scene which he has been such a big part of for 30-plus years. The event is taking place at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel, part of the Hollywood & Highland complex which houses the Kodak Theatre, home of the Academy Awards® presentations. (Full details.)

Doohan's final convention will be followed up by a very auspicious occasion: On Tuesday, August 31, he will be witness to the unveiling of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, joining the hundreds of other luminaries who have made history in film, TV and radio — including most of his Star Trek castmates. The star will be located in front of the Hollywood Entertainment Museum, which contains a reproduction of the Enterprise-D Bridge from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The exact location is 7021 Hollywood Blvd., about a block and a half west of the convention venue. The ceremony begins at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, and is open to the public free of charge. There will be bagpipes, and there will be Klingons. You are welcome to wear your own Starfleet uniform or other Trek costume.

We will provide full coverage of the convention and the Walk of Fame ceremony next week. In the meantime, to give you a little taste of the festivities, we have provided some of the tribute videos which will be shown at the weekend event. At the top left is "The Wit and Wisdom of Montgomery Scott," a montage of Doohan's greatest moments from the original TV series, the movies, and his appearance in the TNG episode "Relics." The second video is a collection of greetings and congratulations from the various parts of Doohan's large extended family, namely his children and their families, plus his wife Wende and their four-year-old daughter Sarah, along with his favorite charity Cowboys for Kids. Third is a collection of home movie moments, a glimpse into Doohan's private life, trips and activities, some at Trek events with his castmates. The fourth item is an album of still photos also from his private life — pictures provided by his children. Finally, we have a photo gallery of pictures we've taken since 1996 of Doohan at conventions and other events.

We are extremely lucky to have this opportunity to celebrate the man who is Jimmy Doohan. What a survivor he is. He survived D-Day in World War II; he survived various travails in this personal life, and many ups and downs in his career including typecasting from Star Trek; he survived a heart attack in the 1980s and a severe bout with pneumonia just a few months ago. Recently it was widely reported that Doohan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, the same affliction that claimed the life of Ronald Reagan earlier this year. The Alzheimer's is only in its early stages, but he has also been suffering from Parkinson's disease, diabetes and lung fibrosis. He's a stubborn lad, though, and he'll be damned if he'll give in easily. When he heard the news reports about himself last month, he remarked to Wende, "If I had Alzheimer's, I think I'd remember."  His health is increasingly fragile and he's not nearly as able to respond to people like he could not long ago, but he still adores his family, friends and fans as much as they adore him.

"Beam me up, Scotty" is one of the most familiar expressions to enter the popular lexicon from the world of television (despite the fact that, word for word, that phrase was never spoken in the show). Mr. Scott was your archetypal fix-it man, the one you could always count on to make things work, and he did it without a lot of noise and pretense (though maybe a furrowed brow now and then). He knew what he was doing, and he loved what he was doing.

He has literally been an inspiration to generations of new engineers. A few years ago Doohan was awarded an honorary doctorate in engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering.  The reason was, more than half the students applying to the school responded to the question "Why do you want to be an engineer?" with the answer, "Scotty." (So it's okay to call him "Dr. Doohan.")

In fact, it was Doohan's idea to make the Enterprise engineer a man from Scotland. Having been exposed to many accents during the war and imitating them shamelessly, he became quite facile with his voice. When he initially met with Gene Roddenberry about the part of a Chief Engineer in a new show, Doohan demonstrated eight different accents for him. Roddenberry asked, "Which accent do you like?" Doohan replied, "Well, if you want a good engineer, he better be a Scotsman!" The character was initially unnamed, and almost got cut from the show before it went into full production, but when it became apparent the engineer was vital to this science-fiction premise, he evolved into a full-fledged role — and got the first name "Montgomery" from Doohan's middle name (which came from his grandfather) and the last name "Scott" because... well, they wanted to call him "Scotty."

Lots of people assume Jimmy Doohan is Scottish, but he's only got a small amount of Scottish blood in him — he's actually more Irish. He was conceived in Ireland, but his parents decided to get out of Belfast because conditions for Catholics there were deteriorating. They picked Canada, landed in Halifax on New Year's Day in 1920, and took a train 5,400 miles to British Columbia. James was born March 3, 1920, in Vancouver. The family (Jimmy was the youngest of four) eventually relocated to Sarnia, Ontario, where Jimmy endured a difficult childhood with a father who failed to leave his drinking behind in the old country.

It was largely for that reason that Jimmy "escaped" from his life by signing up for the Royal Canadian Artillery, once the country joined the war effort in 1939. Posted in England, he served throughout the duration of the war, becoming an officer and rising through the ranks, but without seeing actual combat until June 6, 1944 — D-Day — where he led a regiment of 33 men onto Juno Beach at Normandy, France.

You may have never noticed, watching the Original Series and the movies, that Mr. Scott has a physical handicap — he's missing the middle finger of his right hand. That's because the actor kept it very well hidden.  (Watch the shows again carefully — Scotty is almost always clenching his right hand, or hiding it behind a console — but if you know to look, the missing digit is occasionally apparent.)  That injury occurred on D-Day.  Lt. Doohan successfully led his Canadian troop onto the beach and pushed inland to establish the best possible gun position (along the way Doohan shot two German snipers, never knowing whether he killed them). A field was secured and command posts were established, but not all Germans between the beach and their position had been captured. That night about 11:30, Doohan and another officer were walking between command posts when machine gun fire broke out. Doohan was hit; he fell into a shell hole, looked at his hand and saw blood. Three bullets struck the one finger. Never losing consciousness, he actually walked to the regimental aid post, unaware he also took four bullets in the leg.

There was an eighth bullet, and it was nothing less than a miracle that he's still with us today. It hit his chest, four inches from his heart. But it ricocheted off the sterling silver cigarette case in his pocket, the one his brother had given him for being best man at his wedding. It's like a trite plot twist, he acknowledges — his brother saved his life from thousands of miles away. Jimmy pushed the dent out of the cigarette case and continued using it until he quit smoking years later. He stayed in the military, learned to fly and came to be known as the "craziest pilot in the Canadian Air Forces."

Well, back in Canada after the war, Jimmy never gave thought to a career in acting until one night around Christmas of 1945, he took a break from his VA school studies and turned on the radio. "And I heard the worst radio drama I had ever heard. Couldn't believe how terrible it was," he said. With no training whatsoever, he was sure he could do better. So he found some Shakespeare and other reading material and marched into the local radio station to say, "I want to make a recording."

That "tryout" eventually led to a scholarship at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, where he trained under famed acting coach Sanford Meisner. "He turned out to be one of the greatest drama teachers in the world," Jimmy would say years later. He then knew he had a career, and he was soon working in the fledgling medium of television. His close friends as an actor in New York in the 1950s included Tony Randall, Leslie Neilsen, Lee Marvin, and other names you'd instantly recognize. His roommate for a while was John Fiedler, who a decade later played "Mr. Hengist" in "Wolf in the Fold." By the early 60s Jimmy followed most of his peers to Hollywood.

His career was blossoming while his personal life was becoming a shambles (in his own words, per his autobiography "Beam Me Up, Scotty" written with Peter David). He had been married to Janet Young since 1947, and it was an increasingly unhappy union, but they stuck it out for 17 years and produced four children whom Jimmy stays close with to this day. Those children are daughters Larkin and Deirdre, and twin sons Montgomery (Monty) and Chris.

Jimmy and Janet divorced in 1964. Jimmy was working pretty steadily in Hollywood, but hadn't yet landed a running job. He was part of Star Trek's second pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before" in 1965, and by 1966 the show was picked up for NBC, and he had a gig that lasted three years — though the cast certainly didn't feel much job security. The fact that the show was barely saved for a third season is a well-documented case of fan activism.

Though Doohan roundly criticized Roddenberry for leaving the show to implode in the third season, Jimmy and Gene became very close friends, trading war and aviation stories and sharing a number of sailing adventures. In 1970 Jimmy actually started dating Gene's secretary, Anita, and they got married. Gene was dating Majel Barrett at the time, and the two couples did almost everything together. Majel was at Jimmy and Anita's house when Gene called from Japan and asked her to come out there and marry him. But things started getting tough for Jimmy in those post-Star Trek years — he found himself typecast as "Scotty" and the jobs were not forthcoming, plus his marriage with Anita collapsed after a couple of years.

But then he started to realize that Star Trek could continue earning him a living. Because of his notoriety from that show, he began speaking engagements at colleges around the country ... and then there was the convention phenomenon. It started around 1972, when Star Trek really found its audience in syndication. Jimmy and his castmates were overwhelmed by the adulation and fascination being heaped upon them by crowds of thousands.

And then in 1974 he found his one true thing that made his personal life complete, finally. While doing a play in San Francisco, he was met by two young ladies who came backstage to get autographs. Julie brought Wende to the play as a gift, because Wende was a big fan of Scotty's. Jimmy couldn't keep his eyes off Wende. He invited her to come see the play again, and they went on a date. On their second date, he proposed. A few months later, she accepted. On October 12 of this year, Jimmy and Wende will celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary. (By the way, Jimmy's best man was William Campbell, known to fans as "Koloth" and "Trelane.")

That marriage produced three more children for the Doohan family: Eric, Thomas and Sarah — the latter born in 2000 when Jimmy was 80. "Oh, she's gorgeous," he bragged to convention of astronomers that summer.

This weekend James Doohan will be surrounded by his family, friends, castmates and fans as they all pay tribute to the man's talent, hard work, bravery, humor and love, and send him off to a well-earned retirement.

Here's to ya, lad.