James Doohan: STAR TREK's "Beam me up, Scotty" Legend Passes at Age 85 *merged*

[Swordfish]

Legendary STAR TREK icon James 'Scotty' Doohan has died at age 85, reports CNN. The actor had been battling Alzheimer's Disease and died this morning at his home in Washington of pneumonia.


http://trekweb.com/images/stories/42de747250d44-1.jpgFamous for his Scot accent for the character 'Montgomery Scott', Doohan endeared himself to legions of fans as 'Scotty' and propelled himself and his role into entertainment history. Doohan made his final public appearance at a Farewell convention in Hollywood last summer, and then received his star on the Walk of Fame August 31st, 2004.

The Canadian-born Doohan's early days in radio made him a master of dialects, and he settled on Scottish for the commanding and resourceful engineer of the Starship Enterprise after auditioning for the role. Doohan participated in D-Day as a member of the Royal Canadian Artillery during World War II.

Doohan entertained us all with his portrayal of 'Scotty'. An American icon has been lost, but his legacy continues to inspire, and will forever live on when people comment "Beam me up, Scotty."

http://trekweb.com/articles/2005/07/20/42de747250d44.shtml

RIP :(

[Fezzik]

We will miss you James.

Fezz

[Bogie]

I hope this to be many years from now, but I want my last words to be "Beam Me Up Scotty!".

TV and movies make us forget that time marches on. Actors and actresses grow older just like us.

[Skyguy]

RIP :(His passing is a sad thing, but he apparently had a child with his wife 5 years ago. (Just before he fell ill.)

I hope I'm that virile when I'm an octogenarian!

[Bogie]

His passing is a sad thing, but he apparently had a child with his wife 5 years ago. (Just before he fell ill.)
I hope I'm that virile when I'm an octogenarian!
3 wives, 7 children. (married 3rd wife when he was 55 and she was 18!)
Born in Vancouver, lived in Sarnia and London, Ontario.

An amazing life history (http://www.nndb.com/people/729/000025654/).
Returning from the war, he joined the Cdn Army as a Private and left as a Captain, Doohan worked as an actor on Canadian radio, then came to New York, where he studied drama alongside classmates Leslie Nielsen and Tony Randall. He was a regular on the Canadian kids' science fiction series Space Command. His early American television work included episodes of Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Daniel Boone, The FBI, Hazel, The Virginian, and The Outer Limits. He is best known, of course, as the ship's engineer on the original Star Trek.

Gifted at mimicry, Doohan invented his character's Scottish accent when he auditioned for the role, but he could also do French, German, Spanish, Russian, or other accents just as convincingly. "I did about eight different accents when I was reading... Gene asked me which one I liked, and I said, If you want an engineer, you'll want a Scotsman... and he made me Montgomery Scott."

[richard]

Actor James Doohan from Star Trek fame has died at the age of 85.

This site wouldn't let me post a link so people will have to find out links for themselves.:mad:

[mander]

http://torontosun.com/Entertainment/2005/07/20/1139915.html

[Ken_ver_1_5]

he will be missed.

[smirnoff]

he will be missed by the world.

[Paul Stanway Jr]

:(

[mander]

Doohan's ashes to be blasted into space


BOB THOMAS
ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES - He made his name in Hollywood beaming his colleagues back to the safety of the Enterprise on Star Trek. Now, actor James Doohan's family is hoping to beam him up to the ``final frontier" that Doohan's character "Scotty" loved so dearly.

The actor, who died Wednesday at age 85, had told relatives he wanted his ashes blasted into outer space, as was done for Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.

"He'll be there with his buddy, which is wonderful," said Doohan's agent and longtime friend, Steve Stevens.

Doohan died at his home in Redmond, Wash., with his wife of 31 years, Wende, at his side. He had retired from public events last year, not long after announcing he had Alzheimer's disease.

Houston-based Space Services Inc., which specializes in space memorials, plans to send a few grams of Doohan's ashes aboard a rocket later this year. Remains are sealed in an aluminum capsule that stays in orbit up to several hundred years before falling and vaporizing in the Earth's atmosphere, the company has said.

It should be a fitting finale for an actor who, as the Starship Enterprise's frazzled chief engineer saved the Enterprise almost every week from blowing up, burning up or being overrun by renegade aliens when the warp drive, the phasers, the shields, the power cells or some other futuristic collection of doohickies failed.

As the man who commanded the Enterprise's particle beam transporter, Doohan's character also inspired the phrase, "Beam me up, Scotty." Capt. Kirk and other members of the Enterprise crew never really issued the order quite that way, however, until the fourth "Star Trek" film when Kirk said, "Scotty, beam me up.''

A master of dialects from his early years in radio, the Canadian-born Doohan experimented with seven different accents for the hard-pressed engineer.

"The producers asked me which one I preferred," Doohan recalled 30 years later. "I believed the Scot voice was the most commanding. So I told them, 'If this character is going to be an engineer, you'd better make him a Scotsman.'''

Doohan was born March 3, 1920, in Vancouver, British Columbia, the youngest of four children of William Doohan, a pharmacist, veterinarian and dentist, and his wife, Sarah. He wrote in his autobiography, "Beam Me Up, Scotty," that his father was a drunk who made life miserable for his wife and children.

At 19, he escaped the turmoil at home by joining the Canadian army, where he became a lieutenant in the artillery and was among the Canadian forces that landed on Juno Beach on D-Day.

After the war, Doohan enrolled in a drama class in Toronto on a whim. He showed promise and won a two-year scholarship to New York's famed Neighborhood Playhouse, where fellow students included Leslie Nielsen, Tony Randall and Richard Boone.

His commanding presence and booming voice brought him steady work as a character actor in films and television in Canada and the United States. Then came Star Trek and fans forever screaming ``Beam me up, Scotty.''

"Good gracious, it's been said to me for just about 31 years,'' he said in an 1998 interview. "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.''

Married three times, Doohan was the father of nine children.

"A long and storied career is over," William Shatner, who played Kirk, said Wednesday.

[Lesley]

bmus

[Just Doug1]

Here's to memories. Here's to Warp 15, Mr. Scott.