Los Angeles – James Doohan, the burly chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the original “Star Trek” TV series and movies who responded to the command “Beam me up, Scotty,” died Wednesday. He was 85.
Doohan died at 5:30 a.m. at his Redmond, Wash., home with his wife of 28 years, Wende, at his side, Los Angeles agent and longtime friend Steve Stevens said. The cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer’s disease, he said.
He had said farewell to public life in August, a few months after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
The Canadian-born Doohan was enjoying a busy career as a character actor when he auditioned for a role as an engineer in a space adventure on NBC in 1966. A master of dialects from his years in radio, he tried seven different accents.
“The producers asked me which one I preferred,” Doohan recalled 30 years later. “I believed the Scot voice was the most commanding.”
The series, which starred William Shatner as Capt. James T. Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as the enigmatic Mr. Spock, attracted an enthusiastic following of science fiction fans, but not enough ratings. NBC canceled it after three seasons.
When the series ended in 1969, Doohan found himself typecast as Montgomery Scott, the canny engineer with a burr in his voice.
Paramount Pictures brought back the TV cast in 1979 and hired director Robert Wise to make “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” which was successful enough to spawn many sequels.
James Montgomery Doohan was born March 3, 1920, in Vancouver, British Columbia, youngest of four children of William Doohan, a pharmacist, veterinarian and dentist, and his wife Sarah. As he wrote in his autobiography, “Beam Me Up, Scotty,” his father was a drunk who made life miserable for his wife and children.
At 19, James escaped the turmoil at home by joining the Canadian army, becoming a lieutenant in artillery. He was among the Canadian forces that landed at Normandy on D-Day. “The sea was rough,” he recalled. “We were more afraid of drowning than (we were of) the Germans.” He was hit by machine-gun fire, taking six hits: one that took off his middle right finger (he managed to hide the missing finger on screen), four in his leg and one in the chest. Fortunately, the chest bullet was stopped by his silver cigarette case.
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.
Doohan’s first marriage produced four children.
He had two children by his second marriage. Both ended in divorce. He married Wende Braunberger, and their children were Eric, Thomas and Sarah, who was born in 2000, when Doohan was 80.