For the Love of Spock Page #7

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"Star Trek" for a fourth season.

A short time after we finished

shooting for "Star Trek,"

I signed on with

"Mission impossible."

["Mission impossible"

theme playing]

[Adam Nimoy]

Before he started on "Mission,"

there was a press

conference in Honolulu

announcing that

he was joining the show.

It was a very exciting

experience for me

to be there spending

time with Dad.

Although, by then, sharing him with the

fans had become a part of my life.

[Leonard Nimoy] My

character, Paris The Great,

was a master of disguise.

Therefore, I got to play

a multitude of characters,

old men, Asians,

South American dictators,

blind men, Europeans.

But then, before I knew it,

I was playing the South

American dictator again,

and the Asian, and the old

man, and the blind guy.

It got boring.

A short while later,

I left the show.

After "Mission impossible",

I played Tevye in

"Fiddler On The Roof."

It was only the first experience

in my extremely enjoyable

theatrical career.

In "Fiddler on the Roof",

he was magnificent.

He was very precise.

He avoided every cliche.

And as he grew into the role,

he was extravagant.

His portrayal of Tevye in "Fiddler

On The Roof" was utterly fantastic.

Probably the best

of any I've seen.

- Because he was an actor.

- Like a real actor.

I think he realized that what would make

that work in a non-Broadway setting

was it was about him,

and his wife, and his kids.

And it was

beautifully sculptured.

[Leonard Nimoy] I went on

to appear as Fagin in "Oliver,"

Arthur in "Camelot,

and a one-man play

about Vincent Van Gogh.

[Adam Nimoy] In the early '70s,

Dad was in a play called

"Man in the Glass Booth,"

and it was a terrific play.

He really owned up to that role.

And as I watched him

night after night,

he was completely unrecognizable

to me as my own father.

He had to play a wealthy...

braggadocio, vain,

egocentric New York Jew.

Not a Jewish man, but a Jew.

And as the play develops,

when the Jew gets arrested

as being a concentration

camp commandant,

he then has to play

the meanest, most committed,

most devoted Nazi officer

you can imagine.

And he stands up in the booth.

Not supposed to do

that in Israeli court.

He stands up,

and he's in his regalia.

He's in his uniform,

but he doesn't have his hat on.

And when he put that

hat on, he changed.

You didn't want to

go anywhere near him.

- Very quietly... And this was him.

-[rapping on desk]

He starts moving like this.

And he marches

to the last bit of dialogue.

And it gets louder,

and louder, and louder.

If a director had come up with

that, he should get an award.

The actor came up with it,

and he should get an award.

It was chilling.

The times when your dad

was performing in New York,

and then we would see

each other very often,

and that's when they

started to go closer.

And then we became his groupies.

When he performed anyplace

east of the Mississippi,

we would fly out to be there.

One summer, he did two plays.

One in Michigan,

and one in Wisconsin.

And at that time, he was flying

his own single engine airplane,

and I flew a lot with him.

I love flying.

So, I plotted

the entire course out.

I took lessons,

and I got my little license.

Not a pilot's license. I got--

They call it a pinch hitter.

So that if anything

happened to him,

I could take over

without a problem.

And that was probably one of the

best times I ever had with him.

The decade of the '70s was kind of

an interesting period for my dad,

because he had done

so much theater work.

He was really kind of

proving himself

as the character actor

that he always wanted to be.

He also hosted multiple

seasons of "In Search Of."

...underwritten in part

by a national...

[Adam Nimoy] And he was in

Philip Kaufman's remake

of "invasion of the

Body Snatchers."

They were shooting

in San Francisco,

and I happened to be

in school at Berkeley,

and it was just a lot of fun

watching them make that film.

But what happens to us?

You'll be born again

into an untroubled world.

He was a multifaceted

individual that is for sure.

I knew that as a kid.

I used to watch "In Search Of,"

and I remember him in

the Kaufman "Body Snatchers"

and "Mission impossible,"

you know.

Uh, he was never just Spock

to me even growing up.

We came here from a dying world.

We drift through the universe

from planet to planet

pushed on by the solar winds.

We adapt, and we survive.

Captain, I found this device

on my console.

It seems to serve

no useful function and--

[laughing]

Captain?

[laughing]

I'm sorry, Spock, It's your--

[laughing]

When they began casting,

We weren't-- I wasn't called.

It was decided that

George in the show

would not appear

on the series.

And I thought,

"What's happening?"

Uh, then it was announced

that Bill was cast

to do Captain Kirk.

Leonard was cast

to do Mr. Spock.

Jimmy Doohan was cast

to do Scotty

and all the other male voices,

and Majel was cast

to do Nurse Chapel

and all of the female voices.

But when Leonard learned

of that, he said,

"What Star Trek is about

is diversity, coming together,

and working in concert

as a team."

And he said, "The two people that most

personify that diversity in our cast

"are Nichelle Nichols

and George Takei.

"And if they're not going

to be a part of this,

then I'm not interested."

How many times does that happen

in this business, you know?

It says a lot about Leonard.

[Adam Nimoy]

Tuesday, October 22nd, 1973.

"Dear Adam, this may turn

out to be a long letter.

"I'm very glad I could see you

and Julie on Sunday.

"It was good to be with you,

"but I think it might have

been especially useful

"in putting our

relationship, you and me,

"in a new perspective.

"This came out of our argument.

"I discovered you and I were having a

terrible battle on a verbal battleground.

"I felt very sad about it, and all

I could say was, 'I'm sorry.'

"it suddenly occurred to me

that it might be useful

"if I tell you some things about

my relationship with my father.

"I always loved and feared him,

"but we had very little

real personal contact.

"He was not a demonstrative man.

"Most of my day-to-day

interaction was with my mother

"with my father in the

background as a sort of weapon.

Neither of them was ever

very giving of approval."

You guys were at odds a lot

about some of the company

you were keeping

and some of the things

you were doing.

In the early '70s, there was a

slight lull in Dad's work career,

and he was at home for the

first time, hanging out,

and not really quite knowing

what to do with himself.

And it was also during this time

when he was taking a close look

at me and my life.

What he saw was, to him,

not that pretty.

Even though I was doing

very well in school...

I was a senior in high school,

and by this time, I was like

a full fledged Deadhead.

[psychedelic music playing]

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