Leonard

by William Shatner

  I wanted to make sure such a terrible thing like that never happened again to an esteemed member of our cast. To make certain of that, I brought a good lock and chained and secured his bicycle to a fire hydrant. When he came outside and saw it, he demanded, “Who did that?” I stood right up and shrugged. “I don’t know. I was wondering that myself.”

  The next day he came to work with bolt cutters. Now, I am a lover of animals; I ride horses and love dogs, especially Dobermans. Wonderful dogs, big, wonderful dogs. In fact, on occasion, I would bring one of my Dobermans with me to the studio, and keep the dog in my dressing room. So when I came outside later that day and saw Leonard’s bike there unattended, I worried that someone might take it, so to help my friend Leonard, I put it in my dressing room for security purposes only. When they called lunch and Leonard went outside and discovered his bike was missing, once again he demanded to know what had happened to it. I pressed my palm earnestly to my chest and told him about my fears and directed him to my dressing room. “Door’s open,” I suspect I told him. I may have added that the best way to stop a Doberman in midair is to reach in and grab its tongue. Then I went to lunch.

  Leonard claimed later that he had employed the Vulcan nerve pinch, but it didn’t work. “Those dogs are meaner than you,” were his actual words, “and that’s not easy.” I gave him back his bicycle, believing my point had been made. Apparently, it hadn’t. The next day Leonard drove his car, a large Buick, onto the lot, parked it directly outside the soundstage, put his bicycle in the backseat, and locked the car.

  I did not personally tow that car away. But I did feel it might be a hazard, so I arranged for it to be done. I believe that was when Leonard finally agreed that he would be running to the commissary.

  Whatever attributes the audience attributed to Spock, and probably Leonard, the character resonated with them. Kids began wearing Spock ears, and Leonard received piles and piles of fan mail, far more than any of the other cast members. When he was out in public, people would greet him with a raised hand or wish him, “Live long and prosper.” Ironically, many of them came from women who, according to pop psychologists, were attracted by his alienation. On a different level, I experienced the same thing. People began addressing me as “Captain” or “Kirk.” That was a new experience for me. I’d had professional success, I’d played a role in some major movies, people recognized me, but I had never before been called by my character’s name. It was odd, and in some ways, it made me uncomfortable. I’m not quite sure why, but it did. I wondered, What is that all about? It’s crazy. So often I didn’t acknowledge it, or I disparaged it.

  If I was feeling that confusion, that ambivalence, I can’t imagine what Leonard must have been going through. Other actors had become famous because of the characters they played. Jim Arness was Gunsmoke’s Marshall Matt Dillon. Robert Stack gained recognition as Eliot Ness on The Untouchables. Edd Brynes was a teen idol as Kookie in 77 Sunset Strip. But none of those characters achieved the historic popularity of Spock. Fans of those shows were thrilled to meet Jim Arness, Robert Stack, or Edd Byrnes—but our fans wanted to meet Mr. Spock.

  Perhaps the strangest thing was that eventually Leonard became somewhat ambivalent about his relationship with Spock. Spock made Leonard’s career. In each of the three years the show was on the air, Leonard was nominated for an Emmy as best supporting actor. TV Guide named Spock one of the fifty greatest characters in TV history. Leonard became well known and in demand because of the original series. But the new fear, replacing “I will never work again,” was that he was so strongly identified as Spock that he could never escape him. For someone who proudly described himself as a character actor, being so strongly typecast he could not play other roles was a terrifying possibility. His first autobiography, published in 1975, was titled I Am Not Spock. The title, he explained, came from a meeting in an airport, in which a woman introduced him to her daughter as Spock—although the child was never convinced. It also came from the publisher’s desire to profit from the popularity of Spock as well as create a little controversy. It was not, Leonard always insisted, meant to be a statement about his feelings about Spock, and he said if he ever had the opportunity to portray any fictional character, without hesitation he would choose Spock. And several years later, when he did write a second autobiography, it was titled I Am Spock.

  He had come full circle.

  While Star Trek initially became incredibly popular among a core audience, it didn’t achieve the kind of success the network had envisioned. Leonard always believed they didn’t really understand the show. They expected an action show with monsters, futuristic weapons, and great battles in space; that wasn’t the show Roddenberry wanted to produce. So we never got the full promotional push from the network. Scheduling always was a problem. They moved us around, making it almost impossible for us to build an audience. We would come to work each week secretly harboring the fear that we had been canceled. The first season the show was broadcast at 7:30 Thursday nights, which was early enough for us to attract our target, high school and college kids, young professionals, and young married couples. The second season we were on a little later, and our audience got smaller. Our third year, we originally were moved to Monday nights at 7:30, the perfect spot for us. But doing that required moving the top-rated live comedy show Laugh-In back a half hour; when that show’s producer, George Schlatter, objected, NBC moved Star Trek to Friday 10:00 P.M. That was the worst possible time slot for us; our young audience wasn’t home watching television on a Friday night. And those people who were home were in a different universe.

  The show just never had the support of the network. We worked on an extremely tight budget, which meant we had a difficult six-day shooting schedule—and for the third season, they even reduced that budget by $15,000 an episode. If we went over budget, we weren’t permitted to beam down to another planet in the next episode; instead we did what was referred to as a “bottle episode”—the entire episode had to be shot on the existing Enterprise sets. To ensure there was no overtime, we ended every day at precisely 6:18. Even if we were in the middle of a scene, we stopped at 6:18 so the crew could clean up, put everything away, and be done by 6:30. The CBS show Mission: Impossible was filming on the adjoining soundstages and had an eight- or sometimes nine-day schedule—and then an extra day to shoot inserts, the clever little devices they used to stop the weekly revolution in an unnamed Eastern European country. They needed that time—that was a visual show—whereas of necessity, we were a verbal show. Star Trek depended on the interplay between the cast; MI depended more on what the camera showed the audience. It was amazing how much we accomplished with so little money. Our special effects truly were minimal. Our doors, which seemed to open magically, were manually operated. All the sound effects, essentially whooshing when the doors were operated and occasional death rays, were added in postproduction. For a show supposedly taking place three centuries in the future, we relied on rudimentary, inexpensive technology.

  What made the show work, in addition to the relationships between the members of the crew, were the stories we told each week. Star Trek was a tribute to the great tradition of science fiction, in which future civilizations were used to tell contemporary morality tales, tales about subjects that couldn’t be addressed for various reasons at the time. Leonard was a serious man; he always cared about the issues that affected people’s lives. I like to believe I’ve lived my life the same way. While both of us had found ways to do meaningful work, Leonard in plays like Deathwatch and Yiddish theater, me in great movies like Judgment at Nuremburg, we also had done a lot of shoot-’em-ups and cop stories—the cotton candy of the entertainment industry. So when we got our scripts each week, we always were interested in seeing which controversial topics our writers were attacking that week and how they had cleverly managed to get away with it. “That’s what made Star Trek meaningful for me,” Leonard explained to journalist Paul Fischer in 2009. “We tackled some very interesting issues thr
ough the years: racial issues, economic issues, ecological issues. Writers were given an opportunity in Star Trek to tell stories about issues that they could not tackle in other television shows.” On different episodes, we explored grand issues like authoritarianism, class warfare, imperialism, human and alien rights, and, always, the insanity of war. Maybe the most controversial thing we did get away with was the first interracial kiss ever shown on American television. It actually caused that particular episode to be banned on several Southern affiliate stations. Leonard and I, DeForest Kelley, George Takei, Walker Koenig, Jimmy Doohan, Majel Barrett, and Nichelle Nichols were doing work we were proud of doing. And every once in a while, we’d get confirmation what we were doing was important.

  After the first season, both Leonard and Nichelle Nichols began getting the types of offers they’d been working for their entire careers. Nichelle had been brought up in the musical theater, and her dream was to appear on Broadway. She told Roddenberry she had decided to leave the show and move to New York. He asked her to think about it for a few days and, coincidently, the following night she went to an NAACP fundraiser in Beverly Hills. During the party, one of the hosts asked her to meet a man who described himself as her greatest fan. Another Trekkie, she thought, one of the growing legion of fans of the show. And then she turned around to greet Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “I am your greatest fan,” he told her. “I’m that Trekkie.” Nichelle told him how much she regretted not being out there marching with him. “No, no, no,” he said. “No, you don’t understand. We don’t need you to march. You are marching. You are reflecting what we are fighting for.”

  Nichelle told him how incredibly flattered she was, then admitted that she was leaving the show, that she’d told Gene Roddenberry the day before. He shook his head and said, “You cannot do that. Don’t you understand what this man has achieved? For the first time, we are being seen the world over as we should be seen. This is the only show that my wife, Coretta, and I will allow our little children to stay up and watch.”

  Apparently, Whoopi Goldberg told Nichelle a similar story, remembering turning on the show when she was nine years old and seeing Nichelle, which caused her to run through her apartment screaming, “Come quick! Come quick! There’s a black lady on TV, and she ain’t no maid!”

  While perhaps not exactly typical, it was the kind of reaction we were getting. Roddenberry’s objective had been achieved—and no character was more important to that than Leonard’s Mr. Spock. It was those loyal fans, and Gene Roddenberry, that kept us on the air for three seasons. While we were still shooting second-season episodes, we began hearing rumors that NBC was planning to cancel the show. In response, Roddenberry very quietly orchestrated a massive letter-writing campaign through fan clubs. “If thousands of fans just sit around moaning about the death of Star Trek,” Bjo Trimble, a friend of Roddenberry, wrote, “they will get exactly what they deserve: Gomer Pyle!” The threat worked. Either because those people loved our show or were terrified of Gomer Pyle, the network received more than one million letters pleading with the executives not to cancel the show. It probably was the greatest display of fan loyalty in television history, and NBC respected that loyalty and canceled the planned cancelation. That marked the beginning of the most unusual relationship between a show and its audience in television history and perhaps in all the annals of entertainment.

  SIX

  It might well have been the British beer ad that marked the beginning of our friendship. When we did the original series, none of the actors were well paid. Apparently, Leonard was paid $1,250 an episode our first season, more than everyone else but less than I. We didn’t even get paid residuals; it’s possible that no show has been run more often in syndication than the original series, yet none of us have ever received a penny from that. The network and Paramount also retained all merchandising rights. That was a keen source of resentment by everybody in the cast, but notably Leonard. Spock was hot! Spock was marketable, and the network sold him. His likeness began popping up all over the place, and Leonard grew progressively angrier. Mr. Spock was the result of seventeen years of him struggling to learn and survive and get better as an actor. But what might finally have set Leonard off was discovering during a visit to London that Spock’s image had been plastered on billboards selling Heineken. Leonard was justifiably furious that the studio was using his face to sell beer in Britain—especially because he didn’t know about it or receive any income from it.

  Unfortunately, Leonard had become used to that type of treatment. Several months into our first season, an agent offered him $2,000 to make a personal appearance in Boston on a Saturday afternoon. Even after the agent took his 10 percent fee, Leonard would make more money in a few hours than he made in a week doing the show. This was a huge offer for him; it was the first time he’d ever had this type of opportunity. His only problem was that in order to be there on time, he had to get a 6:00 P.M. flight Friday night, which meant leaving the set a bit more than an hour early. It wasn’t really an issue; with enough notice, we easily could film around him. He asked Roddenberry for permission to make the flight. What happened then was something Leonard never forgot.

  “I didn’t get an answer from the producers for a few days, and the agent wanted me to make the commitment,” Leonard explained. “Finally, I was told Gene Roddenberry wanted to see me. I went to his office, and we spoke for a few minutes. Then he said, ‘I understand you want to get out early Friday.’” That was true, Leonard said, then told Roddenberry about the $2,000 offer.

  As he told me this story, he shook his head in disbelief. He was truly stunned when Roddenberry replied, “I’ve just started a company called Lincoln Enterprises. We’re going to do some merchandising of Star Trek memorabilia, but we also want to represent actors for personal appearances. I’d like to represent you for this appearance. The fee is twenty percent.” Leonard told Roddenberry that he already was paying an agent 10 percent and didn’t understand why he should be forced to pay him too. Roddenberry looked at him and said coldly, “The difference between your agent and me is that your agent can’t get you out of here at five o’clock on Friday, and I can. And all it’ll cost you is twenty percent.”

  Leonard’s response was consistent with the way he led his life. “I can’t do that to this agent,” he said. “He got me the job.”

  Roddenberry’s reply accurately described the thought process of the suits about actors. “I will never forget his exact words,” Leonard said. “‘Well, you’re just going to have to bow down and say master.’”

  “You got the wrong guy,” Leonard snapped, then walked angrily out of his office. In that instance Roddenberry relented, and Leonard made his flight. “But while we worked together for years afterward, that was the end of any semblance of friendship between Gene Roddenberry and myself.”

  As the popularity of Spock continued to rise, Leonard’s relationship with the producers continued to get worse. It got so nasty that the producers sent him a memo informing him that he was not allowed to use the studio’s pens and pencils.

  The result was predictable. Until this time in his career, Leonard had been powerless; like most actors, he was always a whim away from being fired or not getting the job. Now that he finally had actual power, those seventeen years of slights, seventeen years of being easily dismissed as a working character actor, it gave him the backbone to stand up for not only his rights but the rights of every member of the cast. Several years later, Filmation obtained the rights to produce an animated version of the show. They hired Leonard and me, and they hired Jimmy Doohan to play Scotty and do all the other male voices and Majel Barrett as Nurse Chapel and the other female voices. Their explanation for not hiring the other actors was that they were working on a limited budget and couldn’t afford them. When Leonard learned about that, he said he wouldn’t do the show. “This isn’t Star Trek,” he told them. “Star Trek is about diversity, and the two people who most represent that are George Takei and Nichelle Nichols,
and if they’re not going to be part of it, then I’m not interested.” The company had no choice; without Leonard or me, there was no Star Trek. This was long before the Star Trek franchise was generating small mountains of revenue, so the salary offered to Leonard made a difference. He had learned how to use his power. They hired those actors.

  At the same time, I was having my own problems with Gene Roddenberry. He had created a quasi-military medal that Lincoln Enterprises was marketing. To promote sales of this award, he wanted to use it on the show; I was supposed to pin it on a crew member. This awards ceremony had absolutely nothing to do with the plot, and I refused to get involved. They prevailed upon Leonard and somehow convinced him to do it.

  Both Leonard and I had a complicated relationship with Gene Roddenberry. He had many talents, but often tact wasn’t among them. While he had the vision to create this amazing world, he also could waste time focusing on petty ways to generate insignificant dollars. And he was not easily swayed; when he believed in something, he didn’t easily relent, whether he was dealing with actors or the network. It was Gene who convinced Leonard to put on those ears, and it was also Gene who mounted the fan-based letter-writing campaign that kept us on the air. Leonard once described his relationship with Roddenberry “like a father-son relationship; sometimes it was great, and sometimes it was really bad.” Obviously that was the reason Leonard at times was so bitterly disappointed by Gene’s actions. I never felt that way. Gene certainly could be paternalistic, but I don’t think I had a need for approval at that point in my career. Whatever the sometimes difficult dynamics of their relationship, without question, Roddenberry and Leonard both lived long and prospered because of it. They needed each other—we all needed each other—and looking back, it is far more important to focus on Gene’s creative genius than the family fights we endured.