He was hired for another episode, but the director wasn’t comfortable with Leonard’s choices, and he was replaced. That was devastating for Leonard. He didn’t do anything casually. Even when he had only a single line, he worked at it, so to be told he wasn’t good enough or he didn’t understand the character was a real attack on his integrity. He was fighting to establish a career, and this was a big step backward. It actually took him some time to get over it.
Because of the way he worked, in some ways these bit parts were more difficult for him than larger roles. The more dialogue a character has, the easier it is to become comfortable in the role. With only three or four lines, it’s hard to establish any rhythm or create a believable character. But it was work, it came with a paycheck, and so he never turned down an offer and tried his best to create something. In Get Smart, for example, he played a sinister character lurking in the back of a poolroom. So he wore dark clothes and dark sunglasses—this was long before people wore sunglasses inside—and kept the sunglasses on throughout the entire episode. Ironically, the one thing he was rarely permitted to do on camera was smoke. Leonard was a heavy smoker off camera; in fact, a lot of actors were, as it helped them relax between takes. I smoked too. Once, he was playing an outlaw in a western and asked the propman for one of the hand-rolled brown cigarettes cowboys smoked. He intended to use it to help create his character. The propman turned him down. Ziv was churning out these shows without knowing which companies might end up sponsoring them. They were concerned that cigarette companies might not be willing to sponsor a program if bad guys were seen using their product, so bad guys didn’t smoke in those shows. Only heroes relaxed with a cigarette.
As a character actor, Leonard played an amazing array of characters, although his specialty was being the heavy, the bad guy. While some Ziv shows would not use actors more than once, other shows were far more relaxed about it. He did eight episodes of Lloyd Bridges’s Sea Hunt, for example, playing everything from a revolutionary student to an explosives thief. In one episode, he would have a mustache; in another, he’d take off the mustache and wear a hat. He did a variety of accents, whatever it took to earn a paycheck. Most Ziv shows paid $80 a day and were shot in two days; Sea Hunt was one of their most successful shows, so it had a larger budget—they paid $100 a day and shot in two and a half days, so if they needed a Spaniard with a mustache and glasses, Leonard said, “Sí, señor,” pasted on the mustache, and wore glasses. During the next few years, Leonard appeared in many of the most successful series on television, working with some of our best actors—and gaining a reputation in the business as a go-to bad guy.
He became a regular on westerns, playing both cowboys and Native Americans, appearing in Colt .45, Tombstone Territory, The Rough Riders, Mackenzie’s Raiders, 26 Men, Tate—the adventures of a one-armed gunfighter—Outlaws, Death Valley Days, Cimarron City, three episodes of Broken Arrow, Tales of Wells Fargo, The Rebel, and Doug McClure’s The Virginian. He worked with Academy Award winner Ernest Borgnine in one of his four appearances on Wagon Train, Clint Eastwood’s Rawhide, Bonanza, and of course four episodes of Jim Arness’s Gunsmoke, as well as all the others. He played a soldier in Dean Stockwell’s infantry platoon on the last day of World War II on The Twilight Zone, a submariner on three episodes of The Silent Service, and a sailor on Navy Log. He played both cops and robbers, he did two episodes of the science-fiction show The Outer Limits, and he worked on medical shows from General Hospital to Dr. Kildare.
A lot of professionalism and little money went into these shows. There was no time for preparation or rehearsal; you just did it. When these shows went on location, they shot from sunup to the last light. They literally would chase the sunlight, running away from the encroaching shadows. The crew would take the camera and reflectors and run up a hill, staying just ahead of the shadow, stopping and shooting for a minute, then picking up and moving another ten feet. Close-ups were often shot against a wall so they could be done after the sun went down simply by lighting a small area. If there was a way to save money, they figured it out. They didn’t deceive themselves into believing they were creating art; they were making television shows.
“It was great training,” Leonard once said. If you flubbed a line or made a mistake, the camera kept rolling, then they would go back and just pick it up one line earlier. There were no lengthy retakes, no second or third takes of a scene. Often the actors didn’t know the context of the scene when it was shot. It was make your entrance, do your exit. Then they shot the close-ups. That was the one chance to show any kind of expression. He believed that “whether or not you got called back had to do with whether or not you could hit your marks and say your lines on demand. I tried very hard to be proficient at that so I would be invited back.
“I remember doing an episode of M Squad, a cop show starring Lee Marvin. I played an arsonist; my brother was played by James Coburn. We worked together for three or four days. One morning we were supposed to be in makeup at 7:30 and on the set, ready to go, at eight o’clock. I got there on time, no Jim Coburn. Eight o’clock, I’m made up, ready to go, on the set, no Jim Coburn. I heard through the buzz that he had overslept. That was unheard of that an actor would hold up a television company. We scrambled and did some other things. I thought, oh this poor guy just ruined his career. We finished the episode and Jim Coburn’s next job was in the movie The Magnificent Seven. He became this big hot star and I remember saying to myself, I was on time; where’s my stardom!”
Leonard was not a star, he never got top billing, but he worked regularly. He took whatever was offered. On the first of his three appearances on Broken Arrow, for example, he played a Native American accused of a hanging crime—and he had no lines. He spent most of the show sitting in the prisoner’s dock listening silently to testimony.
Like the majority of actors, Leonard continued to work at other jobs to support his career. In addition to teaching acting and driving a cab, at various times he ran a vending machine route, delivered newspapers, was a movie usher, and even worked in a pet shop selling exotic fish. It was never an easy life, and as he pointed out, “I went a long time before I could make a living as an actor. Before Star Trek, I spent about fifteen years in Los Angeles looking for work as an actor, and during that time, I never had a job that lasted any longer than two weeks.”
Those were the “character-building years,” as Leonard later referred to them, and every person who has ever tried to earn a living in this profession can relate to that—and knows how hard it is to maintain the dream. Even he admitted that at times he would be very unhappy, very angry. Those feelings are part of an actor’s life; you see people you’ve worked with, people whose talent you doubt or you know aren’t as good as you, get parts that you should be playing or on occasion even become stars. At times, you begin to wonder, Why not me? It often is more frustration than jealousy, but you just keep going. It affects every part of your life. Sometimes, though, that frustration explodes. Leonard’s wife Sandi once told an interviewer, “We had terrible fights. There were times he wanted to give up acting and take a sensible job, and I wouldn’t let him.” Believe me, every struggling actor’s family can relate to Sandi when she continued, “Leonard wasn’t much fun in those days. And I didn’t always appreciate what a strong husband and father he was.”
Few of those small roles gave Leonard a chance to really apply his talents, so he found other ways to exercise his skills. In 1962, he and his good friend Vic Morrow optioned the movie rights to a play they had done in a small theater on Santa Monica Boulevard, Jean Genet’s Deathwatch. It wasn’t exactly a hot commercial property. Rather it was a complex, highly emotional story that takes place in a jail cell in which two prisoners are fighting over the affections of the third inmate, who happens to be a killer. He had gotten wonderful reviews in that play and often credited it with getting him noticed in the industry, and after that, he began working a lot more often. It marked the first time he was able to earn enough as an actor t
o cut back on his other jobs. Following that, his performance onstage in Genet’s better-known play The Balcony consolidated his growing reputation as a talented young actor.
Leonard and Morrow somehow raised $125,000 from small contributors to shoot the film. Just think about that: Leonard was working several jobs and barely earning a living, yet his respect for his profession and his passion for honest and emotional storytelling was so profound that he spent his energies—and probably most of his money—getting this project completed. I can’t imagine that anyone believed this film was going to be a commercial blockbuster. They began filming Deathwatch in 1964 with Morrow directing and Paul Mazursky and Michael Forest costarring with Leonard, while Gavin MacLeod played a minor role. They couldn’t find a distributor, so they booked into select theaters themselves. It opened in San Francisco in 1966. Two years later, after Leonard began to get some recognition, they managed to get limited distribution in art houses nationally.
As it turned out, one of the people who saw that play in Santa Monica was a young actor named George Takei. He was so taken with the performance that he remembered the names of the actors, and when Roddenberry cast him in the role of Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, he immediately recognized the name Leonard Nimoy.
I had also started working regularly on television, making guest-starring appearances in many of them. Live drama was very popular and even a little prestigious at that time, and initially, I appeared regularly in shows presented by a single sponsor like The Kaiser Aluminum Hour, Alcoa Premiere, Goodyear Playhouse, Kraft Theatre, The United States Steel Hour, and The DuPont Show of the Month, as well as legendary programs like Playhouse 90, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and two classic episodes of The Twilight Zone. While I continued making movies, television was where the work was, and as a new father, I needed to keep working. Eventually, I worked at least once on practically every memorable show from that period, among them Naked City, 77 Sunset Strip, and Route 66. On The Outer Limits, I was an astronaut returned from orbiting Venus who can’t seem to get warm. I appeared regularly on The Defenders and actually was offered the leading role. On The Fugitive, I played a former police officer running a youth program, who also may be a serial killer responsible for several murders that Richard Kimball is accused of committing. I appeared on medical shows like Dr. Kildare. On Gunsmoke, I played a wanted man pursued by Marshal Dillon hiding out among the Quakers. None of us had the slightest idea we were in the middle of television’s Golden Age.
When you worked as often Leonard and I did, eventually you would cross paths with many different people. You never knew when one of them might be in a position to make a difference in your career. In 1960, for example, Leonard guest-starred as a deputy sheriff on western writer Sam Peeples’s show, The Tall Man. It starred Barry Sullivan and Clu Gulager as Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. That episode was the first one written by a twenty-one-year-old woman named Dorothy C. Fontana, and she was so excited, she went to the set to meet the actor. She recalled, “I told Leonard this was the first thing I had ever sold, and he asked me some questions and was very encouraging and polite. The producers liked his character and the way he did it, so they brought him back for a second episode. But then they killed him, and he was off the show.”
The magic struck Leonard’s friend from Jeff Corey’s classes, Vic Morrow, who starred in the successful World War II action series Combat! Morrow helped Leonard get a nice role in an episode entitled “The Wounded Don’t Cry.” He was cast as Private Neumann, a GI who translates German—thank you, Yiddish—when his battalion finds an enemy aid station. Among the viewers when the show was broadcast was a casting director named Joe D’Agosta, who really appreciated Leonard’s performance. D’Agosta kept good notes about who was being hired to do what, his way of finding talented young actors. Not too long afterward, D’Agosta was doing the casting for producer Gene Roddenberry’s first show, The Lieutenant. The Lieutenant was the story of a Marine infantry battalion stationed at Camp Pendleton during peacetime. The title character was platoon leader and training instructor Second Lieutenant William Tiberius Rice.
Tiberius? What an interesting middle name for a character. But where have I heard that name before? Oh, I remember—a great Roman emperor.
In the episode entitled “In the Highest Tradition,” Leonard played a slick Hollywood producer who wants to use the facilities at Pendleton to shoot a film about a Marine hero—who turns out to be somewhat less than heroic. Also appearing in that hour-long show were Gary Lockwood as the lieutenant and Majel Barrett. It was directed by Marc Daniels, whom Leonard had met previously when Daniels was directing an episode of Dr. Kildare featuring Leonard’s acting student Fabian. This kind of flamboyant producer was not normally the type of part Leonard played, but his agent, Alex Brewis, was known for his persistence. D’Agosta once described him as “a likable bulldog.” No matter what D’Agosta was casting, Brewis would show up in his office telling him, “That’s the perfect role for Leonard. You got to bring him in for it.” It didn’t matter what it was. “That’s perfect for Leonard.” D’Agosta remembered being impressed with Leonard’s work in Combat! and brought him in to read for the part. While initially Marc Daniels didn’t think he was right for the role, Leonard’s audition convinced Daniels to give Leonard the part. Leonard said that this turned out to be the most important audition of his life. It was a small decision that had enormous ramifications.
The Lieutenant turned out to be the stepping-stone to Star Trek for several people. Star Trek was the next program Gene Roddenberry produced, and he asked D’Agosta to help him with the casting. Majel Barrett married Roddenberry and appeared in every version of Star Trek, both on television and in the movies, often both as a character and the voice of the computer. Gary Lockwood costarred in the second Star Trek pilot and several years later appeared with me in my series T.J. Hooker. Marc Daniels eventually directed fifteen episodes of Star Trek; in fact, after the two pilots were done, while we were all waiting to see if the network picked it up, Daniels directed Leonard in an episode of Gunsmoke called “The Treasure of John Walking Fox,” in which once again Leonard played an enigmatic Native American.
D’Agosta also cast several other actors who appeared in episodes of The Lieutenant in Star Trek, including Walter Koenig and Nichelle Nichols, whom he’d discovered in an acting workshop. Actually, The Lieutenant episode in which Nichelle appeared was never broadcast, but perhaps more than any other episode in this series, it demonstrated what Gene Roddenberry intended to do with Star Trek.
Gene Roddenberry had a quiet vision of what television could be at its finest. He understood the impact it could have on society, but he had to spend a lot of time trying to sneak his social message past studio executives and the censors. This episode, entitled “To Set It Right,” was shot while America was in the midst of the civil rights movement. Nichelle Nichols played the girlfriend of a white Marine, and Dennis Hopper played a Marine who objected to white men dating black women. It was a very controversial subject, and NBC decided it was too controversial to put on the air. I’ve spent considerable time with network executives. They think in bottom-line numbers, so it would be fascinating to have heard the discussions that must have taken place. It was extraordinary for a network to absorb the cost of producing an hour-long show and not broadcast it. The pressure from affiliate stations in different parts of the country must have been enormous. Knowing Roddenberry, I suspect he fought hard for this show, and though he lost the battle, he kept fighting his war. Setting Star Trek three hundred years in the future allowed him to focus on the social issues of the 1960s without being direct or obvious. The fact we were doing future fiction enabled him to film the first interracial kiss in American television history, when Captain Kirk is forced through telekinesis to passionately kiss Nichols’s communications officer Lieutenant Uhura. The fact that Kirk had no control of his actions is demonstrated by the fact that Spock sings, dances, laughs, and also shares a passionate kiss with Barrett’s Nurse Chape
l, so clearly none of the crew members were acting of their own free will. Kirk was forced to kiss the beautiful Uhura!
Clearly that was fiction on many levels.
Joe D’Agosta was responsible for Leonard being cast in the role of Mr. Spock. Although D’Agosta was working at another studio when the Star Trek pilot was being cast, Roddenberry was unhappy with the actors he was seeing and asked him to help. He wasn’t paid, although Roddenberry sent him a check for $750 when the series was picked up. “When I told Gene I didn’t have time to do the casting,” D’Agosta remembered, “he told me to just give him a list of names, and they would bring them in and make their deals through business affairs.”
Roddenberry provided D’Agosta with a ten-page document that included only some broad character outlines. “There wasn’t a lot of description of Spock in the script other than he was a half-human, half-alien Martian,” he continued. “But what Gene wanted was a tall, lean Lincoln-ish character, who conveyed a sense of serenity. He had more of a physical image than a personality in his mind. He wanted an actor whose mostly humanlike appearance conveyed that he was a man of few words but had firm conclusions and thoughts. He was looking for someone who appeared to radiate a higher level of intelligence. Leonard fit that physical description but also projected that aura of intelligence. I eventually recommended three or four actors to Gene Roddenberry, and Leonard was one of them.”
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