“Must he have proper table manners as well?”
The structure is a simple one. The play takes place a week after Vincent’s death, and Theo has invited several of his friends to hear him make his own statement about his seemingly misunderstood brother, which he does by reading from their correspondence. And moment near the end of the first segment probably makes the statement Leonard wanted to make with this show: “Vincent, love your whore, love nature, love life, love that bastard Gauguin, but for God’s sake, Vincent, learn to love yourself!”
After several tryouts in Sacramento in 1978, Leonard did the show for the first time at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater, a prestigious regional theater in Minneapolis. The reviews for Vincent were terrific, and Leonard presented the show hundreds of times in cities all across America. While the show was written to use locally available props to make it easy to transport, it grew to be a two thousand–pound set that Leonard would pack up and store in his garage in Bel Air. The show eventually became his actor’s security blanket. No matter how successful an actor might be, at some point, in the dark of the night, way back in the recesses of his or her mind, he or she wonders and fears that it’s all going to fall apart. Very few actors are immune to that. So what some actors do is find a vehicle, a one-man show that they can always go on tour with and make a few bucks. Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain Tonight! James Whitmore’s Will Rogers’ USA. Tony Lo Bianco as Fiorello LaGuardia in The Little Flower.
French actor Jean-Michel Richaud discovered the play in 2011 and wanted to play the role. He and Leonard became friends, and as Jean-Michel remembers, “When we would talk about it, he would go to the edge of the seat and move forward. He would become very animated and, for sure, there was a twinkle in his eye. He would tell me that the play was pulling at him. Many times he would put it to rest, and from time to time, he would hear the furniture set in his garage calling to him.”
Leonard actually found a clever way to support his research into Van Gogh’s life. In 1976, producer Alan Landsburg had hired him to narrate his series entitled In Search Of … which investigated mysterious phenomena. Landsburg successfully made several documentaries, including In Search of Ancient Astronauts and In Search of Ancient Mysteries, which had been narrated by Rod Serling. After Serling’s death in 1975, Landsburg needed someone to replace him, and Leonard’s great popularity with science-fiction fans made him the perfect choice. It almost didn’t happen. Leonard had done the pilot episode for a somewhat similar show entitled The Unexplained. In that episode, Leonard interviewed a young man who claimed to have been abducted by aliens—the perfect show for Spock. But when that show was not bought, Landsburg hired him immediately.
This was the kind of job every actor loves. Almost all the work is done by other people, and you just show up for a day or two to tape voiceovers or do an entrance and exit. It’s often possible to film several shows in one day. It allows an actor to earn a good salary while still having time to work on those projects that really interest him. During one period, for example, Leonard was starring in Equus on Broadway. Every few weeks, Landsburg would send a film crew to New York; and on the day the show was dark, they would race around the city finding appropriate backgrounds for Leonard do his intros and exits. They filmed in graveyards, in old brownstones; they did the introduction to a show about Native American faith in the National Museum of the American Indian. The next morning, he’d go into a recording studio and do the narrations.
The good news for Leonard was that this was an interesting show, often investigating subjects that probably intrigued him, including the Abominable Snowman, ghosts, voodoo, the Shroud of Turin, mummies, the disappearance of bandleader Glenn Miller, and life before birth, although it also treated some questionable subjects, like killer bees, alien abductions, and the Amityville Horror, with equal respect. Leonard was particularly curious about those things that seemed just a little bit beyond our knowledge, things like ESP, hypnosis, and supernatural phenomena. While Leonard was writing Vincent, he was able to convince Landsburg to send him to Europe to research and write an episode for the show … “In Search of Vincent van Gogh.”
During his research, Leonard was able to visit those places Van Gogh had lived and painted in France and Holland. In fact, while digging into Van Gogh’s life, he actually discovered some hospital records that indicated the painter had suffered from epilepsy rather than being insane.
In Search Of … was the perfect show for Leonard to host, because more than anyone I have ever known, Leonard spent his entire life in search of knowledge and creative expression.
TEN
Before Star Trek, producers were hiring a respected character actor when they called him; after Star Trek they wanted his name, although most of the time his full name was usually “Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy.” But now people knew it, and it attracted a growing audience. It was an odd time for Leonard—the first time in his career he had the luxury of making choices rather than accepting roles for the income. The actor’s inclination always is to say yes and then feel relieved he or she has a job. Leonard was carefully feeling his way into his post-Spock career. He made several mostly forgettable films. What he was really trying to do was shed his ears. Instead, what he was discovering, as I did, was that there was no such thing as post–Star Trek. In almost every story or review about whatever it was he was doing, almost inevitably there would be a reference or a comparison to Spock. “Tevye is not recognizable as Spock” or his character in the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers “is the evil side of Spock.” I’ve wondered if reporters or critics ever realized when they wrote that he had successfully made the audience forget Spock for a few hours that they actually were pointing out that no one had really forgotten about Spock.
Forgotten? In fact, the opposite was true. While each member of the original cast was finding his or her own projects, in the background, Star Trek was growing more popular in syndication than it had ever been during its original run. Rather than successfully escaping it, it was overtaking and enveloping all of us. It was as if it had become the theme music of our lives.
Soon after Leonard quit M:I, he accepted his very first starring role in a television movie, an ABC Movie of the Week thriller called Assault on the Wayne. He played the commander of a nuclear submarine carrying a secret antimissile weapon. As he discovers his crew has been infiltrated by enemy agents who intend to sail the sub into a mid-ocean trap and steal the device, Commander Kettenring has to somehow figure out which members of his crew are traitors to foil their plot. Unfortunately, the movie sank, although it still shows up on occasion on late-night television.
Following that, he made several films, including his first theatrical feature, the cowboy movie Catlow in which—just like the days before Star Trek—he played the villain. He costarred with Yul Brynner and Richard Crenna while his friend and mentor Jeff Corey also had a small role.
It was a bumpy road, filled with plays, TV movies, and one-shots in popular series. I was following the same path. The phone rang a lot, but as much as we pretended it wasn’t true, we were both carrying our characters on our backs.
Leonard made some interesting choices, among them starring in his first major Hollywood film, director Philip Kaufman’s remake of the suspense classic The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Donald Sutherland and Jeff Goldblum costarred with him, and Robert Duvall made an unbilled cameo as a priest on a swing. In this story, aliens have come from outer space to colonize Earth. They arrived as giant seedpods that are hidden under beds, and when a human goes to sleep, an exact replica emerges from the pod and takes control of his or her body. Physically, they are exact duplicates, but they have no emotional center; they are completely dispassionate.
Dispassionate aliens? Now that sounds familiar. I wonder why they thought of Leonard.
In the film, he plays a psychiatrist and the author of several bestselling self-help books who refuses to believe claims made by friends that people they love have changed somehow, that they
have lost access to their emotions. Leonard’s Dr. Kibner listens sympathetically but implores these people to be rational. In soft and measured tones, he manages to calm their fear—then the audience discovers that he is one of the pod people. In fact, he may well be the leader of the invasion. One critic pointed out the greatest irony—none of Dr. Kibner’s close friends, the people who come to him for help, even notice that he himself is devoid of emotion.
In some ways, this is Leonard showing Spock’s dark side, an alien unable to experience any of the human emotions that Spock always found so fascinating yet also was unable to feel.
I’m not sure when each member of the original cast accepted the inevitable, that we were bound to Star Trek forever. I know I probably resisted longer than anyone else. I still kind of thought my most memorable role was around the next corner. It took me quite a while to understand and finally appreciate and be very grateful for the important place that Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise filled in the entertainment universe.
It was while Leonard was working on Body Snatchers that Paramount decided to go ahead with the first Star Trek movie. Only after they settled his lawsuit for a percentage of merchandising revenue did he agree to appear in it. With the success of that film, the studio was finally beginning to understand the potential value of this property. This TV show that had struggled through three seasons had become a franchise. Paramount immediately began planning a second Star Trek feature. Leonard agreed to do it—we all did—but this time he demanded a guarantee from the studio that they would find other, very different roles for him. The studio agreed to two “pay or play” commitments. They would have to pay him for two more films, whether or not they used him. I know studios; if they were paying him, they would find a way to use him.
While the script for Star Trek II was being written, he accepted the role of the Israeli pioneer and Prime Minister Golda Meir’s husband, Morris Meyerson, in the TV movie A Woman Called Golda. Initially, he turned it down, not sure he could do it, but the producer finally talked him into it. In the movie, which was filmed in Israel, the great actresses Judy Davis and Ingrid Bergman played Golda at different times of her life. This was only a few years after the miniseries Roots had caused people to start searching for their own heritage, and with roles like Tevye and Meyerson, it was as if Leonard was exploring his Jewish roots. Working with Ingrid Bergman was especially poignant for him. While making this film, she was dying of cancer, and everyone in the cast and crew knew it. Leonard remembers how wardrobe created costumes to keep her arm, badly swollen arm from the treatments she was receiving, covered. He spoke to her for the last time several months after the film was done. She had stopped taking her medication, she said. It made her feel awful, and she accepted that whatever was going to happen would happen. “I want to enjoy myself as much as possible.”
She was honored with an Emmy for the best performance by an actress in a TV movie, although she had died before it was announced. Leonard also was nominated as best supporting actor, his fourth nomination, but the competition included John Gielgud, Derek Jacobi, and the winner, Laurence Olivier, for his work in Brideshead Revisited.
Following the success of both the first and then second Star Trek feature films, Leonard was ambivalent about making a third film. I think we both were. We had done this, then done it again and then again, and for an actor, it was no longer challenging. Spock had died in the Wrath of Khan, but enough seeds had been planted in his death scene to make his cinematic resurrection viable. Trying to find that challenge that makes familiar material exciting. Leonard came up with an interesting idea: he told the studio he wanted to direct the film. That was a huge leap; he had never directed a movie, much less a movie with a substantial budget.
He was taking a gamble. When you make a demand like that, you’re taking a big risk, especially in a situation where they had already killed off his character. But they also knew the value Mr. Spock brought to the story and were convinced that Leonard was serious about it. Well, he was. The studio agreed to it.
I was thrilled. Years earlier, Leonard and I had added a “most favored nations” clause to our contracts that said, essentially, that whatever one of us got, the other one had to be treated to equally. I have no memory of negotiating that. I just woke up one day, and we had a favored nations clause. That meant if Leonard got to direct a film, I would get to direct the next one. Until then, this clause had worked mostly in Leonard’s favor. Each time my agents had gotten me a raise, he would automatically get the same raise. We used to laugh about it; I’d tell him that he didn’t even need an agent, that he could save the 10 percent by firing his agent and just relying on mine to get us the best possible deal. But this really paid off for me; the money that my agent had gotten for us over the years was nothing compared to being given the opportunity to direct a feature.
Directing a major movie is a universal dream. There is a wonderful, and clearly invented story, that after Mother Teresa had won the Nobel Prize a delegation from the United Nations visited her in her humble surroundings. A representative told her how greatly she was admired throughout the world and said, “All that you have been given you have given to others. Surely there must be something you’d like for yourself.” When she asked for food for orphans, the representative told her that while that was a beautiful request, this one time they wanted to give her something for herself. So Mother Teresa thought about it and finally said in her soft voice, “Well, I have always wanted to direct.”
That was every actor, ever. And now Leonard was being given that opportunity. It actually was something he’d been preparing to do for almost his entire career. Early in his career, he once said, people had been telling him he should be directing. Instead of being flattered, “I took it as an insult. I thought, what’s wrong with my acting?”
Obviously, that wasn’t the rationale behind that suggestion. Leonard just always came across as being smart, as being analytical. Maybe it was the cadence of his voice or the way he used the language, but he projected his natural intelligence. That’s what made him a good teacher, and it probably was what people saw in him when they made that suggestion. He started learning how to direct early in his career. While in the army, he directed training films in addition to starring in and directing plays like A Streetcar Named Desire for the local theater company he had helped establish. Through the years, he paid attention to the way different directors worked and learned from almost every job; from the early days of TV he learned how to be economical, how to shoot fast and get what you need right away. A lot of directors protect themselves by doing several takes of the same scene, figuring at least one of them would be useable. Before videotape was available, that sometimes got to be expensive as well as time consuming. On a set, time really has a cost. Among those directors he worked for in those days was Jack Webb on Dragnet, who was a master at shooting quickly and cheaply. Webb used lots of close-ups. He would bring actors in, stand them up against the background, and have them say their lines directly to the camera. Often the person they supposedly were talking to wasn’t even on the set. An actor might come in, read his lines, and leave without making the slightest contact with another actor. Norman Felton, the producer of The Man from U.N.C.L.E, Dr. Kildare, and several other shows, was known for helping young directors learn the process. Leonard spent several days on the U.N.C.L.E. set trailing Joe Sargent, who would later direct great feature films like MacArthur and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.
Leonard’s first opportunity came in 1972, when he was hired to direct an episode of the anthology series Night Gallery. It was called “Death on a Barge,” and as Leonard said, “The script was poetry.” He probably meant poetry written by Edgar Allan Poe. It was the story of a beautiful young vampire kept on a barge in the middle of a canal by her father. The water prevented her from leaving and, equally important, prevented other people from getting there. And then the canal was drained!
Leonard, dear Leonard, as only he could, described it as
the story of “Romeo and Juliet in vampire terms.”
He subsequently directed another Night Gallery and an episode of Mission: Impossible, but when he signed to do Star Trek III, he hadn’t been behind a camera in almost a decade. I was doing the police show T.J. Hooker when the studio signed Leonard to direct. He had guest-starred on an earlier episode, playing my old partner who seeks revenge when his daughter is raped and there isn’t enough evidence to convict the rapist. But we decided it made sense for him to direct an episode of the show. A TV cop show, a multimillion-dollar feature … on some level it made sense. The episode he directed was called “The Decoy,” in which beautiful young Heather Locklear volunteered to be a decoy to draw out a man who is killing beautiful young blondes. The real challenge for Leonard in that script was figuring out how many different ways he could shoot Heather Locklear with as few clothes as possible. So probably it wasn’t the best preparation for the movie.
Many people wondered how I would respond to being directed by Leonard. And truthfully, I was among them. The director has to be in complete charge on the set, and in our friendship, neither one of us felt we had that power. I thought it might be a little awkward at first, but I had no doubts we’d find a way of getting through it. We’d certainly had disagreements in the past and talked our way through them. Actors often disagree and have to find the comfortable middle. Leonard told a story about the first real meeting we had with producer Harve Bennett to go over the script. Just the three of us, and Harve probably thought he was the referee. Leonard remembered that I came in and said flatly, “I want nothing to do with this script.”
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