James Montgomery Doohan (photo ©C Thomas) was born on March 3, 1920, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. After attending high school, he enlisted in the 102nd Royal Canadian Army Cadet Corps and joined the Canadian Royal Artillery at the beginning of World War II. After being commissioned a Lieutenant, he was sent to England and took part in the D-Day operations after training. He got wounded and lost his right hand’s middle finger, but still served, even as an aviator.
After the end of the war, James Doohan intended to improve his technical education, but listening to radio programs he thought he could do better and began to be seriously interested in acting, starting with roles for radio. He discovered the existence of an acting school in Toronto, and there he won a scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater in New York. He became famous as a radio actor, also thanks to his ability to reproduce different accents, and over time his roles in television programs increased with some roles in movies as well.
James Doohan auditioned for the role of chief engineer of the Enterprise in the TV show “Star Trek” doing different accents, but said to the producer Gene Roddenberry that in his experience the best engineers are Scottish, and in the end, the Scottish accent became one of Montgomery “Scotty” Scott’s trademarks. His character didn’t appear in all episodes but still had an impact on the audience which included inspiration to study engineering.
James Doohan’s success in “Star Trek” ended up being an obstacle after the show’s cancellation because the actor got typecast. Unlike his colleagues, he decided to embrace that situation and when conventions about the show started he became a regular guest offering fans his entertaining skills. Doohan remained tied to the Star Trek saga by resuming his role in the animated series, in which he exploited his skills to play other characters as well, and in the moves that began to be produced in the late 1970s.
Throughout his life, James Doohan has been married three times and had a total of 7 children. In the last years of his life, he had a series of health problems, and on July 20, 2005, he died following complications of pulmonary fibrosis. He was cremated and part of his ashes were sent into space on SpaceX’s Dragon space cargo ship on May 22, 2012. His son Chris played Scott in “Star Trek Continues”, a web series that pays homage to the original series. It’s another demonstration of how much that show influenced James Doohan’s life.
