In the early days of the FX network, they had a morning show called 'Breakfast Time', whose set looked like an actual apartment. (Tom Bergeron was one of the hosts.) An "Iddiette" named Listener Mara invited me to that set one night to watch the live broadcast of an S-F auction. (The set where it took place was the big atrium/ballroom which was redressed for the occasion. I would have been in that back corner where the food table was......)
One of their guests on that show was James Doohan, best known as Scotty on 'Star Trek'.When the show was over and it was time to leave, I made my way over to meet him. And that's when I first noticed he was missing his middle finger.
I looked it up on the web and found that it was shot off during the Normandy invasion. Doohan would quip years later that he "gave the finger to Hitler."
Putting together this post, I went looking for details about the loss of the finger and found conflicting reports as to how it happened. According to his autobiography, "Beam Me Up, Scotty", he was part of the Royal Canadian Army Troops and he claims to have lost it to German fire.
But other sites, including Wikipedia had a different story:
His first combat was the invasion of Normandy at Juno Beach on D-Day. Shooting two snipers, Doohan led his men to higher ground through a field of anti-tank mines, where they took defensive positions for the night. Crossing between command posts at 11:30 that night, Doohan was hit by six rounds fired from a Bren gun by a nervous Canadian sentry: four in his leg, one in the chest, and one through his right middle finger. The bullet to his chest was stopped by a silver cigarette case. His right middle finger had to be amputated, something he would conceal during his career as an actor.
That may have been how it actually happened, but I'll go along with Doohan's version. I believe, as did the Trickster on 'The Flash', that everybody has the right to change their own reality.
Remembering James Doohan on this Veterans' Day......
BCnU!
Awesome! I remember reading about how they concealed it during the filming of ST... I wonder if in Toobworld Mr. Scott has all 10, or is he lost one in a transporter accident?
ReplyDeleteI actually wrote about that for the second part of the story, but then thought it wasn't appropriate for the day. I'll post it on Monday.
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