From: bilh@pd.jaring.my   
      
   On Saturday, February 28, 2015 at 1:41:24 AM UTC+8, The old geezer wrote:   
   > R.I.P Dr. Spock.   
      
   From the New York Times:   
      
   By Virginia Heffernan   
      
   Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global   
   following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of   
   the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut "Star Trek,"   
   died on Friday morning at    
   his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83.   
      
   His wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, confirmed his death, saying the cause was end-stage   
   chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.   
      
   Mr. Nimoy announced that he had the disease last year, attributing it to years   
   of smoking, a habit he had given up three decades earlier. He had been   
   hospitalized earlier in the week.   
      
   His artistic pursuits -- poetry, photography and music in addition to acting   
   -- ranged far beyond the United Federation of Planets, but it was as Mr. Spock   
   that Mr. Nimoy became a folk hero, bringing to life one of the most indelible   
   characters of the    
   last half century: a cerebral, unflappable, pointy-eared Vulcan with a   
   signature salute and blessing: "Live long and prosper" (from the Vulcan   
   "Dif-tor heh smusma").   
      
   Mr. Nimoy, who was teaching Method acting at his own studio when he was cast   
   in the original "Star Trek" television series in the mid-1960s, relished   
   playing outsiders, and he developed what he later admitted was a mystical   
   identification with Spock, the    
   lone alien on the starship's bridge.   
      
   Yet he also acknowledged ambivalence about being tethered to the character,   
   expressing it most plainly in the titles of two autobiographies: "I Am Not   
   Spock," published in 1977, and "I Am Spock," published in 1995.   
      
   In the first, he wrote, "In Spock, I finally found the best of both worlds: to   
   be widely accepted in public approval and yet be able to continue to play the   
   insulated alien through the Vulcan character."   
      
   "Star Trek," which had its premiere on NBC on Sept. 8, 1966, made Mr. Nimoy a   
   star. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the franchise, called him "the   
   conscience of 'Star Trek' " -- an often earnest, sometimes campy show that   
   employed the distant future (as    
   well as some primitive special effects by today's standards) to take on social   
   issues of the 1960s.   
      
   His stardom would endure. Though the series was canceled after three seasons   
   because of low ratings, a cultlike following -- the conference-holding,   
   costume-wearing Trekkies, or Trekkers (the designation Mr. Nimoy preferred) --   
   coalesced soon after "Star    
   Trek" went into syndication.   
      
   The fans' devotion only deepened when "Star Trek" was spun off into an   
   animated show, various new series and an uneven parade of movies starring much   
   of the original television cast, including -- besides Mr. Nimoy -- William   
   Shatner (as Capt. James T.    
   Kirk), DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy), George Takei (the helmsman, Sulu), James   
   Doohan (the chief engineer, Scott), Nichelle Nichols (the chief communications   
   officer, Uhura) and Walter Koenig (the navigator, Chekov).   
      
   When the director J. J. Abrams revived the "Star Trek" film franchise in 2009,   
   with an all-new cast -- including Zachary Quinto as Spock -- he included a   
   cameo part for Mr. Nimoy, as an older version of the same character. Mr. Nimoy   
   also appeared in the    
   2013 follow-up, "Star Trek Into Darkness."   
      
   His zeal to entertain and enlighten reached beyond "Star Trek" and crossed   
   genres. He had a starring role in the dramatic television series "Mission:   
   Impossible" and frequently performed onstage, notably as Tevye in "Fiddler on   
   the Roof." His poetry was    
   voluminous, and he published books of his photography.   
      
   He also directed movies, including two from the "Star Trek" franchise, and   
   television shows. And he made records, singing pop songs as well as original   
   songs about "Star Trek," and gave spoken-word performances -- to the delight   
   of his fans and the    
   bewilderment of critics.   
      
      
   But all that was subsidiary to Mr. Spock, the most complex member of the   
   Enterprise crew, who was both one of the gang and a creature apart engaged at   
   times in a lonely struggle with his warring racial halves.   
      
   In one of his most memorable "Star Trek" performances, Mr. Nimoy tried to   
   follow in the tradition of two actors he admired, Charles Laughton and Boris   
   Karloff, who each played a monstrous character -- Quasimodo and the   
   Frankenstein monster -- who is    
   transformed by love.   
      
   In Episode 24, which was first shown on March 2, 1967, Mr. Spock is indeed   
   transformed. Under the influence of aphrodisiacal spores he discovers on the   
   planet Omicron Ceti III, he lets free his human side and announces his love   
   for Leila Kalomi (Jill    
   Ireland), a woman he had once known on Earth. In this episode, Mr. Nimoy   
   brought to Spock's metamorphosis not only warmth, compassion and playfulness,   
   but also a rarefied concept of alienation.   
      
   "I am what I am, Leila," Mr. Spock declares after the spores' effect has worn   
   off and his emotions are again in check. "And if there are self-made   
   purgatories, then we all have to live in them. Mine can be no worse than   
   someone else's."   
      
   Born in Boston on March 26, 1931, Leonard Simon Nimoy was the second son of   
   Max and Dora Nimoy, Ukrainian immigrants and Orthodox Jews. His father worked   
   as a barber.   
      
   From the age of 8, Leonard acted in local productions, winning parts at a   
   community college, where he performed through his high school years. In 1949,   
   after taking a summer course at Boston College, he traveled to Hollywood,   
   though it wasn't until 1951    
   that he landed small parts in two movies, "Queen for a Day" and "Rhubarb."   
      
   He continued to be cast in little-known movies, although he did presciently   
   play an alien invader in a cult serial called "Zombies of the Stratosphere,"   
   and in 1961 he had a minor role on an episode of "The Twilight Zone." His   
   first starring movie role    
   came in 1952 with "Kid Monk Baroni," in which he played a disfigured Italian   
   street-gang leader who becomes a boxer.   
      
   Mr. Nimoy served in the Army for two years, rising to sergeant and spending 18   
   months at Fort McPherson in Georgia, where he presided over shows for the   
   Army's Special Services branch. He also directed and starred as Stanley in the   
   Atlanta Theater Guild'   
   s production of "A Streetcar Named Desire" before receiving his final   
   discharge in November 1955.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)