Fascinating: The Life of
Leonard Nimoy
by Richard Michelson,
illustrated by Edel Rodriguez
Alfred A. Knopf Books
for Young Readers, 2016, $17.99
Third-grader Lenny Nimoy
nervously peeks through the curtain of his school’s little theater, watching an
audience gather. He has been recruited quite suddenly to open the night’s
talent show with his rendition of “God Bless America”, after the school’s
social director Mr. Chalfin had heard his resonant voice belting out the Shema prayer at synagogue.
As he is nudged on to
the stage, he is delighted to see that front-row seats have been reserved for
his proud parents. Mr. Chalfin presciently bends down and whispers to him
“Reach for the stars!”, and a career is born.
Feeling befuddled was
not a new sensation for Lenny. When his Yiddish-speaking Russian Jewish
immigrant parents had arrived in Boston, their passports had been stamped
“alien”, a perfect description of how they felt. They took classes at a
settlement house to learn how to be “more American’: how to cook hot dogs, how
to brush their teeth with a toothbrush instead of a rag. Nimoy, like so many
children of immigrant families, spent much of his life working to overcome the
psychic stigma of feeling alien. Yet, ironically, his acclaimed portrayal of
the unflappable Mr. Spock on Star Trek eventually brought him back full circle.
He fully inhabited a character whose main trait was his “otherness”.
The Jewish origin of the Vulcan Salute
photo credit: Seth Kaye
Richard Michelson’s new
book The Life of Leonard Nimoy,
is a loving, gentle recounting of a remarkable, richly-lived life. Michelson
seamlessly and with great warmth guides the reader through the many
incarnations of the life of the man who was to become his dear friend and
father-figure, starting with his stint as a newspaper boy on Beacon Hill in
Boston. Through this work, Nimoy kept up with current events and saved enough
money to buy his first camera, a Kodak Bellows. The observational skills he
honed through his early experiments with photography served him well later in
his life as an actor and director; he felt that his pictures exposed people’s
souls.
Leonard was indeed
becoming more and more American, less “alien”. He loved performing, and by the
time he was seventeen decided that he was meant to be an actor. A kind-hearted
priest from the neighborhood spotted his talent and offered him a scholarship
for the Boston College summer theater program. By the end of that season, Nimoy
was eager to follow his dreams and travel to Hollywood.
To raise money for train
fare, he took a job in 1949 as a door-to-door Electrolux vacuum cleaner
salesman, an occupation for which he showed surprisingly little promise. Soon
he discovered that while he couldn’t really be a successful salesman, he could “act” the part
of one quite effectively. All aboard for California!
Michelson colorfully
traces Nimoy’s next thirteen years, during which he worked as a movie theater
usher, a soda jerk, and a cab driver. (One of his passengers was a young
congressman from Boston – yes, JFK – who urged him not to give up on his
dreams.) He acted on numerous television shows, opened a teaching studio, and
married and had two children. His big career break came, of course, when he was
offered the role of the super-logical “alien science officer” Spock on Star
Trek’s Enterprise starship.
Though to an outside
observer, the role of Mr. Spock would seem tailor-made for Nimoy, Michelson
says that the decision to take it “was not a no-brainer” at the time. It was going to require that he wear
what the author describes as “pointy ears and a silly haircut. What if the
audience made fun of him, and his career was ruined?”
Eventually, Spock-like
logic prevailed, and Nimoy decided to take the plunge. Rather than being
laughed at, he was widely admired for his character’s calm core, commitment to
justice, and ongoing efforts to convince everyone that “it made sense to live
peacefully.” And the Spock haircut, far from being a laughingstock, became all
the rage, aided in no small measure by the fact that Max Nimoy (his father) was
a barber.
After a wildly successful,
multi-award-winning career as a performer and director in films and on
television, as well as being a recording artist and poet, Nimoy decided to turn
his attention back to one of his first artistic loves, photography. It is here
that his life intersected with that of the book’s author, who is proprietor of
the highly regarded R. Michelson Galeries in Northampton, MA. The two men found
that they were very much in tune artistically, personally and professionally.
Also, they were serendipitously such look-alikes that they were often assumed to be father and
son, adding an element of hilarity to their close friendship.
R. Michelson Galleries
mounted several shows of Nimoy’s photographs, some of them quite controversial.
The Shekhina Project (2002) – an exhibition exploring the feminine aspect of
God that included some nudity – and The Full Body Project (2007), which brought
confident large woman out of the shadows, drew particular ire from some
critics.
Throughout his
wide-ranging career, Nimoy never abandoned his pride in his Jewish origins or
his deeply-rooted love of the Yiddish language. In his later years, he hired a
tutor to speak Yiddish with him, just for the joy of it. He was also a major
contributor to the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA.
He happily acknowledged
that the universally recognized Vulcan salute he created for Star Trek had its
genesis in the hand position used during the biblical priestly blessing,
performed with high drama in synagogue services. (Congregants were supposed to
close their eyes when this blessing was being given, so as not to be dazzled by
the holy presence, but once again, Nimoy peeked.)
Illustrations by
Cuban-American artist Edel Rodriguez – currently much in the news for his droll
Time magazine cover depicting Donald Trump’s Velveeta-colored face melting –
harmonize with and enhance the magical feeling of the book, never intruding on
but always enhancing the text.
Richard Michelson,
himself a renaissance man (author, speaker, gallerist, mentor to emerging
artists) is to be heartily applauded for focusing not on Mr. Nimoy’s celebrity,
but on his humanity and inner spirit – one of generosity, kindness, humor,
curiosity and artistry. As a friend of mine (a celebrated musician himself)
once said to me “I’m not interested in people who are famous, I’m interested in
people who DO something.” Now that’s fascinating.
° ° ° ° ° ° °
review by Judy Polan
Mad for Mod
madformodblog.com
September 8, 2016
