Leonard by William Shatner Read Free Book Online

going to auditions during the day, and when he got a part, he could quit without being missed. “I did that kind of work for a long time,” he said. “I didn’t want to take a responsible job where people depended on me. If I did take a job where there was any dependency on me, I would let them know I could leave abruptly. I’m an actor!”
    I actually never knew Leonard drove a cab until much later in our lives, when he just happened to mention that he had driven a cab in the same neighborhood in which he then lived. And then he told me about his most memorable passenger and what he had learned from him. Democratic senator Adlai Stevenson, then trying to get the party’s presidential nomination after losing to Eisenhower in 1952, was speaking at a political dinner being held at the Beverly Hilton. Leonard was told to pick up a passenger at the Bel Air Hotel. That passenger turned out to be Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy. When Kennedy found out Leonard was from Boston, he barraged Leonard with questions about the West End, about his parents’ immigrant experience, and about Leonard’s acting career. Leonard told him it was tough, then asked him about Stevenson’s chances of getting the nomination for a second time. Rather than answering, Kennedy leaned forward and said, “You talk to a lot of people. What do you think?”
    When they reached the Hilton, something else memorable happened: Kennedy tried to stiff him for the $1.25 fare. “He stepped out of the cab and started to walk away without paying. By this time, he’d been distracted.” One thing about Leonard, when he did the work, he expected to be paid. And as I would learn, he was willing to fight for what he believed he was owed. So Leonard got out of his cab and followed Kennedy into the hotel. “I want my $1.25,” he said. Kennedy found someone he knew and borrowed $3, which he handed to Leonard.
    That trip actually had an impact on his life. The fact that rather than answering Leonard’s question, Kennedy turned it around and “made me feel much more worthwhile—more meaningful and important to myself; that a man in his position would ask me for my opinion. He obviously knew much more than I did, but he wasn’t interested in impressing me with his knowledge … That was one of the most important lessons I ever learned, and often I found myself doing exactly what he did. If somebody asks me a question, I may have an answer, but often I’ll say, ‘But what do you think?’ I learn a lot more that way than simply by answering the question myself.”
    That really became an important part of his personality. Anyone who spent time with Leonard would pick up on that immediately. John de Lancie accurately described him as “a formidable listener. He listened actively, which most people don’t do.”
    His first year out of the army, he was cast in several Ziv shows; he was a cowboy in Luke and the Tenderfoot, a sailor in Navy Log, he did an episode of Your Favorite Story and an episode of The Man Called X, a spy story supposedly based on the true adventures of a government adventurer. He also appeared on stage, playing a supporting role in a play entitled Life Is but a Dream at the Civic Playhouse, a show that would have been long forgotten except that Leonard got his first strong review in the LA Times : “Leonard Nimoy carries conviction.”
    No one who knew Leonard would disagree with that either; in everything he did, he always carried conviction.
    I actually made my debut on American television at that time. I was offered a key role on one of the most popular shows in television’s brief history: I created the role of Ranger Bob on The Howdy Doody Show, costarring with several marionettes and a clown named Clarabell. Clarabell did not speak; instead he expressed his opinions by honking a bicycle horn. That did cut down on meaningful