James Doohan - Early Acting Career

Early Acting Career

After the war, Doohan started his acting career. His work began with a CBC radio show appearance on January 12, 1946. He took a drama class in Toronto, and later won a two-year scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, where his classmates included Leslie Nielsen, Tony Randall and Richard Boone. For several years Doohan would shuttle between Toronto and New York as work demanded. During this period he appeared on some 4,000 radio programs and 400 television programs, and earned a reputation for his versatility.

In the mid-1950s he appeared as forest ranger Timber Tom (the northern counterpart of Buffalo Bob) in the Canadian version of Howdy Doody. Coincidentally, fellow Star Trek cast member William Shatner appeared simultaneously as Ranger Bill in the American version. Doohan and Shatner also appeared on the 1950s Canadian science fiction series Space Command.

Doohan played the lead role in the CBC TV drama production Flight into Danger written by Arthur Hailey who turned it into the novel Runway Zero-Eight, later adapted as Terror in the Sky. His credits also included The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Bewitched, Fantasy Island, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) and Bonanza. In the Bonanza episode, "Gift of Water" (1962), he co-starred with actress Majel Barrett, who would later be cast in the role of Star Trek's Nurse Chapel. He appeared as an assistant to the United States president in two episodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.