DeForest Kelley
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| DeForest Kelley | |
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| Birth name | Jackson DeForest Kelley |
| Born | January 20, 1920 Atlanta, Georgia, United States |
| Died | June 11, 1999 (age 79) Woodland Hills, California, United States |
| Spouse(s) | Carolyn Dowling (1949-1999) |
| Notable roles | Leonard McCoy in Star Trek |
Jackson DeForest Kelley (January 20, 1920 – June 11, 1999) was an actor best known for his starring role as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy of the USS Enterprise in the television series Star Trek and six of its subsequent movies.
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[edit] Early life, World War II service
Kelley was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of Ernest David Kelley (a Baptist minister) and Clora Casey, delivered in their home by his uncle, a prominent local physician. As a child he sang in the church choir, where he discovered that he enjoyed singing and was good at it. Eventually this led to solos and an appearance on radio station WSB in Atlanta. As a result of his radio work, he won an engagement with Lew Forbes and his orchestra at the Paramount Theater.
Kelley served in the Second World War as an enlisted member of the Army Air Forces between March 10, 1943 and January 28, 1946. After an extended stay at Long Beach, California, he decided to relocate to the state permanently to pursue an acting career and to live with his uncle, Casey. He worked as an usher in a local theater in order to earn enough money for the move. Kelley received encouragement from his mother about this life change, but his father disliked the idea. While in California, Kelley was spotted by a Paramount scout while doing a Navy training film.
[edit] Film career
The first movie of Kelly's acting career was feature film Fear in the Night. The low-budget movie was a blockbuster hit, bringing him to the attention of a national audience. His next role in Variety Girl established him as a leading actor. A few years later, Kelley and his wife, Carolyn, decided to move to New York City. He found work on stage and on live television, but after three years in New York the Kelleys returned to Hollywood. In California he received a role in an episode of You are There. In turn this led to him starring in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral as Morgan Earp - his first major role in a big film, and was a source of three movie offers.
For nine years Kelley primarily played villians. He built up an impressive list of credits, alternating between television and motion pictures, however he was afraid of being typecast so he broke away from villians by starring in Where Love Has Gone and a television pilot called 333 Montgomery. The pilot was was written by an ex-policeman named Gene Roddenberry,and a few years later Kelley would appear in another Roddenberry pilot, Police Story which was also not picked up.
Kelley played Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy from 1966 to 1969 in Roddenberry's Star Trek (TOS) and the first six Star Trek motion pictures (1979 to 1991). He also had a cameo in the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation: "Encounter at Farpoint".
After Star Trek, Kelley found himself typecast. He did a few television appearances and a couple of movies, but essentially he retired. In a TLC interview done in the late 1990s, he said one of his biggest fears was that the words etched on his gravestone would be "He's dead, Jim", a catch phrase that Dr. McCoy spoke in many Star Trek episodes. Kelley took up poetry as a hobby, and he published the first two books in a series "The Big Bird's Dream" and "The Dream Goes On". Kelley would never finish this series, as he died at age 79 in Woodland Hills, California from stomach cancer. He was survived by his wife, Carolyn, who died in October 2004.
[edit] Trivia
- Years before being cast as Dr. McCoy, Kelley appeared in the 1962 Bonanza episode entitled "The Decision," as a doctor sentenced to hang for the murder of a judge's wife. The judge in this episode was portrayed by John Hoyt, who played Dr. Boyce (one of McCoy's predecessors) on the Star Trek pilot "The Cage."
- In the Star Trek episode "Spectre of the Gun", Dr. McCoy, with his crewmates, would face down the Earp brothers, including Morgan Earp, a role he played years earlier in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
- One of his best-known lines as Dr. McCoy, listed in detail in the Bones McCoy article, was of the form "I'm a doctor, not a ________!" As a nod to the original series, this phrase was also often used by the Holographic Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager.
- Kelley appeared as an Army medic in the 1956 film The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. It was a bit part with only one line: "This man's dead, captain."
[edit] External links
- DeForest Kelley at the Internet Movie Database
- DeForest Kelley article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki.
- DeForest Kelley at TV.com
| Major Cast Members of Star Trek: The Original Series |
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| William Shatner • Leonard Nimoy • DeForest Kelley • James Doohan • Nichelle Nichols • George Takei • Walter Koenig |
Categories: Articles lacking sources from April 2007 | All articles lacking sources | 1920 births | 1999 deaths | American B-movie actors | American film actors | American television actors | American military personnel of World War II | Baptists from the United States | Bonanza | Hollywood Walk of Fame | Irish-American actors | People from Atlanta | People from Georgia (U.S. state) | Perry Mason cast members | Stomach cancer deaths | United States Army soldiers
