![]() On Highway 375 to Roswell, New Mexico, you can stop at the Little A-Le-Inn and wash down your Alien Burger with a Beam Me Up, Scotty (Jim Beam, 7 Up and Scotch). There are novels with the title, and cocktails. Elvis is said to have greeted him with the phrase, and Groucho, too. He was the guy who spent four decades on the receiving end of the request to "Beam me up, Scotty" – if not on TV, where no character on Star Trek ever actually uttered the words, at least in real life, where fans would cheerfully bark the injunction across crowded airport concourses in distant lands, and rush-hour freeway drivers would lurch across four lanes of traffic to yell it out the window at him. James Doohan is an honorary member of that last category. Some great men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have great catchphrases said to them. This essay is anthologized in Mark Steyn's Passing Parade: In lieu, we present, upon the occasion of his centenary, Mark's appreciation of James Doohan, creator of an enduring screen character. ![]() Kathy Shaidle, our Saturday movie columnist, is away this weekend. ![]()
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