Thank you very much.
[Applause]
Thank you very, very much. Thank you so much.
And Dean Juarez, you're a very generous man. He gave me his cap because the one they gave
me was too small for my big head.
Thank you, Sir.
Dean Juarez, and Division Directors Lynne Allen, Robert Dodson, and Jim Petosa. faculty,
families and, of course, graduates...
I think President Brown... he sent me a letter, President Brown sent me a letter inviting
me to do this, and my "Yes" came back so fast, I think he felt like he'd been stunned by
a phaser.
To refuse this request, this invitation, would have been highly illogical.
I am a walking, talking bundle of gratitude. I grew up in this great city surrounded by
academia, the arts, and a powerful wave of immigrant energy. I was lucky. I met people
who took me by the hand and said, "Look at this... Try that..." and early on I had a
sense of what I wanted to do, and who I wanted to be.
I suspect that some of you graduates aren't there yet. You haven't decided exactly what
you want to do, or how to go about doing it. That's okay. Yes, it will worry your parents.
Just keep in mind what Robert Frost said, "Home is the place where when you have to
go there, they have to take you in."
So hang in there. Life does unfold. And for those of you who know exactly what you want
to do, good! Now all you need to do is find someone to pay you for doing it. I have three
words for you. Persistence, persistence, and persistence.
Sixty-five years ago I saw Ted Williams hit home runs at Fenway Park. I learned to sail
on the Charles River. I sold newspapers at the corner of Boylston and Arlington, in front
of the Arlington Street Church... In the Winter.
From where I lived it was a ten minute walk to Boston Garden where I watched the Celtics,
the Bruins, and the Ringling Brothers Circus. The neighborhood was called The West End.
Three and four story attached brick buildings. A tenement area populated by immigrants, approximately
65% Italian and 30% Jews living side-by-side, and identifiable by the smell of the cooking
as you walked up the stairs.
We had neighbors named Santosuosso, and Spinale, and Rabinowitz, and Cohen. The Italian iceman
who delivered blocks of ice before we had a refrigerator learned enough Yiddish to talk
to his Jewish customers who had not yet managed the English language.
I first stepped on stage when I was 8 years old at 357 Charles Street, the Elizabeth Peabody
Playhouse. The playhouse is gone now, but for years you could see a sign on the spot
which said, "If you lived here, you'd be home now."
It was a community settlement house, which was created to help immigrants find their
way into the culture. They offered classes in language, cooking, shopping, kitchen sanitation,
dental care, and how to apply for a job. There was a gym, and a sports program, and there
was a small gem of a theatre.
When I was 8 years old I was asked to sing a song... probably, "God Bless America," and
I was cast as Hansel in "Hansel and Gretel." It was something to do after school and on
weekends, and I continued to perform there in various children's productions for several
years.
When I was 17, I was cast in the role of a teenager in a play called "Awake and Sing."
This was my first time in an adult production, an adult play. The play was written by Clifford
Odets and concerned a Jewish family in the Bronx very much like my own in the West End.
Three generations living in one apartment, and the young man I portrayed was experiencing
the same concerns that I had at the time.
How do you find the right job? How do you find the right girl? Who am I supposed to
be, and what am I supposed to do with the rest of my life?
Maybe some of you have experienced what I felt doing this role in this play. I was electrified.
The author gave me a voice when I was struggling to find my own. This piece gave an audience
illumination about their own lives. I thought if I could do work like this for the rest
of my life, I would consider myself blessed. I had found my path.
Around this time I had a welcome bit of affirmation. I was seen in a play by a Jesuit priest who
ran the theatre program at Boston College. He offered me a scholarship for an 8 week
summer theatre program, and I grabbed at it. It was classes every morning, rehearsals in
the afternoon, and performances at night, after which we would help build sets for the
next week's production, and often fall asleep on the stage and start the whole thing all
over again in the morning. I loved it.
And I was totally comfortable - this Jewish kid from a Yiddish speaking family, at a Jesuit
school - being blessed daily with "Our Fathers" and "Hail Marys." And I will always be grateful
to Father John Bonn.
The last job that I had before leaving Boston, I was selling vacuum cleaners on Boylston
Street. The money I made went to pay tuition at a theatrical school in California.
Don't ask me why I didn't go to New York. I still don't know.
"Life unfolds". I got on a train at South Station and spent three days and three nights
in a coach seat, and I was excited. I knew without a doubt what I wanted to do, and I
believed I had something to give.
After six months at the school, I dropped out. I feel safe in telling you that I was
a dropout because you're graduating today.
I paid $400 for the first year of tuition, and when I abruptly left I got a refund of $47.00. Why
did I dropout? I felt I wasn't getting what I needed.
In fact, I wasn't sure of what I needed, but I knew I wasn't being touched or inspired.
The work I was involved with in Boston as a teenager was better than what was being
done by the graduate students at the school.
Now, full disclosure: Some of the people who stayed in that school were helped later in
building their careers by the network of folks they met in that school. Networking is important.
I hit the streets making the rounds of agents' offices, and within a year after leaving the
school, I was on a soundstage, in costume, and acting on film. Not much came of it, although
I had high hopes. Maybe what sank the project was the title. It was called "Zombies of the
Stratosphere."
And in case you're wondering, the answer is "yes," I played a zombie.
It would be almost ten years before I would become a student again. In the meantime, I
jobbed around in small roles in smaller productions. But I was gaining experience. I worked at
various low level jobs, I spent two years in the United States Army, I got married,
had two kids, and came back to Los Angeles with little money and the tiny scraps of a
career.
I drove a taxi at night so that I could be available for auditions during the day. One
night I picked up Jack Kennedy at the Bel Air Hotel. Yes, that Jack Kennedy, the senator
from Massachusetts at the time, and future president.
We chatted about careers, politics, and show business, and we agreed that both had a lot
in common. Maybe too much in common. He said, "Lots of competition in your business, just
like in mine." And then he gave me this: "Just remember, there's always room for one more
good one."
Words to live by, and I tried to do that.
After ten years in California, I had developed my craft and then I finally came to understand
what I needed to learn. Spencer Tracy, when asked about acting technique said, "Know your
lines and don't bump into the furniture." Well, he had his tongue firmly planted in
his cheek. If acting is to be considered an art, one needs to learn more than the superficial
craft. This is true of any work in the arts. What is the work about? What does it say to
a contemporary audience? What light does it cast on our lives and on the issues which
concern us and connect us? Indeed, how does it help to heal the world?
I found a teacher who put me in touch with these issues. The craft that I had acquired
over the years served its purpose as a foundation. I was introduced to theme, to substance, to
sub-text. My work improved, and I began to support myself and my family as an actor for
the first time. I was 35 years old. I came to be recognized as a useful performer who
would bring something personal to a role.
And then came Mr. Spock in 1966. It took 15 years, but I was ready. I was on my game.
Still, I hesitated... I took my work seriously. Did I really want to put on those pointed
ears?
A wonderful curator and founder of the New Museum in New York, Marsha Tucker, said. "Do
what scares you". Well...It scared me. And I did it.
My folks came to United States as immigrants, aliens, and became citizens. I was born in Boston,
a citizen. I went to Hollywood and I became an alien.
Spock called for exactly the kind of work I was prepared to do. He was a character with
a rich and dynamic inner life. Half human, half Vulcan. He was the embodiment of the
outsider, like the immigrants who surrounded me in my early years.
How do you find your way as the alien in a foreign culture? Where does your identity,
your dignity, come from, and how do you make a contribution?
I'm reminded of a quote from John F. Kennedy as president. He said, "We must never forget
that art is not a form of propaganda. Art is a form of truth." Spock was a truth.
The character, seemingly so foreign, was welcomed and quickly became enormously popular. And when
for the first time in a wonderful script by Theodore Sturgeon, I said, "Live long and
prosper" and stuck up my hand in an ancient Hebraic gesture, and the deal was done.
The impact on my life was intense, and I had to learn to deal with celebrity.
When the Star Trek TV series was cancelled after three seasons - and folks are shocked
that it was only three - I was hired to work on the "Mission Impossible" series, and I
was thrilled.
The series was visual, cinematic and I got to play a wide variety of characters in makeups
and dialects. I played Asians, Europeans, South Americans, businessmen, hippies... In
the second season, the same characters came around again and I thought I would go out of my mind.
Not only was I being asked to do the same characters, more importantly, they had no
inner life. They were charades. The demands on me were totally superficial. No substance,
no inner life, no truth.
I was dying a slow, creative death and I asked to be let out of my contract, which still
had three years to run. I was let go and I never looked back.
Since Star Trek went on the air 46 years ago, I have never been without work. I have given
hundreds of performances in films, television, and theaters, including Broadway and stages
across the country. The North Shore Music theatre in Beverly, the Cape Cod Melody
Tent where I acted in "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Camelot," The Wilbur Theatre on Tremont
Street where I presented my one man show about Vincent Van Gogh. And I went back to school
and earned a master's degree in education when I was in my thirties.
I never worked, and I never drank when I was smoking...
I got that backward...
I never worked drunk... 0:14:35.000,0:14:34.250 Oh, Scotty, beam me outta here, will ya?!
I never worked drunk and I never worked high, though I must say I paid my respects to smoking
and booze. I smoked a lot of cigarettes and all the good that came from it was to send
some tobacco growers kids through college, and what I got was a pair of beat up lungs.
Respect your body. It's a vital part of the creative process.
The alcohol got a firm grip on me until I gave it up 23 years ago.
Our creativity walks on a razor's edge, using both sides of the brain.
The left side of the brain gives us logic and discipline. On the right side, is instinctive,
creative thinking.
We, as artists, need both. Fall to the left and we lose inspiration and originality. Fall
too far the right and we are in danger of drifting into undisciplined chaos.
The secret of a long, healthy career in the arts is the successful walk on the razor's
edge.
Here's a description of the artist's life... "Edwin Booth, the actor, heard the solemn whisper of the
God of all arts. 'I shall give you hunger and pain and sleepless nights. Also beauty
and satisfaction known to few and glimpses of the heavenly life. None of these shall
you have continually, and of their coming and going, you shall not be foretold.'"
As a kid, we walked the Boston Commons and the Public Gardens and I was intrigued by
the inscription on a fountain there. It's from Ecclesiastes. It says, "Cast thy bread
upon the waters for thou shalt find it after many days." Not long ago, I tweeted that and
what came back was "Cast thy bread upon the waters and you'll get soggy bread."
Well, I reject cynicism. I reject it. To me that inscription means, "What goes around,
comes around."
You are the creators and the curators of your own lives. You create your own life and your
work.
Give us your best. Give us the best of your art. We crave it. We hunger for it.
Help us to see ourselves, to know ourselves. Illuminate our lives.
And keep in mind what Victor Hugo said. "Popularity is the crumbs of greatness."
And please, please... For the sake of our culture, for the sake of mankind, don't create
any more reality TV shows. [Applause]
And of course, and of course... I cannot leave without saying to you in all sincerity...
Live long and prosper.
Thank you. Thank you.