Leonard Nimoy was one of the most beloved TV actors of the 20th century, but he also admitted in interviews over the years that –- despite growing up the Jewish son of Ukrainian immigrants –- he made his career in the pre-“Star Trek” days playing Native American characters. Among other instances of “redface,” he played a Comanche warrior in the TV show “Tate,” a character named Chief Black Hawk in the film “Old Overland Trail,” and a mysterious Native who seeks justice for his murdered white friend in an episode of the wildly popular show “Gunsmoke.”
Nimoy spoke fondly about his role on “Gunsmoke” in an interview with the Archive of American Television back in 2000 (he passed away in 2015). The actor recalled having met the star of the long-running Western series, James Arness, years earlier when the two were in the same acting troupe. Nimoy eventually went into the military, but kept in touch with Arness, who one day told him he’d landed the lead role in the TV adaptation of a popular radio show –- “Gunsmoke.” Nimoy appeared several times on the show over the years, but it was his final appearance in 1966 that was most memorable to him … and most controversial today.
“A guest starring role in the Gunsmoke show was the last job I did just before I started shooting ‘Star Trek,'” Nimoy explained in the retrospective interview. “I had already done the ‘Star Trek’ pilot and I was hired for this story –- playing an Indian.” Specifically, Nimoy played a man named John Walking Fox, who got his own episode title in season 11: “The Treasure of John Walking Fox.” Nimoy once told PBS that he did the show while he was waiting to hear about whether or not “Star Trek” was going to finally get picked up after failed pilots, and complimented the episode’s “clever” script by Clyde Ware. With decades of retrospect, though, the story doesn’t sound clever so much as misguided and guilty of racial stereotyping.
Nimoy played mysterious Native American John Walking Fox
“The story, as I recall, was about an Indian fur trapper, very good friends with a white man who also did the same thing and they often went trapping together,” Nimoy told the TV Archive. The white man was eventually killed in a confrontation with a broker, and per the actor, “there was something about, there wasn’t going to be any justice for this friend of John Walking Fox.” The Indigenous character saved the day by paying for his friend’s funeral in gold, ultimately orchestrating infighting among the town’s criminals (including his friend’s killer) by pretending to have gold treasure. The killer was eventually killed in the squabble over John’s treasure. “There is no treasure, but he built this story,” Nimoy said. “So it’s kind of a wry way of getting some social justice.”
Social justice is an ironic term to use here, as plenty of Native American activists were already fighting for recognition and equity in the 1960s, all while non-Native people were playing cartoonish versions of them on TV. Nimoy told PBS that “the character [of John Walking Fox] was designed to be enigmatic,” and shared some qualities with “Star Trek” hero Spock. This, of course, plays into stereotypes of the mysterious, stoic Native that were rampant across the Western genre at the time (for more on this and every other issue discussed here, watch the great documentary “Reel Injun”). The John Walking Fox episode isn’t particularly shocking, but the way Nimoy spoke about being typecast as a Native American sort of is. “I had played some Indians before, but I think this is the most important Indian role I had ever been given,” Nimoy told PBS in the 2010s. “Most of them were not quite so consequential.”
The actor had a troubling way of discussing his Indigenous roles
You would think that decades of retrospect would have led Nimoy to better understand why speaking about taking Native American roles as if he’s seeking better ethnic representation on screen would be misleading, but it seems the actor never came to that realization. In Abigail Pobegrin’s book “Stars of David,” Nimoy talked even more callously about being typecast in a racial role that didn’t fit him (per The Atlantic). “Guys like me were playing all the ethnic roles, usually the heavies — the bad Mexicans, the bad Italians,” Nimoy explained. “And those were the jobs that I took and was happy to get for a long time. I played Indians in Westerns many times.”
Disturbingly, Nimoy even claimed in the book that the first Native role he took was “a role that a Native Indian turned down because the Indian character was so unredeemably bad.” But he wasn’t concerned about the poor representation because, as he put it, “I was happy to get the work, thank you very much.” This is a heartbreaking, infuriating story presented as something lighthearted. It’s heartbreaking because it sounds like the writers behind the project in question ignored the valid concerns of the Native actor they initially offered the project to, instead opting to just keep the script the same and give the job to a non-Native man. It’s infuriating because Nimoy also positioned the unnamed Native actor as ungrateful for what he had been given, rather than brave for standing up against harmful, reductive stereotypes that dominated the industry at the time. Essentially, this story is everything that was wrong with 20th century Native American portrayals in Hollywood in a nutshell.
Hollywood barely cast Native American actors for decades
I wish there was a “but” at the end of this story or some sort of come-to-Jesus moment that this deeply beloved and talented actor had later in life in which he realized that he was actively blocking Native actors from getting roles. If there is, it’s not in any interview I’ve found; Nimoy was still speaking positively about nabbing Native roles to PBS just a few years before his death. The actor was culpable for his own actions, but he was also one piece of a larger racist system. In Arlene B. Hirschfelder and Martha Kreipe de Montaño’s 1998 book “The Native American Almanac: A Portrait of Native America Today,” the authors include an extensive yet incomplete list of non-Native actors who took Native roles. “Surely no group has ever been misrepresented in so many movies for so long,” they wrote. “Many Indians feel that in casting, Native actors have occupied a single niche because, until recently, Indians usually were not cast to play Indians. Bankable non-Indian stars got major Indian roles.”
Nimoy’s name is, of course, on the list. But “Gunsmoke” seems to mark one of the last times the actor played a Native American on screen. “Star Trek” took off soon after and made him a household name, and his habit of taking on Indigenous roles with impunity became a thing of the past. In 2011, the actor joked to the Wall Street Journal that the transition from one pigeonholed role to the other made sense. He worked on Westerns, “most of the time playing Indians,” he told the outlet. “[So,] naturally, when I got into science fiction, I had to play an alien.” Yeesh.