Long before he was Spock, a young Leonard Nimoy turned up on General Hospital in a role wildly different from his future sci-fi fame.
Long before he donned the Vulcan ears and boldly went where no man had gone before as Mr. Spock, Leonard Nimoy checked into General Hospital and played a drug dealer named Bernie Smith on a single episode, the 17th episode of the show's inaugural season. Nimoy had just turned 32 and was very early in his acting career when he took the GH role.
The episode aired April 23, 1963 — just over three years before Nimoy rocketed to fame as Spock. His character was a “pill pusher” who appeared on Peggy Mercer’s (K.T. Stevens) doorstep looking for her boyfriend, Roy Lansing (Robert Clarke). Peggy and Roy had only just reunited after she broke off her engagement to Dr. Steve Hardy (John Beradino), unwilling to play second fiddle to his work. Bernie arrived to deliver drugs to Roy, and the realization that Roy was an addict shattered Peggy’s rekindled romance.
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This episode was Nimoy's only one and his character was never mentioned again but since the chronically inept PCPD would have been tasked with taking him down, longtime GH fans know he probably enjoyed a long, prosperous criminal career offscreen in Port Charles.
Nimoy never publicly spoke about his time on GH, but footage of his appearance survives in the ABC archives — and his paystub for the episode still exists. Soap opera historian Gary Warner discovered it while researching his 1995 coffee-table book, General Hospital: The Complete Scrapbook.
Warner told the LA Times that when he was looking through the stacks of payroll stubs, the name jumped out at him, "Leonard Nimoy? Leonard Nimoy! This is like gold." The paystub revealed Nimoy was paid $145 for his one episode on the show which was very early in his career. Warner also revealed that the kinescope copy stored at UCLA was incomplete: "They’ve got all the early shows on kinescope out at UCLA." Warner said, "So we ordered up the show and they couldn’t find the sound. The sound was on a separate reel. I still don’t have the sound, but I’ve got Leonard Nimoy."
To date, this is the only known image of Nimoy’s GH appearance, reproduced in Warner’s book:
ABC
Shortly after his brief stop in Port Charles, Nimoy landed the role that would catapult him into pop-culture immortality. But like so many future stars, before Leonard Nimoy became a Hollywood legend, he was a soap star.
Were you watching GH when Nimoy aired as Bernie Smith? Do you remember his appearance — or the storyline that broke Peggy and Roy’s reunion? Tell us in the comments, and come back next week to see which actor we spotlight next in Before They Were Stars.
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