‘Star Trek’ actor Lawrence Montaigne dies

Team Udayavani, Mar 20, 2017, 10:27 AM IST

Los Angeles: Lawrence Montaigne, who played a Romulan and then a Vulcan on episodes of the original Star Trek and at one point was lined up to replace Leonard Nimoy on the series, has died. He was 86. 

Montaigne, who also appeared in the Steve McQueen war classic “The Great Escape” (1963) and on TV’s Batman as a robot controlled by the Joker, died on Friday, his daughter, Jessica, posted on Facebook, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Montaigne portrayed Decius on “Balance of Terror,” the first-season, December 1966 episode that introduced the Romulan race – he has a memorable line, “Permit me the glory of the kill” – then played the Vulcan character Stonn on the second-season opener, “Amok Time,” in September 1967. 

In The Great Escape, directed by John Sturges, Montaigne played the Canadian P.O.W. Haynes, one of the prisoners who doesn’t get out alive. 

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Rome, Montaigne early in his career appeared on Broadway, worked as a stuntman fencer in “Scaramouche” (1952) and danced in “The Band Wagon” (1953), starring Fred Astaire. 

On ABC’s “Batman”, he played Mr. Glee, a lifelike robot who becomes a bank teller at the behest of the felonious funnyman the Joker (Cesar Romero). 

Montaigne appeared often on television, with roles on such shows as “The Outer Limits”, “Burke’s Law”, “Hogan’s Heroes”, “Dr. Kildare”, “The Time Tunnel”, “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”, “The F.B.I”. And “McCloud.” 

His body of film work also includes “Tobruk” (1967), “The Power” (1968), “The Psycho Lover” (1970) and “Escape to Witch Mountain (1975).” 

Montaigne wrote novels as well as an autobiography, 2006’s “A Vulcan Odyssey.”