Surely, you must be kidding. Leslie Nielsen was the best man at James Doohan's second wedding? Yes, he was, and don’t call us Shirley! It happened in 1967, when Doohan married Anita Yagel. Also in attendance that day: Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Doohan and Yagel divorced in 1972.
For those wondering about the connection between Doohan, who co-starred as Montgomery Scott, the intrepid engineer aboard the USS Enterprise on Star Trek: The Original Series, and Nielsen, the star of Forbidden Planet, Police Squad!, Airplane!, Creepshow, and the Naked Gun movies, they became friends while studying at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. Another of their classmates was Tony Randall, who’d later find success with Pillow Talk, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, The Odd Couple, and Down with Love, a Ewan McGregor-Renee Zellweger romantic comedy that co-starred Star Trek: Voyager’s Seven of Nine, Jeri Ryan.
Sticking with the Doohan-Nielsen connection, Nielsen, late in his career, morphed from a dramatic actor into the king of spoof movies. Those include not just some of the titles mentioned above, but also Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Wrongfully Accused, a couple of the Scary Movie comedies, Superhero Movie, and Stan Helsing. Doohan took a similar route, but more specifically spoofed his role as Scotty in the likes of National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1 and Homeboys in Outer Space.
National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1, starred Samuel L. Jackson and Emilio Estevez and sent up the Lethal Weapon movies. Released in 1993, it was a hit-and-miss affair that co-starred a couple of memorable Star Trek talents, namely William Shatner and F. Murray Abraham, the latter of whom played the villainous Ru’afo in Star Trek: Insurrection. The movie also boasted nearly 20 different cameos from such film and TV stars as Erik Estrada, Larry Wilcox, Phil Hartman, Denise Richards, and Bruce Willis, as well as several Star Trek figures, among them Doohan, Whoopi Goldberg, and Charles Napier. Goldberg, of course, played Guinan on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek Generations, Star Trek Nemesis, and Star Trek: Picard, while Napier infamously guest starred as every Trekker’s favorite space hippie, Adam, in The Original Series episode, ‘The Way to Eden.”