I haven't seen this talked about on TBBS, although I've spotted a few mentions of it elsewhere with inconclusive results.
Does anybody know exactly what that ring was he wore? I'd heard it mentioned it belonged to his mother who had recently passed away, a kind of tribute. Others have said it was his wedding ring, just moved over. Anybody know for certain?
What's interesting is that in nuTrek, Karl Urban wore his Starfleet Academy ring on the pinky finger of his left hand, in tribute to Deforest Kelly. A nice touch.
Most folks probably know that Dr. Leonard McCoy wore a gold ring on his left pinky finger. Although we don’t know why Leonard McCoy wears a ring, we do know a bit about
DeForest Kelley’s ring.
>>Reposted from the Star Trek Phase II forum:
http://forums.startreknewvoyages.com/index.php?topic=11619.0
The ring that De Kelley wore was actually a woman’s gold ring with a blue diamond in it. It was actually won in a card game in France shortly after World War I by De’s uncle Herman. Herman gave the ring to his sister, Clora (De’s mom). When De’s mom died decades later, it was the only possession of hers that De wanted. (Similarly, when De’s dad died, the only possession De wanted of his dad’s was his Bible.)
Anyway, De would always wear his mom’s ring throughout his acting career. It kept him centered and focused and reminded him of the things that were important—especially as De seemed to by typecast playing outlaws and cattle rustlers and other unsavory characters. The ring gave him an anchor and helped him to keep from losing himself.
When Gene Roddenberry hired De to play, Dr. McCoy, the ring was almost a show stopper (literally). Gene had wanted De as the ship’s gruff surgeon but was thwarted for one reason or another in the first pilot and again in the second pilot. When
Star Trek finally went into production, the stars aligned and De was available for the part of Dr. McCoy. Roddenberry didn’t want any contemporary 20th century jewelry, but De insisted that “you can’t have me if I can’t have my ring,” and Roddenberry relented.
You can see De’s ring in pretty much every episode; often, the blue stone was turned inside on the palm side of the hand to not be too distracting to the shot. But once in a while, you can glimpse the stone. You can even see the ring all the way up to publicity shots taken for
Star Trek VI, the Undiscovered Country. The ring is small and De’s hands are often moving, so there just aren’t any really great close-up shots of the ring. (And now, let’s play “name the episode.”)
You can find rings in the proper style on ebay (thanks, Patty!), but you generally have to know to look for a woman’s ring, in a French style, from the Edwardian period. We found one, but we had to swap out the red stone (I think it was a garnet, but it might actually be a ruby--I'm not much of a gemologist) for a blue one. And, in our case, we needed a Size 7 ring to fit
our McCoy's (Doc John Kelley’s) left pinky finger.
So here’s what we picked up for
Phase II:
You can find an interesting story about this ring from a transcript of a convention appearance by De:
http://klhalliday.com/dekelley/VirtualCon/Boyhood.htm#Ring
Although this gets into the realm of costuming more than props (and I’m more of a prop guy), the line is kind of thin here. But as always, please let me know if you have any questions or thoughts.
