Any biographer tracing the rollercoaster arc of William Shatner’s career faces a formidable challenge in chronicling the life of an American icon who continues to lead an active and very public life as he nears his ninetieth decade.
I undertook this challenge and spent three years researching and writing about William Shatner’s life, interviewing friends and colleagues with whom he interacted at one point or another during his long career, reading hundreds of interviews with him and about him, and screening as much of his onscreen work as I could—occasionally venturing down rabbit holes for information that was tough to come by. (Example: The Butler’s Night Off, Shatner’s first onscreen appearance, filmed in 1951 when he was still a student at McGill University and about which little is known.)
Once I felt I had covered all the bases of Shatner’s life—from his birth in Montreal in 1931 to his picking fights on Twitter eighty-eight years later—I needed to choose a title for this book. I wanted to avoid any allusions to Star Trek, no matter how cleverly they might be cloaked—to me, that was just too obvious. I know, I know—this book would not exist had not Gene Roddenberry’s television series jump-started William Shatner’s career fifty-odd years ago. And, yes, Captain James T. Kirk is, without a doubt, his defining role. But as I hope you will learn in reading this book, William Shatner’s career in show business existed for over a decade before Star Trek and certainly encompassed so much more after the series’ initial three-season run on NBC. So it felt too easy to peg the book’s title to Star Trek. Besides, it’s been done countless times before in the thousands (millions?) of newspaper and magazine articles written about William Shatner once the series completed its initial run. He himself has used Star Trek-ian verbiage in a few of his own book titles (including Star Trek Memories and William Shatner: Live Long and . . .).
I also wanted to avoid using the word “definitive” anywhere in the book’s title. It’s an adjective that I have always found somewhat pretentious, particularly when used by an author (or by an overenthusiastic publisher) to describe a biographical work. No written account of a person’s personal and professional life can ever be “definitive,” even when chronicled in memoir form—when one’s memories, in recalling their life, tend to be selective (or, worse, self-serving).
But in the end, choosing a title for this book wasn’t as difficult as I first imagined it would be. It was, in fact, right there from the day I began this project, since whenever someone would ask me about my next book, I usually answered in one word: “Shatner.”
The name itself triggers so many images: Shatner as Captain Kirk in Star Trek, of course, but also as bug-eyed, sweaty, hysterical Robert Wilson in The Twilight Zone, confronting that furry gremlin no one else sees (“There’s a man out there!”). Or Shatner as Denny Crane (“Denny Crane.” “Denny Crane.”) savoring a cigar with Alan Shore on their Boston Legal balcony. Or Shatner as the Priceline Negotiator, karate-chopping his way through another witty ad. Or the late-sixties Shatner, crowned with various iterations of hair, slow-talking his way through versions of “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Or the swingin’-seventies Shatner guesting on daytime game shows with his second wife, Marcy, and appearing in a string of forgettable movies, summer-stock stage productions, and television shows. (And let us not forget those margarine commercials . . . “Promise.”) There’s Barbary Coast Shatner (OK, so maybe not so memorable) and Shatner as tough LA cop T. J. Hooker and Shatner reviving Captain Kirk (and his career) on the big screen in various Star Trek iterations, both in front of the camera and in the director’s chair (for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier). There’s Shatner as beauty pageant host Stan Fields in Miss Congeniality and its sequel and as grouchy Ed Goodson in the CBS sitcom $#*! My Dad Says. There’s Shatner as a cable TV interviewer (Shatner’s Raw Nerve). There’s the funky, spoken-word-album Shatner working with Brad Paisley and Iggy Pop and Henry Rollins and covering everything from country music to old standards to Christmas tunes. There’s Shatner as the subject of several websites, including the now-defunct Shatner’s Toupee (Shatnerstoupee.blogspot.com), the extremely well-researched “Definitive Oracle” that tracked the subtle weaves and styles of his (alleged) hairpieces at various stages of his career—with essays, accompanied by topical photographs, to substantiate theories regarding the hairpieces’ handiwork. There’s the late-in-life Shatner picking yet another Twitter fight with Outlander fans or with “snowflakes” or with someone from Dancing with the Stars or with the #MeToo movement or with a half-dozen other targets . . . or, more likely than not, with his go-to Star Trek frenemy George “Oh My” Takei in a back-and-forth squabble that’s lasted over twenty-five years and continues to this day.
So Shatner it is.
In the course of researching and writing this book, I was hoping to speak to The Man himself. I had interviewed William Shatner once, back in 2009, when I wrote about his new celebrity interview show, Shatner’s Raw Nerve, for the New York Post, where I have covered television for the past twenty-four years. Our interview was conducted over the phone and was pleasant enough; it took a slight detour to the off-ramp of awkwardness when I mentioned his, shall we say, checkered history with some of his costars. “I really haven’t rubbed anyone the wrong way. I think you’re referring to some cast members from Star Trek,” he said, a bit testily. “I’ve asked them numerous times to see if I can assuage their bitterness. I don’t know what their problem is, quite frankly, so I’ve given up on trying to make it better. I don’t like any ill-feeling, and if there was something I could do to correct it I would. But nothing seems to work.” That exchange passed quickly enough and we got back on track. I found Shatner to be quick-witted and perceptive, two attributes that were on full display in Shatner’s Raw Nerve. (If you’ve never seen it, you can find episodes online. Check it out.)
But getting an interview with William Shatner for this book was not in the cards. In 2016, after signing the contract to write what would morph into Shatner, I contacted his representatives to inform them of this project and to request an interview with their client. I had an “in” with one of Shatner’s agents (through a friend) and I was cautiously optimistic, though I had heard he could be prickly and I wasn’t holding out much hope. I heard nothing for several months and then circled back. Crickets. On my third try, I finally received a reply via e-mail: “Mr. Shatner” could not participate in my project, it said, “due to an overcommitted production schedule.” Fair enough. At least they didn’t tell me to get lost or threaten the legality of my endeavor. I appreciated the civility of the tone, since that’s not always the case in these scenarios. It’s a tricky proposition writing a book about someone who is still alive but is not participating in the project—and, in William Shatner’s case, is still heavily invested in his career and works at a pace that would exhaust someone half his age.
Later, I considered it a badge of honor when Shatner blocked me on Twitter, although I’m still not sure why he chose to do that. Maybe he was upset that when I wrote to Walter Koenig (Chekov from Star Trek) requesting an interview, he sent back this reply: “Unless you will have several photos in your book showing Mr. Shatner having sex with a horse I must politely decline. Walter Koenig.” It was the best turndown for an interview I’ve ever received, bar none. And it somehow found its way into the pages of the New York Post’s renowned Page Six gossip column. I have no idea how that happened.
William Shatner did, though, ask several people I contacted for this book not to speak to me, including a friend of his since their days at McGill University in Montreal. When I initially contacted the friend, he told me he was visiting Los Angeles and would be having dinner with “Bill” (his intimates all call him Bill). He would ask Bill if it was okay to talk to me for this book. As expected, Bill put the kibosh on that one. It’s a frustrating scenario for a biographer, but I get it, and it’s not an unusual occurrence when writing a book that is, by definition, “unauthorized”—a word that conjures up seamy scandal but, in reality, means only that the book’s subject did not cooperate with the author or endorse the project in any fashion. I was fortunate, though, to interview many of William Shatner’s friends, colleagues, and associates spanning nearly the entire breadth of his life and career—including a future Canadian diplomat who, as a young, frightened, shell-shocked Jewish refugee in the late 1940s, learned to speak English with help from his summer camp counselor: a guy named Bill Shatner. You’ll read more on that later.
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No book writes itself, and I was helped throughout the long process of researching and writing Shatner by many people who contributed in one way or another, even if it was to share a story that I didn’t use in the book or to steer me in another direction vis-à-vis William Shatner’s life and career.
So here we go.
I would like to thank John Cerullo, Carol Flannery, and Marybeth Keating at Applause Books; David Klimek (who provided invaluable research assistance and advice from Montreal and kept me apprised of Shatner’s activities in Canada); Patty Bergamaschi (transcriptionist par excellence); Roger Corman; Arnold Shapiro; Tom Bleecker; Christopher Plummer; Pierre Epstein; Bruce Raymond; Greg Evigan; Pierre Lafond; Fred Bild; Justin Halpern; Steve Holland; Rick Husky; Richard Donner; Stephen McPherson; Angie Dickinson; Joel Katz; Alan Dean Foster; Nancy Kovack Mehta; William F. Nolan; Howard Ryshpan; Arthur Weinthal; Breakfast Television and Global News in Montreal; Michelle Lafond; Scott Sternberg; Library and Archives Canada; Nancy Jacoby; Henry Winkler; Lionel Caplan; Lionel Tiger; Joan Collins; Bill D’Elia; Austin Beutel; Vicki Kaywood; William F. Nolan; Ron Goulart; George Foreman; Scott Faris; Steve Carver; Ken Connors and Terry DiMonte at CHOM (97.7 FM) in Montreal; Brenda Carroll at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; and the archival photo staffs at the Associated Press, Alamy, Photofest, Getty, and the Canadian Jewish Archives. My apologies in advance for anyone I have inadvertently left off this list. It was not intentional.
Last but certainly not least, a special thank you to my daughter, Rachel, and especially to my wife, Gail, for her unwavering love, support, and encouragement over the past thirty-six years. This book would not have existed without you.