Up Till Now (10 page)

Working with a great star like Spencer Tracy, an actor I’d watched with awe while growing up in Montreal, was absolutely thrilling for me. I loved Spencer Tracy. However, acting with me was obviously less thrilling for him. After Spencer Tracy had flawlessly delivered a stirring ten-minute summation I asked him, with all the arrogance of youth and the confidence of a stage actor, “Did you memorize all of that?”

I did not know that Spencer Tracy had started his career on the stage. He just looked at me, that’s all, just looked at me and never spoke to me again. I’m sure he thought, who the hell is this young punk thinking I came to the set unprepared? Or that I didn’t think he could memorize his lines.

Burt Lancaster played a proud former Nazi judge who accepted responsibility for his actions, giving it the full teeth-gritted Burt Lancaster. We shot his scene in one day. But when we came to work the next morning we were told that Mr. Lancaster wasn’t satisfied with his performance, he wanted to do a retake. He knew he could do better. And then he gave exactly the same teeth-gritted Burt Lancaster performance he’d done the day before. That’s better, he said, and went home happy.

I remember Richard Widmark’s intensity and Judy Garland’s fragility and Montgomery Clift. Montgomery Clift played a mentally incompetent German civilian who had been sterilized. He fidgeted and stammered and continually shifted in the witness chair. I thought he was brilliant, not knowing then that he had been addicted to pain-killing drugs and had become an alcoholic after being disfigured in a terrible car accident about five years earlier. What I thought was his performance was his pain. Of course I knew nothing about any of that at the time.

Some of the concentration camp footage that we had been shown
privately was included in the film. By this time Americans knew about the concentration camps, but nothing could have prepared them for seeing these atrocities. Distributors wouldn’t touch
The Intruder
because of its provocative story, but
Judgment at Nuremberg
was considered one of the most important films Hollywood had ever made. It was showered with awards. It won two Academy Awards and was nominated for nine more—including Best Picture, which was won by
West Side Story
. Maximilian Schell won for Best Actor; Judy Garland, Spencer Tracy, and Montgomery Clift were nominated and I... and I...this film did not make me a star. It made me a paid actor and when it was done I started looking for work again.

There is one advantage to not being a star. Every young actor gets warned about the dangers of being typecast. The reality of the profession is that once you’re perceived to be a specific type or character it’s very difficult to play other roles. Burt Lancaster played Burt Lancaster. John Wayne, John Wayne. It’s very good advice, although it has little to do with the reality of life for most actors, which is, basically, work. I was very lucky early in my career. I was able to move easily between the stage, television, and movies. I could play comedy and drama, I could be the leading man or a supporting player, and I was offered a broad variety of parts. Part of the reason I was becoming better known was what people perceived to be an unusual. Speech. Pattern. Apparently I was becoming known for. Pausing, between words, in. Unusual places. People have commented that it calls attention to the. Words, I’m saying. It provides a different kind of emphasis on a line. I have no idea where that. Came from. Possibly it came from the fact I was working so often in so many different types of plays and television program and movies that at times I did need to hesitate to remember my next words. Possibly, that’s just an assumption, but the reality is that I don’t even hear it. I can mock the idea. I understand people hear me speaking. That way. They’ve even put a name to it, calling it Shatnerian. As in, ah yes, the character spoke with true Shatnerian eloquence.

But it’s certainly nothing I’m doing intentionally, nor do I do it in
real life. I have seen several William Shatner impersonators speak in that. Clipped. Punctuated manner. Okay, if people recognize the impersonation as me, then it must be me. When an impressionist did Jimmy Stewart or Edward G. Robinson or Jimmy Cagney or Cary Grant, I knew exactly who they were doing. I always wondered, if Jimmy Cagney and James Stewart were having dinner at home, did Cagney say, “Pass the salt, you dirty rat?” And did James Stewart reply, “Um, ah, ah, ah, I...I...here... here it is.” But when I watch them doing me, speaking that. Way. The audience laughs. So it must be what. I’m doing. But I don’t recognize it in myself.

One thing that often does happen to an actor is that elements of the character they’re playing seep over into their real life. It’s quite different from speech patterns. You can’t go to work every day playing a monstrous man and then go home at night and enjoy a party. The intensity of the work is too strong. You have to inhabit the character’s body, and the transition back and forth between the character’s life and real life is often a difficult one to make. When we were making
Star Trek
, for example, Leonard Nimoy remained true to Spock the whole day. He couldn’t easily go in and out of a taci-turn, cerebral, emotionless character like that and as a result remained distant from the rest of us. Sometimes when a role is completed it’s very difficult to shed your character and move into a completely different life. In the early days of television it was easier because the whole job lasted less than a week. There wasn’t time to get deeply invested in a character. But now I had spent months trying to understand and portray the worst kind of racist, and then an assistant prosecutor of the people who had provided legal cover for unimaginable atrocities to take place. It was time for comedy.

The wonderful actress Julie Harris was going to star on Broadway in
A Shot in the Dark
, an English version of the French farce
L’Idiot
, and she decided she wanted me to co-star with her. I don’t know why, I’d never met her, but apparently she’d seen me on television and wanted me. I remember what my agent said when he called to tell me about this: “Trust me, Bill. This play is going to make you a star.”

More than anything else, I love being on the stage. At times during
my career I’ve been able to connect emotionally with an entire audience, and during those rare moments it literally feels as if a relationship exists between us. We’re in this experience together. And this was an opportunity to do a farce and work with the legendary director Harold Clurman. Clurman had been a founding member of the Group Theatre, he was involved in the original Broadway production of
Waiting for Lefty
, and except for the fact that he did not want me in his play and did everything possible to make my life miserable— except kick me in the pants—we got along very . . . badly.

He seemed to get some sort of perverse joy out of insulting me: Just what do you think you’re doing? What are you, trying to be charming? No, no, no, that’s not the way to play it. And just how long have you been acting?

In addition to Julie Harris, the play co-starred Walter Matthau and Gene Saks. I played French Examining Magistrate Paul Sevigne, who is investigating his first case, a murder in which the beautiful parlor maid was found unconscious, naked, and holding a gun next to the body of the dead chauffeur. Naturally, as this was a farce, I didn’t believe she had committed the crime.

Matthau played the fabulously wealthy Benjamin Beaurevers, who may have been having an affair with the maid. The play got nice reviews and ran for eighteen months. But there was one moment during the entire run that I will never forget. Walter and I were playing a scene across a table; basically I was accusing him of committing the murder and he was accusing me of being an idiot. Something happened, truthfully I don’t remember what it was. I could make something up but . . .

In fact, I will make something up. It makes for a better story. And honestly, I do make things up. It’s part of the actor’s craft. For example, and I’m not making this up, I used to love to ride motorcycles with stuntmen I’d met while making
Star Trek
in the desert. We’d race through Antelope Valley, in Palmdale, and in those years there were a lot of stories about Unidentified Flying Objects, UFOs, being seen in that area. There was a photograph of one hovering directly above a power line. So when I rode in the desert I’d look into the
sky. I figured if the aliens could read my thoughts they’d know that the actor who played Captain Kirk on
Star Trek
was out there. If they wanted publicity, what could be better than contacting Captain Kirk? I’m not making any of this up.

I was riding with five guys and we were using the buddy system— keep the man behind you in your rearview mirror so if anything happened you could help. I was last in line because they were all faster than me, looking up into the sky. Unfortunately, about a century ago miners would dig gravelike holes in the ground, maybe three or four feet wide, six feet long and six feet deep, to see what types of minerals might be found. If they found nothing of interest they’d abandon the hole and dig another one a half mile away. So the desert floor is pocked with these holes. So I was looking into the air, last in line, and I drive into one of these holes. Boom! I was going 30 miles an hour and I went straight into the hole and flying over the bike. I was wearing protective leather clothing so I got bruised a little, but not hurt. Unfortunately, the stuntmen forgot all about the buddy system and disappeared. All true.

I’m alone in the broiling desert, I’m covered head to toe in a helmet and leathers, and the bike is in this hole. I had a big decision to make: I didn’t know whether I should take off the helmet and leathers and die of sunstroke or keep them on and die of heat prostration.

I managed to get the bike out of the hole but it wouldn’t start. This was a beautiful Bultaco and I didn’t want to leave it there because I was afraid someone might steal it. So I started pushing the bike and falling down. I actually managed to find a road and pushed the bike until I found a gas station. It wasn’t that far. The mechanic found a wire that had been disconnected, reattached it where it belonged, the bike started, and I drove home. Truth.

Not too long afterward I was being interviewed for a television program and the interviewer said, “I heard you love riding motorcycles.”

“Oh, I certainly do,” I said. I told him the whole story, driving with head in the air, big potholes, flying through the air, live or die, lost, where to go, start pushing the bike and then... and then this is
the part I made up: “And then I saw somebody standing on a ridge, dressed in a silver suit. He was sort of gleaming in the sunlight, this man from out of nowhere standing atop a ridge in the desert. I didn’t know what to do. And he motioned to me, follow me. And I follow him, and I follow him and I don’t know whether I blanked out from heat prostration or sunstroke, but suddenly he was gone and I was in a place where I could be saved. He had led me to civilization. I was able to fix my bike and I know now that an alien saved my life.”

It’s a wonderful story and every bit of it is not true. But the tabloids picked it up and ran it: “Shatner Saved by Alien.” I loved it. I’d put one over on the gossip rags. Several years later a man named John Newland called me. John had produced and directed the series
One Step Beyond,
which purportedly investigated and dramatized paranormal phenomena. Newland had taken LSD on camera before anybody knew what it was. The show was off the air but he was doing a special
One Step Beyond
with celebrities, hoping to bring back the show. Because I was Captain Kirk he thought I’d be the perfect guest. “Has anything sort of strange ever happened to you?” he asked.

“No, not really,” I said. “Well, here’s a letter that somebody wrote about witnessing an airplane crash on the Simi Valley Highway that never happened. Could this have happened to you?”

Obviously he wanted me to say something happened. “No, I don’t . . .” and then I remembered. “That never happened—but I’ll tell you what did happen.” Looking up, hole, push, silver suit, saved.

“Perfect. You can be the star of the special.” I wrote the script, an alien saved my life. We filmed it at Moses Lake in Washington. Rather than holes dug in the ground, there were large sandbanks. A Canadian stuntman was hired to play me. I drove the motorcycle to the top of the sandbank and stopped; they moved the cameras to the far side of the rise and the stuntman went flying over the top and took a terrible spill. That was the dramatization of the fall I took with my bike.

Unfortunately, the stuntman hit it wrong and broke his back. He was lying there in the sand unable to move. It was awful. I went
rushing over to him. The stuntman’s girlfriend was kneeling over him, but as I approached she stood up and sand trickled down onto his face. This girl looks at me, tears in her eyes, and says to me, “Mr. Shatner, could I have your autograph?”

Several months after we’d finished shooting the segment New-land invited me to meet astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who had become known for conducting paranormal experiments from space, and was going to host the program. That was very exciting for me; obviously I had tremendous admiration for the astronauts. When we met he shook my hand firmly and looked me directly in the eyes and said, “Bill Shatner, I’ve admired you for a long time, Captain Kirk, it’s great to meet you. Boy, that is some amazing story about what happened to you in the desert.”

He thought it was true. I had made up this whole story, and he believed it. How could I tell an astronaut that he was being fooled? That this never happened? “It certainly was amazing,” I agreed.

The show never went beyond that special episode—but for more than three decades the tabloids have been telling and retelling the story of the day William Shatner’s life was saved by an alien.

I truly love making up reality. I did a movie entitled
Free Enterprise
in which I played myself, but a me whose dream it is to do a musical version of
Julius Caesar
in which I play all the parts—except Brutus, of course, but only because of the technical difficulty involved in stabbing myself in the back.
Free Enterprise
was a low-budget movie being made by young filmmakers, so we were asked to provide our own wardrobe. In an army-navy surplus store in Westwood I found a beautiful leather bomber jacket, a white scarf, and a World War II captain’s hat. I bought them for about fifty bucks and wore everything in a scene.