Up Till Now (14 page)

I climbed back up on top. Seven miles an hour became ten, became twenty... suddenly I was standing on top of a diesel locomotive going almost forty miles an hour and we were approaching a sharp curve in the track and beyond that was a low bridge. Wait a second, I’m an actor. What am I doing standing on top of a diesel locomotive racing forty miles an hour toward a trestle? At that speed the wind was so strong I had to bend forward into it just to remain upright. The wind was coming right up my pants legs, trying to lift me. The helicopter was starting to swoop down on me. In my role I was supposed to be frightened. Believe me, in that situation it did not require a lot of acting ability to look scared.

When we finished the scene the director told me proudly, “I got it.” Reviewers wrote that the scene “looked real.” Looked real? It
looked
real?

But when it comes to real stunts, absolutely nothing I’ve ever done was more realistic than co-starring with actress Tiffany Bolling and five thousand live tarantulas in the classic horror film
Kingdom of the Spiders
. Oh, the things I’ve done for my art.

It was a typical horror film plot; thousands of angry and hungry tarantulas attack an isolated town. I played veterinarian Rack Hansen, who desperately tries to warn the mayor that we needed to bring in the tarantulas’ worst enemy, rats and birds, and lots of them, to save the town. Unfortunately, the mayor protests that letting loose legions of rats to attack thousands of tarantulas might affect business at the forthcoming country fair. As it turned out, that was a fair to remember.

We filmed in the small town of Cape Verde, Arizona. Just imagine the reaction of the townspeople when they found out a motion picture was being made there: Wow! That’s incredible, a film being made in our small town. It’ll be great for business...

. . . and they’re bringing thousands of
what
with them? Often when making a movie on location the crew has difficulty keeping interested spectators out of the background. This, however, was not a
problem on this particular shoot. Lock up your families, five thousand tarantulas are coming to town.

Before being given this role I had to sign an agreement that I would work with spiders. I didn’t mind that—tarantulas don’t kick you in the pants, bang you on the shoulder, or refuse to speak their lines. Besides, as I learned, tarantulas have had very bad PR. They’re actually not very dangerous, a tarantula sting is a little less painful than a bee sting—although they do make you itch. But I had a good concept for a stunt, I wanted to fall into the shot with a tarantula on my face—and then have it walk off so the audience would know that it was alive. The problem was how to keep the tarantula on my face as I fell. I began experimenting with glue, trying to determine precisely how much glue it required to keep the tarantula on my face as I fell, but still allow it to walk off my face.

It’s an interesting question for an actor: Which is worse, standing on top of a speeding locomotive without any kind of safety cable or gluing tarantulas to your face?

It took me six tries to figure out how much glue I needed to make it work. And when we shot the scene it worked perfectly. Actually, once I got used to working with the spiders it didn’t bother me at all; what did bother me was the fact that a lot of these spiders died making this film—you could actually hear them being squished when cars ran over them. And I didn’t like working with the rat. This was a trained rat that had an invisible monofilament leash on it so it couldn’t get loose—until it did get loose and jumped on me.

But perhaps the most difficult stunt I’ve ever done was a nude scene with gorgeous Angie Dickinson in Roger Corman’s film
Big Bad Mama
. As the posters promised, the essence of this film was Hot Lead! Hot Cars! Hot Dames! Hot Damn! It was Roger Corman’s “tribute” to
Bonnie and Clyde,
with a little more violence and a lot more skin, and it proved forever that Angie Dickinson is not a natural blonde.

Angie Dickinson played a gun-totin’ mama who robbed banks with her two sexy young daughters; I was a con man who went along
for the ride. And Angie Dickinson. Oh, she was a magnificent woman. Smart and beautiful. As a total package she was delicious. We did this film just before she became a TV star on
Police Woman.
They had already been filming for about two weeks before I arrived on the set. The only person I knew on the set was Roger Corman. The very first scene Angie Dickinson and I were going to shoot together was a love scene which required both of us to be totally naked. I wasn’t overly concerned about working nude; let’s be honest, I was working with Angie Dickinson, who was going to be looking at my body? Most people weren’t even going to notice I was in the scene.

Before we shot we had a table reading with Roger Corman. Angie was very reluctant to do this scene. “I don’t know about this nudity,” she said. “You know, I’ve never been naked in front of a camera before. I’m very apprehensive.”

Roger calmed her down. “Okay, Angie, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll just close the set. We’ll just do it with the minimum crew. We’ll eliminate anybody who really doesn’t have to be there.”

“All right,” she agreed. “But Roger, please, I don’t want anybody else there. I don’t want to look up in the rafters and see people looking at me.”

Corman gave his word. “It’ll just be you, Bill, me, and the cinematographers.”

She smiled. “That’s okay, then.”

Roger turned to me. “How ‘bout you, Bill? Are you okay with it?”

“If she’s all right with it, it’s fine with me. My only worry is that I’m going to get an erection.”

Everybody laughed, assuming I was kidding. I wasn’t. I was going to be in bed with a gorgeous naked woman. Not getting an erection was going to be very . . . hard. Normally when I was going to do a scene or a stunt I knew how to prepare for it. But in this situation I really didn’t know what not to do.

We shot the scene that afternoon. Angie and I walked onto the set wearing bathrobes. “I’m so nervous,” she told me.

“Don’t be,” I said, meanwhile trying to think about anything
except the fact that this beautiful woman was completely naked beneath that robe.

“Okay, everybody,” Roger said loudly. “Let’s clear the set, please. Everybody off the set, and I mean everybody. I don’t want to see anybody except Paul behind the camera. Come on, let’s move it. Close the doors behind you, please.”

Angie focused on my eyes, and then shyly let her bathrobe drop onto the floor. I stood there in awe. I was looking at the perfection of the female body. This was an ode to the beauty of woman. Her silken skin flowed mellifluously over her hips into the rising swells of her ripened breasts, her long blond hair just barely covering her...

But let me pause here for just one moment to tell you about something particularly meaningful to me. More than twenty years ago I attended a charity horse show at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center. It was a wonderful evening. The funds raised that night were contributed to a hospital at USC. Afterward I learned that the women running this show had decided that this would be its final year. I thought, if these women can run a horse show, why can’t I? I’ll get some people to help me and do this. In 1990 I renamed it the Hollywood Charity Horse Show. But then I needed to find a primary charity to be the recipient of the money we raised.

Fate intervened. One afternoon I was standing on the balcony of the equestrian center and when I looked into the ring I saw a demonstration that changed my life. An obviously severely handicapped child was sitting on a horse; a handler was leading the horse around the ring as spotters walked on either side of this child. This was the first time I had ever seen riding therapy. This was my introduction to a program called Ahead with Horses.

As I learned, when a physically or emotionally handicapped child sits astride a horse something magical transpires. Kids who can’t walk get motion. Kids who can’t talk garble something to the horse. Kids who have difficulty relating to the world somehow communicate with these horses. I saw children who literally could not hold up their heads lead horses through intricate exercises. Watching these children interact with horses will move people beyond tears. You see
these children who have been afflicted with terrible handicaps just blossom, you see them smile and laugh.

I’d found my charity. So since 1990 the Hollywood Charity Horse Show has raised funds to support Ahead with Horses. A few years later we began adding other charities, among them Camp Max Straus, a summer camp especially for inner-city kids with physical, emotional, behavioral, or social interaction problems that would make it almost impossible for them to attend traditional camps.

The Wells Fargo—they have become the primary sponsor— Hollywood Charity Horse Show usually takes place in late April. In addition to a silent auction, top-notch entertainment, and an arena show, we serve a wonderful dinner. Tickets are expensive, in 2007 they were $250, but every dollar—not
almost
every dollar—
every single dollar
goes directly to our charities.

So if you’d like to make a difference in a child’s life, please visit
www.Horseshow.org
for details. Now let us return to Angie Dickinson’s naked body.

The set had been almost completely cleared. I pulled back the covers of the bed and slid into it. “Wait a second,” Angie said loudly. “You know what, Roger, I think we need the makeup people.”

Roger yelled, “Get George back in here. Tell him he can stay.” “And the lighting director. We definitely need him.” “Fred, come on back in too.” “And the grips, maybe they should stay here too. Oh, and you know what? Sound, we’ve got to have the sound men here, don’t we?”

I propped myself up on my elbow. Eventually she named just about everyone on the entire crew—you can stay, let him stay, you’d better stay. The only person she didn’t name was a craft services guy—someone who served lunch—and he wandered off the set but snuck back on later.

Finally we shot the scene. It wasn’t nearly as... hard as I had feared. Everything was so technical. Move your nose jusssst a little to the left, please, that’s good. Now put your arm down. Now just move back and forth, wait wait wait, your arm’s in the wrong place. Makeup! Please touch up Angie’s eye shadow, thank you.

By the mid-1960s I was no longer even being offered parts that were going to make me a star. Gloria and I were living in a comfortable home—with the requisite pool—in Sherman Oaks with our three girls, Leslie, Melanie, and Lisbeth. Truthfully, I was struggling. It seemed like the more I worked the further behind I got. My parents would come down from Montreal to see their grandchildren and I can vividly remember my father sitting by the pool and asking me, “So? How are you doing?”

I told him the truth. “It’s tough, Dad. I got the mortgage, I got all the things the girls need...”

“Can I help you?” he asked.

I probably smiled at that offer. “Dad,” I told him, “you don’t have enough money to help me.”

I really didn’t know what I was going to do. I felt trapped: I was doing what I had dreamed of doing, working as an actor. I’d appeared on Broadway and in important movies and on every respected television show. I’d worked with the best producers and writers and directors. I’d gotten many superb reviews and even won awards—but I wasn’t earning enough money to support my family. Had I been single, with few responsibilities, I would have been fine. So I began to wonder if this was the time to find another career.

If there was something else I could have done, this was the time I would have done it. What I could not possibly know then was I was ending one chapter of my life, but another vitally important chapter was about to begin. That was chapter five.

After
the pilot for the
Alexander the Great
series failed to get picked up and the very well-reviewed
For the People
was canceled after thirteen episodes, I did a third series pilot for which I had little hope. I was much more excited about starring in a beautiful play entitled
The Hyphen
, which had been written especially for me by Norman Corwin. I so admired Corwin, who was regarded as the greatest playwright in radio; at McGill I’d performed in all of his plays.

A few years earlier he’d written the film
Lust for Life,
for which he’d been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, Kirk Douglas had been nominated as Best Actor, and Anthony Quinn had won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Norman just called me out of the blue and asked me to play the lead role in this play. My role was that of a scientist who was visited by a fairy, who had come to show me that the world is much more than a collection of scientific facts. We opened at the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City, and received tremendous reviews, and we were planning to take it to New York.

While we were getting the play ready to move to New York my agent called to tell me that NBC had decided to pick up the pilot. My first series was actually going on the air. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s called...
Star Trek
?

Well, if you haven’t heard of it apparently you’ve been living in a cave on a remote atoll somewhere in the South Pacific or have been participating in some bizarre experiment.
Star Trek
is arguably the best known, most enduring, and influential television series ever produced. If you haven’t actually seen an episode of this show, perhaps you might have run across some of the merchandise? Some of the estimated two
billion
dollars’ worth of
Star Trek
merchandise that has been sold. Maybe you’ve seen one of the many dozens of collectible models of the Starship
Enterprise,
including the
Wrath of Khan
battle-damaged
Enterprise,
some models which light up or play recordings of my character, Captain James Tiberius Kirk; or the series of dozens of collectible plates including twentieth-anniversary editions of “Amok Time,” “Journey to Babel,” “Piece of the Action,” “The Trouble with Tribbles,” or the twenty-fifth-anniversary Mr. Spock, Captain Kirk, Chekov, Mr. Sulu (with or without a certificate), a 3D McCoy plate and a 3D Scotty plate as well as Classic Kirk, Classic Uhura, and Classic Spock plates; or the Starfleet Academy T-shirt, DJ Spock T-shirt, Captain Kirk “Risk Is Our Business” T-shirt and the infant/toddler T-shirt; the Starfleet Academy mug, disappearing image transporter mug, the “I Slept with Kirk” mug and “I Slept with Kirk” large mug, the
Enterprise
stein, the tankard, collection
of glasses, Icee cups, and glow-in-the-dark cups; the complete DVD sets of the original series,
Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek:Voyager, Star Trek:The Animated Series,
or videos of the ten
Star Trek
feature films; numerous recordings of the music; the literally thousands of different action figures, among them nine- and twelve-inch clothed figures, the twelve-inch classic edition Chekov, twelve-inch Dr. McCoy, and twelve-inch Engineer Scott, the nine-inch Kirk Casual Attire and the nine-inch Command Edition Captain Kirk, the five-inch fuzzy Tribbles, six-inch Mirror Scotty Ltd. Edition, seven-inch Commander Kirk and Command Chair, the Dr. McCoy Action Figure European Special Edition, fourteen-inch porcelain Dolls from Hamilton Collectibles and Acrylic Sculptures; the United Federation of Planets blanket; Limited Edition Hand Phaser Prop replica kit, limited edition fortieth-anniversary bronze Phaser and the Danbury Mint Gold-Plated Laser; “Her Name is
Enterprise
” Journal; over one hundred novels including
Ashes of Eden,
hundreds of comic books and magazines and guides;
Star Trek
trading card sets from more than a dozen different manufacturers, including cards with glossy finishes, 3D cards, moving-picture cards, holographic picture cards, autographed cards, and even gold-plated cards, as well as playing card sets and trading card tins and card holders; visible Klingon postcards;
Star Trek
scripts; annual Christmas tree ornaments; the “Trek Chicks Rock” trucker’s hat; Franklin Mint chess set, checkers set, 3D chess set in pewter, 3D chess set in wood; dozens of different watches, including the twenty-fifth-anniversary watch and video game watch, wall clock, desk clock, alarm clock, and traveling clock; the Evil Spock “Screw York Logic” women’s cap and T-shirt and Evil Spock T-shirt; snow globes; dartboard; limited edition gold stamp, commemorative stamp book; endless thousands of autographed photographs; film cell art including Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk pictured next to the Golden Gate Bridge surrounded by four film cells; sets of movie posters;
Enterprise
telephones and telephone and address books; silver coins; ties; the Spock decanter; commemorative spoons; pins; matchbooks; plastic rings; dice; numerous different jigsaw puzzles
from twenty-five pieces to a thousand pieces;
Enterprise
earrings; belt buckles; a pocket knife; lunch boxes; a rubber doormat and a mouse pad; photon torpedo candies, numerous key rings and key chains; bookplates and bookmarks; wanted posters; wrapping paper; party invitations; cocktail napkins; dozens of different Halloween costumes “for children of all ages,” latex masks and Spock ears; life-size cardboard stand-ups; a command bridge model; Frisbees; kites; View-Master sets; wrist communicators; sticker sets and sticker books; a disc gun; water pistol; space flashlight; yo-yos; hand-held electronic games; Spock bop-bag; interactive VCR board game;
Star Trek
the game;
Star Trek
trivia game; Silly Putty; freezicle kit; Super Phaser Target Game; easy painting sets, coloring books, activity books; marbles; pen and pencil sets and pencil boxes; handheld pinball game, window scenes set, soft poseable figures; Mego play bridge; Klingon Disruptor Figure;
Enterprise
glider; bread cards; puzzle boards, sticker books; telephone cards from dozens of countries around the world, including the United States, Germany, Chile, Estonia, Holland, and Austria; piggy banks; CD holders and albums; coasters; holograms; velvet paintings; motion-picture props; fan club and convention magazines; kitchen aprons, lighters; bobble-head dolls; a wallet, raincoats and umbrellas; swivel belt-clip phaser holster...

Star Trek
grew to become better known than any television series in history. It was broadcast on network television for only three years, there were only seventy-nine episodes, but for reasons that many wise men have tried for many years to explain, it eventually gained a great and extraordinarily loyal following. Small fan clubs grew into conventions that attracted as many as twenty thousand people, many of them dressed as their favorite characters and villains. It has generated more than two billion dollars in merchandise sales, Google lists 1.3 million sites for
Star Trek
merchandise, and at any time eBay generally has more than twelve thousand items for sale. And the actors, in particular myself and Leonard Nimoy, became among the most recognized people in the world.

For example, just before the shah of Iran was deposed in 1979 I was invited by his government to participate in a photography safari,
in which we would shoot pictures of a black leopard at night. The shah had set up wilderness preserves to allow animals native to that area to survive and prosper. So we drove several hundred miles outside the capital of Tehran to this beautiful wilderness. We drove along the Caspian Sea where fisherman were using techniques a thousand years old to catch sturgeon. And finally we came to this small village on the seacoast. The area we were in had been part of the Ottoman Empire; for centuries nomadic tribes had swept down from Russia to stop there on their wanderings. The village in which we stopped had possibly been an oasis at one time, but now it consisted of a single street with perhaps three stores and a kabob house. Our guide asked if we wanted to stop for a kabob. Well, of course we did. This was truly outside civilization as I knew it to be and I wanted to experience as much of it as possible. We walked into this restaurant, it was a shed really, it had no more than six uncovered wooden tables and badly worn chairs. There were several men sitting there, one of them a Turkoman, a large man made larger because he was wearing the traditional Turkoman garb: the tall black bear hat, a red jacket with sashes through it, and high black boots. He looked right at me for a moment, then turned and looked toward the back of this small room. There was a small black-and-white television set sitting on top of a cabinet—and that set was showing
Star Trek
. This Turkoman waved his kabob through the air and declared, as if it were perfectly normal to see me sitting in a kabob house in a village on the Caspian Sea, “Captain Kirk!”

Star Trek
was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. I look back upon it as the miracle that changed my life. In fact, it has changed your life, too. All the extraordinary opportunities I’ve been given since that time can be traced directly to that series. So if I hadn’t done
Star Trek
none of the things that followed would have happened, therefore you wouldn’t be reading this book. To fill the time you’re spending reading it, you would have had to find other things to do. And your life would be different.

It continues to astonish me how many people know it so well. And know me. In 2001 I was producing and directing a low-budget
film named
Groom Lake
. We were shooting in the small town of Bisbee, Arizona, which is about twenty miles from the Mexican border and a popular crossing point for illegal immigrants. One night while I was working, my now-wife, Elizabeth Shatner, was invited by a border patrolman to ride along the border on horseback with him.

It was a very unusual experience, she told me. So several nights later Liz and I went on patrol along the Mexican border. We began by driving deep into the Sonoran Desert until we reached a campfire where horses were waiting for us. Even though we were in the desert it was very cold and we were wearing heavy jackets and Western hats. There was no moon that night and we could barely see twenty feet in front of us. The agents gave us their night goggles; when we put them on everything appeared in a greenish tint. Then we rode into the night. The agents stayed on foot; we trailed about fifty yards behind them.

In a sense this was like a sad game in which everyone was playing a role. The agents knew from experience where the Mexicans were going to try to cross the border. Suddenly the agents started running and our horses started galloping behind them. Within minutes the agents had rounded up about twenty-five Mexicans who had just crossed the border. By the time we got there the Mexicans were squatting on the ground, listening to the agent. “Look,” he told them. “You’re going back across the border. Don’t come back this way.”

Liz and I were sitting up on our horses, bundled into jackets, hats on our heads, wearing these goggles that covered most of our faces. And suddenly, one of these illegal immigrants looked at me, first with curiosity, then with recognition, and said finally in a heavily accented English, “That is Captain Kirk?” Then he smiled and asked, “We have autograph?”

Obviously I never dreamed that any of this would happen when I did the pilot. If I had I would have done it much sooner.
Star Trek
was created by an experienced television writer named Gene Rodden-berry. In his proposal to NBC he described his show as
Wagon Train
— a very successful Western series about the adventures of a wagon train
as it rolled west—to the stars. Initially Roddenberry wanted Lloyd Bridges to play the lead role of Captain Pike, and when Bridges turned him down the part went to Jeffrey Hunter, who was best known for playing Jesus Christ in the movie
King of Kings
. The pilot also starred an actor named Leonard Nimoy playing an alien named Mr. Spock. As Leonard remembers Roddenberry telling him, “I’ve got this alien and I want him to look kind of satanic.” Basically that consisted of a severely curved eyebrows and large pointed ears.

NBC turned down the
Star Trek
pilot, complaining that there wasn’t enough action in it, that it was “too cerebral.” It required the audience to think too much. But the concept was so intriguing that the network agreed to pay for a second pilot. Apparently Hunter’s wife began making all kinds of demands on Roddenberry, who finally fired him. To replace him he needed an actor who was not too cerebral. So he offered the role to Jack Lord, who later starred in
Hawaii Five-0
. Supposedly Jack Lord asked for 50 percent ownership of the show. That’s when Roddenberry called and asked me to look at the pilot with him. I guess he felt I was the perfect choice for the lead role in a show that wasn’t too intelligent for its audience and whom he didn’t have to pay a lot of money. And for me, all I had to do was replace Jesus Christ.

The first pilot was a wonderful, magical story in which Jeffrey Hunter is lured to a planet by an alien species in hopes that he will mate with a deformed human female who had survived a crash landing there. To convince him to produce children with her, they transformed her into various types trying to figure out what would attract him. Psychologically it was very interesting. But it was much more than interesting. It was original.