Shatner Rules Read Free Page A

“Coat Saint Luck.” (It’s not, but like most French speakers, we love any opportunity to correct your pronunciation with our own splendid and sexy French tones.)
    3. My grandfather, Wolf, changed the family name to Shatner from Schattner. “Wolf” was a creation of his, too, because it sounded much cooler than his birth name, Sheldon.
    4. I started acting when I was six, and have never gotten a paycheck for anything other than performing.
    5. In college, I appeared in many dramas and musicals. My comedy work was limited to my academic record.
    6. My first film was a 1951 Canadian film noir titled
The Butler’s Night Off
. I’ve never seen it.
    7. I won the Tyrone Guthrie Award at Canada’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival in the 1950s. I recently misplaced it up the backside of one of my roasters.
    8. In 1954, I played the character of Ranger Bob on the Canadian version of
The Howdy Doody Show
.
    9. One of my earliest television roles was playing Billy Budd in a live staging of the classic, opposite Basil Rathbone. Rathbone was forever associated with playing Sherlock Holmes. Can you imagine that? Being forever linked with an iconic character?
    10. Throughout the 1950s, I acted in a variety of live television plays. Live TV was the norm back then, and there was no risk of a Janet Jackson Super Bowl halftime show moment.
    11. My first big studio movie was 1958’s
The Brothers Karamazov,
which also featured Yul Brynner, Claire Bloom, and Lee J. Cobb.
    12. I once got into a fistfight on stage during the Broadway run of
The World of Susie Wong
with Australian actor Ron Randell. For fifty years now, he’s ignored my challenges for a rematch! Coward! [EDITOR’S NOTE: Mr. Randell died in 2005.]
    13. Since then, I’ve never, ever punched another actor. (Do birthday punches for Candice Bergen count? She seemed to think so!)
    14. I starred in two classic
Twilight Zone
episodes, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” and “Nick of Time,” both written by Richard Matheson. I also acted in
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
and
The Outer Limits
. Before reality programs, TV networks seemed preoccupied with “quality.”
    15. I turned down the title role in
Dr. Kildare
because I didn’t want to get bogged down with a series. Also, I faint at the sight of fake blood.
    16. Eventually, I came around to the idea of doing television, and after the network nixed the first
Star Trek
pilot featuring Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike, I was hired to star in the second pilot as Captain Kirk. But enough with the obscure trivia, moving on . . .
    17. Just kidding.
Star Trek
never really caught on with audiences, ran for three seasons, and was canceled. I wish I had taken notes at the time, because you people sure do have a lot of questions about it.
    18. In the 1970s, I really began to get into horses. I could talk about horses all day. I raise Saddlebreds, a uniquely American breed of horse that emerged in Kentucky around two hundred years ago and is used mainly by rich plantation owners. They are known as “five-gaited horses,” meaning that in addition to the walk, trot, and canter, they also do the ambling gaits known as the slow gait and the rack. Seeing one of these animals in action is not unlike watching a ballerina at work. I’m also a champion reiner. What’s reining? Well, it’s a champion riding competition that involves . . . Oh, sorry. I’m being told you don’t have all day. More on this later.
    19. For many years, I suffered from tinnitus. Now, it only flares up when I don’t want to listen to all those questions about
Star Trek.
    20. In the 1970s, I began doing television commercials. I’ve done hundreds. And if you would like to reserve this space for your product or service in the paperback version of this book, please call the publisher. We can work out some sort of arrangement.
    21. In 1975, I starred in a television series