William Shatner: from Julius Caesar to Captain Kirk

2016 is not only the year that William Shatner turned 85, but it also marks the 50th anniversary of the birth of Star Trek. 

One of Montreal's most famous sons started his career playing Shakespeare at Stratford back in the day when the festival was housed in a tent.

There were also many CBC productions made in the 1950's and early 60's with Shatner's name on the list of credits:The Well, Point of Departure, and The Coming Out of Ellie Swann to name a few. Shatner's success on stage and screen took him to Broadway and then Hollywood where he acted in the Brothers Karamazov with Yul Brynner. By the early 1960s he made the leap to American television in an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and became a regular on programs like The Man from Uncle and The Twilight Zone. In 1966, the Starship Enterprise came calling.

Star Trek had mediocre ratings and was cancelled after only three seasons. But the Star Trek phenomenon just grew more popular as it went into reruns. Shatner went to space again as captain of the Enterprise in several Star Trek films, but he also found time to make music, write sci-fi novels and star in hit TV shows like TJ Hooker and Boston Legal.   

William Shatner has reinvented himself as an artist over and over. But as he said in an early CBC interview, success in the acting world is as much about being in the right place at the right time as it is about perseverance. Preparation and perhaps most importantly saying "yes" to any opportunity comes next. He illustrated the point with a story about how he landed his first real big break. It happened at the Stratford Festival where he was Christopher Plummer's understudy in Shakespeare's Henry V. When Plummer had to go to the hospital with painful kidney stones, Shatner stepped in. The performance put him in the spotlight. But he had to work hard to stay there. "I was working all the time but I wasn't making any money." he recalled. 

When Shatner's television career started building steam after he moved to the U.S., there were inevitable comparisons to another Canadian actor, Lorne Greene. The two Canadian actors were duking it out for the American TV audience in 1965: Lorne Greene's Bonanza was competing in the same time slot as Shatner's drama For the People.

For the People lasted only 13 episodes, but soon after its cancellation, NBC gave the green light to a new science fiction series for its 1966/67 TV schedule. It was, of course, Star Trek. CBC arts critic Nathan Cohen observed that the "gifted but neglected" William Shatner was finally set to land his own series. It looked like Shatner's hard work had paid off at last. But the show was cancelled in 1969 and he went on to other projects. In 1979, Shatner told Don Harron on CBC Radio's Morningside that for those associated with the show, Star Trek had long since "ceased to exist." But the fans weren't ready to let it go. Plans for a Star Trek movie resurfaced and gathered momentum as a budget of 15 million dollars was guaranteed for the project. They were off and running. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released in 1979. Shatner was busy plugging away at keeping Captain Kirk alive at Star Trek conventions and in interviews. 

In 1980, David Cole interviewed Shatner on the CBC Radio program Variety Tonight. Shatner talked about dealing with press junkets, whether he watched Star Trek re-runs on his own time, and his approach to dealing with Star Trek fans, known as Trekkies. 

 The following year, in 1981, Variety Tonight's Jim West asked Shatner how he kept in shape. He put horseback riding at the top of the list. Shatner loves horses and also breeds them. In fact, he was the Grand Marshall of the Calgary Stampede parade in 2014. He talked about where he'd learned to ride horses as well as the special training he had in order to prepare for the role of Captain Kirk in the second Star Trek movie. In 1982, Shatner  was interviewed after the release of the second movie, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. He made it clear that he worked hard to develop the character of Captain Kirk.

Shatner's musical career began in 1968. He remade classics like the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and Elton John's "Rocket Man" in a dramatic spoken voice with musical accompaniment. Critics were baffled and music fans mocked him. Shatner was undeterred and released several more albums in following years. Then in 2004, he released an album called Has Been, together with musical pioneer Ben Folds. It got good reviews and Shatner was vindicated. He discussed his approach to creating music in 1979 with Don Harron on Morningside. 

William Shatner celebrated his 85th birthday on March 22, 2016.