William Shatner

• Born: March 22, 1931
• Place of Birth: Montreal, Quebec, Canada

ACTOR

Shatner became world famous for portraying James T. Kirk, captain of the starshipEnterprise, in the television and the movie series,Star Trek.

AREA OF ACHIEVEMENT: Entertainment

Early Life

William Shatner was the son of Anna Garmaise and Joseph Shatner, a clothing manufacturer in Montreal. William Shatner had two older sisters, Joy and Farla. His paternal grandfather, Wolf Schattner, had anglicized the family name to Shatner when he and Shatner’s grandmother emigrated from Austria-Hungary. Shatner was raised in Conservative Judaism, but he lost his faith when he was a teenager. He attended Willingdon Elementary School and West Hill High School in Notre Dame de Grace, Quebec, and Baron Byng High School in Montreal, graduating in 1948. Shatner played football, competed on the wrestling team, and was a member of the ski club. West Hill was predominantly Roman Catholic, and Shatner frequently got into fights because he was Jewish. He earned the nickname Toughy because he won most of them.

Shatner discovered acting during a summer camp on a farm ninety miles north of Montreal in 1937 when he appeared in an amateur production. He played a Jewish boy in Nazi Germany who had to say good-bye to his dog. Two years later, he was acting professionally at the Montreal Children’s Theater, and he continued to act there for five years. His first role was playing the title character in a stage adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). From the ages of ten to thirteen, he appeared regularly on the Montreal Radio Fairytale Theater for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

At his parents’ request, Shatner attended the College of Commerce at McGill University in Montreal, graduating in 1952. However, he was a mediocre business student and devoted most of his energies to student theater. He also worked as a radio announcer for the CBC while attending college. During one summer vacation, Shatner and eight friends canoed from Lake Champlain to New York, and the next summer he and a friend hitchhiked across the United States.

His father was furious when Shatner revealed that he wanted to become a professional actor rather than join the family business. They made a deal that if Shatner did not become successful as an actor within five years, he would return to Montreal and go to work for his father.

Life’s Work

Shatner’s first job after college was with the Mountain Playhouse in Montreal. Then he moved on to the Canadian National Repertory Theater in Ottawa. In 1953, Shatner joined the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Stratford, Ontario. Over the next three years, he played more than one hundred roles in more than sixty plays, not just those of William Shakespeare but of Sophocles and of Christopher Marlowe. Shatner made his Broadway debut in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great (1587) in 1956.

That year, Shatner moved to New York, and for the next decade he alternated between appearing on Broadway and on live television in New York and in filmed television and films in Southern California. His television appearances included The Kaiser Aluminum Hour, The United States Steel Hour, the Goodyear Theater, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and One Step Beyond. He was featured in the films The Brothers Karamazov (1958), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and The Outrage (1964), and he starred on Broadway in The World of Suzie Wong (1958) and A Shot in the Dark (1961).

Shatner’s first attempt at becoming a regular in a television series was playing Archie Goodwin in a short-lived adaptation of the Nero Wolfe mysteries. Unfortunately, he turned down the role of Dr. Kildare, which became a big hit for actor Richard Chamberlain. Shatner’s second attempt at a series was the legal drama For the People, in which he played an assistant district attorney. However, the program lasted only thirteen episodes. He then played the title character in Alexander the Great, a television pilot that did not sell but did good business when it was released theatrically in Europe.

Shatner more than fulfilled his agreement with his father, but stardom eluded him until 1965, when Shatner was cast as Captain James T. Kirk in the television series Star Trek. He went on to play the character in the original series, from 1966 to 1969, and in seven films, from 1979 to 1994.

He went through an expensive divorce in 1969, and over the next decade he accepted nearly every acting job offered to him to pay alimony and child support. He starred in many television films, including The Horror at 37000 Feet (1973), The People (1972), The Tenth Level (1975), The Andersonville Trial (1970), and Pray for the Wildcats (1974), and he appeared in mostly forgettable theatrical films, including Big Bad Mama (1974) and The Kidnapping of the President (1980). He often made guest appearances on other television shows, such as Kung Fu,Ironside,Mission: Impossible,Hawaii Five-O, and Barnaby Jones.

Shatner’s first attempt as a series regular after Star Trek was in a Western called Barbary Coast in 1975. Unfortunately, it lasted only thirteen episodes. He finally succeeded in non-Star Trek series television by playing the title role in the police drama, T. J. Hooker, which ran from 1982 to 1987. Shatner’s biggest post-Star Trek success came in 2004, when he was cast as attorney Denny Crane for the final season of the legal drama The Practice. He reprised the same character in the spinoff, Boston Legal, and he remained with the series until its end in 2008.

In 2011, Shatner narrated The Captains, a documentary in which Shatner interviewed the actors who had played the leading role in a Star Trek series. In 2014, Shatner starred in a Broadway one-man show centered on his life. Shatner starred alongside Terry Bradshaw, Henry Winkler, and George Foreman in Better Late Than Never (2016–18), a reality TV show in which the celebrities, framed as aging stars, toured several Asian countries. In 2021 Shatner starred in the film Senior Moment. That same year, Shatner was the center of controversy when it was revealed that his television show I Don't Understand with William Shatner would air on the Russian government-controlled network RT. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Shatner withdrew from the show and expressed support for Ukraine while denouncing Russia. In 2024, at the age of 93, Shatner said he would consider reprising his role as Captain Kirk in a new Star Trek project if it would permit de-aging, a visual technique used to make actors appear younger.

Significance

As James T. Kirk, Shatner became one of the most celebrated images of the late twentieth century, and he made a major contribution to both the critical and commercial success of Star Trek. At its peak in syndication, the original series was broadcast two hundred times daily in the United States, and the first seven Star Trek films, which starred Shatner, grossed more than six hundred million dollars. It is estimated that as much as fifty million dollars’ worth of Star Trek merchandise had been sold by 1999, including books, plastic models, dolls, mugs, T-shirts, backpacks, trading cards, jewelry, interactive board games, and screen savers. Many of the items featured Shatner’s likeness. Shatner successfully parlayed his initial success as Kirk into an acting career that has spanned over seven decades.

Shatner won a Golden Globe and two Emmy Awards for his portrayal of Denny Crane in The Practice and Boston Legal. Shatner has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and his handprints and footprints are enshrined at Mann’s Chinese Theater.

Bibliography

Hauck, Dennis William. Captain Quirk: The Unauthorized Biography of William Shatner. New York: Pinnacle Books, 1995.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. William Shatner: A Bio-. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994.

Meyer, Nicholas. The View from the Bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood. New York: Viking, 2009.

Sharf, Zack. "93-Year-Old William Shatner ‘Might Consider’ Returning as Captain Kirk in New ‘Star Trek’ Project Through De-Aging: ‘It Takes Years Off of Your Face’." Variety, 6 May 2024, variety.com/2024/film/news/william-shatner-star-trek-return-captain-kirk-de-aging-1235992937/. Accessed 2 Sept. 2024.

Shatner, William. “William Shatner at 90, on Love, Loss, and Leonard Nimoy.” Interview by Hadley Freeman. The Guardian, 20 May 2021, www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/may/20/william-shatner-interview-love-loss-and-leonard-nimoy. Accessed 2 Sept. 2024.

Shatner, William, and Chris Kreski. Get a Life! New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.

Shatner, William, and David Fisher. Up Till Now: The Autobiography. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2008.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Star Trek Memories. New York: Harper’s, 1993.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Star Trek Movie Memories. New York: Harper’s, 1994.