What the heck… it’s William Shatner’s 80th birthday. So, I figured I’d bring back a couple of clips from the past, related to the Civil War, of course…
First, we have Shatner, as Capt. James T. Kirk, welcoming Abraham Lincoln aboard the Enterprise…
Then we have Shatner as Norton Parker Chipman in The Andersonville Trial.
We’ll certainly pardon Shatner for not donning a Gettysburg Longstreet beard that may, or may not, have helped him look like the real N.P. Chipman…
Incidentally, the 1970 version of the Andersonville drama was directed by none other than George C. Scott, who had actually played the role of Chipman in the original 1959 hit Broadway play… and who, in that same year (1970), positioned himself for an Oscar for his performance in Patton.
So, on Shatner’s 80th birthday, take a moment to look back at a couple of his contributions to our memory of the Civil War.
Andy Hall
March 22, 2011
Happy birthday to William Shatner, for sure. I remember twenty years ago hearing on the radio that he’d turned sixty, and thinking how old that was. (We joked he was now eligible for an admission discount at the museum where I worked.) He seemed much older than me then than he does to me now, I suppose because the relative difference in his age and mine is substantially less than it was.
I still haven’t figured him out. You can’t swing a cat in Hollywood without hitting someone willing to tell what an insufferable, self-absorbed prick he is, and yet. . . in his autobiography he told one of the funniest, most self-deprecating stories on himself I’ve ever heard.
It was on the set of his last Star Trek movie, Generations, I think, where the ship was being attacked, and Shatner was supposed to pitch forward and hold on to the bridge railing. This was the first time, in all the movies, that they’d actually built a set on gimbals that would pitch and roll — always before they’d giggled the camera.
So they rehearsed it a few times with the set locked in place, and when all was ready, the director yelled, “action!” The set lurched, Shatner pitched forward, grabbed the railing — and it snapped off in his hands.
Now Shatner had always taken a certain pride in being an action star, and did a lot of his own stunts back in the day. So he rolled into the fall, landing safely and rollng to a stop in the shallow bridge well at the feet of the other actors. The panicked directors yelled, “cut!,” and an attractive young female assistant rushed over to check on him. “Mr. Shanter, Mr. Shatner, are you OK?” she pleaded.
Shatner sat up and, in his most suave-y voice, dramatically brushed off his uniform and said nonchalantly, “I’m just fine, thanks. Done this a time or two, you know.”
“Oh, thank God!” the young woman replied, “we thought you’d broken your hip!”
The man who tells that story on himself can’t be all bad.
Robert Moore
March 23, 2011
Cool story, Andy.
James F. Epperson
March 23, 2011
Andy, a long time ago we knew a woman who had organized a fan convention or two, and she was adamant that Shatner was a jerk, but thye rest of the regulars were OK.
More trivia: One of the court martial judges in the Andersonville movie was played by Alan Hale, who is most famous for playing the Captain on Gilligan’s Island.
Robert Moore
March 23, 2011
Don’t forget good ol’ Jed Clampett got a spot in there as well.
Shatner, to me, is a childhood super hero. There wasn’t one that was any cooler. Frankly, I find the fan groupie thing a bit odd. Don’t go looking for the tv or movie character, when going to meet the real deal.
Susan Evelyn McDowell Cole
March 23, 2011
William Shatner also made regular appearances in Louisville, Kentucky buying horses. My daughter Alexandrea and her husband Tim lived there. Shatner loves blondes, and my son-in-law was not above pushing his wife (and my daughter) into Shatner’s path to sell a horse.
Of course, Tim never sold Shatner a horse and my daughter finally got rid of Tim.