“You! You there!” he shouted to a boy on the street. “What day is this?”
The boy gave a puzzled look. “It’s Shatmas, sir.”
“Good! I haven’t missed it. Here, lad. There’s a big, juicy turkey of a Shatner movie in the bargain bin at Walmart. Buy it and deliver it to my house.”
There are those who, with apologies to pretenders like Alexander Graham Bell and the not-as-great Gretzky, call Bill Shatner the greatest of all Canadians.
That’s true, but is such limited thinking. Why restrict his importance to a single frozen land with only about 40 million inhabitants? He is simply the greatest HUMAN, possibly excepting the anonymous inventor of the wheel, and of course Bobby Troup.
Today is his 95th birthday. I celebrate his birthday as both Shatmas and New Year’s Day. Different people reckon the start of the new year with different methods, and have varying ways to calculate how many there have been. At the end of September in our calendar, the Jewish community will welcome the year 5787. The Chinese just celebrated the beginning of 4724. In a site dedicated to crap, we have no choice but to count the birth of William Shatner as the beginning of time (or at least any time worth living in), so today is the beginning of the year 95 A.S.N. (Anno Shatner nostri).
Referencing the great day to the common calendar, the day known to most of the world as March 22, 1931 was the greatest day in history, for it marked the birth of the promised one … the golden child … the chosen one. Know him. Embrace him. For as surely as crapped is the past tense of crap, Shat is the past tense of shit.
Like most of his followers, I celebrate by getting into costume and re-enacting one of his many career highlights. I normally choose this all-time classic:
During the pandemic I could not re-create that fight, since the scene requires two actors, which was inappropriate in the era of Coronavirus and social distancing, so that year I chose to re-enact the fight scene from White Comanche, since Shatner plays both parts.
This year: The Scoopy Players, my community theater company, will present a stage version of Incubus, Shat’s offbeat 1966 movie performed entirely in Esperanto.
I did not make that film up. The entire movie is below.
Further study from the ancient archives of Other Crap: decades of Shatner curiosities.
From the proprietor of a site that worships crap, happy birthday and stay crappy, Bill. You have already lived long and prospered, so just keep up the … er … good work.
Kidding aside:
There are those who say that Bill Shatner sucks. But did you know that there was a time when Shatner received unanimous acclaim from high-brow critics for a major Shakespearean performance? No, not ironic praise, but sincere encomiums.
My parents started taking me to the Stratford Festival in 1962 or 1963, too late to see Shatner, but his picture was in their halls, and I have read about his one magical night. The big draw in the 1956 festival was Shakespeare’s Henry V, starring Christopher Plummer. Shatner had only a minor role, but was also Plummer’s understudy. Plummer suffered from kidney stones, and his pain became so intense one night that he couldn’t perform. It was June 18, 1956. Enter Shatner.
This is an understudy’s greatest dream, and greatest nightmare. Shatner was going on for Canada’s most acclaimed young actor, and had to play Henry the Fucking Fifth, one of the best roles Shakespeare ever wrote (you have probably heard of the Band of Brothers speech). His career could have ended right there. Instead, it was a triumph. He got the greatest applause from the rest of the cast, professional actors who understood how difficult it was to do what he did at all, let alone to critical and audience raves!
Shatner’s other work at Stratford was nothing more than workmanlike. Here he is as Lucentio in a modern-dress staging of The Taming of the Shrew
I assume he took his wardrobe home with him after that role, because he wore the same outfit about 20 years later in that notorious screen triumph Big Bad Mama
Same haircut as well!
I never got to see Bill as Henry V, but I absolutely love him as Marc Antony in a hip-hop production of Julius Caesar within Free Enterprise, a wonderful, underrated film.
Shatner also played Marc Antony in a serious production – a CBC broadcast, pre-Trek (December, 1960). I like the hip-hop version better.
OK, so you make a movie about Shatner’s big night in ’56 and call it Enter the Shat. Then you show it on a double bill with (clearly the opening act) Enter the Dragon. Now that would be a worthy night of martial arts!
Shatner’s big night would be a pretty good story, but you don’t really get the significance of it if you aren’t aware of the buffoonery of his later years. You need the context of 2026 to get the emotional impact of 1956. To state it another way, in 1956 he was just another understudy who succeeded, not Bill Fucking Living Legend Shatner. If only he had been a much-maligned buffoon first, then became a successful Henry V – what a great movie that would be! The emotional impact would be as if he would go to Broadway now, play King Lear in a revival, and be acclaimed the greatest Lear ever. That would be the ultimate underdog story, at least among the stories where underdog is spelled with a lower-case “u.”
I suppose a great scriptwriter could evoke emotional resonance from his big 1956 night with some kind of time-shifting narrative, but I can’t figure out how to make it work.
Shatner would have been a much better Underdog than Wally Cox.
As much as William Shatner has been caricatured for overacting, he was an excellent actor. In my opinion, he probably deserved an Oscar nomination for The Intruder (1962), though I certainly understand why he wasn’t nominated. When I rented the film from Netflix (back when they rented DVDs), Southern integration was history. I can certainly understand why people didn’t want to watch that film in 1962. According to Roger Corman’s Director’s commentary, that was the only film he ever made that lost money. I think all Shatner fans should watch that movie at least once. I haven’t seen every movie Shatner appeared in, but I am reasonably certain he has never played a more evil villain.
I agree with you! I just think that he eventually found it easier to do a form of self-parody rather than to seriously engage as an actor. And he found that it paid, so why not?
The Intruder (62) is an excellent film. Shatner is superb in it. One of Corman’s best films.
Replying again, another year later, on the original theme of Shatner actually having been an excellent actor, when he cared to be and/or had the right role – which did not happen often – I saw another online article about that just this past week. I can’t remember where I saw it, or I would link it here.
Anyway, I consider Shatner to be the acting equivalent of Rod Stewart. Rod was actually a serious and talented rock vocalist, as reflected in his time with Faces and his initial solo work. And then he spent the rest of his career making commercial pap and schlock, engaging in self-parody, and apparently having fun.
“For the last many years, I have celebrated my birthday by working on a very successful charity called The Hollywood Charity Horse Show. We have been doing it for 35 years and raised millions of dollars for children and veterans.”
Funny you missed the news that Chuck Norris died
Funny?
That doesn’t seem all that hilarious.
I noticed but didn’t find it noteworthy. Chuck wasn’t bad enough to make fun of, and he wasn’t good enough to praise.
Pretty much the same applies to Mueller.
“We… few… We… happyfew… We… band….. ofbrothers…”
Knowing this background explains a lot. Shatner’s line delivery, his speeding-up-and-slowing-down cadences… it’s all an attempt to fit his dialogue into iambic pentameter.
Gotta give him props, he seems destined to hit the century mark. I wonder what the longevity record for the most mainstream actor there’s been? I think he’s got a shot, not only that but he still seems to be fairly active.
James Hong, Clint Eastwood and Dick Van Dyke are still alive, all a bit older than Shat.
Among stars, Kirk Douglas lived to 103, and Bob Hope to 100. Kirk had a stroke at 79 and looked ancient at 80. Hope was still pretty active at 85ish, but disappeared after that.
There’s never been anyone like Shatner. He’s still going on talk shows, flying into space, contributing to podcasts. He’s always upbeat. If you didn’t know Shatner’s age, you’d think he was in his 60s or 70s. He is amazing – energetic, lucid, thoughtful, and not even very wrinkled. The others I mentioned were/are old men, shells of their former selves, but Bill is still Bill. He has lived into the kind of old age we all dream of, but only he can really live out.
Thought about it a bit more, and Clint Eastwood has Shatner beat about a year plus in age, and did direct that Juror #2 movie in late 2024, so is still fairly active. They both would definitely be the top two right now.
I checked if they had actually been in anything together and nothing, but it looks like there’s a pretty cool photo of Eastwood visiting Shatner and Nemoy in the late 70s on the set of a Star Trek movie.
Eastwood is still working hard, but he doesn’t have Shatner’s joie de vivre.
Shatner’s energy is impressive but at the age of 93 James Hong did some martial arts with Michelle Yeoh. How many actors can claim to have any oscar winner pick their nose on screen and then make them eat it?
Hong is another one who seems much younger than he is.
Norman Lloyd lived to be 106, if you consider him mainstream enough.
If you don’t, then I suppose the answer would be Kirk Douglas (103), and was certainly mainstream (i.e., basically a household name).
Olivia de Havilland lived to be 104, but I’m not sure if you meant men only.
Obviously Dick Van Dyke is still alive at 100, and is certainly mainstream.
Jeanne Renée Deneuve died at 109. Catherine Deneuve’s mother and a French actress.
Repeating – but worth repeating – If you’ve ever given half a Shat’s ass about any flavor of Star Trek, you MUST catch Free Enterprise, which I discovered here last Shatmas. This is destined to become the Shatmas equivalent to It’s A Wonderful Life. In a world where Trump is trying to make his birthday a national holiday, we all have to remember that Shatner is the reason for the season.
A marvelous, underrated movie.
You have a pic of the two of them dressed, but you failed to mention Shatner’s greatest achievement: The pretend boning of a totally naked Angie Dickinson when she was close to her prime in the immortal classic, Big Bad Mama. Now that’s a life well led.
OK, I was just channel-hopping (today, of all days) and I landed on a show where Shatner plays Mark Twain. Coincidence…or Shatmas miracle?