It's work, Jim, but not as we know it
Saturday July 05 2008
Up Till Now
with David Fisher
Sidgwick & Jackson, st£18.99
The ambivalent feeling many actors have towards their most famous roles is perhaps best summed up by the titles of Leonard Nimoy's two autobiographies: I Am Not Spock (1977) and the rather more resigned I Am Spock (1995)
In Up Till Now, Nimoy's old interstellar comrade seems far more relaxed about the whole business. "Star Trek," writes William Shatner, "was the most wonderful thing that happened to me... the miracle that changed my life." He also throws in proud anecdotes about being recognised as Captain Kirk by Mexican peasants and Turkoman tribesmen. Yet, in the end, what gives the book much wider appeal than you might expect is how little Kirk it contains.
The man's long and often eccentric non-Kirk career makes for a winningly comprehensive guide to post-war showbusiness. After all, as Shatner explains, his career strategy has essentially been two-fold: answering the telephone and saying yes to whatever he's offered.
Such cheerful self-deprecation proves to be the book's default tone -- and even in the odd moments when Shatner turns embittered, boastful or petulant, he generally manages to be amused by his own bitterness, boasting or petulance.
In some books, the death of an alcoholic wife in the family swimming pool might undermine the overall geniality. Here, Shatner simply writes about the incident with candid regret -- before moving on efficiently.
Shatner was born in 1931, to a Jewish family in Montreal. His first break came when he joined Tyrone Power's Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario. After that, he headed to New York, where he kept being offered parts that were guaranteed to make his name -- but never quite did.
During his first lead role on Broadway, he heard one audience member whisper to another: "Will you still love me after this?"
Shatner then tried his luck in Hollywood where, again, he got several supposedly breakthrough parts, but no breakthrough. In 1966 he was thinking of giving up when, as the producer's third choice, he bagged the part of the captain in a new TV science-fiction series ...
But what's sometimes forgotten is that Star Trek was a flop. After it was cancelled, Shatner embarked on another round of C-movies, many of which featured him dying in unusual ways: "In The Horror at 37,000 Feet, I got sucked out of an airplane while carrying a lit torch into the baggage compartment to confront a druid ghost."
Only gradually did it become clear that the Star Trek re-runs on local channels had led to the cult following that finally made him a star.
Not that stardom changed his career strategy much. Instead, he apparently continued to accept every quiz show, presenting job and advert put before him -- all of which he lists with a characteristic combination of self-satire and something that looks touchingly like pride.
They also add to the book's ultimately charming atmosphere of an affable old cove reminiscing in a rambling sort of way about his extraordinary life.
- James Walton
