Up Till Now: The Autobiography

were radioed that a bear was coming in our direction. It had been spotted from an airplane, which was against the law, but this was American television. We waited along the riverbed. The far side of the riverbed was covered with a line of trees and bushes, and beyond that was limitless tundra. We didn’t talk very much, I think the other members of the crew were just as nervous as I was.
    It was late fall. I was dressed in a bulky parka. I’d never shot an arrow dressed like that and it was awkward. As we waited the guide indicated a copse of low trees with very thick brambles. The bear was moving through the root system, staying in the cover. I looked, but I couldn’t see it. There was a break in the tree line and there he was. “Here’s what he’s going to do,” the guide whispered. “He’ll come close to the middle of the tree line and stand up on two legs at the edge and look around. If he doesn’t spot us or sense us, he’ll get down on all fours and come toward us. If he knows we’re here, he’ll run for the tundra, the open.”
    I was shaking. One shot. I’m an actor, I’m an actor. Finally he moved into the open and stood up. This was the most magnificent and terrifying creature I had ever seen, it was almost prehistoric. He was forty yards from us and only at that moment did I truly appreciate the hell I’d put myself into. Only then did I have to face my fears.
    He lowered himself onto all fours and began coming toward us. But instead of coming across the river he dropped into the bed, which was about two feet below the level of the land. I could see his back moving diagonally across the horizon in front of me. Totally instinctively—I certainly couldn’t have been thinking—I moved out into the open and ran toward the bear. The cameramen were running right behind me. My arrow was cocked. The bear turned away from me at a right angle, giving me a very small target, but while on the run I lifted my bow and launched my arrow. I watchedit fly as if it were on a towline. It seemed to drive right into the bear. But the bear continued running; he turned and ran right back into the woods.
    It took me only a few seconds to realize that we were only twenty or thirty yards from a wounded bear. We didn’t know what he was doing. The guide raised his rifle and swept the area, waiting for him to spring out of the tree line at us. We heard him crashing through the thick foliage, but then that sound stopped. The guide said softly, as if we were in a movie rather than on a TV show, “We got ourselves a bad bear.” Nobody moved; we believed we were being stalked by a desperate animal.
    We sat where we were, waiting in complete silence. Well, silence except for the deafening sound of my heart beating. Unlike a bullet, which kills on impact, an arrow is essentially three or four razor blades and it kills by cutting, so a shot animal lies down and bleeds to death.
    A wounded animal waits to attack. We waited in place for about a half hour and then the guide walked into the woods to search for that bear. The camera crews were behind him. They found the dead bear in the bushes. In the sunlight, with the shadows of the branches moving across this giant animal’s back, it looked as if it were still alive and that alone was terrifying. We poked at it to make certain it was dead.
    At that moment I changed from being a hunter to someone who will catch a fly and let it loose out a window. I have never shot at any living creature again. Looking at that magnificent animal, the amazing stupidity of what I’d done just humbled me. I realized that to destroy life was to destroy part of myself. The vanity of it, the idiocy of it, but until I faced that bear it had nothing at all to do with courage.
    Which brings us to being onstage with the very beautiful France Nuyen in The World of Suzie Wong. Gloria and I moved back to New York and we bought a little house in Hastings-on-Hudson for nineteen thousand dollars. This was an amazing step for me, this was roots. For an actor, that kind of commitment can be terrifying. But I was confident I could afford it, I was going to be paid $750 a week to star in a Broadway show. That was a tremendous amount of moneyin 1958. My name was going to be above the title, WILLIAM SHATNER IN... It was in lights, WILLIAM SHATNER IN... I remember when the titles first went up on the marquee. I walked up and down West 44th Street just looking at it, and then I went back at night to see it all