Up Till Now: The Autobiography

‘Please don’t hit Bill on his shoulder’?”
    Well, that just made him angrier, and he began to clap me harder and harder. I went to Josh Logan, I went to the union. I tried everything to stop this guy from slamming me on the shoulder. But nobody could help me because the play had become chaotic. It was completely out of control.
    Before a performance I went to his dressing room. “I’ve asked you nicely,” I explained. “Now I’m telling you. You hit me on the shoulder one more time, I’m going to hit you back right on the stage.”
    Rather than a warning, he took that as a challenge. In our next performance he clapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and punched him. He was stunned, though somehow he got off the stage. The moment the first act ended and the curtain came down he raced across the stage and reared back to throw a punch at me that might have put me into Shubert Alley. I ducked, and instead he hit our eighty-six-year-old prop man. He knocked him out cold on the stage. That’s when the Act 2 curtain started to go up.
    I was desperate. I had a wife and a child and a mortgage. So in my desperation I began to speed up my lines. I changed the intonation and the emotion. Just by speaking faster and putting emphasis on different words I shortened the play by fifteen minutes—and people began to laugh. I love you, had become, I love you ? We were making fun of this turgid melodrama. We turned it into a lighthearted comedy.
    The show became a hit. A comedy. We ran for fourteen months and I won several acting awards from major theater organizations. And when the movie version of it was made, I was invited to buy a ticket to watch William Holden playing my part. I was quite surprised by Holden’s performance. Apparently he didn’t understand the play—he thought it was a serious love story.
    Several years later I was doing Star Trek and there was a part for an Asian girl. They asked me how I felt about casting France Nuyen.It was all these years later, and I was curious what she would be like. Hire her, I said, she’ll be great. When she came on the set she was delightful. That defensiveness I remembered so well seemed to have disappeared, and I found myself wondering what could have possibly gone so wrong. And then she needed some makeup and she said, “Makeup. Come here.” And it all came back. It was the arrogance, I remembered every bit of it.
    Obviously France and I both grew older and wiser and smarter and better looking and... and well, we’ve worked together on several more projects. Although we’ve never discussed those old days.
    Before we continue with the narrative of my life, just let me pause here for a few seconds to check out the latest new additions to ShatnerVision.com, the Web site run by my daughter Lisbeth, who has not yet been born. In this book, I mean. ShatnerVision is a compilation of short videos. Oh, look at that, that’s clever. Good, I see they’ve added the little piece I did especially for you. Take a look at it, it’s easy to find, it has your name on it.
    But please, don’t mistake ShatnerVision for WilliamShatner.com, which is my official Web site. That’s an easy mistake to make, but they’re very different. For example, the wonderful store from which you can order anything from a DVD of a movie in which I starred named Incubus —the only feature film ever made in the artificial language of Esperanto—to an exclusive Wrath of Khan twenty-fifth-anniversary bloodied Kirk action figure, is at WilliamShatner.com, but the video of me explaining why I don’t like to take off my pants on Boston Legal can be found on ShatnerVision. What surprised me most were the incredibly low prices on an array of remarkable items. I could buy my own autograph for considerably less than I would have expected to have to pay for it. And if I sent a check, I would have to sign it, putting me in the somewhat unique position of using my autograph to sign a check to buy my autograph. Of course, you wouldn’t have that problem. So, that should clear things up.
    Now back to my life. Somehow I managed to escape Suzie Wong with my reputation intact. In fact, once the show had settled in I began working on television programs during the day, then rushing tothe theater at night. By day I was a respected television actor, playing the blind senator in a show written by Gore Vidal, appearing on Hallmark Hall of Fame with Ellen Burstyn, Carol Channing, and Maurice Evans, and starring