Read Online Up Till Now. The Autobiography by William Shatner - Free Book Online
Authors: William Shatner
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of the dress rehearsal the director gathered the cast around him and gave us his final notes. “We’re going on in exactly forty-seven minutes. Good luck, everybody, it’s been a pleasure working with you. I know we’re going to have a wonderful show. Now you have a little time to eat because we’re going on in exactly forty-three minutes...”
So we all went back to our dressing areas and got ready to do the show. Apparently Chaney started getting very nervous and to calm himself down had a few drinks. Forty-two minutes’ worth of drinks. He managed to get through the first part of the show until we reached the fight scene. As the scene started he looked at me angrily and said, “Right here I pick up the chair and hit you over the shoulders with it and you roll backward. Then you fall over the table...”
With that the stage manager lifted his head and screamed, “We’re on the air, you son of a bitch!”
That was the problem—and the excitement of live TV—it was live. Fortunately, my stage training had taught me how to deal with unexpected events. Once, for example, I was in a play in which the whole plot hinged on my shooting another actor, but when I reached for the prop gun it wasn’t there. The stage manager had forgotten to put it back after the previous performance. But the guy had to die or the play was over, so I picked up a corkscrew and screwed him to death.
That presence of mind was perfect for live television. On one show I was involved in a shoot-out. The actor who had to shoot me got much too close, and when he shot me, the blank shell—which was made of wax—hit me right under my eye. It was painful as hell, but I just kept going. Keep going, that’s what actors do. Except the blank had caused a huge blood blister to form, a big red blot right under my eye. And it just kept growing, it kept getting bigger andbigger. It was like the blimp of blood blisters. It was like a clown’s red nose stuck to my face, growing and becoming a deeper shade of red. Of course I didn’t know that, I couldn’t see my face, but it was the only thing every other actor could look at. And they looked at it with great wonder, this mammoth red golf ball growing on my face. This was a murder mystery but they couldn’t say two lines without breaking into complete hysterics. And naturally because the other actors were looking at something on my face and couldn’t stop laughing I became very self-conscious. I was trying to look down, which of course is impossible, but worse, it forces the viewers at home to look down too. The red pustule had become the focus of the entire show. And somehow we got through it. We always got through it, although there were some difficult times.
For aging movie stars just trying to keep their careers alive by working on TV the hardest thing to do was memorize their lines. In the movies they’d only had to remember a few lines at a time and if they forgot them the cameras stopped and they reshot the scene. But this was live television, there was no going back. Paul Muni had to be fitted with an earpiece because he just couldn’t remember three sentences. I co-starred with Bert Lahr in a play called The School for Wives , Walter Kerr’s adaptation of a Molière comedy, on Omnibus . Bert Lahr! The Cowardly Lion himself, the great burlesque comedian. Sidney Lumet was directing. It was thrilling for me, for the whole cast. We were all nervous for him, we didn’t want to see him struggle with this new medium. When he came in to rehearsal the very first day we all sort of held our breath, all of us ready to help him. But he didn’t even glance at his script. He had memorized every single word. So while we were stumbling through the first reading he had already mastered the nuances. Well, this was great. The next day we came in and we’d all learned a little more and Bert Lahr forgot a couple of words. As we got closer to the airdate most of us knew large sections of the play and he was
So we all went back to our dressing areas and got ready to do the show. Apparently Chaney started getting very nervous and to calm himself down had a few drinks. Forty-two minutes’ worth of drinks. He managed to get through the first part of the show until we reached the fight scene. As the scene started he looked at me angrily and said, “Right here I pick up the chair and hit you over the shoulders with it and you roll backward. Then you fall over the table...”
With that the stage manager lifted his head and screamed, “We’re on the air, you son of a bitch!”
That was the problem—and the excitement of live TV—it was live. Fortunately, my stage training had taught me how to deal with unexpected events. Once, for example, I was in a play in which the whole plot hinged on my shooting another actor, but when I reached for the prop gun it wasn’t there. The stage manager had forgotten to put it back after the previous performance. But the guy had to die or the play was over, so I picked up a corkscrew and screwed him to death.
That presence of mind was perfect for live television. On one show I was involved in a shoot-out. The actor who had to shoot me got much too close, and when he shot me, the blank shell—which was made of wax—hit me right under my eye. It was painful as hell, but I just kept going. Keep going, that’s what actors do. Except the blank had caused a huge blood blister to form, a big red blot right under my eye. And it just kept growing, it kept getting bigger andbigger. It was like the blimp of blood blisters. It was like a clown’s red nose stuck to my face, growing and becoming a deeper shade of red. Of course I didn’t know that, I couldn’t see my face, but it was the only thing every other actor could look at. And they looked at it with great wonder, this mammoth red golf ball growing on my face. This was a murder mystery but they couldn’t say two lines without breaking into complete hysterics. And naturally because the other actors were looking at something on my face and couldn’t stop laughing I became very self-conscious. I was trying to look down, which of course is impossible, but worse, it forces the viewers at home to look down too. The red pustule had become the focus of the entire show. And somehow we got through it. We always got through it, although there were some difficult times.
For aging movie stars just trying to keep their careers alive by working on TV the hardest thing to do was memorize their lines. In the movies they’d only had to remember a few lines at a time and if they forgot them the cameras stopped and they reshot the scene. But this was live television, there was no going back. Paul Muni had to be fitted with an earpiece because he just couldn’t remember three sentences. I co-starred with Bert Lahr in a play called The School for Wives , Walter Kerr’s adaptation of a Molière comedy, on Omnibus . Bert Lahr! The Cowardly Lion himself, the great burlesque comedian. Sidney Lumet was directing. It was thrilling for me, for the whole cast. We were all nervous for him, we didn’t want to see him struggle with this new medium. When he came in to rehearsal the very first day we all sort of held our breath, all of us ready to help him. But he didn’t even glance at his script. He had memorized every single word. So while we were stumbling through the first reading he had already mastered the nuances. Well, this was great. The next day we came in and we’d all learned a little more and Bert Lahr forgot a couple of words. As we got closer to the airdate most of us knew large sections of the play and he was
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