Why Shatner is sheer poetry

   






Though I have always loved Le Chat (originally known as William Schattner), I find I'm becoming more of a fan all the time. I can't watch that awful Old Man's Adventure Hour thing that he's in, because it's too raucous (I'd have preferred a saner, more Michael Palin-esque travel and adventure show, which would still be fun no matter what), but I have seen bits of it, and though he's at least 15 years older than the other 3 guys (whoever they are - who cares??), he looks a good 15 years younger.

He's going to be 87 in a few months. Eighty-seven. Let that sink in. One critic described him as "eerily ageless", and this seems to support my long-held theory that he made a deal with the devil long ago. He's like that Star Trek character who was a whole lot of famous guys like Brahms and Galileo while on earth, and who faced the bizarre dilemma of not being able to die.

When you see him in his early stuff, you seldom see the histrionics that made Captain Kirk such a hit (and which saved the show from the dullness of the first Kirk, Jeffrey Hunter, who nearly sank the whole series before it even launched).  One of the two Twilight Zones he was in had him making a deal with a devilish machine which would answer all his questions about the future - about HIS future - if he put a penny in the slot. He quickly became obsessed with it,  craving knowledge of his fate and equally dreading it. THAT Shatner was incredibly good-looking, what they used to call a matinee idol, brooding, sizzling with barely-disguised panic (not to mention knock-the-camera-dead beauty). In other words, a lot of stuff was going on at the same time. Watch this man - he is far more subtle than you think.

And the biceps. Don't get me started.

I've seen him do Shakespeare convincingly, because that's what he started off doing. He can make those antiquated phrases sound like something he just thought up. It's called acting. The man is everywhere still, doing this and that, making appearances and doing one-man shows. Since he can't stand for 2 straight hours (and who can?), he uses a rolling office-chair as a prop that he can do all sorts of business with. It seems so natural that no one notices it's a "device", something to allow him short pit-stops. His energy is so hyper that I doubt if I could keep up with him, but I know there is a thoughtful, even tender side to him. 

And there are the horses. The horses! But that is for another post.