Shatner: The Transformed Man, The Myth, The Legend

There’s nobody on the planet like William Shatner. The man has got such an amazing attitude towards himself, towards his career, towards everything–that you really can’t touch him. He can cover Blur on an album produced by Ben Folds or he can get up in the middle of a celebration of George Lucas and sing “My Way.” Doesn’t matter. He is the man. I’m not even a huge Trek fan and I can see that.

This is from The Mike Douglas Show in 1969, where it seems Shatner was co-hosting the show for a week with Douglas. Now–there’s several versions of this online where he does sing “It Was a Very Good Year.” But this version has the Hamlet “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy intact on it–and you need to get the introduction and the Shakespeare to get the full effect, in my humble opinion. This is the only vid of this I can find online–so I apologize. Normally I don’t post anything where the audio is this out of sync. But dammit, it’s still worth watching.

And I have to apologize to Shatner. A while back I saw someone here locally perform Hamlet and do it, as I’ve stated, “Shatner Hamlet.” But Shatner’s Hamlet is apparently much better than this guy, whose performance is now demoted to “Bad Shatner Hamlet.”
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After the break, Shatner discussed his acting approach on Star Trek. Which is priceless.

These found via Classic Television Showbiz.

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