Just a few months prior to heading to Stratford after being offered a job with the company in early 1954, Shatner packed up his very small car (bought for him by his father who also loaned him a little bit of money) and moved to Toronto, the nearest big city to the small town of Stratford, Ontario. There he got a few jobs with the fledgling CBC television network, on CBC Theatre and (probably) on Space Command. Returning from Stratford’s very successful season after gaining exposure in the Shakespeare Festival, Shatner truly began a habit that he still has to this day…saying “yes” to just about any production that would hire him.
Before we get more into Shatner’s life and times in the bustling city of Toronto, let’s back up a few years to 1949 and to a trip young Bill took after his freshman year at McGill University. He and a friend decided that they wanted to see America, and so they began a transcontinental journey hitchhiking across Canada and the United States, from Montreal to New York, to Santa Barbara (and possibly Los Angeles) and up to Vancouver and then back to Montreal. The two young men had no money whatsoever, so for the three months they were on the road they often slept in the cars they got rides in, or outside under the stars. This was Shatner’s first major exposure to the U.S., and it reinforced some of his budding plans and goals, plans and goals that he had not even (at this point) told his parents about.
Although he loved California and dreamed of a life eventually working in the movies there, as almost all young aspiring actors dream of to this day, his main goal at the time was to become a professional theater actor and move to New York City and to Broadway, mecca of the performing arts. In the early 1950’s, Broadway theater was still the professional actor’s dream job, probably tied with glamorous cinema, with television not even a thought. But how could Shatner earn the money to move to New York City and realize his goals? Stratford was the first major step in that direction.
The Stratford Festival gave Bill a wealth of experience and connections. It also provided him a steady paycheck which, while not making him wealthy, did allow him to begin saving towards an eventual move to the Big Apple. However, Stratford ran from May (when rehearsals started) to the end of August (when the last performance occurred)…what to do for money in the other 8 months of the year? An answer lay in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto, with its still thriving radio dramas and with it’s relatively new television division.
In the 1950’s (especially the early to mid-1950’s), broadcast television was dominated by anthology programs and one-off movies or productions. These anthology series and shows often featured very serious dramatic programming, with esteemed writers like Paddy Chayefsky and Rod Serling crafting original programs alongside broadcast productions from Shakespeare, Melville and other classic authors. Early adopters of then-expensive television sets were most often the wealthiest citizens, and the nascent television studios catered to this more highbrow crowd with more highbrow, theater-like fare.
As television in the 1950’s was mostly filmed live, and later “live-to-tape”, there was no real permanence associated with it. The natural fit for this new medium, where live-in-studio productions were staged would have been professional theater actors, which is just one of the reasons that most early television production was centered in Toronto and (especially) New York City. Actors were brought in, were quickly expected to learn their lines, perform the production (possibly twice to accommodate West Coast audiences) and then it was on to the next program. There were no residuals, no conventions, no fame or cache associated with appearing in this most ephemeral of mediums. Instead, television was the working actor’s day job, his way to possibly stay afloat and make ends meet until the next steady theater job.
It was into this atmosphere that Shatner found himself in late 1954 Toronto. He took up residence in a “tiny studio apartment on the top floor of a rooming house a few blocks away from the CBC”, perpetually cold and sleeping in a rope mattress. He had few friends, and would often spend hours each night at the local hotel, reading a book and milking the $2.50 all-you-can-eat buffet. In his autobiography, Up Till Now, Shatner estimates that he was one of about 20 professional actors in Toronto at the time, and one of only about 30 in all of Canada.
A professional actor is someone who makes his or her living only through acting, and indeed it appears that Shatner (aside from two very brief stints as a theater assistant manager in 1952 & 53) has never had any other paying job than that of an actor. He never waited tables, never worked in a bookstore, never did odd jobs, and never worked in the clothing industry (which would have been the most natural fit for him, considering his background.) For his entire adult life, Shatner has worked as a professional actor…a truly amazing feat when you think about it.
As Shatner writes in Up Till Now:
Each job lasted the length of the show and then we started all over again. I’d get a job Tuesday, work Wednesday, and begin looking for the next job Thursday. Then I’d have to wait two weeks for my thirty-five-dollar check. For the first time I lived every day with the feeling that this job might be the last job I’d ever get; that after this job my career might be over. Fortunately that feeling has lasted only sixty years.
I remarked somewhat snarkily at the top of this post that Shatner started saying “yes” to anyone who would hire him. But really, what he did was truly admirable: he harnessed an unstoppable work ethic into a career that continues to this very day. Although James Brown was called “the hardest working man in show business”, a very credible case could be made that William Shatner deserves that title instead.
“The Big Leap”, an episode of General Motors Theatre (the newly renamed CBC Theatre) is the first Shatner appearance that I could find that occurred after the 1954 Stratford season. He certainly worked that fall and winter in a variety of small roles for both television and the far more more ubiquitous radio, but I only have records of the television productions and the haze is very strong even there. Indeed, the first date I had for this episode I got from IMDB.com, and then much later I saw a completely different date on a CBC archive site…I’m going with the Canadians on this one.
If the date I have from the CBC is correct, this was the first episode of the newly renamed General Motors Theatre to air in their second season. I have no idea what the episode was about, but from the pictures I’ve seen it involves Shatner in a small role as a young boyfriend (?), and Lorne Greene as some kind of gangster possibly. The action seems to take place mostly in a room overlooking some large falls, and may involve murder or a suicide (aka “The Big Leap”.) Or maybe it was a comedy? Who the hell knows?
For the next six months or so, Shatner would appear in over a dozen similar television productions for the CBC, most lost to the ages due to the nature of the medium in the 1950’s. On the bright side, we’ll be able to move through these quickly. On the downside, there are very few details at all about them, and so most of the upcoming posts will be short, sweet and to the point.
Shatnerweb’s Rating:
Unknown – Not Viewed
Shat Level: Unknown – Not Viewed
Shatner’s Web
It’s time to detail all of the connections between “The Big Leap” and other Shatner appearances!
Lorne Greene was, by far, the most famous actor associated with this production that Shatner would work with again. Greene was about 10 years older than Shatner (although even then he looked at least 20 years older), and was one of those few professional actors working in Canada at the time.
During the war, CBC radio gave him the nickname “The Voice of Canada”, but he was quickly dubbed “The Voice of Doom” by the public as he was tasked (in his natural voice of solemnity and gravitas) with reading the names of fallen Canadian soldiers over the air. His acting style had very little range, but he exploited what he had perfectly into a long running role on Bonanza as Ben “Pa” Cartwright and then later into the memorable role of Commander Adama on the original Battlestar Galactica.
Greene would next appear with Shatner as a starring member of the 1955 Stratford company, first in Julius Caesar and then in The Merchant of Venice, where they would become friends. They would also both appear on 1970’s variety special, John Wayne’s Tribute to America, and then in 1978’s TV miniseries The Bastard. Finally, both would pop up in 1985’s comedy, The Canadian Conspiracy.
E.M. Margolese would next appear with The Shat in April of 1955, in the Scope anthology’s episode, “The Verdict Was Treason.”
Jack Creley appeared with Shatner in a number of Canadian productions over the next few years, including the General Motors Theatre episodes “Forever Galatea” and “The Black Eye”, as well as Scope‘s “the Verdict Was Treason.”
The actor Cec Linder would appear with Shatner just a few months later in an episode of On Camera, “Man in 308.”
Nadyne Turney also appeared with Shatner in 1955, in another episode of General Motors Theatre, “The Coming Out of Ellie Swan.”
James Manser worked with Shatner previously at Stratford, and would return to the festival for the 1955 season as well. He would appear in the Tyrone Guthrie directed, short-lived Broadway production of Tamburlaine the Great in 1956 and then his last appearance with Shatner would be in the film version of Oedipus Rex in 1957.
Austin Willis would appear with Shatner in just a few weeks time for the General Motors Theatre episode, “I Like it Here”, and then once more in a 1955 Playbill episode written by Rod Serling, “Mr. Finchley Versus the Bomb.”
Finally, Les Rubie would also appear in the General Motors Theatre episode, “I Like It Here” and would do so one more time in 1955’s “Forever Galatea.”
The director, producer and writer of “The Big Leap” was a man named Leo Orenstein. He produced or directed over 150 productions for the CBC, including many adaptations of some of those “highbrow” authors I mentioned like Ibsen and Checkhov. He would go on to write and direct another episode of General Motors Theatre with Shatner, 1955’s “Forever Galatea.”
Producer Basil Coleman would also produce “Forever Galatea.”
Ronald Weyman would also produce “Forever Galatea” and then later in a 1955 episode of On Camera, “On a Streetcar”, that also featured Shatner.
And woah! What do have here? Silvio Narizzano, who was credited with the “story” for William Shatner’s very first professional acting job in The Butler’s Night Off was also a producer for this episode and for the upcoming episode in 1955, “Billy Budd.”
Further Studies
I have very little to point you to during this period. You can check out some more pictures of various CBC productions CBC archives here.
Read up on Lorne “Hyman” Greene here.
Check out some more history on the CBC here.
Share this:
