Young Shatner must have made quite an impression on the CBC, and especially on the producers of General Motors Theatre; over the course of about six weeks he appeared on the program 3 times, and over the span of eighteen months, he worked on at least 8 episodes. Some of that would certainly be due to Shatner’s unrelenting drive (born of desperation) to scrounge up a job, and some to his fantastic work effort once he got one.
From Up Till Now:
We (professional actors in Toronto) got up in the morning, searched for work, or were actually working that day.
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.
Shatner has long prided himself on his preternatural ability to quickly memorize lines for a role (and then “almost as quickly forget them”), and that surely came in handy with the work coming his way in 1954 and 1955, not only for General Motors Theatre but also for other anthology series and one-off specials coming his way in relatively rapid succession (although I’m sure not fast enough for Bill trying to save some money for a move to NYC while affording life in big-city Toronto.)
These prodigious powers of memorization would have come in handy if he did appear on The Canadian Howdy Doody Show the day before, as I postulated as possible in my previous post. Alliteration!
The last appearance that I could find for Shatner in 1954 (and if anyone can find a different one, I’ll buy him or her a nice dinner) was for the aforementioned General Motors Theatre, in an episode titled “The Black Eye.”
What was this episode about? Was it high comedy or serious drama? What was Shatner’s role? Did he nail it? (Spoilers! Of course he must have.) I have no real idea since this program, like many of its time, has been lost to the ages.
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 Black Eye” and other Shatner appearances!
Corinne Conley previously appeared with Shatner earlier in the year for the CBC Theatre’s, “The Man Who Ran Away.” She would next appear with him in about six week’s time on the Scope episode, “Antiquity 54” and again six years later on another episode of General Motors Theatre, “The Well.” After that, she would not appear in the same production for 55 years, in the 2015 movie A Christmas Horror Story.
Alex McKee also worked on that CBC Theatre episode, “The Man Who Ran Away.” He would later work with Le Shat in the Scope episode, “The Verdict Was Treason.”
Jack Creley previously appeared with Shatner in “The Big Leap” just one month previously. He would go on to work with The Shat in a number of Canadian productions over the next few years, including the General Motors Theatre episodes “Forever Galatea” as well as Scope‘s “the Verdict Was Treason.”
Woah. Now this was the first time that Donald Ewer worked with William Shatner, but not the last. He would go on to appear with him in 1955’s “Billy Budd,” and 1960’s Festival production of “Julius Caesar.” And then 34 years later he would play a cab driver in an installment of Shatner’s short-lived Tekwar series, “Teklab.” I wonder if they spoke of their past history…most likely they never even shared the same filming days and Donald Ewer was left to wonder, “What if?”
This is the second time that David Gardner worked with Shatner. In 1955 he too joined the Stratford company, appearing in at least three plays with Shatner during the ’55 and ’56 seasons of the festival. He would then travel to Broadway to appear in the short-lived run of Tamburlaine the Great, and then appear one more time with Shatner in the film version of Oedipus Rex.
Margaret Griffin would appear with Shatner one more time in the 1955 episode of General Motors Theatre, “The Coming Out of Ellie Swan,” where she was credited as “Nonnie Griffin.”
One of the writers, Mavor Moore, would go on to pen another General Motors Theatre episode with Shatner, “The Well” in 1960.
Sydney Newman acted as producer or supervising producer in the Shatner-featuring CBC/General Motors‘ episode “The Man Who Ran Away,” and “I Like It Here,” as well as for The Canadian Howdy Doody Show. After this episode, he would do the same for the episodes “Billy Budd,” “Forever Galatea,” “Never Say No,” and “The Coming Out of Ellie Swan.”
Further Studies
Read more General Motors Theatre here.
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