Poll result and a roundup of other toup news...

Our most recent poll asked for your take on what goes through Bill Shatner's mind when he sees himself without his toupee. 6% said "That is the real me"; 15% suggested that he doesn't really emote on the matter at all; 31% said "That's not the real me" and 46%, the greatest number, suggested that he simply can't bear to look.


Thanks for voting! Now for a quick roundup of other toupee-related news:

We wanted to bring to our readers' attention a recent appearance by Bill Shatner on The Howard Stern Show, notable for two key reasons: firstly, Bill Shatner came on with his wife Elizabeth - a very rare occurrence indeed. Secondly, the level to which this married couple good-naturedly subjected themselves to some of the most intimate, explicit and incredibly personal questions was really something to behold.


Here's a video clip from the show's YouTube channel:

After listening to the Shatners answering an endless stream of questions about their sex lives, one can't help but think "This is OK, but the toupee is off limits?" How can that be? Perhaps offering the public more in this arena (the couple would certainly have known beforehand to expect such deeply intimate questions - that is, after all, what Howard Stern does) is a way to compensate for the lack of discourse on the toupee.

Or was this a subtle signal by Elizabeth to her husband that if he decides to open up about the toup, she will stand by her man? Is she perhaps even pushing behind-the-scenes for more disclosure?

The people must hear the truth about the toupee.

The entire audio is currently up on YouTube in three parts and we certainly recommend this fascinating and very funny exchange to our readers.

Next, the good folks at My Star Trek Scrapbook have posted an interesting snippet from a 1987 issue of the spoof magazine Cracked (which as of 2007 exists only as an on-line publication). Here's the crucial image...

Notice the detail of the toupee - the overlapping lace at the front is perfectly rendered.

...click over to My Star Trek Scrapbook for more context.

And finally, a trailer for the 1974 William Shatner TV movie Indict and Convict recently appeared on YouTube:

This is a movie our staff (and other Bill Shatner fansites) have long sought to locate in order to conduct a thorough toupological analysis. The following quote from an IMDb user review may help to explain our enthusiasm for tracking down this particular title:

A lost classic? William Shatner in the 1974 TV movie Indict and Convict.

"Without divulging anymore than the title of the movie does, I can tell you this: ABSOLUTELY, SPECTACULAR, TOTALLY OVER THE TOP PERFORMANCE BY WILLIAM SHATNER. Completely out of control with his searching looks, pauses (extended) during dialogue, made every effort to steal every single scene in the move. (I wouldn't have respected him if he hadn't) But wait... there's MORE. He's wearing those Gow-Awful Choclote [sic] Brown double knit suits complete with matching vest, plaid collared shirt with no button down collars... but worst of all... It was the dreaded and feared 1970's Necktie."

Need we say more?

Image sourced here.

Add to all of the above, the movie also has a soundtrack scored by none other than Jerry Goldsmith - there's a clip of the score here ("Perhaps my #1 unreleased Goldsmith grail!" notes a commenter at Film Score Monthly's board).

If any of our readers can help us track down a copy, we would certainly be very grateful!

And that's it for this post!

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Mother, May I Go Out to Swim?" - a toupological analysis.

"Mother, May I Go Out to Swim?" is a fifth season episode of the anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. This installment, broadcast in April 1960, is Bill Shatner's second appearance in the series, the first being the classic third season episode "The Glass Eye" in 1957.

Star Trek alumni Herschel Daugherty directs with William Shatner starring as John Crane, privileged mamma's boy. Our story begins with Crane attending a coroner's inquest, apparently the subject of a murder investigation.


Cue flashback: John's mother Claire (Jessie Royce Landis) is off to visit her daughter Alice to tend to sick grandchildren, while John is heading off to Vermont to indulge his photography hobby (his mother says she will join him there later).


Mother and son are evidently very close. Claire has even adapted part of the family home to create a separate apartment for her pampered son.


Up in Vermont, John meets an attractive young lady while buying film for his camera.


The pair then take a walk to a nice nearby waterfall and strike up a bond over their mutual experiences of loss. John suffered polio as a child and, as a result, walks with a limp. Lottie (Gia Scala) is an orphan from Germany and carries vivid childhood memories of WWII. "When my father died, he left us fairly well off" remarks John on his present-day sense of security. He then tells Lottie that his mother is coming to Vermont and that she will soon get to meet her.


But then John abruptly leaves: his mother always calls at 9pm!


In spite of Claire's ubiquitous presence in John's life, romance soon blossoms.


And it isn't long before marriage is on the cards.


But what will John's mother make of Lottie? And can John really fully tear away from his mother and devote his attentions to his future wife?

Claire (her son often refers to his mother by her first name) finally arrives in Vermont...


...and John, sure that his mother will love her future daughter-in-law, arranges for the three of them to have afternoon tea.


But Claire and Lotte have a chance meeting (unaware of each others' real respective identities) before this fateful event - and it doesn't go very well at all as Claire acts rather snobbishly toward the foreigner she sees before her in the store...


Oh, that was you! Oops! The formal introduction is ruined as the pair recognize each other. Lottie excuses herself.


Lottie and Claire are evidently not going to become fast friends. But can they ever learn to co-exist? Or should the happy couple simply wait for Claire to die before they can live in peace in the home John will inherit?


Or is there perhaps another, darker solution?


And that's where we'll leave it...


So what to make of all this?

Of course there's a major twist in this episode, which we won't reveal here. And the story is really set up with that as the climactic payoff. Judging from the 9.5 (out of 10) rating "Mother, May I Go Out to Swim?" received at tv.com, this is quite a popular episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. We don't disagree that it is good, but at only around twenty-five minutes long, it all feels more like an hors d'oeuvre than a main course. Kind of like a Columbo episode comprised of only the first act (the murder) or imagine Psycho ending after the shower scene!


What does it all mean? What are the implications and the emotional consequences of all that unfolds before us? A story under the Alfred Hitchcock banner about a voluptuous blonde and a man who has an unusual relationship with his mother. So much raw material there...


It's all good and fun to watch, with solid performances and fair direction. But the truncated length and the way the story is geared towards that one wow payoff doesn't really allow for a more developed and richer tale to be presented. Bill Shatner's other effort in this series, "The Glass Eye", had a twist too, but it also made better overall use of its brief running time to present an atmospheric, unsettling and ultimately far more rewarding drama than "Mother, May I Go Out to Swim?", which never quite seems to escape the weight of presenting necessary exposition in order to instead make a forceful emotional or stylistic case to the viewer.

1957's "The Glass Eye" - a more effectively presented story.

Let's move swiftly to the hair...

As with other early 1960s Bill Shatner performances like "Nick of Time", there is a definite spring in the actor's step evident as the resplendence of the "fresh out of its wrapper" "Jim Kirk lace" is subtly shown off from every conceivable angle. The young actor happily tilts his head towards the camera in a manner that not long ago - struggling with sprays and combing techniques to conceal his thinning locks - was becoming increasingly impossible.


One can only imagine how Bill Shatner must have felt after saying "yes" (“It’s easy to say no...saying yes carries more danger to it. Saying yes is risky business — but how much richer my life has been because of it.” source) to this new toupee and, after having it fitted, realizing that a whole new chapter was opening up in his life...

As for toupological moments, there's really only one very subtle one: an interesting close-up of the rear of the toupee showing some carefully trimmed neck hair:

But the toupological import of these early sixties performances are far less about individual moments of toupologcal interest than they are about a wider symbolism. A new decade. A new, youthful toupee. And in America a new youthful president was about to be elected. Was JFK's Inaugural Address inspired by Bill Shatner's toupee-wearing?

"Let the word go forth from this time and place, to hair and scalp alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of toupees—designed in this century, tempered by lace, disciplined by the hard and bitter pieces worn by others, proud of a since withering heritage of real hair—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of that follicular plenty to which this scalp has, until recently, always been privy, and to which I am re-committing today both at home and in public. Let every person know, whether they wish me well or ill, that I shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of my new toupee."

A toupee that would symbolize the spirit of the New Frontier...

We should also note that the Master of Suspense served as a presenter of each segment of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. And in a very subtle manner, the famous director also appears to pay tribute to Bill Shatner's new toupee, leaning down in the episode's prologue to expose his bare scalp (we suspect that a toup-less Bill Shatner today would strongly resemble Alfred Hitchcock)...


In the closing segment, Hitchcock tosses away an artificial device covering his head (an umbrella).


Is this too a subtle message? "The toupee is all very well when you're young, but if you're still wearing it when you reach my age, it may be time to lose it..."

Bill Shatner may have failed to heed the apparent advice of his mentor, but in a way he has paid the late director an even greater tribute. By wearing the toupee for so long; by denying its existence save for a few very clever teases; by undertaking all manner of stunts over his career that unnerved the viewer as to the stability and resilience of the toupees he wore, the actor has both honored Hitchcock's stylistic legacy and himself laid claim to being known as the true Master of Suspense.


"Mother, May I Go Out to Swim?" is available to purchase as part of the newly-released fifth season Alfred Hitchcock Presents box-set. A good episode in the series, but perhaps not a classic...


We should also note that a couple of times, including in our previous post, we alluded to what we thought was a (toup-less) behind-the-scenes photo from the making of this episode. Thanks to our eagle-eyed readers, it turns out that the picture in question is actually from a TV show called Tactic and features William Shatner (apparently in a very late-era toup-less performance), Alfred Hitchcock and actress Diana Van der Vlis. There's really nothing out there on the web about this specific episode that we could find, and we wonder whether footage from it even survives. The prospect of seeing Bill Shatner act with Alfred Hitchcock in a 1959 toup-less performance is certainly a very tantalizing one! Double the suspense!!

New early "Jim Kirk lace" image.

Not long ago, we undertook a full toupological analysis of a 1958 episode of the TV show Suspicion called "The Protégé". We had to rely on a pretty poor-quality copy, but nonetheless still found that this was very likely one of the earliest on-screen examples of Bill Shatner touping-up with a "Jim Kirk lace".


Now, thanks to a recent LA Times article covering Bill Shatner, we have a new and far clearer image from this episode. And its one that displays the "Jim Kirk lace" with considerably more clarity.

William Shatner with actress Phyllis Love in 1958.

The contours of the hair are pretty much identical to the "Jim Kirk" style (doesn't Bill Shatner look like a skinny Capt. Kirk?), which the actor wore right until the end of Star Trek in 1969. Although at the back, we can see that the toup "lid" isn't quite fully integrated into Bill Shatner's real hair as it should be. Early days...


At this point, we're pretty confident that Bill Shatner still had enough of his own hair to create a kind of heavily-sprayed shell.

The toup-less heavily-sprayed "shell" option from 1957.

But with each passing day, the thinning was getting more intense, particularly at the back, as noted by this 1957 press report stating "[William Shatner] had already ordered a toupee to camouflage a thinning spot in the cinnamon hair."

What we believe to be the last toup-less picture of Bill Shatner available to the public comes from a 1960 behind-the-scenes image of the making of "Mother, May I Go Out to Swim?". More on that here.

Bill Shatner, likely toup-less in 1960 - or is it 1959? (see update below).

Anyway, the new LA Times image is a very welcome addition to our archives. Here's hoping more recordings (and pictures) of Bill Shatner's 1950s TV work surface!

UPDATE: The above image may actually be from a 1959 TV show called "Tactic". See the NBC archives here. Thanks to reader Tintorera for the clarification.

Poll result and a special session of the WSSTS General Assembly.

Our most recent poll sought to gauge our readers' views on whether Bill Shatner's toupee-wearing was primarily for the actor's own self-image or for the image he wishes to convey to us, the general public (of someone who has hair).

44% said that the key thing was for Bill Shatner to see hair on his own head when he looks in the mirror (to feel young and vital). 55% said that the most important thing for Bill Shatner was for the public to see hair on his head (to see an actor with a full head of hair). A question arises: If there were no public - for example, if the actor was stuck on a desert island with a box of toupees - would Bill Shatner still bother?

Thanks for voting!

The WSSTS General Assembly building. Notice the "bald dome" ceiling design; though not visible in this image, the dome is covered from above by a giant replica toupee.

Now, during this week, the various department heads and key specialists at the William Shatner School of Toupological Studies went into an extraordinary session in the WSSTS General Assembly building (pictured above). Several days of fierce debate followed and yielded some fascinating observations. Why?

One of our toupologists flagged a clip of Bill Shatner's 1994 guest appearance in the short-lived sci-fi series seaQuest DSV. The episode in question is called "Hide and Seek" and a clip was recently uploaded to YouTube by user and devoted Bill Shatner clip collector "Zainin6662".

Let's first take a break with this brief and amusing snippet from the episode:

"Hello..."

According to Wikipedia's summary, in "Hide and Seek" Bill Shatner plays "...ousted dictator and escaped UEO prisoner Milos Tezlov, who wants ... dolphins to train for militaristic purposes. However, when [Stephanie Beacham's character] notices Tezlov's autistic son Caesar taking an extreme liking to dolphins, she forges a deal for her release, granting Tezlov passage aboard the seaQuest."

Not really worth dwelling too much on a plot in which an ousted dictator goes by the name of Milos Tezlov!

seaQuest DSV was one of a spate of mid-90s sci-fi shows that came in the wake of the popularity of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Most suffered from terminal blandness, endless meddling by network and studio "suits" and were largely forgotten soon after they were cancelled. Some, like Sliders, lasted five seasons; others, like the insufferably awful seaQuest, three...

But let's turn to the clip that caused such excitement at the WSSTS:

Bill Shatner has three daughters (Leslie, Lisabeth and Melanie) by his first wife Gloria. And although they were all born bald...


...because they were female, they all soon grew thick and resplendent heads of hair. Thus, the actor never had to face the potential pain of seeing his baldness gene affecting a male heir.


But in this episode of seaQuest, Bill Shatner evidently managed to move past the risible dialogue and (perhaps in an effort to save the episode) channel some profound personal emotions related to the above.

"My son," says the actor sounding like Marlon Brando's Jor-El. "What if?" Bill Shatner appears to be thinking, pouring himself into this otherwise flat character. "What if I had a son?" Let's examine the first part of the on-screen moment again and then look at the rest in slow-motion:

"My son. My heir. My heir and my curse," the character says. But the first "heir" sounds more like "hair". "My son. My hair," Bill Shatner appears to reflect wistfully. The meaning is clear. There is both a blessing and a curse here. The latter is the baldness gene; will his son suffer as he did? The character slowly sighs, the pain welling up inside his soul into a powerful on-screen crescendo that reflects both despair but also hope. "My curse..." Bill Shatner will bequeath his son not only the curse of baldness, but also the potential power of the toupee. It's a complex and potentially volatile mix.

"You will carry me inside you, all the days of your life. You will make my strength your own, and see my life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father, and the father the son."

As Bill Shatner delivers these incredibly emotional, personal and heartfelt words, his hand moves gently to his fictional son's hair (brown and curly, much like the actor's own hair would have been at that age).


He strokes it lovingly, but then pulls at it. Perhaps to see if it is still strong. Or are there already terrifying signs that it is growing weak and thin? Or perhaps it is also a moment of jealousy. "Dammit, I wish I still had this! Does it come off? Can I have it?" The sheer volume of subtext that can be inferred here is truly overwhelming.


What emerges is one of the most complex, multi-layered and profoundly moving performances ever committed to the screen in the history of both cinema and television. Bill Shatner managed to mine aspects of himself, delving deep into the darker parts of his psyche to create an electric moment of television that may well be studied for decades, if not centuries. It's a shame that Bill Shatner himself speaks not of the toupee, for his thoughts on how he, as an actor, prepared himself for this gruelingly personal scene would be as priceless as hearing from Shakespeare how he wrote Hamlet. But that is not to be...

And that is why the WSSTS convened a Special Session. There was so much to discuss about this moment and so many at the School who felt that it so perfectly encapsulated the essence of what makes toupology such a stimulating and rewarding field of study! And we didn't even get to the mustache!