Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Shatner's two toupees...



There have been suggestions (we'll try to de-weasel that with some evidence) that William Shatner actually wore two toupees. The first was a large hairpiece that covered his balding crown. The second was a smaller piece at the front of his head, designed to thicken his hair up just a little. In some episodes of Star Trek, it appears that Shatner went without the frontal piece, or wore a lighter one than usual. This appears to be the case in the episode "The Tholian Web" for the scenes in which Shatner's face is partially obscured by a space helmet as well as in the episode "The Enterprise Incident" while Shatner is in Romulan makeup. Another example appears to be the central aging stage in the episode "The Deadly Years".

2 comments:

  1. I'm not sure about the two-hairpiece theory (it does have some merit). But I'm thinking in this episode (The Deadly Years) the front part of his toupee is just brushed back.

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  2. He's definitely wearing a frontal lace-toupe in the Deadly Years. It's easy to spot the characteristic glistening lace line (it even shows up in the above-posted image). This seems to be an independent toupe in its own right, though, as it seems to cover less actual horizontal real estate than his trademark Kirk-hero-swoosh-toupe. I'm not sure that the same effect could be accomplished simply by brushing the Kirk-hero toupe back--assuming it would even stand for it.

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