New toup-less photo?

We've managed to find an unusual photo of Bill Shatner at the mysterious website memory-prime.de. The picture is from an article chronicling Shats' marriage difficulties relating to his first wife Gloria Rand. That would likely date it at late 1968- early 1969. The pair eventually divorced.

But what is with the picture? The first question is: did Bill have his own thin frontal swoosh that he grew long in order to cover up his otherwise very acutely receding hair? We've seen this effect before in two photographs from the book Captain Quirk: An Unauthorized Biography:

Yet it appears that Shats is wearing some kind of hairpiece in these pics, but could they merely be to cover a bald crown? Something that would create an effect similar to this?:


Such hairpieces would be far easier to wear, eliminating the need for the frontal lace being glued to the forehead.

And yet, other pictures appear to tell a somewhat different story of more uniform thinning:


Could Captain Kirk's famous frontal swoosh be nested upon a far thinner real swoosh? Were the two somehow integrated?

Despite appearances, the above picture is indeed of Shats with his usual frontal toupee glued in place.

So just what is going on?


In this case, we have so many questions and so few answers. But if we had to guess, we would say that the mysterious picture is either a toupee so worn out (or ruffled by rain?) that it is simply looks very bad or it is indeed a toup-less or semi-toup-less picture (meaning that the frontal hairline, if not the rest, is real). And would Bill, sensitive about appearances, really smile like this for a photo if he wasn't wearing a toupee? That is why we are inclined towards the first, badly ruffled toup theory.

Let us know your thoughts.