Shatner: Where No Man is a little-known 1979 authorized biography of Shats written by William Shatner, Sandra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath. The front cover of the book features perhaps the weirdest Bill Shatner picture we have ever seen. His right eye is in shadow making his left eye appear cross-eyed...and the hair. By the end of the 1970s, Shats had become quite meticulous about his weave, yet in this picture, the hair seems to have been little more than an afterthought. It almost looks like the photographer was about to take the picture before Bill realized he had forgotten to put on his toup. He then rushed out, quickly put it on his head and damn issues of alignment, symmetry and all the rest of it just yelled "Cheese!".
That is probably not what happened. Yet, with today's era of Photoshopped over-perfection, it's funny to look back at a time when such an obviously bad photo could ever make the front cover of a book, especially an authorized (part-auto) biography.UPDATE: A reader has suggested (correctly, we feel) that to add insult to injury, the image was also flipped. In which case, here is the corrected image, still by no means a great work of photographic art:
I think one reason the photo looks strange is because it's flipped.
ReplyDeleteBill is looking like Peter falk!!
ReplyDeleteGreat quote from Shatner that appears in this book about having a relationship with an audience.
ReplyDeletehttp://irreference.com/william-shatner-on-acting/
I don't think the image was flipped - see this picture:
ReplyDeletehttp://community.livejournal.com/startrek_tos/200450.html
It was flipped. You can also discern this by the side of the head on which the toup hair is parted.
ReplyDeleteHe lookes exactly like John Fogerty in this photo. 'Bad toupe rising'?
ReplyDeleteThe flipped image looks so strange. It doesn't even look like the same person. I didn't realize his face was so asymmetrical... More secrets of the universe uncovered by the William Shatner School of Toupological Studies.
ReplyDelete