The newest member of the family.

Bill Shatner's three daughters look on as their mother attends to their dad's toupee.

In Bill Shatner's subsequent three marriages, one key principle had to be understood by his wives: "My three daughters and my toupee are an inseparable part of the package."


However, the actor's first marriage was different in that respect, as wife Gloria Rand and the couple's three daughters were all there to witness the arrival of a newest family member. Imagine the tension and the anticipation as Gloria, Melanie, Lisabeth and Leslie Carol (a newborn baby at the time) waited anxiously outside the toupee-fitting center. Finally, the toupee-fitter let the four in, with a smiling, proud and somewhat sweaty Bill Shatner inside wearing his very first toupee: "The newest member of our family!" he says, proudly "It's a boy!".


At this point, it seems like the right time to tell you a little about the Red-billed Oxpecker. These African birds form a symbiotic relationship with several mammals upon which they happily spend their lives perching: they comb through their fur eating their ticks, which the mammals are perfectly happy to have eaten from them.


Does the picture at the top of this page show a similar relationship? Did Gloria take it upon herself, in a maternal role, to take care of Bill Shatner's toupee at all times, making sure that it remained presentable to the general public? Perhaps this is why after the pair divorced in 1969, Bill Shatner almost immediately stopped using his "Jim Kirk lace". It seems that the first toupee and the first wife were inexorably linked...


Our thanks to regular reader Margaret for sending us the image, sourced, she tells us, via the folks at More Shat, Less Shame.