Encyclopedia Shatnerica toupee entry.

The Encyclopedia Shatnerica is an A-Z book featuring all things Shatner and has an entire entry marked "Toupee". Somewhat oddly, Bill Shatner mentions this book favorably in his autobiography Up Till Now despite its numerous references to the toupee issue. Perhaps he never read it. Anyway, here is the toupee entry:

"Speculation has long run rampant about the true nature of Shatner's impeccably coifed hair. While some deluded fans still maintain it is nothing but an expensive perm (and Shatner himself denies it is anything but 100 percent real), words like weave, plugs, and rug are more frequently used to account for the ever-changing shape and color of Shatner's mane over the decades.


"Because his personal wigs were too ratty-looking, Star Trek's producers had two custom hairpieces made for Shatner at the beginning of each television season in the late 1960s. That way, he could wear one while the other was being cleaned. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, the reserve hairpiece disappeared from the makeup department. A search was conducted, the usual inquiries were made, but the missing lid was never recovered. Suspicions began to turn toward Shatner himself, who, some allege, may have preferred the top-quality $200 workpiece wig to the substandard ones in his own collection."

See here for more on Shatner's "ratty" personal rug and the missing toupees. The entry continues:


"In the 1980s, Shatner opted for a fuller, wavier hairstyle that called even more attention to the issue. Reports had him spending as much as $2000 a month to maintain his weave. The curly monstrosity earned him recognition in a National Enquirer feature rating worst celebrity hairpieces. Togther with the tight bodice that Shatner wore to restrain his disdended belly, the topee is one of Shatner's few concessions to vanity. 'I don't like to see youth slipping away,' he admitted to Playboy in 1989. 'Seeing old photographs, buried in the attic someplace, that's one thing. But to see yourself walking around on a television screeen in one instant and then to compare that with your present-day form in the next is tough.'"


See here for more on where the author evidently sourced the "$2000 a month" rumor. The entry continues:

"In 1991, Shatner had to deal with more than just seeing his image reflected in old reruns, when placards featuring doctored photographs of him - along with five other bewigged celebrities - began appearing on walls and lampposts around lower Manhattan. The posters were part of a baldness outing campaign conducted by writer Ed Leibowitz and graphic designer Lorraine Heffernan, whose stated purpose was to 'wrest the toupees from the chrome domes of America's leading celebrities.' For the record, the other cueballs exposed in the campaign were Charles Bronson, Ted Danson, Larry Hagman, Joe Namath, and John Wayne.

"Why the public fascination with Shatner's hairpiece? The lure of the taboo, for one thing. Few have seen it - and fewer still lived to tell the tale. One of the few actors to speak openly about eyeballing Shatner's rug is Alan Tudyk, who costarred with him in 2004's Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. Asked by an interviewer for his impressions of Shatner's piece, Tudyk reported: 'It's beautiful...[W]e also had Chuck Norris on that movie - his is nowhere near as good as Shatner's.'

" 'I don't wear a hairpiece. That's the stupidest question I ever heard.'

-Shatner, to a radio DJ who asked about the toupee in 1994"

All we have found for the Leibowitz-Heffernan story is this article from Entertainment Weekly - some pictures of the posters would be a great find, while the sources for the Alan Tudyk story are also unknown - if anyone out there has more on either, please let us know.

Star Trek caricaturist takes on Shatner's toupee.

In the book Inside Star Trek: The Real Story by Robert Justman and Herb Solow, the authors mention a Star Trek sound technician by the name of Frank Oakden, who also turned out to also be a talented caricaturist of the cast and crew of the show. In the above example, Oakden pokes fun at the effect of a strong gust of wind on the good captain's hair.

Another early Shatner toupee press report.

For the People (1965)

Thanks to a reader, we previously managed to locate a press report from 1957 (see here) which openly notes that Shatner "had already ordered a toupee to camouflage a thinning spot in the cinnamon hair."

Well, now we have located another report, this time from the somewhat curious and very difficult to navigate (but also full of interesting material) Star Trek archive site Memory-prime.de. The June 1965 story (newspaper unknown) refers to Bill Shatner's role as an assistant district attorney in the short-lived, but well-received CBS series For the People, which largely sank because it aired at the same time as the popular NBC series Bonanza. The article makes a prominent mention of Shatner's lack of hair - it appears that at the beginning at least, the toupee was an open secret:

Should Bill Shatner have done followed in Ted Danson's footsteps?

As we have mentioned here before, many on-screen celebrity toupee wearers are actually somewhat or very open about their lack of hair off-screen. There is no mystery in seeing a bald Jack Klugman or John Travolta. Once it is done, we cease to care. For them, the toupee is merely a professional stage costume of sorts. Rather than being absolutes, the toupees are an interchangable component of these actors' lives.

Reports suggest that Travolta
has simply given up on the toups.

Only a rare few like Bill Shatner attempt to preserve the absolute illusion, never (well, almost) having been openly photographed sans toup.

In 1993, balding actor Ted Danson took a very brave step. In one of the final episodes of the sitcom Cheers, he not only took off his toupee, but character Sam Malone's too.

Now, perhaps seeing Captain Kirk doing such a thing would be a bit ridiculous. Surely people in the Star Trek future have disposed of such emotions as vanity to even be wearing a toupee in the first place. Kirk's hair is real, right? But should the off-screen Shatner have been more open about his baldness, while still getting into the toupee when necessary, as actors like Nicholas Cage do? It is probably too late for that now. Something tells us that we will never see Bill Shatner bald as long as he lives.

Shatner has often spoken and written about his genuine and very deep fear of growing old. Perhaps the hair helps maintain the illusion of youth. And why not? Shatner is an absolute model of vigor for a 78-year-old. To paraphrase one of the aliens from the original Star Trek pilot episode: "He has an illusion, and you have reality. May you find your way as pleasant."

Shatner baldness curiosity fuels army of Photoshoppers.

There appears to be a lot of speculation out there as to what Shats would look like without his touppe. Here are a few Photoshopped pictures we found on the internet. You think it suits him?




A website called The First Church of Shatnerology also has a gallery of speculative baldness. See here.