Tag: 1957

The Kaiser Aluminum Hour – “The Deadly Silence” (05/21/1957)

Shatner plays a father’s second-favorite son 🙁

A few months after first appearing on Studio One’s “The Defender”, a program originally created and produced by Worthington Minor, Shatner returned to the show Minor was currently executive producing, The Kaiser Aluminum Hour, for the third and final time.

The Kaiser Aluminum Hour was only on TV for one season and 25 episodes so that means Shatner appeared in 12% of the episodes. Too bad it didn’t run longer I guess, maybe he could have somehow beefed up that ratio! Although I was not able to view his prior two appearances, for this one I was able to see it a few years back at the Paley Center in Los Angeles, which now appears to be closed. Good thing I watched when I did! I also found a few pics, but obviously not much visual evidence exists.

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Westinghouse Studio One – “The Defender: Part 2” (03/04/1957)

Time for some good old courtroom trickery!

Hello, ShatnerWeb readers! I’m back! I was stuck in outer space for the last few years, and lost track of all time. Hopefully I’ll be able to make sure I continue to bring you Shatner reviews (still in chronological order) at a relatively steady pace. What that pace might be, I have no idea…but hopefully it’s steady.

This post will be a review of Studio One’s The Defender: Part 2. Part 1 was only partially complete when published a few years back, so I hope that you go back and fully inbreathiate the finished product before moving on to Part 2 below. Come on, you know you want to. It’s like getting 2 for the price of 1!

Thanks for being patient and, as always, for reading!

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Westinghouse Studio One – “The Defender: Part 1” (02/25/1957)

Shatner appears with “The King of Cool”

Just a few short weeks after being on the well-regarded Kraft Television Theatre playing a doctor for the first time, Shatner appeared on the much more prestigious Westinghouse Studio One as a lawyer…again for the very first time in his career. Studio One started out in 1947 as a radio program, but after one year moved to CBS television where it aired under a variety of names from 1948-1958. Much like Kraft Television Theatre, over the years Studio One gained a fantastic reputation for mounting high-quality dramatic programs featuring some of the best writers, directors and actors working in live television. These included directors like John Frankenheimer, Sidney Lumet and Daniel Petrie, writers like Rod Serling, Reginald Rose and Gore Vidal, and yet another who’s who of great actors including Charlton Heston, Jack Klugman, Warren Beatty, Grace Kelly and James Dean.

Several of the productions even made the leap to the big screen, probably the most notable being “Twelve Angry Men.” That teleplay was first broadcast on Studio One in 1954, winning a number of Emmys before becoming the motion picture 12 Angry Men in 1957 and being nominated for three Oscars, including Best Picture. The writer of Twelve Angry Men was Reginald Rose who returned to Studio One and to the courtroom setting with “The Defender,” featuring William Shatner performing with veteran actor Ralph Bellamy and future great (and King of Cool) Steve McQueen.

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Kraft Television Theatre – “The Discoverers” (02/06/1957)

Shatner plays a doctor for the very first (but not the very last) time!

From 1947-1958, the anthology program Kraft Television Theatre aired more than 650 original or adapted comedies and dramas. According to Wikipedia, the show “was broadcast live from Studio 8-H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, currently the home of Saturday Night Live.” The actors, directors and writers whose work was featured reads like a veritable who’s who of Golden Age television, and included folks like Paul Newman, Rod Steiger, George C. Scott, James Dean, Joanne Woodward, Sidney Lumet and Rod Serling. In fact, Serling’s “Patterns” was first broadcast on Kraft Television Theatre and remains not only the script that brought Serling stardom but also one of the best-remembered episodes of the show’s illustrious 11-year run.

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Omnibus – “Oedipus, the King” (01/06/1957)

Well, this is a bit confusing.

On Sunday, January 6th 1957, the Tyrone Guthrie directed motion picture version of Oedipus Rex (starring Douglas Campbell and featuring William Shatner) debuted in Canada (one night before it would make it’s NYC debut.) On that very same night, the ABC anthology television show Omnibus aired a live version of the play, evidently billed as “Oedipus, the King” and also evidently starring Christopher Plummer as the titular character. The play also still (naturally) featured William Shatner.

As with many productions during this “hazy” period of Shatnerica, I was a bit confused by this for quite a long time.

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Oedipus Rex (01/06/1957)

Shatner’s second motion picture is…underwhelming.

In 1950, when Shatner was most likely a junior at McGill University in Montreal, he appeared in his very first motion picture The Butler’s Night Off. In that film, he played one of the “crooks,” a very small role with only a few lines. Seven years later he would appear in his second motion picture, this time a filmed version of the classic Sophocles play Oedipus Rex. Once again however, and actually even more so than The Butler’s Night Off, this was the very opposite of a starring or featured role.

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