Early in my career I had the opportunity to work as studio camera operator on a public television series, and for one episode William Shatner was the guest star.
After I leaving commercial radio in the middle 1970s, I'd managed to transition to television production. My first gig was on the studio camera crew for a regional PBS education television operation called the Nebraska ETV Network, housed in a massive and state-of-the art production facility on the east campus of the University of Nebraska.
As a regional feeder hub for national public television, NETV contributed original programming to the Corporation for Public Television and its distribution arm PBS. A couple years after starting work there, I found myself one of the studio camera operators for a spoken-word poetry series, eventually known as “Anyone for Tennyson?”
Produced by a New York company called Great Amwell, the executive producers were William Perry and Jane Iredale. These two forged an agreement with NETV brass Jack McBride and Ron Hull and soon our four production studios and post-production facilities became a factory producing three seasons... sixty half-hour, prime time PBS episodes ... covering the works of over three hundred poets.
The production was multi-camera-studio, using three, sometimes four large studio cameras rolled about on wheeled dollies with signals fed into a main control room where the show was switched using a large console with a sea of buttons and fader handles. Some of these “Tennyson” episodes were shot live-to-tape in front of a studio audience following a couple days of rehearsal. For other episodes we taped closed-set in smaller chunks, over two or three days, and later edited segments into their finished half-hour format. Decades later I'd transition into a career as Director of Photography for films and commercials, which was more of the traditional narrative, single-camera "Hollywood type” of production.
Television studio cameras at the time weighed about two-hundred pounds, had small black-and-white video screens on the backside used as viewfinders and came with headsets so the director, housed next door in a control room, could call out shots while watching monitors and giving instructions over intercom without actors... or studio audience... hearing the command chatter. The cameras themselves were always called out by number... one, two, three, sometimes four... from left to right. One and Three served as “wing” cameras with the middle camera, always Camera Two, dedicated to covering your guest star.
Putting poetry on television can be a tricky thing. A poem is born on the written page, yet it flourishes when read aloud, but only if that performer should be skilled enough. Otherwise it's more painful than a kindergarten dance recital. Recordings of such mundane verbal expression go back to the earliest wax cylinder recordings of Thomas Edison and his plodding recitation of “Mary Had A Little Lamb.” Shakespeare's plays also begin as script on a page, but simply putting a camera in front of stage performers can be a bit of a crap shoot. Without adaptation, using a visual medium to express a written one can result in truly poor television.
To address all this the executive producers decided to cast a dedicated quartet of experienced stage actors for this series. Cynthia Herman, Jill Tanner and George Backman auditioned successfully, with Paul Hecht rounding out the quartet for season one. But for season two, his role was played by Norman Snow. Come season three, the fourth member was one Victor Bevine.
Producers also hedged their bets on this poetry series by adding guest stars in every third or fourth episode. Eventually we saw Cyril Ritchard, Claire Bloom, Richard Kiley, Ruby Dee, Will Geer, Henry Fonda, Valerie Harper, Vincent Price, and during season two, Darrin McGavin, Fred Gwynne, and Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner. The program theme for Shatner's appearance was “A Poetic Portrait Gallery.”
For this episode I was assigned as operator for Camera Two, the middle camera which would primarily cover our guest star. This was 1977 and I'd been at the studio three years. Yes, I'd been a fan of the original series “Star Trek” when it first aired from 1966 until 1969. NBC then cancelled the show after it's third season, a year before my high school graduation. Now, only eight years later, here I was on the day when William Shatner himself walked into our cavernous Studio One.
The director and Shatner spoke quietly during their look-see, Marshall explaining and Shatner nodding. Of course the crew took notice, our quick glances sizing up our guest for the week. Marshall Jamison was a towering man, perhaps six-three or six-four, a veteran of both Broadway and the Golden Age of live network television, having directed "U.S. Steel Hour" and "That Was The Week That Was". Beside him, Shatner seemed diminutive, smaller in person than a die-hard Trekker might expect. I immediately considered Quartet member George Backman, quite lanky and tall. Such height discrepancies were bound to create interesting staging and blocking challenges for Jamison (one trick he would use that week was to keep Backman seated whenever sharing a scene with Shatner).
There is an unspoken etiquette that one learns on a studio set, namely that name actors and stars are to be respected. They aren't there because they're looking to make friends... there because it is a job, one for which they've gained some mastery of the skill sets. As with many occupations, a level of attention and concentration is required when you work, lest you screw things up. The better actors can make it look all so easy and natural, but do not mistake easy for easy-going or accessible. Although our director and the executive producers were invited to call him “Bill,” for myself I was only comfortable addressing him as “Mr. Shatner” and then only when necessary. Forty years later, as I'm writing this, I will reference him by last name for literary convenience.
Appearing on “Anyone For Tennyson?” was perhaps not the shiniest career point for Shatner. Coming eight years after the “Star Trek” cancellation, but a full five years before his ABC series “T. J. Hooker” in 1982, his defining role as Captain Kirk now seemed to haunt the man, always following behind him like some shadowy pup, no matter what career turn he took or what audition he entered. Our first day, when one of the studio engineers within earshot happened to let the phrase “beam me up” slip out, a noticeable chill flashed through the set. The studio crew quickly picked up that any mention of the expression “Captain James T.” would be off limits. Shatner himself would later refer to these years as “that period” when role offers were few and he'd been attending sci-fi and Trek fan conventions, along with roles in "Big Bad Mama", "Kingdom of the Spiders" and "Horror at 37,000 Feet". Not to mention occasional celebrity spots on daytime TV game show "$10,000 Pyramid". Things would however start looking up; just two years after this Tennyson gig Shatner returned to his original role for Paramount's big screen reboot "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", released in 1979.
The centerpiece of this particular “Anyone For Tennyson?” episode was selections from the 1915 “Spoon River Anthology” by Edgar Lee Masters. It's a collection of free verse short poems comprising fictional epitaphs of departed town residents as imagined by Masters. Each of the cast would have turns at the more famous short verses, staged with a few simple set elements for mood... a gnarled tree branch here, or a stylized tombstone there. Lighting cues helped establish some visual tone for each.
It may not be widely known, but when first starting out, Shatner had been a member of the Canadian National Repertory Theatre in Ottawa where he trained as a classical Shakespearean actor. The words of Shakespeare and performance of poetry are both about cadence, beat, and timing. Although teleprompters grace every camera, they're only a crutch just showing the words of the script. Nothing about pacing, pausing, phrasing. One simply can't mark-up the teleprompter script to show those nuances. It takes preparation and practice. Shatner arrived on our set prepared.
From what I remember, recording stopped more often for technical gaffes and sound problems than for any performance issues. With only three members of the Quartet working on this episode, not four... it was almost as if Mr. Shatner's presence was the only additional factor needed to fully round out this ensemble. Cast members Cynthia, Jill and George seemed just a bit more “on” working with an important guest star. Same could be said for the studio camera crew, too.
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During rehearsal for his “Deacon Taylor” recitation, concerning a prominent church member secretly fighting alcoholism, I'd framed a low angle up on Shatner as The Deacon. In the biz we call this a “power angle” and it seemed to help define the perspective of a congregation member looking up to Deacon Taylor in a pulpit. At one point there was a line in the shooting script where this character reaches out to grab a wine bottle placed prominently in the frame, a hand prop difficult to see from a higher camera angle.
The control room signed off on my composition and we began prepping for a run through for lines. In my viewfinder I saw Shatner frowning just a bit, holding his pose, staring right through my lens directly to me. Slowly, subtly, he motioned with his hand, a gentle little “up up up” lift with his palm. Something's off. I step out from behind my camera:
“Something?” I ask.
“Up,” he motions, as if to say “bring the lens up.”
Strange, I think to myself. But I comply, unlock the pedestal column and bring it up a couple inches but Shatner quickly waives off my attempt at correction.
“Not enough, higher” he gestures.
I try another lift but my once dramatic power angle is diluted to the point of ineffectiveness and my efforts at supporting the context of the frame disintegrate like an Enterprise crew member caught in some faulty transporter beam. Quietly, I step forward beside my lens and gently ask why this low angle is discomforting.
Shatner pauses. He looks me in the eye. Quick glance left and right, sees no one else watching. Then he raises his hand but this time with eyes locked to mine and his fingers up, he taps the underside of his own chin, a mime to silently suggest:
“This. Double chin.”
He pats the underside of his jaw again for emphasis. His message is:
“Help me out a bit here.”
Ah, vanity. And my lesson learned. Always make the star feel good, at least about himself. To be honest, with the strong dramatic studio lighting the whole staging was so shadowed that I hadn't seen the cause of his concern, unfounded or not, but it was a bother and distraction that he didn't need. I nodded in reply.
My solution was to pull back, moving the lens away and compensating for the wider frame by zooming tighter and using a longer focal length. The result was additional distance from the lens which seemed to appease Shatner because now the upward angle appeared less severe. The director, watching my camera feed in the control room, either didn't see or didn't mind the adjustment. We rehearsed once and shot the scene.
In that television studio, at that moment, I had a chance to help an actor's performance just a bit rather than be another hindrance upon it. And for Mr. Shatner, it was...
Face... the primal frontier.
