I have a massive collection of 35mm Film Clips from Star Trek TOS which I am trying to preserve and catalog before they degrade over time. I was perusing the recently scanned film clips and I saw something unusual, something unexpected and potentially hilarious. I saw something unusual behind Kirks head in this clip. At first I thought it was a blurred image from movement. This sometimes happens, but I didn't think so.
I zoomed in even more and it really looked like Kirk had long hair! Now, of course, he doesn't have long hair, but it is well known that William Shatner wore a toupe. Could this be the toupe flying back? That is an awful lot of hair. And is that a bald cap?
I made some inquiries, and found that William Shatner did not wear a toupe, he actually wore two smaller hair pieces. This hairpiece looks more like a wig. So, I am going to make a proposition that this is NOT William Shatner in this image, but a stunt double wearing a wig to make him resemble Captain Kirk. The wig came off during the fight and this image was captured in all it's glory.
As I was going through more film clips, I found this one where, I swear, it looks like looks like Kloog is thoughtfully helping put the hairpiece back into place. I honestly don't see how the other actor's aren't cracking up.
This is what I love about searching through these film clips. Finding these moments that didn't appear on screen or have possibly never even been seen by the public. These are precious peices of history
I have created this project to preserve these precious pieces of history. If you want to help with this project, I have some of the original 35mm film clips for sale on ebay at:
The proceeds from the sale of the film clips support this preservation project. We need to scan, process, evaluate and annotate thousands of film clips. We are creating an online searchable database that is available to the public so we can uncover treasures such as the film clips shown here.
You can also contact me at drbeth_david@yahoo.com.
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