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trektism · 5 months

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my girlfriend bought me this book a bit ago i havent read it yet tho because im in the middle of finishing invisible women and murderbot book 7,, but all the talk about it as of late makes me want to pick it up immediately

"Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man" - A brief dive into Shatner's love for Leonard (Shatnoy confirmed?)

Wow I'm back again so soon and while I was meant to be writing the angst post for ST:ID, I was side-tracked by a book. A book you say? Well I was gifted the book "Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man" and after a few tweets on twitter, people were suddenly dming me asking me to make a tumblr post about the book.

NOTE: You can read a sample (34 pages) for free on google books here

For fun I am also going to give this book a rating of 4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Generally I read these kind of books because it's fun to learn something new about the cast or some fun insight into the behind the scenes of star trek. I'm searching for the crumbs. This book surprisingly does go into some new unexplored terriority for me, which is shatner's praise and love for Leonard on almost every page.

But it is written by Shatner, you've got to keep this in mind. It's almost as if he just recounted all these memories onto a tape recorder and then wrote them out word for word, without sorting them at all (and this is a method he talks about using frequently in the book so I wouldn't be surprised) So that means he will repeat things A LOT. For example he recounts his wife's death in two different chapters and also the fact that leonard directed "Three men and baby" is mentioned no-less than 3 times.

There's some small tidbits of insight into leonard's personal life but not necessarily anything that I hadn't heard before. I think the only thing new to me was that Leonard had an apparent love for häagen-dazs coffee ice cream.

It's still unclear to me if Shatner is some kind of narcissist or is just ND in some kind of way. Often he will bring up Leonard's anger/disappointment towards him and he will just write:

"I don't remember it being that way" "If I had known I would have apologized" "I was joking, but he took it seriously"

Which kinda just sums up Shatner.

Now to start getting into things we'll start with the first interesting pages to me in the book:

"Earlier in this film, we were looking at a framed photograph of us in our star trek costumes on the cover of TV Guide. "This is us," He'd (Leonard) mused. "Siamese twins" p2. I agreed, "Yes, you and I. Joined at the hip." A few seconds later, I added, "You and I have spent more than half our lives together. I think of you as one of my dearest friends, my dearest. And I truly love, I love you." p2.

I mean why not start this post with just a straight up love confession from Shatner to Leonard?

"Leonard wasn't a man given to public displays of emotion. Much like his character Spock, he was very reserved. "The same," was the best response he could muster at that moment. But at the very end of the documentary, as we stood next to each other looking into the camera, he suddenly and quite unexpectedly threw this arm around my shoulders and blurted, "You're my best friend" p3.

Another thing is, Shatner is repeatedly brings up the fact that he's never had any kind of friend in his life, apart from Leonard, throughout the entire book.

"Honestly, until Leonard and I developed our relationship, with the exception of my wives, I never had a real friend; I didn't even know what a friend was. I had never had anyone in my life to whom I could completely emotionally unburden myself." p3.

"There certainly have been some wonderful people I have been close to, people I know I could rely on, but as far as speaking openly and revealing that which is most troublesome and most secretive, secure in the knowledge it will remain as bured in their breasts as it is in my mine, there was only Leonard." p4.

So what he is saying is... He never trusted any of his wives with any of his emotional burdens or secrets. Only Leonard. He could only trust Leonard.

It's also interesting that Shatner kinda states that he basically only got married because that's what you were "supposed to do" in the 1950's.

"This acting business brings together a lot of good-looking young people, and many of them pair off. We were married in four months after we'd met. In the 1950's, people were married for better and for worse and for life. Or so we believed. The general belief in the acting community was that two people could starve as easily as one. So when Leonard and I met, we both had been married for more than a decade." p33.

In another part of the book he brings up a trip he took with two pairs of brothers, how jealous he was of their relationship and closeness. How he was extremely sick on the trip but had no one to take care of him and oh, how he longed for a relationship like that with Leonard.

"It was a difficult trip through some extraordinary heat; I fainted twice. Among the riders were two sets of brothers." p80. "About halfway through the trip, Carl had to leave to fulfill other commitments. As he left, they hugged each other and wept. Grown men in their fifties weeping at losing the chance to spend more time together. I was struck by their love for each other." p80 "They love each other, and they are each other's best friend. That is something that is very rare, very enviable, and, to me, something that must be cherished when achieved. And for a time, I had that with Leonard, and I lost it." p81.

He even makes a reference to how Kirk needs Spock beside him.

"Spock was tremendously loyal and had a great appreciation for the talent and leadership of Kirk. He was totally devoted to seeing to it that whatever Kirk needed to be done got done" "Conversely, Kirk relied on Spock unfailingly for his advice, knowing it would never be encumbered by any thoughts of personal gain or tempered by emotional constaints. But he also depended on him to share the burden of command. With the exception of De Kelley's Mccoy, Kirk had to maintain the distance of command from the rest of the crew. That can be a lonely place if there is no outlet, and Spock provided that outlet for Kirk." p81.

Other honourable mentions

He picked out this picture of him and Leonard, out of ALL their photos together. This is the one he chose to put into the book. p136.

"I can close my eyes and see him, young and handsome, tall and taciturn. He's there in my mind; his light step, his sardonic humor, his passion for his work. I hear his voice in all its richness, infused with an endless curiosity, and the sounds of his unhappiness as well as his laughter." p273.

"I actually helped write Spock's death scene. We were in Harve Bennett's office, and he was outlining his vision of the scene. I suggested that it would be cinematic to have us separated by the plate-glass door, while our hands were seemingly touching each other. p157.

What if we hold hands, but through glass so it's not gay. Right guys? Right....?

An account from Richard Arnold (star trek research consultant): "They loved each other so much," he said. "It was so obvious when we'd see them onstage; they didn't quite hold hands, but about as close as you can get to that, arms around shoulders.

This is kinda random but I feel it deserves a mention: Shatner writing about how he had a brush with death while driving his car. He talks about how in that moment he realized that if he died then and there, that no one would care and this weighed heavily on him. (This was before he met Leonard)

"I realized something about myself at that moment: If my car went into the river, I would have left no tracks on this earth. Beyond my family, there was no one who truly cared about me." "There was no one who would miss me if I disappeared beneath the river. That left me with a terribly empty feeling." p24.

He's basically been seeking this kind of close friendship/relationship his entire life and Leonard is the only one who has ever come close to it.

Shatner being an 'asshole' to Leonard

Something that stuck out to me is this part in the book where Shatner recalls his fathers death. It was in the middle of filming the episode "The devil in the dark" and as such, he had to return to filming after his father's funeral.

"In that scene, Kirk has to react to Spock's pain. I returned to the set several days later, after burying my father." "I'd looked at the footage of Spock mind melding with the Horta, and Leonard graciously offered to work with me. "Show me what you did," I said" "I asked him to show me exactly what he did. Leonard got down on his hands and knees, closed his eyes, and reenacted the scene to give me something to react to. He didn't simply rush through it, he felt the emotion. He screamed out from the depths of his soul, "Pain... Pain.. Pain..!" "Rather than respecting his commitment to the work, I went for the cheap joke. I called out, "can somebody get this guy an aspirin?" I waited for a laugh that never came. Leonard was furious, absolutely furious. I could see the anger in his face. He thought I'd set him up for ridicule, then betrayed him for the amusement of everyone else on the set. Leonard stalked angrily off the set. He confronted me later, telling me he wanted nothing to do with me, that he thought I was a real son of a bitch. My apology seemed hollow. He didn't say a word to me that wasn't in the script for at least a week." p96.

Then there is the time Shatner refused to let Leonard have photo taken in the dressing room:

"In my memory, I asked politely. There may be another side to that story. When I found out, I called the producers to complain. Soon, someone came down and asked the photographer to leave." "Leonard decided he wasn't going to continue being made up until the photographer returned. When that didn't happen, he got up and confronted me in my trailer. "Did you order the photographer out?" he asked. "order" seemed like a harsh word, but not an inaccurate one. "I did," I admitted. "I didn't want him there." p102. "Years later, Leonard remembered this conversation very clearly. He told me, "It was approved by Roddenberry. It was approved by the head of the studio, It was approved by publicity" To which he remembers me responding "Well, it wasn't approved by me." "George takei described Leonard's demeanor as "Cold Rage." p103.

and of course, I feel like it's relatively well-known that Shatner repeatedly stole Leonard's bike and even had this car towed at one point. I doubt that's even scratching the surface of 'pranks' or acts of jealously that Shatner enacted onto Leonard, but for the sake of this post, I'm just limiting it to what is written in this book.

Does he act this way because he truly is an asshole or just weirdly trying to gain the relationship he so desperately craves from Leonard? He knows that friends can joke around, play pranks and have fights. He really wants someone that can forgive him, that loves him no matter what he does. It's like he's acting out how he "thinks" a friendship should be.

Now you may ask why bring up these moments? Well that will lead into my next segment where we discuss Leonard's final relationship with Shatner.

Leonards final days

It's a well-known fact that Leonard stopped talking with Shatner in his final days. Shatner has always claimed that he has no idea why and is heartbroken about the fact. Though in this book he does refer to an 'incident'

"There was a small incident; I was making a film about the many captains of the Enterprise, and Leonard did not want to appear in it. I thought he was kidding; it was such a small thing. But then a cameraman filmed him speaking at a convention without his permission, and he got angry. Essentially he stopped speaking to me. It made no sense, and I reached out to him several times to try to heal this problem, but I never got a response." p268. "It was very painful to me. As I'd never had a friend like Leonard before, I'd obviously never been in a situation like this, and I had no idea what to do about it." "I kept asking people "What happened?" But no one could give me an answer. It remains a mystery to me, and it is heartbreaking, heartbreaking. It is something i will wonder about, and regret, forever. p269.

It's hard to say why Leonard stopped talking to Shatner. Was this the final straw the broke the camels back? Is there something that happened between them that Shatner refuses to talk about? Or maybe he just didn't want to face him before his death.

Shatner's final letter to Leonard:

"My dearest Leonard, I love you like a brother. Maybe when I first met you, in the beginning of our deep friendship, you might have irked me here or there. At least that's what I have been told, but I don't remember any irks, I just remember laughter. I remember being in limousines with you, bending over with laughs, I remember the deep talks we had about your family and friends and life in general. The stories you told about your grandfather and your father. The mind-melds and the interviews. I have deep love for you Leonard - for your character, your mortality, your sense of justice, your artistic bent whether it's painting pictures or as an actor. It is with great gratitude to have known you all these many years. You're the friend that I have known the longest and the deepest. I have missed you terribly and have longed for those dinners we used to have. I told you fifty years ago to give up smoking but no, you wouldn't listen. Now my advice is to relax, be happy. You're a wonderful man and I, along with so many other people, think so highly of you. Good luck my friend. Love, Bill." p270, p271.

guys I have to admit, I'm starting to feel insane writing this. Like?? Shatner freely wrote all of this into a book.

I do find it kinda weird that he basically put a "I told you so" in this final letter to Leonard. Supposedly Leonard had been angry that no one had told him to stop smoking, so maybe Shatner was truly grasping at straws as to why Leonard wasn't speaking to him.

"I think about Leonard. I miss him. Even when we weren't in close touch, he was always in my life." p272.

Shatner ends the book with:

"LLAP, my friend, my dear, dear friend." p275.

Conclusion(???):

I have to say this entire thing has really opened my eyes towards the possibility that Shatner was in-fact in love with Leonard. This entire book feels like one gigantic love confession, which it is.

I made this post because, well, I can't be the only one sat here going crazy about some of things he said in this book, I merely condensed them into a singular post. This post doesn't even cover spirk or other moments/events that happened in their lives, it's mostly just for fun :)

All I can say is; only Shatner knows the truth and he'll definitely be taking it to the grave.

To end this post, since this book is in memory of Leonard nimoy, I will simply say: Live long and prosper and maybe once in a while when you are thinking of Spock, think of Leonard for a moment too🖖

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