He Failed as a Theater Manager and Was Kept On as an Actor

The box office money was missing, and so were the tickets. William Shatner, then a young business graduate working as an assistant manager at a professional theater in Ottawa, could not keep track of either.

He had asked to join the acting company after summer theater work in Montreal. The manager who was moving to Ottawa told him the acting jobs were filled, but he needed an assistant manager, and Shatner had just earned a degree in business.

He recalled the pay as about $33, so little that he joked he had to skip eating if he wanted to do laundry. That paperwork failure led to his move into the professional company, because the theater kept him on as an actor instead.

Shatner was an unlikely business student. He said he failed nearly everything and barely passed, but he had spent three years writing and directing college musicals, working in radio, and acting professionally while in school.

As assistant manager, he was just as careless. He lost tickets and could not find cash, the lifeblood of a theater. When managers asked where the $50 had gone, he had no good answer.

Then the theater managers made him an offer, with Shatner recalling them saying, "it's not working out but would you like to be a member of the acting company" because he was a good actor. He said yes.

Shatner described it as one of "one or two professional acting companies in Canada." The pace was punishing, with a new play every week, opening on a Monday or Tuesday and running through Saturday night.

Sundays were for tearing down one set or refurbishing it for the next play, which opened Tuesday evening. Shatner did that for three or four years.

That training led to an invitation to the new classical company in Stratford, Ontario, where leading directors from England had come to manage and direct. He stayed three years playing Shakespeare.

Stratford later took a play to New York, and Shatner had a good part. Agents noticed him, he signed with an agent, and he began his career in the United States, as Shatner put it, "as a result of stumbling around."