Alexshatner the Great!

As a lifelong Trekkie (The Original Series only, natch!), I had heard long ago of a fabled television pilot produced in 1963 (for the 1964 TV season) whose failure to be picked up as a series ensured that William Shatner was free to step into the burgeoning series Star Trek as the iconic Captain Kirk. Trek ultimately made it onto the air in the 1966-67 season for a three year run. All I'd ever really seen of that pilot in question was the occasional photo such as the one shown here at right. Until now...

Alexander the Great (1963) would have lured viewers into the weekly adventures of that li'l 23 year-old rascal Alexander, King of Macedonia, who was undefeated in battle as he conquered as much of the known world as he could.  

Our show begins with this rather graphic introduction, of Macedonian soldiers having been strung up by their ankles to die. 

Having been alerted to the carnage, a rider furiously strides into the area. 

It's 32 year-old Shatner, sporting golden locks, as the famed leader. 

As you can see, he's distressed by what he finds. 

A number of his men have clearly been tortured.

That horse is gorgeous. And Shatner is also fit and handsome.

At this stage, he'd found success on the Broadway stage (notably in The World of Suzie Wong) and had worked on many TV shows including The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. He'd also balanced leads in B-movies with supporting parts in major movies such as The Brothers Karamazov (1958) and Judgement in Nuremberg (1961.)

One of the men is not quite dead yet and Shatner holds him, offering him a drink of water. 

Before expiring, the depleted man is able to inform his leader of who did this. He also relays that Alexander's close ally Cleander was taken. 

Knowing that Alexander was reputedly at least bisexual, I thought Shatner was going to lean in and kiss the man. 

The editing here is also a tad "off" so for all I know, they filmed even closer contact between these two, although no such thing would have been aired in 1964.

Shatner's trusted (and one-eyed) aide, Kleitos, who discovered the scene is played by veteran character actor John Doucette. 

Doucette is unable to convince his leader not to tear off after the enemy, but Shatner will have none of it. He wants to rescue Cleander. 

A little-known fact is that Shatner was (and is) an excellent horseman in real life and he performs virtually all of his own riding in this and also clearly does multiple stunts without benefit of a double. (Though it's probable that some of the truly risky bits were done by a stuntman.) 

He does manage to regain custody of the tortured Cleander, whose been tied to a horse. 

You ought to recognize the actor playing this role, though he isn't seen to his best advantage in these shots. I'll make it clear for those who don't know in a moment. 

This actor was an up and comer, having guest-starred on countless TV westerns and won a brief role as a tormented homosexual in The Young Philadelphians (1959) as well as a role in 1962's Geronimo. Earlier in the year, he'd worked in Soldier in the Rain and Tammy and the Doctor (both 1963.)

It's Adam West! In a few short years he would become immortal as Batman and his alter-ego Bruce Wayne.  

Back at the base camp, the natives are becoming restless. Shatner has been missing and is presumed dead. There is discourse over how to proceed in the event that he doesn't return. 

Among them are Mr. Joseph Cotten as Antigonus. 

Prolific character actor Simon Oakland as Attalos. 

And dancer-turned-actor Robert Fortier as Aristander. Some of these roles are based on actual people, others are either made up or amalgams of historical figures. 

Interestingly, Fortier would later appear as a guest on Star Trek as one of a group of alien beings who've taken over the U.S.S. Enterprise, though his scenes were mostly with Spock, McCoy and, memorably, Scotty. 

Both Oakland and the aforementioned Doucette were everywhere on TV at this time. And both of them, as seen here, were guests on separate installments of my beloved The Big Valley. Oakland had a wife, Nancy Malone, who he suspected of being in love with Jarrod while Doucette had a mail-order bride, Anne Helm, who really was in love with Heath. Looking at it now, I'm nearly convinced that they were given the very same suit to wear!

As the men are in talks about how to proceed, this gladiator comes striding in. It's Karonos.

He circles the table, surveying the men, and then we find that he's played by...

John Cassavetes! Like the others, he'd been working on a ton of television, but in 1968 would land a choice role in Rosemary's Baby, followed in the 1970s by a series of insightful and experimental movies in which he directed and sometimes costarred. 

Cassavetes has brought with him a captive of the enemy. A burly beast of a man. 

It's interesting to watch the blend of actors and styles. Cotten was a disciple of Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock while Cassavetes was clearly of a new school of acting. 

Providing some of the villainy of the piece is this Persian leader Memnon.

Clearly some attention was paid in creating a certain look for the man, but to those of a certain TV generation, it's unmistakable who this is. 

It's very busy, often comedic, character actor Cliff Osmond! He's a surprising pick to play a fierce and threatening (if ravenous) soldier, though he's pretty effective. In yet connection, he would play one of The Siren's henchmen on Adam West's Batman. The Siren was, of course, Joan Collins, who would act in one of the best Star Trek eps with Shatner. 

When Shatner's horse arrives back at camp without him and with blood visible on the equipment, the men truly believe him to be dead. 

This is particularly upsetting to this gal. Though her name is Ada, she's sort of an amalgam of females. The real Ada of Caria was the adoptive mother of Alexander. This character is his lover, and contains elements of Sisygambis, another older woman who loved him and who died four days after him by refusing to eat! 

I mention this because directly after hearing of Alexander's "death," this woman attempts suicide. Cotten is able to prevent it. 

I could not figure out who in the world the actress was! I kept veering towards, then disavowing Virna Lisi or Signe Hasso. 

It turned out to be Israeli actress Ziva Rodann, a busy TV guest star and occasional movie performer in things like Forty Guns (1957), Last Train from Gun Hill (1959) and The Story of Ruth (1960) and Samar (1962.) She also popped up in Shatner's The Brothers Karamazov (1958) as a gypsy dancer. 

Her dark looks and exotic features meant she played all sorts of ethnic types from Native Americans to Egyptians. She's seen here with Shatner and also with Chuck Connors of The Rifleman and, interestingly, with West on Batman where she portrayed Nefertiti. 

Rodann exited the biz before 1970 and is still with us today at 93! (Editor's note: This photo was initially a very grainy and faded newspaper clipping that I cleaned up with the use of AI in order to get a better look at the details. Note the hairy legs in relation to the shaved chest.) 

Now that Shatner is gone 5 days and his horse has returned alone and bloodied, the council must select a new leader. 

Tauron, played by Peter Hansen, wants Cotten to take the role. 

If hansen is familiar to you, he spent decades as Lee Baldwin on General Hospital and also appeared on The Golden Girls as one of Dorothy's boyfriends who turns out to be a real lech and a creep. 

Cotten opts out, instead shifting leadership to Cassavetes. (This might be the most leg you'll ever see out of Oakland, who often played more buttoned-up roles on The Night Stalker and Baa Baa Black Sheep, among countless others.)

After, oh, about 23 seconds, Cassavetes has a power trip and decides to proceed with things 180-degrees differently than Shatner had intended. 

Fortunately, before things can get too out of hand, a team of riders bursts into the camp. 

It's Shatner, with West in tow. 

Everyone, well most everyone, is thrilled to have him back.

A by now filthy Shatner wonders what his men had been intending to do. 

Cassavetes (looking quite diminutive in his sandals against the others) confesses that he'd been put in charge and was about to enact plans of his own. 

But first things first! As a bath is prepared for him, he greets Rodann.

Then he talks strategy with Cotten while peeling out of those clothes. 

Shatner, always a yo-yo-er when it came to his weight, was in good shape at this stage.

Their conversation continues as Shatner enters his ornate bathtub.

It's about the steamiest dang bath in all creation. The wisps of steam, in fact, make it hard to even find Cotten at times! LOL

"Ouch!"

At one point during their discussion, I thought Shatner was going to pull Cotten into the tub with him. 

Cotten has other ideas, though, and dumps a bucket of scalding water into Shatner's face. He's careful, though, to avoid the "hair," lest Shat's toupe might go flying off onto the floor...! 

All's well in the end.

That evening, before a celebration to honor Shatner's return, someone frees the captive enemy soldier and "encourages" him to do Shatner in in exchange for his freedom.

The festivities are underway and Shatner finds Hansen and Doucette in a physical sparring match, though Hansen is at a disadvantage. So Shatner decides to take on Doucette himself. 

This results in Doucette winding up "ass over tit" in the air. And, yes, this really was the two actors performing the stunt. 

Doucette isn't just rolling over and taking it, however. 

He takes Shatner in hand...

...and threatens to break him in two. 

But it's all in the spirit of sport. The party continues. 

Needless to say, any reference to the real Alexander's proclivities were not going to be represented in this 1963 TV pilot. But, intentionally or not, there's an underlying homo-eroticism present, thanks to all the scantily-clad men and their endless physical contact. 

Look at the body language here! Maybe the creators wanted to distract some folks away from this by having Rodann in the background, preparing for a seductive dance. 

It's not a lengthy dance, but she writhes around in several contortions, managing to keep that huge wig on in the process.  

Shatner, looking very bronzed and handsome, still has to contend with Cassavetes' dissenting viewpoints about the military campaign. 

The rest of the men are split as to whose point of view they ascribe to. 

Shatner provides one of those visionary glances which would later become a staple of Captain Kirk...

...before giving us a taste of that famous emphatic delivery which has become legend. (A side story. I was once cast as Caiaphas (one of two times) in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar. The otherwise decent cast was plagued somewhat by a subpar Pontius Pilate. Twice during rehearsals, the director said to him, "A little less Shatner, please." Ha ha ha!!)

On the battlefield, Shatner becomes injured and is seen to by his ladyfriend Rodann. Some parts of the battle scenes are lifted from 1959's The Giants of Marathon, but not only was this a common practice for TV series of the day, but they are also interwoven rather well in most instances here. 

She's clearly hooked. 

Depending on how episodes fell in the seasons (Shat was usually slimmer in the early episodes of any given season), Trek fans are used to seeing this shaved torso. 

His stride as Alexander is also similar to the confident strut of Kirk.

One benefit that this pilot has is the location shooting, done in St. George, Utah. The real outdoor settings help put the story across.

This is an actual screenshot from the movie, not a pic stolen from the People of Wal-Mart website. 

As I say, Osmond, despite his comic background, does present a threatening visage in all of his gear. 

And he too finds himself atop a horse for the big finale. 

There were a few moments in which stuntmen were utilized, but more often than not, the actors were up in that terrain duking it out. The landscape and the use of the performers for many action sequences elevated the quality.  

It was fun for me to see members of the Disaster Movie Club, such as Cotten from Airport '77 (1977) appear. Naturally, Cotten, a favorite of many of his peers, did far more than that. He was about to head into the infamous Hush, Hush... Sweet Charlotte (1964) after this.

While it's not exactly a "disaster movie," Cassavetes' Two-Minute Warning (1976) has many of the hallmarks of one, including an all-star cast, a catastrophe at the climax and... Charlton Heston as the lead. 

West's role is actually very minor. He wrote this off as one of the worst TV pilots in history, though it really is not. Trouble is, by the time it popped up on television, he was famous and his billing was adjusted to second (!) when in fact he's hardly featured in it. 

This project had collected dust on a shelf from 1963 until 1968 when it was aired as an installment of a show called Off to See the Wizard, a program in which Oz characters presented family-oriented movies, often in two parts. It remains a curio for having two major TV icons of the 1960s on screen together. 

This program is free to view on YT in two renditions. This one, purportedly in HD, was too dark for my taste and had a watermark in the corner of the screen. This one has, to my mind, a better picture quality, but the colors are more garish. 

Both of them are 1000 times better than the unwatchably godawful version that had been available previously as depicted here! So bless the uploaders who have at last given us a chance to see Alexander in all his glory...

This isn't life-changing entertainment, but it's also not the disaster that some folks have suggested. And, considering how difficult it could have been to have a weekly series of this sort, I can see how it was passed on. But it's a must for fans of the indefatigable Mr. Shatner who still walks among us today at 95.  

The End!