Spirit of the Horse

by William Shatner

  The two horses came up close to me, looking with great earnestness upon my face and hands. The gray steed rubbed my hat all round with his right fore-hoof, and discomposed it so much that I was forced to adjust it better by taking it off and settling it again; whereat, both he and his companion (who was a brown bay) appeared to be much surprised: the latter felt the lappet of my coat, and finding it to hang loose about me, they both looked with new signs of wonder. He stroked my right hand, seeming to admire the softness and colour; but he squeezed it so hard between his hoof and his pastern, that I was forced to roar; after which they both touched me with all possible tenderness. They were under great perplexity about my shoes and stockings, which they felt very often, neighing to each other, and using various gestures, not unlike those of a philosopher, when he would attempt to solve some new and difficult phenomenon.

  I could frequently distinguish the word Yahoo, which was repeated by each of them several times: and although it was impossible for me to conjecture what it meant, yet while the two horses were busy in conversation, I endeavoured to practise this word upon my tongue; and as soon as they were silent, I boldly pronounced Yahoo in a loud voice, imitating at the same time, as near as I could, the neighing of a horse; at which they were both visibly surprised; and the gray repeated the same word twice, as if he meant to teach me the right accent; wherein I spoke after him as well as I could, and found myself perceivably to improve every time, though very far from any degree of perfection. Then the bay tried me with a second word, much harder to be pronounced; but reducing it to the English orthography, may be spelt thus, Houyhnhnm. I did not succeed in this so well as in the former; but after two or three farther trials, I had better fortune; and they both appeared amazed at my capacity.

  He afterwards showed me a wisp of hay, and a fetlock full of oats; but I shook my head, to signify that neither of these were food for me.

  He then put his fore-hoof to his mouth, at which I was much surprised, although he did it with ease, and with a motion that appeared perfectly natural, and made other signs, to know what I would eat; but I could not return him such an answer as he was able to apprehend; and if he had understood me, I did not see how it was possible to contrive any way for finding myself nourishment. While we were thus engaged, I observed a cow passing by, whereupon I pointed to her, and expressed a desire to go and milk her. This had its effect; for he led me back into the house, and ordered a mare-servant to open a room, where a good store of milk lay in earthen and wooden vessels, after a very orderly and cleanly manner. She gave me a large bowlful, of which I drank very heartily, and found myself well refreshed.

  My principal endeavour was to learn the language, which my master (for so I shall henceforth call him), and his children, and every servant of his house, were desirous to teach me; for they looked upon it as a prodigy, that a brute animal should discover such marks of a rational creature. I pointed to every thing, and inquired the name of it, which I wrote down in my journal-book when I was alone, and corrected my bad accent by desiring those of the family to pronounce it often. In this employment, a sorrel nag, one of the under-servants, was very ready to assist me.

  The word Houyhnhnm, in their tongue, signifies a horse, and, in its etymology, the perfection of nature. I told my master that “I was at a loss for expression, but would improve as fast as I could; and hoped, in a short time, I should be able to tell him wonders.” He was pleased to direct his own mare, his colt, and foal, and the servants of the family, to take all opportunities of instructing me; and every day, for two or three hours, he was at the same pains himself. Several horses and mares of quality in the neighbourhood came often to our house, upon the report spread of “a wonderful Yahoo, that could speak like a Houyhnhnm, and seemed, in his words and actions, to discover some glimmerings of reason.” These delighted to converse with me: they put many questions, and received such answers as I was able to return. By all these advantages I made so great a progress, that, in five months from my arrival I understood whatever was spoken, and could express myself tolerably well.

  When I asserted that the Yahoos were the only governing animals in my country, which my master said was altogether past his conception, he desired to know, “whether we had Houyhnhnms among us, and what was their employment?” I told him, “we had great numbers; that in summer they grazed in the fields, and in winter were kept in houses with hay and oats, where Yahoo servants were employed to rub their skins smooth, comb their manes, pick their feet, serve them with food, and make their beds.” “I understand you well,” said my master: “it is now very plain, from all you have spoken, that whatever share of reason the Yahoos pretend to, the Houyhnhnms are your masters; I heartily wish our Yahoos would be so tractable.” I begged “his honour would please to excuse me from proceeding any further, because I was very certain that the account he expected from me would be highly displeasing.” But he insisted in commanding me to let him know the best and the worst.

  I told him “he should be obeyed.” I owned that “the Houyhnhnms among us, whom we called horses, were the most generous and comely animals we had; that they excelled in strength and swiftness; and when they belonged to persons of quality, were employed in travelling, racing, or drawing chariots; they were treated with much kindness and care, till they fell into diseases, or became foundered in the feet; but then they were sold, and used to all kind of drudgery till they died; after which their skins were stripped, and sold for what they were worth, and their bodies left to be devoured by dogs and birds of prey. But the common race of horses had not so good fortune, being kept by farmers and carriers, and other mean people, who put them to greater labour, and fed them worse.” I described, as well as I could, our way of riding; the shape and use of a bridle, a saddle, a spur, and a whip; of harness and wheels. I added, “that we fastened plates of a certain hard substance, called iron, at the bottom of their feet, to preserve their hoofs from being broken by the stony ways, on which we often travelled.”

  My master, after some expressions of great indignation, wondered “how we dared to venture upon a Houyhnhnm’s back; for he was sure, that the weakest servant in his house would be able to shake off the strongest Yahoo; or by lying down and rolling on his back, squeeze the brute to death.”

  HORSING AROUND ON THE SET

  I have to tell you a story that has very little to do with horses, but has more to do with something one horse brought into my life. It’s among my most treasured memories from shooting any film or TV episode with a Western theme. We were filming an episode of Star Trek, one that involved horses. Actually, it involved a horse, and also a tiger. Strangely, the episode was not the third-season “Spectre of the Gun,” our only Western, which had no horses. In “Spectre,” crew members had been captured by an alien whose idea of fun was to drop us into a re-creation of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. It was shot entirely on soundstages and was a bit of déjà vu for DeForest Kelley because a dozen years before he had costarred as Morgan Earp alongside Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in the film Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. (I suppose it would have been doubly fitting if “Dr. McCoy” had played Doc Holliday instead of Kirk, but I digress.…)

  The episode in question was from the first season and it was called “Shore Leave.” We shot on location at the famed Vasquez Rocks in Agua Dulce, California, with Leonard Nimoy, myself, and DeForest. One scene called for a knight on horseback to run a lance through DeForest, and another involved a tiger who was discreetly chained to the ground a few yards away.

  The great thing about locations, even for TV, is that you often go to some mountain or valley or ranch or forest well outside the city. You always have to get up real early in the morning, because first you have to get there, and then you have to go to makeup. After that, if a horse is involved, there’s also the matter of getting the horse calmed and familiar with the location and ready to shoot.

  While that’s going on, you have time to sit. Leonard and I were already in our Starfleet wardrobe. We had gon
e to the food-services truck to get something suitably rustic—an egg sandwich with onions on toasted rye bread and coffee—and then we sat there, not far from where the one horse was kept, watching the sun rise. This particular day, the sun set the sky aflame as it rose, and it was like a dream—it struck us both the same way. The dream was the skies coming to life, the privilege of doing what we were doing—it was a memory we both cherished.

  Now, I love the other kinds of location moments too. You know, driving a fast car and skidding ninety feet to a stop on a cliff like we were on—which I have also done. But standing near a settled horse, with no pressure to do anything other than absorb the morning and eat the sandwich, that was magic.

  The irony, of course, is that I’m a Canadian Jew, Leonard was a Boston Jew, and we were eating something classically New York. But somehow it said “daylight and open spaces” and it was delightful, just us with the strong smell of onions and the animal now waiting patiently nearby.

  Obviously, the tiger was not present that day: otherwise, the horse would never have calmed. Interestingly, when the caged cat did arrive, there was nothing restful about the location. It was electric with his ferocity.

  On Westerns, or on any film with horses, things are not usually that placid.

  What horses do, most immediately, is bring you humility. Whenever you think you’re doing something well on a horse, whenever you think, “Oh, I am really good,” the horse immediately, within a short while, shows you the wrongness of your conclusion. That is a lesson I remember every time I am on horseback. Every time.

  Before I did Star Trek, there was a Western episode that I made for television—it may have been on Outlaws or The Big Valley, I did a lot of those shows—where the horse had to fall in front of the camera. They were going to do it the usual way, with a stunt guy looking something like me, galloping toward the camera and falling to the ground. Then they’d cut, bring the camera in, and I’d be the one to get up off the ground. That was how those things were done to prevent injury to the actor.

  Being young and adventurous—or foolhardy, or maybe all three—I said, “I can do this, and make it one continuous take.”

  No one raised any objections. They must have thought I knew what I was doing.

  It was the evening, and they dug up the earth to make it softer, and they wet the ground down because it looks better wet—it photographs more like earth—and then there were some delays. And that’s important because when I went to do the stunt, the ground was not damp but muddy. So I rode toward the camera, pulled the horse’s head around in a flying W—a way of bringing the horse down without injury to the horse—it fell exactly as it was supposed to … and I didn’t get out of the way because a) the wet ground had turned muddy and was like clay; and b) my left leg ended up under the horse. The horse couldn’t get up, and it was struggling to get up. I was pinned there and struggling to get up. Even then, I was still okay. Until the horse finally did manage to get up and stepped on my leg, breaking it. Keep in mind, the cameras were still rolling.

  I wanted to finish this shot so badly that when the horse got up and got away from the frame of the camera, and the director still hadn’t called cut, I rose painfully and stood there doing my dialogue, and I’m shaking with shock. Judging from the faces of the crew, everyone, including the director, thought I was giving the performance of a lifetime. In a way, I was. Method acting at its best. But as soon as the shock was over, I fell back into the mud and didn’t get up. They took me to Los Angeles County Hospital, downtown Los Angeles, to put me in a cast.

  The strange or wonderful thing is, even when I was waiting in the hospital for medical care, my leg numb, I was very much aware of these amazing people working around me, as gunshot victims from gang warfare in downtown L.A. came in and out. Finally, I saw an emergency doctor; he looked like God, coming over in all his whites, handsome guy, and I thought, “Good Lord, this guy is exactly who you want to see when you come into an emergency hospital.” Yet at that same moment, lying there on the gurney, I also saw the black shoes and white socks of the policemen who were handcuffed to gunshot thugs of all stripes. I always try to look at the positives of any experience, and seeing a county hospital from the point of view of a patient was certainly that.

  Getting back to the stunt, it was quite an experience to do it, have it on camera, be in such extreme pain as a broken leg, and it ending with me in a cast for a couple of weeks, not riding a horse for the rest of that episode and only doing close-ups. At the time, though, I looked at the mishap as a freak event. I know better now.

  Another rewarding piece I did on horseback was the TV miniseries The Bastard, in 1978, based on the big bestseller about the Revolutionary War. I got to play one of the most famous riders this side of Lady Godiva: Paul Revere. By that time I was a pretty decent horseman and made a convincing show of riding forth to “give the alarm.”

  Beyond a doubt, though, the two films I did on horseback that were most memorable to me were one I mentioned earlier, the TV movie Alexander the Great, and the feature film White Comanche, which I shot in Spain. The first one I made in 1964 as a TV pilot—quite an elaborate and expensive one, for its day. The latter was shot in 1968, when Star Trek was on hiatus.

  Alexander the Great had a terrific cast. Costarring was another actor soon to take TV by storm: Adam West, TV’s Batman. Alexander, of course, was a dream part and it was a very vital, energetic production, much of it shot on locations in Southern California—locations that passed well enough for the ancient times and the sandy, sun-bedazzled hills and plains where they were taking place. I did a lot of riding in that one: rearing on a beach, galloping across a field, fighting with enemies—I loved every minute of it. I had already discovered that I was a good natural horseman, if not the world’s most adept stuntman; I was at least good enough to convince myself and the director I could do most of the action scenes. I wasn’t, not really, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

  Let me state the obvious: basic horsemanship skills are important if you’re going to convince an audience that you are the person you’re playing in a Western or historical film. I’m not just talking about riding, I mean just sitting there in front of the camera. The horse isn’t in on the agenda. It wants to eat, sleep, have sex, or leave in search of one of the above. You’ve got to be able to control the animal at least that much.

  For this shoot I was able to do that, and also control the horse for close-ups and the run-bys—which is when you turn away in a long shot and run by the camera. Most actors can sit on a horse in close-up, and when they start to wheel the horse away from the camera there’s an immediate cut and then a stuntman gets on that horse, or a similar horse, and rides off at a gallop so the actor is not in jeopardy on rough terrain.

  You will also notice, watching films with horses, that built in to many scenes—this was certainly true in Alexander the Great—one of the other riders or some other character will come over and hold the bridle while the mounted rider is delivering lines. That’s to let the actor concentrate on dialogue without worrying that the horse is suddenly going to take a little walk. Or else you can be assured that there are one or more persons holding on to the horse off-camera, because the horse does get restless after a while and then there is always the chance, on location, that something could spook them, be it a bird or a crew member or the wind causing your cloak to flutter.

  A bit of a digression, here. During the heyday of the Hollywood Westerns, in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s—which is when the genre shifted to TV—the San Fernando Valley was awash with horses trained to do Westerns. These animals knew how to stand very still while the camera was rolling and remained relatively calm around guns firing blanks and people yelling and screaming. (You don’t want them too calm or the scene will be unrealistic: a Civil War battle with horses grazing?) These horses also had to come when a rider like Gene Autry or Jimmy Wakely whistled for them, which horses do not do in real life. Before the ASPCA rightly became involved, the horse was
propelled toward the whistler by a BB gun pellet fired into its rump.

  That pool of horse talent had dwindled by the time I did Alexander the Great, though for all the action it was a very smooth shoot. Thinking back, I wonder if my conviction that I was Alexander and this horse was Bucephalus was somehow communicated to the animal. I like to believe it was.

  My other project that year, White Comanche, was a little rockier. This one was a theatrical film shot in Spain and I played two roles: cowboy Johnny Moon and his slightly unhinged bare-chested Native American twin brother, Notah. We eventually have a High Noon showdown in town … charging one another on horseback and drawing at full gallop. I won.

  Now, this shoot was even further along in that period I was just discussing, when Hollywood had stopped making traditional Westerns. By 1969 they were hardly making any kind of Westerns at all. This was the era of the antiheroic films like Easy Rider—but in Spain and Italy, the so-called spaghetti Westerns were suddenly very popular. That’s why Clint Eastwood went there, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, and many others who had worked in the Western genre. The demand for Hollywood actors who had international recognition was great.

  So off I went, too. It may not have been a brilliant project but sometimes actors do things because they get to spend time in another country. I know that’s why some Hollywood actors went to Japan around this time to shoot Godzilla movies, of all things; they got paid to work in Tokyo.

  That entire film was fun. I had two horses, though not for the reasons you might expect; they weren’t for the brothers but to perform different functions on-screen. This is not uncommon. Charlton Heston had two identical stallions for his 1961 epic El Cid, one for moving easily among other horses and actors, the other for charging sure-footed on the beach and icy mountain passes. (Heston once remarked, “You haven’t lived until you’ve jumped on a saddle, in stiff chain mail, at five in the morning on a frozen hilltop.”) In fact, Chuck used to tell a story about the wrangler bringing the wrong horse for the scene in which El Cid was supposed to be propped, dead, in the saddle to lead the climactic charge. If you watch the film you can see that this horse just wanted to run, not parade to the battlefield. It turns one way, then another, and you can also see Chuck heroically preventing it from doing so with just his legs … since he was supposed to be dead. It’s a masterful job, one that most viewers probably wouldn’t notice. Which is the point.