LOS ANGELES — If anyone has noticed the soaring share price of Priceline.com, it's an easy bet that Canadian actor William Shatner had something to do with it.
Unofficial word on Wall Street is that Shatner, who was initially paid in Priceline shares when he became pitchman for the Internet travel website startup in 1997, is now worth a cool $600 million.
No wonder he looked so happy singing a duet of Total Eclipse of the Heart on Lopez Tonight the other week.
Priceline's shares, which at one point plummeted to $1.80 during the dot-com crisis in 2000, are now trading close to $300 apiece. And although the company won't disclose how many shares (or salary) Shatner receives, it's presumed to be plenty. After all, it's Shatner's personality driven ads for the website that has made it so popular.
As he approaches his eighth decade on the planet, Shatner has gone through more ups and downs than a freight elevator.
After starring in the iconic role of Captain Kirk on Star Trek in the late '60s, he later could find no work and lived in a truck he'd park on the street in the San Fernando Valley area of L.A. He earned food and gas money by making party appearances.
The quirky Priceline ads — with a new and funny Shatner karate chopping, dancing, negotiating, etc. — put him back in the public consciousness (yes, Shatner can do more than play a starship captain and a cop on TJ Hooker) and he ended up winning the role of the quirky lawyer Denny Crane — and two Emmys — on the show Boston Legal.
While we're not saying money buys happiness, we have to admit life seems better lived in a lush house on a California beach than in a truck parked near a shopping mall.
SWEET SUCCESS: The French-Canadian rock band, The Respectables, had their first taste of international love here in L.A. on April 27. An old-school rock 'n' roll group, The Respectables have been around for more than 15 years, but were unknown outside of the province of Quebec until they recorded an English-language album last year, Sweet Mama. One of the singles, Sugar, ended up topping the charts in Canada.
Based on the success of Sugar, the band was invited to perform at the prestigious Musexpo in Hollywood — a music industry convention where about 500 of the country's top music producers from big music labels such as Sony and Universal attend to check out new acts.
"In English, they're nobody, they're starting from scratch. They're just starting to play bars in Toronto and Ottawa and being invited here is a big, big deal," said Pierre Paradis, a spokesman for Sphere Musique, which represents the band.
"Only 24 acts were chosen, and they were one of them."
The Respectables, whose lead singer Sebastian Plante picked up the King's English while living in London a while back sounds more like Mick Jagger than Gordon Lightfoot, performed a 30-minute set of their best stuff at the famous Hollywood club, Whiskey A Go Go.
Said Paradis: "It was the most important 30 minutes of their lives. They went to kill, they rehearsed like crazy. They played safe and played strong and played their best material."
So what now?
"Hopefully, someone will grab them sooner than later."
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