Player Awards, Part I - He's Still Got It

I mentioned in my last post how I love it when artists reinvent themselves. Let me explain. It would be all too easy to just remember the following gentlemen as people who did some cool thing way back when. While these celebrities will always be remembered for the things that initially made them famous, they come back in their later years and do things that make us remember just how cool they still are.

William Shatner


From Captain James T. Kirk to Denny Crane, he's still got it. (My husband saw this and could only say "Oh yeah, Canadian Pimpin'" - it's a compliment and a reference to Shatner's Canadian heritage - don't sweat it.) In my house, we have a saying that someone went to the William Shatner school of acting when they do the overwrought, overdramatic thing - like how he was as Kirk. Some other cool moments: Shatner instructing Eddie Murphy and Robert DeNiro how to be TV cops (Like T.J. Hooker, remember?) in the movie Showtime. So funny.

Billy Dee Williams

I couldn't resist putting up the picture of Billy Dee as the Colt 45 spokesperson. I prefer to look past the tagline: "It works every time" and see it as a piece of history.

Anyway, Billy Dee was an actor before he appeared as Lando Calrissian - he was in the tearjerker Brian's Song (which I bawled at as a kid), and showed off that sexy, sexy, sexy speaking voice in Lady Sings the Blues with Diana Ross - the diva I love to hate. The movie came out in 1972, but somehow I saw it on TV with my mom when I was probably about 11 or 12. Just hearing him say "Ciao Bella" in that deep, drawn out way was enough for me, and I was just a kid! I just saw him again in an AT&T ad, playing on his old persona as all around cool dude and ladies man.

Tony Bennett

Anthony Benedetto. Would you ever believe that the guy who left his heart in San Francisco would be back singing with Christina Aguilera, guest starring on Saturday Night Live (playing a Tony Bennett imitator who was guest starring on the "Tony Bennett Show", with Alec Baldwin playing "the real" Tony Bennett - if I could have found the video, I would have posted it) and being totally cool without even trying? How could he help but be cool? We have the same birthday! Of course, he was born 45 years before me. :)