In Spite of Myself

by Christopher Plummer

  Florence had been a ripe, old-fashioned powerhouse as Aunt Fanny Cavendish, but now it was time for her to make her exit from our lives. I was to miss her badly and her tales of a hundred and one theatrical nights. I would even miss her bruising, disciplinary broomstick. We all expected her leave-taking to be ultradramatic; either the ground would open and she’d be swallowed up or she would vanish in a puff of smoke—preferably black—but no. When Florence walked through the lobby to the hotel’s front door, she was just a tough old gypsy going to her next gig, full of spunk, still very much in love with her profession, who couldn’t wait to lacerate the next young Tony Cavendish about the shins.

  SHE HAD BARELY checked out, when hard on her heels, like a tropical squall, came the second angel. From some aerie in the clouds, on a rush of wings she blew in, scattering all before her. With a final flap, she folded those wings and deposited one bewildered and bewitched husband, enough luggage for a tsarina, a maid, a cook and a pre–jetlagged dog. Her soigné manner and extravagant turn of phrase left no one in doubt she had owned a castle in Spain, flew her own plane, was bosom buddies with Amelia Earhart and had, since the twenties, reduced the Atlantic and Mediterranean oceans to mere commuter hops.

  Ruth Chatterton, a great star of early talkies and the stage, for me the epitome of glamour

  Back in the teens, she had reigned over Broadway as a popular star (among her vehicles Barrie’s Little Minister and What Every Woman Knows) and as the mistress of famed producer Henry Miller.

  She had been a silent-screen star in Hollywood and when talkies emerged (because she was one of the few who could speak the King’s English) she became for a spell First Lady of the Screen and the highest-paid woman in the United States. “She reeked with chic, her hat of the week cost sixty-four courses, three runaway horses,” and her name was Ruth Chatterton. Ruth wore many hats. She was a novelist, a director and a producer. Besides being an aviatrix, she was a tennis player, a golfer and a skier. To say she was emancipated and a pioneer of sorts would have been a gross understatement.

  Ruth might have been created by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis. In many ways she personified the twenties but now had mellowed considerably and though still a whirlwind of energy, there was an aura of seductive world-weariness about her that made her Regina in The Little Foxes so deadly frightening and so very much her own. This was the play she was now directing and acting for us so brilliantly. Lillian Hellman, who wrote it, told me years later that of all the Reginas, Ruth’s was by far the best. Of course, it was universally known that its creator, Tallulah Bankhead, and Lillian were mortal enemies, so Miss Hellman may have been somewhat prejudiced. Nevertheless, Ruth was superb, and Mister Billie, who stood at the back and watched, said he was mighty impressed, and that was good enough for us.

  There is a moment just before Regina decides to kill Horace when she is alone on the stage. I shall never forget the frightful effect Ruth produced to make that moment stay in the mind forever. Like a panther she prowled about the stage. Arriving at her decision, she came to a dead stop. Her absolute stillness and repose when she knew the dreadful moment had come were terrifying and beautiful both at once. This vampire became, before our eyes, silkily feminine, soft, almost innocent. Then with two sharp little clicks of her fingers that rang through the theatre like gunshots, she softly whistled a little tune between her teeth, silently turned on her heels and slithered up the stairs towards her kill.

  Ruth had discovered late in life that she could direct. What a loss for the theatre up to then! She was absolutely marvellous at it. In contrast to her rather carefree, high-flown manner, she possessed quite profound insights into the human psyche. Johann just stood by and watched—a glorified stage manager. She brought things out of us we didn’t know we had. I played Regina’s older brother Ben, a wonderfully rich character I enjoyed immensely (adding a soupçon of Lionel Barrymore to taste, I shamefully admit). I was really becoming quite adept at these old codgers, but when the hell was I ever to act my own age? Ruth, however, thought I was the cat’s whiskers (lucky for me) and both she and her husband, Barry Thomson, lavished me with unbelievable kindness and attention. Barry, an extremely handsome older Englishman with a kind, soft nature, played Horace whom Regina totally dominates (precariously close to their real lives, I couldn’t help thinking). Marian Seldes was a heart-wrenching Birdie; Eric House, a tight-lipped, perfect Oscar. We were a pretty good group altogether and the loyal little audience sat up and took notice. That week we surpassed anything we had attempted before and it was all due to Ruth, her drive and her inspiration. She had turned us into a proper company of players and, God forgive us, we had, for that moment at least, earned the right to be proud.

  After the curtain call on the last night of The Little Foxes, Ruth took me aside. She held both my hands in hers, leaned very close and whispered, “The first thing you do when you come to New York is to look me up. I’ll take you to dinner—there are some very important people I want you to meet.” When she spoke in low tones, she had the most beautiful voice and I felt the effect of it all the way down my spine. She may have been accused of being a bit piss-elegant, as Guthrie McClintic once described her, but by God, she had the gift of making you feel you were the only man in the world. I stood there reeling, quite giddy and light-headed, enveloped in a mist of expensive perfume.

  The Chatterton contingent left the next day. After much kissing, hugging and elaborate promises of eternal love, I watched them go. Through the hotel lobby at the head of her host swept The Archangel, her little regiment of supplicants trailing behind her in single file—the frightened, bedraggled dog, already hating the awesome journey, taking up the rear. Whether it was the sudden lump in my throat that made me turn away or whether I just couldn’t face the dreaded moment when she would gather them all up, I’ll never know; but I found myself clapping my hands tightly over my ears to shut out the fearful rushing sound of her wings as she flew them away.

  OUR LITTLE COMPANY was never to be quite the same again. The breathless tension that had been created for us was gone—we’d become a bit complacent, too comfortable with each other. Bad habits were forming. We were too relaxed, too easily distracted. Our eyes began to wander—mine particularly. Fifteen-and-a-half-year-old Waverly, our adopted mascot, had blossomed considerably; there was no mistaking it. The slight crush I already had was growing rapidly by the moment. Kate, however, always the chaperone, in her best Mother Cabrini, wagged a “Don’t touch” finger at me and I was forced to play possum. The fact that Waverly’s father had arrived to be our new “star” made any sort of tryst all the more unlikely, so I transferred my attentions to a much easier target, the voluptuous young assistant stage manager with the great boobs who provocatively made it her constant practice to sit on everyone’s lap.

  Zachary Scott, darkly handsome, the Hollywood star known for his slippery rich boys and rather too-smooth villains (in company with Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet in The Mask of Demetrios, etc.) turned up trumps! He became the leitmotif of the season on and off the stage. Zach was more fun than a picnic. A picnic to him (had he ever deigned to attend one) would have meant copious hampers of gin and vermouth for martinis, Jack Daniel’s for juleps, tequila for margaritas and very little else. His humor was high camp, shaken not stirred, with a whiff of wit passed over ever so lightly for taste. To punctuate his many bon mots he would raise one shaggy eyebrow heavenward and let his mouth sag in imbecilic incredulity at their unexpected success.

  Zachary Scott—the playboy of the Western, or any other world

  A Texan from old Austin stock, his manners were genteelly Southern and his low, deliberately languid drawl had oil and honey in it. He was the first heterosexual I had yet seen to sport an earring. Waverly worshipped him and I could understand why. This of course could have made me exceedingly jealous, but for the fact that Zachary and I became close companions in crime and loyal-to-the-death drinking partners. He was married most happily to Ruth Ford, the onet
ime famous Vogue model of the thirties—sleek and elegant, with whom the author William Faulkner had fallen in love (he wrote Requiem for a Nun for her). Zach and Ruth together made a stunning couple. Avid art lovers (an astounding Tchelitchew collection) and superb hosts, they saw themselves as the younger Gerald Murphys, ultrasmart, internationally accepted citizens of the world. Wherever they went, heads would turn. But Ruth was not here with him now, to keep order or to help turn heads, so his sky knew no limits.

  Zachary gave a very smooth rendition of Sam Behrman’s The Second Man. He had been performing it for some time on the “summer circuit” and could play it backwards—which one day, quite unintentionally, he managed to do. I remember being most impressed with his expertise in handling props—very Cary Grant–ish. He was able to light countless cigarettes for everyone while spouting rapid small talk, or cradle with ease two or three telephones at once while dealing with several separate conversations. Cool, Dad, cool! When I practiced this privately, the telephones would drop on my toes with a painful thud, and the matches would burn my fingers to a cinder. I worked at it for years afterwards—I’m still working at it.

  So we sailed away

  For a year and a day

  In a beautiful pea-green boat.

  There it was, waiting for us at the jetty—a gorgeous speedboat all in green, with a chauffeur in attendance touching his cap to us. We had been summoned to a scrumptious, private island out to sea far beyond Hamilton Harbour. It belonged to the enormously wealthy diamond king Stanhope Joel, who was our little theatre’s principal backer. He had commanded us to a pre-Saturday matinee fête consisting of a quite sumptuous breakfast-cum-brunch.

  We had dolled ourselves up in our best bib and tucker

  And devoured with a vengeance the food, drink and succor

  Stanhope was, I admit, a great host, the old ——!

  Of course, we all got pretty squiffed, on extra-lethal Buck’s Fizzes and French Seventy-Fives, but Zach, in spite of his usual capacity for the booze, became quite bouleversé’d, paralytic! When the time arrived to head back to shore for the matinée, we had to lift him into the speedboat—an utter deadweight. He instantly revived and, pushing Mr. Joel’s chauffeur almost overboard, insisted, above all protestations, that he drive us back full speed. “Ay’ll getcha theah on tahme,” he slurred and while Kate, Barbara, Marian, Waverly and I huddled together in the stern, petrified out of our wits, Zach, with the steering wheel between his two bare feet, drove us at hair-raising speed, his arms clasped behind his head laughing and singing deliriously all the way like some demented merman. Once safely back in the hotel, he collapsed and we carried him to his dressing room, where Mister Billie poured gallons of caffeine down his throat while some of us struggled to help him into his wardrobe.

  Zach hardly offered anything from the text that afternoon. Not exactly in control myself, I was forced to recite most of his dialogue as well as my own, take all his phone calls (fortunately remembering the gist of most of them)—in fact, I just spent a great deal of the time talking to myself! Quelle horreur! And all afternoon Zach quite affably allowed me to propel him around the stage looking as dapper and debonair as ever with a ridiculous, inane grin permanently painted on his accursed mug! God love him! I’m not sure if we ever actually finished the play; I suspect the curtain was prematurely lowered and the bamboozled audience shuffled home in morbid silence as though having just left a funeral.

  Zachary recovered significantly to get through the evening performance without a single hitch, and when that exhausting day was finally over and all of us had no other thought but for our beds, he came out of his chrysalis once more and fresh as a daisy cried, “Alrahght, you mothahs, wheah’s the pahty?”

  He had been such a tonic to us, none of us wanted him to leave, but when Old Kaspar’s work was done and all that, there was nothing left for him but to rush back to the Big Apple, the Dakota apartments, his Tchelitchews and Ruth. I suggested that he try driving the little speedboat with his bare feet all the way back to Manhattan, and, I swear, by the look in his embryonic eye, he’d already thought of it.

  FRANCHOT TONE was the last celestial being to visit our modest little island home. At one time, not too far into the recent past, he was considered by critics, pundits and public alike “the bright white hope of the American theatre.” As a young leading man on Broadway, he had shown staggering potential in the famed Group Theatre days. That revolutionary establishment had brought to the fore such luminaries as Harold Clurman, Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford and Clifford Odets. Franchot, with his and his family’s money (they had inherited the Carborundum electric company) had largely financed the Group Theatre from its inception. So it would not be an exaggeration to surmise that almost single-handedly he had oiled the machinery for the great New Wave movement which signalled the arrival of John Osborne in England and Bertholt Brecht in America and was to have such a lasting influence on theatre everywhere.

  But Franchot had a weakness for the movies and a penchant for domineering, glamorous women—Joan Crawford was one spouse among many—need I say more? Only once, maritally, as in the case of June Walker, did he really strike lucky. Each one more beautiful than the last and each matriarchal to a degree, none stayed with him for long. He seemed to search for this kind of self-destructive alliance, an alliance that could not but help inflict certain pain. Indeed, Franchot Tone was a handsome, sensitive, highly educated and tremendously talented gentleman who was, nevertheless, motivated and driven by pain. His hard living had somewhat diminished his former brilliance, but every so often his work showed strong evidence of great depth and nobility of spirit. Franchot was part French and he used to scream French Canadian invective at me whenever he could in perfect “Joual.” His sense of humor, as one might guess, was seeringly self-deprecating, drawn as always from this inexplicable inner torment. These vulnerable qualities were to make his Chekovian performances (Uncle Vanya and A Moon for the Misbegotten), both of which I later saw, so memorable—a rare combination of lightness and poignancy.

  A principal founder of the Group Theatre and once the stage’s young white hope

  Franchot had brought to Bermuda Robert Sherwood’s famous The Petrified Forest, and he and Johann hit it off splendidly as codirectors. They cast Kate as Gabby the barmaid, whom Bette Davis had played on the screen, and myself as the mobster Duke Mantee, made famous by Humphrey Bogart both on stage and film. Franchot, of course, played Alan Squier, the Leslie Howard role, but was streaks ahead of Mr. Howard in emotional power.

  Squier, the intellectual cynic, near the play’s end rounds on Duke Mantee, the gangster who holds him hostage, begging to be killed to save both their souls. He confesses his love for Gabby and why he so desperately yearns for his own death:

  SQUIER: I want to show her that I believe in her—and how else can I do it? Living, I’m worth nothing to her. Dead—I can buy her the tallest cathedrals, and golden vineyards and dancing in the streets. One well-directed bullet will accomplish that. And it will gain a measure of reflected glory for him who fired it and him who stopped it. (He holds up his insurance policy.) This document will be my ticket to immortality. It will inspire people to say of me: “There was an artist, who died before his time!” Will you do it, Duke?

  DUKE: (Quietly) I’ll be glad to.

  Franchot directed this to me every night and every night his conviction was extraordinary. Here was a man already dying it seemed—still praying to be snuffed out. I no longer was convinced it was Squier, but Franchot himself pleading for his death. It was eerie, too close, almost too real, and shattering, shattering.

  He brought a substance to the play it didn’t quite deserve, and though his pace became slower each successive night (he would kill an entire bottle of Stolichnaya on stage at every performance), he managed at times to lift the piece far above its ken into the loftier spheres of O’Neill.

  Duke Mantee made Bogie a star, but it sure didn’t make me one. It was a marvellous role—I should have b
een grateful—but I was a disgrace. No, not entirely true. I wasn’t too bad in the early scenes (they are a bit of a gift anyway) but I never could learn the last few pages, which had to be delivered at enormous speed—a series of barking commands, cold and steel-like, all difficult to learn under any circumstances and, in my defense, I had only five days to do so, but still it was no excuse. I was to be saved, however, for the luscious assistant stage manager/prompter came up with a sensational solution. She positioned herself snugly against the window on the offstage side while I sat on the ledge onstage—we were literally inches apart. She would whisper each command to me very quickly, and I would repeat it immediately afterwards. Our proximity also gave us the chance to smooch a little, unseen by the audience—my body was “on,” my head “off.” I would lean out the window, deliver a command and get a French kiss delivered straight back to me, another command, another kiss—a fair exchange. As there were numerous commands, we got a lot of smooching done. One night while Duke was peering out into the darkness, this cuddly little ball of flesh had unbuttoned her blouse, exposing a voluptuous young breast, which I stroked with one trembling hand while scanning the horizon with the other. Out of the blue, Duke Mantee had become, need I say, one of my very favorite offstage roles.

  Each night after the performance we would celebrate in the bar. A fresh bottle of vodka would be opened for Franchot and I would sit at the piano improvising for hours, my scotch beside me, watching Franchot, Mister Billie and Kate gabbing away to their hearts’ content. Franchot thought the world of Billie and wanted him to leave the island and work for him as a butler back home, but Billie always politely declined. Franchot was also crazy about Kate. Here was a girl to respect, talented, bright, who wanted nothing else from him but to make him laugh.