In Spite of Myself

by Christopher Plummer

  One evening Ed took us to the very popular Top o’ the Mark for supper. He had no reservation. God knows he never needed one. On arrival we discovered the entire roof restaurant was shut down. The maître d’ at the door, recognizing Ed, apologized profusely, explaining it had been taken over for a private party. We peered through the glass partitions from which one could see the whole room—it seemed absolutely empty. “But there’s no one in the place,” sputtered Mr. Horton with growing irritation. “Oh yes there is, sir, over there,” corrected the maître d’, pointing to a solitary couple seated far away in a corner surrounded by a phalanx of attentive waiters. It was a very young Debbie Reynolds and her host, Howard Hughes, who had bought the whole place out just to serenade her—a quiet tête-à-tête à deux!

  After the show, some nights I would join forces with Joy and Harrison. Together we would do the clubs. Edith Piaf was in town so, of course, as usual, there I was worshipping at her feet. Le petit oiseau with that call to arms in her voice would always be Jeanne d’Arc to me, and I would follow her to the death anywhere—into any battle—wherever she might choose. Eddy took Marta and me to Finnochio’s one daring evening and afterwards I revisited it on my own whenever I could. Finnochio’s had just about the best female impersonators in the world. I marvelled at those truly remarkable men who were able to transform themselves into such beautiful women so effortlessly. No matter how close one sat there wasn’t a flaw—they were perfection. I met some of them backstage and was amazed to learn they were married, had children and led quite normal lives. Yet here they were, sewing away at their own stunning dresses which they so painstakingly had designed and made for themselves. I suppose for them all this was a mere living. For us, it was a faultless art.

  Then there were the strip joints. Oh boy—the strip joints! I would toddle along and pay my respects (without Eddy and Marta), but Joy or Harrison sometimes joined me late into the night. The exotic “Tempest Storm”—a grand exponent of that ancient practice—was currently the toast of the town. Once her star turn was over, the rest of the act consisted of introducing fledgling strippers in their late teens who were now ready to graduate, rather like putting out young bulls in Pamplona. One stripper in particular caught our immediate attention. She wasn’t in the least coarse like the others; her features were delicate, fine. She had pale skin and long blonde tresses, and from head to toe she was perfectly formed. The very picture of a tiny angel untouched, unsullied, she was, as Keats might say:

  Full beautiful, a faery’s child,

  Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.

  She must have lied about her age—she was only sixteen, the waiters told me. The other novilleras, when strutting their stuff, assumed expressions of world-wearied boredom, which made them appear oddly stiff and inhibited. This nymph who seemed so pure and innocent would not have recognized an inhibition had she met one head-on. Someone was obviously grooming her for stardom, for she’d been given a solo spot all to herself. I’ve never seen anyone attack her work with such passion and fury. She clearly couldn’t wait to take everything off as she tossed aside each minute particle of clothing with careless abandon and instinctive grace. The combination of devil and saint was proving too irresistible—it was most apparent her intentions were not just to taunt us but herself as well and the crowd began to see signs of approaching turbulence. If San Francisco was a breeder of earthquakes, please let them be like this one. Caught up in our excitement for her, she would dance this mad dance of hers, naked as nature had made her, or slither and roll along the floor, reflected in its shiny surface striking every suggestive pose imaginable; she had to have been triple-jointed for she was able to do the most amazing and unprintable things. We were out of our seats! She was shocking, fearless, shameless, and she was laughing with sheer joy at our celebration of her body. Of course, she had broken all the rules, she was quite out of control but we didn’t care and neither did she. She was flying now, doing her favourite thing, bringing herself to her particular state of grace, right there before our disbelieving eyes and suddenly the room wasn’t a room anymore; we were all together in some forbidden jungle—wild, primitive and free. On the marquee outside in very small print, she was billed quite simply and appropriately “Sorry.” I was certain I had fallen in love with Sorry. As if craving some drug, I went back several times in the hope of seeing little Sorry perform again but she wasn’t there anymore. They had taken down her billing. I had a horrible fantasy that in a dark alley on some black Walpurgistnacht, her fellow strippers, those older vultures, mad with jealousy, were violently pecking her to death.

  TO FAN my unrequited passion, there was always a brisk breeze that cut like a knife along by the cliffs which overlooked the sea. I would go there sometimes alone to get windburned and watch the hordes of sea lions and seals barking at each other on the rocks. Or were they laughing at me? If so, I certainly deserved it. But the late-summer sun was soon to set on the Golden Gate Bridge and on Nina as well. Eddy and Marta, who both had houses back east on Lake George, kindly offered to put me up for a little holiday and a good-bye celebration of sorts. Eddy’s house was a wondrous old pile hidden by huge trees just above the lake, full of character of course, and typically him. I moved in with Ed and his formidable mother who had just batted 101, God rest her soul. I saw at once where Eddy got his energy and endurance. Then during the day I would join Marta, her husband, and their daughter, Barbara, for boating and picnics.

  We had built a strong little unit together, Marta, Eddy and I, during that lovely fleeting summer. So it was far from easy when the time came to say good-bye. Neither was it made any easier to know that the dawn of my American début had quickly turned to dusk. I was now unemployed and just about dead broke. So it was with certain trepidation that I made my solitary way—a Dick Whittington without portfolio—to that behemoth of cities whose jaws, I was convinced, would open and swallow me up. But all was not lost. For deep down in one of my pockets on a crumpled bit of food-stained paper, still damp from the islands, was a telephone number. I had no choice. I rang it.

  “THOSE ARE ALL my husbands on the wall,” sang out Ruth Chatterton, breezily. I was dying to paraphrase Robert Browning’s acid line—“looking as if they were alive.” We were in an elegant eagle’s nest somewhere high above New York’s Park Avenue. She was showing me her apartment which was, just as I expected, very posh indeed. This was the master bedroom. Above the bed, in a large elaborate frame, were set-in circular cutouts resembling miniatures, photographs in sepia of at least three Mr. Chattertons. There was George Brent, Ralph Forbes and the current, Barry Thomson. In the center, dominating all three, her original mentor and lover—the Broadway impresario, Henry Miller. He seemed to be glowering downwards in general disapproval, particularly at the present successor as he lay there nursing a raging cold. Poor Barry, I thought, what a horrible fate to be constantly haunted like that in bed. Under such critical surveillance, how could he ever possibly perform?! I was astounded too at Ruth’s total disregard as she blithely chatted away moving swiftly from one non sequitur to another. “She’s leaving Barry to die in there all by himself,” I mused, stumbling after her into the living room like a pet dog. The houseman poured us drinks as she outlined my itinerary for the next fortnight—they were not exactly suggestions; they were orders, gilt-edged commands.

  To say dear Ruth had kept her word would be the decade’s most glaring understatement. Her thoughtfulness was quite beyond belief. With that familiar little snap of her fingers she got me into parties I would never have dreamed of crashing. At the mere mention of her name, people became at once attentive. Through her I met authors, producers, actors, musicians, painters and society—top-drawer, café, even cafeteria society. But the best thing she ever did was to bring me to a woman way past middle age who, for years to come, I would respect, admire and love to the end of her days and beyond—my friend and very first real agent—Miss Jane Broder.

  She has a touching way


  Of backing a man up against eternity

  Until he hardly has the nerve to remain mortal.

  —CHRISTOPHER FRY

  A full-fledged legal-beagle was our Jane. More judge than lawyer, perhaps, since her strict sense of fair play was her creed and the guiding force of her life. An older and wiser Portia she was indeed, a “Daniel come to judgment.” The integrity she had built around her was an impenetrable fortress. Part purist, part puritan, her occasional outbursts of righteousness could be a trifle irritating, but there was generally a pretty firm basis of truth behind them and they always cut to the quick. If Jane had ever looked Sin straight in the eye, Sin would have just wilted away, riddled with remorse. In composing her ironclad contracts, however, she was more ruthless and thorough than any lawyer or agent I have ever known. Her speech was hard-core New York Jewish. She began most of her sentences with “Now listen, honey.” But she was in love with talent—that was the soft side of her. If Jane thought you had talent, she was a pushover and she’d do anything for you. A surrogate mother and Golda Meir rolled into one, she would have made a damn fine prime minister of anything. This rotund, affable lady who wore a hat and veil at all times, even in her office, had once created and managed the foremost independent theatrical agency in New York.

  Along with Ruth Chatterton, she had looked after a young Bette Davis and a younger Rosalind Russell, and among others she served were Marjorie Rambeau, Eva Le Gallienne, Gladys George, Paul Lucas, Frank Morgan and Paul Muni. Many of Broadway and Hollywood’s brightest luminaries had, in their early years, passed through her door.

  Untypically for an agent, she was also a brilliant casting director for such powerful men as Herman Shumlin, Kermit Bloomgarden and the writers Elmer Rice and Maxwell Anderson. These men valued her wisdom and trusted her above all others. It was quite clear that Jane had known what it felt like to be First Lady of the Admiralty in command of a huge fleet. But the much larger corporate giants were beginning to dominate the ocean (MCA, William Morris, CMA to follow) and her battleship was now severely reduced to rather cramped quarters—three poky rooms and a waiting room on Forty-ninth and Madison. Her present band of clients, loyal to the death, were young artists George C. Scott, Colleen Dewhurst, Stephen Elliot, David Wayne, Anthony Perkins, Richard Kiley. Older character actors included Eva Le Gallienne (still), Anne Shoemaker, Aileen McMahon, Lucile Watson, Shirley Booth, Kent Smith and John Williams.

  Now most 10-percenters reel off the same old familiar spiel to the young and eager. “We can’t do anything for you till we’ve seen your work—when you do something let us know.” Jane at our first meeting virtually echoed the same phrase, “Listen, honey, I don’t take people till I see their work.” She must have clocked my hangdog look of disappointment, for she followed up with, “But I’ll tell ya what I’ll do. I’ll get you some work so I can come see it!” That was Jane. She called her old friend Morris Carnovsky, that pillar of the Group Theatre, who was organizing a reading of Montherlant’s darkly purple piece—Queen After Death at the ANTA Playhouse. The part of the villain was still open. My long radio training stood me in good stead. I read the pants off it. Jane came backstage afterwards looking like the matriarch of all Yiddisha-Mamas. She gave me the fiercest of double whammies and said, “Honey, you got yourself an agent.” From that moment on I was never out of work.

  THE “GOLDEN AGE” of live television in New York’s early nineteen-fifties was the wackiest of wacky times. To say there was an immediacy to it would be far too tame—idiocy, perhaps, describes it better. No one ever knew what was going to happen next. Most of the time we did nothing but bump into the furniture, the roving cameras and each other, all at once. Even so, some pretty marvellous work was done between mishaps: writers were really writing then, richly, deeply; there was a whole new breed of them, busy as bees, creating little gems of true substance for an upstart medium that should have been very grateful—it still owes them a lot—Horton Foote, Alvin Sapinsley, Paddy Chayefsky, Reginald Rose, S. Lee Pogostin and James Costigan among them. Comedy was being churned out by Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart—all top-class stuff. Comics Jack Benny, Phil Silvers, Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca and Mr. Berle (“Uncle Miltie”), while searching for their light, were being exceedingly funny, if a trifle static. This was understandable, for if they got carried away and actually moved a few feet to the right or left—there was no more set—they had banished themselves to oblivion.

  Journalists Edward R. Murrow, Charles Collingwood, a young Brinkley and Cronkite, even Alistair Cooke, had no choice but to become expert ad-libbers and improvisors to get themselves out of trouble or just to keep the party going. Scriptless, they could extemporize for hours, adding to the “You Are There,” accident-prone quality of early television that made us feel we were living on the edge. Interviewers John Freeman in London and Mike Wallace in New York discovered that the camera could prove a perfect ally when humiliating their celebrity guests. To extract on-air confessions from them, they reduced them to tears in full view of the public, bombarding them with delicate questions they were ill-prepared to answer. That was the cruel side of the medium—probably what it did best—its very purpose for being, to expose the raw nerves of humanity. Nothing could have better illustrated this than the notorious Army-McCarthy hearings we devoured daily in bars, offices and store windows all over the city. Horrified, hypnotized, we watched grown men behave like nasty little boys, supposedly distinguished senators make utter fools of themselves. It unfolded before our eyes like some bad melodrama—the good guys and the bad guys shooting it out to the death—and in the end, it was not the court but the cameras that made the final judgment as to who would win or lose.

  Those were the early warning signs that this explosive new invention was about to get out of hand and go too far, that one day soon it would tell us how to eat, how to dress, how to live. Drunk with power it could dictate policy, bring down corporations, swing elections, topple governments. Newscasters were turned into opinionated superstars. Nothing would be sacred anymore, neither the dignity of high office nor the sanctity of the ruling classes. All would become an open book—what was caviar to the general was now popcorn for the masses. Today we have become quite accustomed to being fed intravenously with third-rate dogma; like some insidious germ warfare it all seems painstakingly planned, carefully calculated. Oh, sometimes something fine comes along to momentarily redeem it, but not often enough.

  In the early fifties, however, television promised everything. There was nowhere it couldn’t go; its horizons were limitless. It was also wonderfully brave, young, fresh, even innocent.

  “GEORGE HAS SOMETHING FOR YOU,” called out Jane from her inner cubbyhole as I waited in the foyer. “I don’t handle television, honey. Let George do it—go see George.” The very smallest of the three small rooms was occupied by a chubby sheepdog of a youth who belonged to that newly discovered species—the television agent. George Morris was a whiz at it. He had managed to wangle me the lead in Rudyard Kipling’s The Light That Failed for the most prestigious drama series on the air—Studio One. The big boss of Studio One, Worthington Miner, was a good-natured, powerfully built man with a rich, rumbling belly laugh which identified him at once as a member of the old boy’s club. Both “Tony” and his wife, actress Frances Fuller, were very like protective parents to me in those early days. I shall be forever grateful to them. The distinguished cast in the Kipling piece included that famous D’Oyly Carte star from England—the man with the monocle—Martyn Greene, and the richly talented fugitive from Citizen Kane and Mercury Theatre days, Everett Sloane. The show’s sponsor was Westinghouse, who went totally ballistic when they realized it was far too late to change the show’s ads, which ironically read: “Westinghouse Electric Presents The Light That Failed.” Though for me it was a most auspicious debut, I’m afraid the show will be mostly remembered for that unfortunate gaff.

  Work began to come thick and fast. George got me a steady job on a daily soap opera whe
re I met new friends like Robert Webber, Audrey Christie and Connie Ford. Not the glamorous separate soft-porn worlds they have become today, where soap stars are turned into gods and do nothing else; soaps then were looked upon by hard-working Broadway actors as merely a means to an end between serious stage work. There was a new episode every day so we all got up at an unheard-of hour of the morning to rehearse and of course we never really ever knew our lines. So we invented and mastered a new technique, which was to wink at the camera operators whenever we were in deep trouble, and they would move past us and shoot a blank wall or a painting or two while we snuck a quick gander at the text.

  The most famous soap opera writer of the day was a lovely older lady with a shock of gorgeous white hair, a big heart and a sunny charm. She was a great hostess and her name was Elaine Carrington. The soaps she was famous for were Pepper Young’s Family and Life Can Be Beautiful, among others. They had run for years successfully on both radio and television and had made her an absolute fortune. I became friendly with her son Robert, a would-be producer, so I was always asked to her legendary shindigs which she threw like clockwork at her house on the sea at East Hampton or her penthouse on Fifty-fifth Street in the city. Everyone in and outside the business was in attendance, Noël Coward a frequent guest. Marlene Dietrich would appear quite regularly, occasionally accompanied by her daughter, Maria, but more often she would bring her friend the delightful Marti Stevens, for whom I have always had the greatest affection. Judy Garland and Gene Kelly came and went and at one party I was introduced to a pert young lady with a brush-cut hairdo and a ski-jump nose who had a penchant for wearing raccoon overcoats with very little underneath. Her name, which could easily have come from the pen of Charles Dickens, was Tammy Grimes.

  THANKS TO JANE AND GEORGE I never stopped. Still “soaping,” I also found time to do all the major shows—Philco Television Playhouse, Kraft Television Theatre, Robert Montgomery Presents, Camera Three and a weekly marathon aptly called Broadway Television Theatre, the brainchild of Warren Wade, a fat little man who always wore an oversized fedora. It was like doing summer stock with cameras—we played the same show nightly—we even did matinées. It was really quite bizarre. Ex-Hollywood icons who had a taste for theatre would fly from the coast to play the leads. I was Sylvia Sidney’s leading man twice—in Kind Lady and Dark Victory. Sylvia, who was a superb actress, had large, deep pools of eyes, which right on cue would overflow with tears gushing from their ducts like waterfalls. “She Could Cry on Demand” should have been the show’s new title.