In Spite of Myself

by Christopher Plummer

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  NEW YORK AND THE LARK

  New York had all the iridescence of the beginning of the world.

  —F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

  That’s exactly how it appeared through rose-coloured spectacles when you were young and even moderately successful. Once it decided you were worth recognizing, what you had taken to be an essentially heartless city suddenly opened its doors, and before you could say Damon Runyon—presto!—it had adopted you! The island of Manhattan had become the Island of Bad Boys—you were as gullible as Pinocchio—and all its shining treasures were yours for the taking. If it had ever been cynical and cold it had most certainly earned the right. No other metropolis in recent history had played host to such greed—had been so generous with her favours. What’s more, it seemed most of her customers were visitors from other planets. Where the hell were the natives? Was there such a thing? A true New Yorker was as rare in New York as a blond Athenian in Athens. Everyone had migrated there with no other purpose in mind but to rob the old harlot of her riches. This achieved, she would be discarded without so much as a nod of thanks, tired and used, yet still resilient enough to come bouncing back for more.

  Of course, none of this occurred to me when, as a youth, I gazed hungrily upon the Big Apple and took my first bite. Although the delirium known as the Age of Jazz was an age long gone, there were still in the midfifties echoes of it everywhere (you could always reach me at Birdland)—precious pockets scattered about from Harlem to the Village to remind us it had once succeeded in freeing the slaves, shaking up the Puritans, and that its glorious past had not been in vain. Fitzgerald, that era’s definitive spokesman, though long dead was still fairly popular amongst the college set; but besides jazz, there was a new sound now with which to contend. With the coming of the Pelvis, “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Blue Suede Shoes,” we were about to witness the dawning of the Age of Rock and the birth of the teenybopper. Young James Dean had just immortalized himself by crashing his car, Martin Luther King, Jr., was about to begin his crusade and the latest D. H. Lawrence was a witty White Russian who proved he could play wondrous tricks with the English language and also manage to beat the censor with a racy little novel called Lolita. After the Cold War impotence of the McCarthy era, a slice of beautifully blended spice was a welcome aphrodisiac. Nabokov’s brilliant satire of nymphet America seducing decadent old Europe filled the void admirably and turned us all on again.

  Having occupied a tawdry variety of roach-infested, “one-night cheap hotels,” I decided to upgrade myself and moved back into the Alice-gonquin. This time I could afford it and with some supportive words on my behalf from good old Jane Broder, I was able to hold my head up high and for a change make my entrance through the front door. There was new management, and the old staff, which was still there, if they indeed remembered my questionable shenanigans and reputation for unpaid accounts, didn’t give a rap and were as charming and accommodating as ever. Bob, the delightful maître d’, who knew everybody’s name and business, and good old Charlie the Chinaman, ageless as ever, still feeding each finger bowl with a rose.

  The autumn smells of New York, which for Broadway meant the Rites of Spring, were some of the most pungent on earth. They were the signal for the Season’s excitement to begin. The latest luxury in our profession was taped television (which meant one could do it again if it wasn’t right) and, courtesy of Edmond Rostand, Mr. Ferrer and the Dupont Show of the Month, I had been rescued from the twentieth-century military draft and inducted into that seventeenth-century regiment of crack guards—Les Cadets de Gascoyne! And how could I ever forget the lady?

  CHRISTIAN: “Yes, yes, yes, who—tell me, oh my knees are knocking.”

  She was a pure-skinned, raven-haired, Semitic beauty from Blighty and her name was Bloom. Not the Molly Bloom of Finnegans Wake nor the bloom of lilacs in Walt Whitman’s dooryard, but a fresh, young bloom called Claire—une véritable Claire de la Lune Bloom. She was nineteen or perhaps twenty, spoke verse like an angel and could already claim as her leading men Charlie Chaplin, Laurence Olivier and Richard Burton. At a glance she was everyone’s idea of Jessica, Nerissa, Perdita, Ophelia—even Juliet—so it wasn’t too tough an assignment for my Christian to make an utter bloody fool of himself over her Roxanne.

  A demure demeanor disguised, I suspected, a good deal of fire and brimstone and she had a coquettish custom of lowering her eyelids and tilting her head sideways at an angle so that masses of black tresses cascaded forward, half concealing her face, like a mantilla. She was mouthwatering—I was entranced, struck dumb! Nothing ever happened between us, of course, her aura had so shackled me it was not possible to make a move, and the fact that her overprotective mother was more than frequently present hardly induced encouragement or invited opportunity.

  I took Claire, her wimple at a rakish angle, to a few speechless dinners and that was about it. I must have been the dullest company—I could do nothing but stare at her. Two such shy ones accompanied by no other sound but the nervous clink of cutlery had the effect of canceling each other out. I was quite honestly relieved when she went back to Blighty and my poor cracked heart, which she had unwittingly cut to pieces, was permitted to mend on its own.

  José Ferrer was at the very height of his career. His Cyrano de Berg-erac had earned him an Oscar and a Tony and he was now prepared to reap all the television awards as well. Although the production was generally supervised by Kirk Browning, Jo directed the major scenes himself. Most of the cast had been with him since the beginning, on stage and screen—Jo being both loyal and practical—so they all had weathered many campaigns together. Rehearsing with this lot was a bit like being in boot camp—Stalag 17 with plumes.

  José Ferrer, my languid self and Claire Bloom

  Jo was a very fine director with a particular penchant for farce. He was both tough and sensitive. He quickly saw my lovesick predicament, took me aside like a proper sergeant major, drilled the wimp out of my Christian, gave him back his balls and made a man out of him! And out of me! Thank you, Jo, for that. When I wasn’t gaping at Claire, I watched his Cyrano most carefully. I admired tremendously the comic force with which he attacked it and made many a mental note which helped a great deal when, one day, I was lucky enough to play that God-given character myself.

  I think this production of Jo’s came off pretty well on the “box”—I can’t quite remember—it all went by so quickly. But triumphant or not, it was television after all, and like yesterday’s newspaper soon to be forgotten. It was really the theatre that year that took hold of my life, pushed me several more rungs up the ladder and made me feel, perhaps for the first time, that I belonged on the “street” and that that throbbing city with all its glittering lights swimming in my eyes had allowed me to stay.

  ONE OF THE LAST FEW remaining seasons of quality and quantity on Broadway was that of 1955–56. When one examines the present state of commercial entertainment in these sparse, uncertain times, it is heartening to look back to a time when the American theatre was still rich in invention, when there was an equal representation of original works by major writers both foreign and domestic and where there was always a healthy traffic jam of out-of-town tryouts waiting in line, frantic to move into their final New York parking space.

  This was the year of Pipe Dream, The Most Happy Fella, the Lunts in The Great Sebastian, The D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, La Comédie Française, Michael Gazzo’s A Hatful of Rain with Shelley Winters, Ben Gazzara and Tony Franciosa, Shirley Booth in The Desk Set, Edward G. Robinson in Paddy Chayefsky’s Middle of the Night, Joyce Grenfell, gently satirical in her own revue—Maurice Chevalier at one theatre—Marcel Marceau at another. There were also Tyrone Guthrie’s productions, Tamburlaine the Great and Troilus and Cressida, Sammy Davis, Jr., in Mr. Wonderful and Sean O’Casey’s Red Roses for Me. Jayne Mansfield’s magnificent chest had its “coming out” party in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter while an accident-prone Orson Welles gave us his sometimes ma
gnificent King Lear in a wheelchair.

  And, by the way, these were just by the by. The ten top new plays of the year were Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, Giraudoux’s Tiger at the Gates, The Diary of Anne Frank which made a star of Susan Stras-berg at seventeen, and No Time For Sergeants, which marked the debut of that charmer Andy Griffith. The Ponder Heart by Chodorov, The Chalk Garden by Enid Bagnold, Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker with a towering comic performance by Ruth Gordon and a pixie performance by Robert Morse—and Bert Lahr, equally brilliant in the American première of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. There was a little-known musical that snuck in called My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison and a young newcomer from Wimbledon named Julie Andrews and lastly, the first big success I was ever in—The Lark.

  The Art of Producing by L. Doherty is a biography of the late Kermit Bloomgarden, who presented The Lark. It is aptly titled for if ever there was a man who made producing an art—it was Kermit. He had gathered and brought before the public most of the top playwrights of our time and had the theatrical knowledge and professional wisdom to guide them through the work process with devout expertise. His record of original productions speaks for itself: Deep Are the Roots, Another Part of the Forest, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, The Diary of Anne Frank, Look Homeward Angel, The Most Happy Fella, The Music Man, Toys in the Attic and Equus, among others.

  Brooklyn-born Kermit was a tough hombre but unlike most of his fellow producers, he admired and respected actors and writers. “We should interfere as little as possible with artists—just throw out sparks that will stimulate them, to make better use of their own creativity.” The antithesis of the unruffled, old-fashioned impresario whose suits were never rumpled nor ties ever out of place, he sweated his way through every production in his shirt sleeves as if he were delivering his very own baby. He knew everyone’s function, could do just about everyone’s job—an expert on all aspects of the game, yet he still never interfered. He was, in fact, exactly what a producer should be and rarely, if ever, is.

  And now here he was presenting Jean Anouilh’s The Lark, adapted by Lillian Hellman, music by Leonard Bernstein, settings and lighting by Jo Mielziner; and here was I staring at him across his desk. It appeared that the British actor rehearsing the part of the Earl of Warwick was to be replaced, and I was the main candidate. Jane, Kermit’s old casting director, had cunningly arranged the meeting and insisted on bringing me along herself. “Honey—you gotta do this, and I’m coming with you to see that you do!”

  Kermit, successfully covering up a soft heart, sat unsmiling, gruffly introduced himself and, jerking his thumb in the direction of a rather small older lady seated nearby in a wing chair furiously chain-smoking, muttered matter-of-factly, “And, by the way, this is Miss Hellman.”

  The lady at once took command. She must have been referring to me, for without removing her cigarette from her lips she mumbled out of the corner of her mouth, “Oh yeah, he’ll be fine.” Then in a few seconds she’d explained the play, its characters and the style in which they should all be performed. I wondered why I was so immediately disarmed, but soon realized it was the natural tone she adopted—low, intimate without artifice—a secure woman in a man’s world but able to beat most of them at their own game. It was a reassuring manner which at once put me at ease, but as she spoke I was reminded of a wonderful actor called Robert Pastene who psychologically had suffered a nervous seizure in the neck, permanently paralyzing it at a very crooked angle. I asked a friend what had caused this unfortunate handicap and was told, “Oh, didn’t you know? He was working for Lillian Hellman.” I was never to see that side of her, however, if indeed it existed at all—I was lucky to remain on her good side for all the time I was to know her, but that morning in Kermit’s office there was no doubt I was in the presence of one strong lady.

  Lillian Hellman—in a man’s and woman’s world, she was herself

  Lillian was the furthest thing from being pretty but that had never stopped her. Her amazing charisma and high intelligence had seduced a great many influential, creative men who seemed to fall for her as regularly as clockwork (Herman Shumlin, Dashiell Hammett, William Wyler, among them); she had them dangling from her bracelets. Based on her reputation as one of America’s great playwrights (The Children’s Hour, The Little Foxes, The Autumn Garden), Lillian was still at this time an exceptionally powerful force in Hollywood and on Broadway. At the time she was certainly the most dominating writer of either gender— the only one to have total casting approval over all her scripts. Major Hollywood stars were required to audition for her; she made Paul Lukas read for his part in her film of Watch on the Rhine even though he was a big star at Warners and had already enjoyed a huge success in the same role on Broadway. Profoundly motivated politically, she was, as everyone knows, a considerable and controversial force in the House Un-American Activities hearings. Whether one agreed with her principles or intentions, one could not deny her courage in taking the Fifth and categorically refusing to name names.

  Besides her writing gifts, her intellect and the effortless way she managed to accumulate power, one of Lillian’s greatest gifts was her clarity. She had an uncanny ability to cut straight to the chase. It took only a few rehearsals, therefore, to observe the director Joseph Anthony (a nice gentleman somewhat frightened by Stanislavsky) make several ill-conceived suggestions before Lillian decided, not too subtly, to take over. We would all assemble on the stage after each out-of-town performance to receive our notes from the director—a normal custom in the theatre. But Lillian had beaten him to it. A chair was brought out in front of us, and ignoring all protocol, Miss Hellman promptly sat down and firmly announced, “I shall give my notes first” (and this with ill-concealed sarcasm); “then, uh, Mr. Anthony can give you his.” Lillian’s only took a few minutes. They were clear and concise. Joe Anthony’s went on and on into the night—obscure and uninspired. I’m afraid we only really listened to Miss H. Her criticisms were often cruel but always frighteningly accurate; her suggestions, constructive, enlightening.

  LILLIAN STRUCK IT LUCKY with her cast. A company of players made of sterner stuff would have been difficult to find. Theodore Bikel, newly arrived from Israel’s Habima, and a wonderful little celluloid import, The Kidnappers, took the small but telling role of de Beaudri-court and made a succulent meal of it. A talented musician, Theo also played the guitar and sang a number of French, Spanish and Israeli songs with a great deal of charm—many of which he composed himself. Every night, one could hear him strumming and singing away in his dressing room, and at parties his “companion” never left his side as he explained in song: “Ma Guitare et Moi, Nous ne Nous Quittons Pas.”

  JOSEPH WISEMAN, who was from my hometown, played the Inquisitor with a sinister stillness that was remarkably chilling. A taut, highly tuned, highly strung stage actor, he had electrified audiences and gained considerable distinction with eccentric performances in the films Detective Story and Viva Zapata! We shared a dressing room on the road and at the Longacre Theatre in New York, whose meager quarters reflected the disdain for actors common to theatre owners and architects. Wiseman was a fiercely intense creature who always gave people a wide berth, didn’t care to be touched and rarely spoke to anyone. He seemed continually in a state of monastic meditation as he glided about obsessively immersed in his role. At rehearsals when his turn came the cast would retire to lie down or take a welcome cigarette break, for we knew these analytical sessions would last most of the morning.

  Joseph Wiseman as The Inquisitor in The Lark

  Thrown together as we were, Joe and I, it didn’t take me long to discover that behind the impenetrable mask lurked a maniacal gallows humour. One night while we were putting on our “slop,” I complimented him on his extraordinary performance opposite Marlon Brando in Viva Zapata! “Oi—uh—my Gott, what a trial, how unpleasant, people staring in stores, in restaurants, for days, for weeks maybe. How embarrassing it was—oh Gott! One evening,
some young animal, God forgive me, approaches me in the street. ‘Mr. Wiseman,’ he begins. ‘Don’t come near me. Don’t touch me,’ I say. ‘Mr. Wiseman—’ I turn; I walk away down the street. Can you believe the gall? He starts coming after me, the fresh meshuggener, ‘Mr. Wiseman,’ he shouts, ‘I just want to ask you something—please!’ ‘No autographs—get away from me!’ I shout back, breaking into a run. He runs after me screaming, ‘Mr. Wiseman! Mr. Wiseman!’ Doesn’t the mensch ever get tired? I run across Broadway down Forty-fifth to Eighth—turn right—up Forty-sixth, back to Broadway, turn left, left again down Forty-seventh. The young fool is gaining on me—I duck into an alley—he’s right behind me! Ah well, Joe, I say to myself, be fair; come on, he’s a nice boy—maybe a little crazy, wants to pay a compliment, maybe an autograph. It’s not the end of the world—let him. By now he’s almost on top of me. ‘Mr. Wiseman, Mr. Wiseman,’ he gasps, out of breath, exhausted. I stop. I turn around, at the end of my rope, weary, resigned, but forgiving. ‘Yes?’ I ask gently, quietly. ‘Mr. Wiseman,’ he says, ‘what’s Marlon Brando like?’”