In Spite of Myself

by Christopher Plummer

  PART OF THE THEATRE’S PROGRAMME was a music festival of short duration but considerable prestige. It was much loved and enjoyed great success. On an average clear day, one might find oneself in the Golden Bamboo staring across a table at Yehudi Menuhin, Dave Brubeck, Wilbur de Paris and Julian Bream munching their egg rolls. Or, out shopping, the person next to you could be Inge Borkh, Maureen Forrester, Paul Desmond, Rostropovich or Erroll Garner.

  Upon leaving the stage door after an evening performance, in the pitch black I accidentally bumped into a tall grey-haired man in a white dinner jacket. He was pacing furiously up and down, humming away to himself and wildly gesticulating. I couldn’t see who this madman was—it was too dark—so I got as close as I politely could. He must have recognized me, for he greeted me enthusiastically with “Vat great evening! Sank you! I yam cawmpawzeeng Henry Feeft piano concerto—fentesticle play—fentesticle!” Conducting an imaginary orchestra, he scurried away up a grassy knoll. It was the renowned pianist Rudolf Serkin.

  AFTER A PARTICULARLY sleepless night, I was jolted out of my bed with a call from Kay Brown in New York. She was informing me that David O. Selznick and his wife, Jennifer Jones, were flying in from the coast to see the Saturday matinée of Henry V and would like to get together with me afterwards to discuss my future. Would I please arrange a meeting place? It would have to be a large house over a certain square footage, secluded from view with at least two acres of surrounding grounds attractively landscaped, including a swimming pool. The owners would be required to vacate the premises until the Selznicks decided they were ready to leave. It would also be necessary for some staff to be left available in order to serve drinks and hors d’oeuvres. The owners, of course, would be handsomely remunerated—money not being a concern.

  David O. Selznick and his wife, Jennifer Jones, about to offer me the world

  Land’s sakes, Miz Scarlett—What waz ah gwanna do?! A wealthy community Stratford was not. I called Tom Patterson—and, bless him, he came up trumps. The richest couple in the vicinity seemed to have just the ideal spot, and as romantic as one could find. They not only agreed; they offered the whole place scot-free for as long as the Selznicks wanted it. It appears they had furnished one of their rooms with several tables, chairs and other artifacts from the set of their alltime favorite movie, Gone With the Wind, at the famous MGM auction. To them, David O. Selznick was God and Jennifer Jones was Saint Bernadette and the Virgin Mary combined. I couldn’t believe my luck.

  D-Day arrived. The Selznicks just managed to make the matinée as the opening fanfare was being played. They had expressly asked for everyone to be discreet concerning their visit, but when they came backstage after the performance, the whole damn place was jammed with press and photographers from far and wide—David directing them like so much traffic, explaining to the world as the three of us squinted into the blazing lightbulbs that I was to be his new male star! Later, on the lawn with tea, champagne and sandwiches, the three of us alone at last, he laid out before me my entire programme for the next few years—my life seemed no longer mine.

  First on the agenda was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night. Jennifer and I were to impersonate the Divers (Nicole and Dick). Rosemary, with whom Diver has the torrid affair, would be the sought-after ingenue Hope Lange. Katharine Hepburn had agreed to play Baby, Nicole’s feisty elder sister. Tommy Barban, the soldier of fortune, would be Vittorio Gassman, and for the wisecracking, piano-playing Abe North it was a toss-up between Noël Coward and Oscar Levant, depending on availability. Both wanted to do it. Ivan Moffat had written the latest screenplay which would, no doubt, be under heavy Selznick scrutiny and John Frankenheimer, the hottest, most provocative new television genius, would be our director. “I want his first motion picture to be mine. I am not interested in the older establishment for this—I want someone young with an unruly imagination.” David was uncannily right—Frankenheimer had an edgy, stylish way with him and a subtle sense of tension that was right up the Fitzgerald alley.

  Selznick was still talking—enjoying his grandiose plans. He would insist we migrate in early summer to the French Riviera, where he had acquired a massive villa. We would reside there for one whole month at his expense for the mere purpose of soaking up “atmosphere”—then we would begin shooting both there and in Switzerland. My next two projects we would discuss at a future date, but he could tell me now that the first was most certainly Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. The two leads would again be Jennifer and me. “The very first thing you must do, however,” David concluded, “is to get a new set of teeth. Yours are awful—impossible to photograph—I can’t even see them!”

  The tea, sandwiches and champagne had not yet reached my stomach. They were stuck somewhere between my throat and my chest. David, I could see, was a past master of persuasion and there was no denying it, he certainly never thought small. I glanced at Jennifer Jones, who was sitting slightly apart. Yes, she was attractive all right, even beautiful in a sensual, neurotic way. The huge myopic eyes, the pouting mouth, gave her a look of despair that was strangely desirable. Yet every now and then her face would tighten as if betraying some disturbing inner secret, forcing the long tendons in her neck to stand out just as I remember them on the screen. She was looking away nervously toward the pond below us and I couldn’t possibly divine what thoughts were going through her head. Although she was perfectly polite and warm, she spoke very little, nodding approval only occasionally—clearly distracted. She was unquestionably a star and able to set up pictures on her name alone (David had seen to that); but was she not a trifle old to be a Fitzgerald or Hemingway heroine? And was she capable of acting those complex, difficult women? More to the point, though I was the right age for Dick Diver, was I not too youthful for her? Yet the whole project was tailored for Jennifer. David would do anything for her. This was the lady for whom the most powerful mogul in filmdom was willing to throw away his kingdom. Trilby had hypnotized Svengali. David Selznick was blinded by love. There was another Jennifer he saw—and it wasn’t the one sitting next to us in the garden.

  I woke from my reverie. The enormity of the offer had hit me with no mean force. Here I was, midtwenties, being presented on a platter with the main characters in two of America’s best contemporary novels! I was among the anointed—my future guaranteed—fame a certainty. But Langham had already promised me Hamlet for the next season and the formidable Tyrone Guthrie, who had crossed over to my side of the fence, likewise—Aguecheek in Twelfth Night. I was torn. How could I throw aside my chance, boring young fart that I was, of improving my craft in the best schooling there is—playing the great characters around whom playwrights of the past had built their tallest tragedies and highest comedies?

  The afternoon sun was disappearing behind the trees and the car had arrived to take the famous pair back to the airport. I muttered weakly something about my duty to continue my stage career. As they were climbing into the car, David threw over his shoulder, “Well, we’ll do Romeo and Juliet first then, you and Jennifer. We’ll do eight weeks on the coast. I’ll get Paul Scofield to play Mercutio. You can keep your hand in any time you want—before we do Tender. Think about it!” And showering me with compliments that would have turned anyone’s head, and certainly turned mine, they were whisked away, leaving me dazed in the middle of my newly borrowed driveway. I had hired Finn Diehl, a local man whom everyone trusted as being the safest and most cautious driver in town. Finn told me later, “You know that Mr. Selznick, eh? He was so dern anxious fer to ketch his plane, eh? He kept shoutin’ at me to git a move on, drive faster and he never stopped hit-tin’ me over the head with his newspaper till we got there!”

  I TELL YA, Emma, this was some dilemma! I wandered about for days, my heart in the classics, my head in Hollywood, not knowing where to turn. There was only one thing that was going to make me forget this mess—I had to get laid! Freud or Kraft-Ebbing could explain it away till kingdom come, but the truth was that every time I came up against an
impossible situation—I had to get laid! I spent the night with a local girl I’d met at a bar. I’d never seen her before in my life but she was warm, understanding, loads of fun and by God was she good at it! What was it with this small town anyway? It had lousy food, and it rolled in the carpets annoyingly early, but surely there must have been a school for lovers somewhere nearby, for this young lady had graduated Magnus Come Loudee!

  It was just what the doctor ordered. I woke up alone the next morning and had just started to roll out of bed when I keeled over onto the floor. The pain was all around my groin and lower abdomen—sharp and jabbing. It made me instantly nauseous. There was no way I could get up. I managed to knock the phone onto the carpet and breathlessly called the taxi service to take me to the hospital. They came right away, carried me into the cab, propped me up on the backseat, where I immediately doubled up and fell on the floor into my own puke. That made them put their foot on the gas and as they tore through the peaceful town I started to whimper like a whipped dog. “So this is what syphilis is like?” I thought. “I suppose I deserve it, but Christ, how the hell was I to know?” Obviously I had syphilis on the brain because Henry V in the fifteenth century had contracted the dreaded disease and had passed it on, considerate fellow that he was, to Katherine, Princess of France, and it ultimately killed her. This, then, was Katherine’s revenge. It had taken her five centuries but she’d finally done it!

  They carried me into the hospital, still raving, where a man in a white smock shot me full of morphine. I zonked out and woke up much later to find someone standing at the foot of my hospital bed busily shaving away my pubic hairs. It was a male orderly. Well, I’m not certain—male is perhaps not too accurate a term. It seemed to be wearing a red wig slightly askew, was chubby, with fat little hands, had albinolike skin covered in freckles and was very, very nervous. Every time it shook, its hands slipped, taking another jab out of me with its razor. I looked down. I was bleeding away happily in several areas.

  Also the orderly never stopped talking—it simply wouldn’t shut up. “Lithen, I wouldn’t wanna be thtuck with what you’ve got! You’ve gone and got yourthelf an iddy-biddy nathty kidney thtone up there. I bet I know whooth not gonna by playin’ Henry The Fiff tonight? Yeth thir! You’re gonna thtay thtuck in your bed and retht and firtht thing t’morrow you’re goin’ to be thtrapped thtraight onto the operating table where they’ll thtick a long thin peeth of wire up yer lil Henry the Fiff. Oh yeth—that’ll get rid of the lil thun of a bitch, you’ll thee!”

  I was at the miserable creep’s mercy and it was enjoying every minute. The job accomplished, the creep finally minced out, leaving behind a trail of cheap, heady perfume that lingered in the room long after with a suffocating stench. I glanced down at my war wounds. My God! I didn’t know guys also had a mound of Venus! I felt thoroughly emasculated and it began to sink in that I was really going to miss tonight’s performance and that William Shatner, my understudy, would have to go on. The thought of Shatner or anyone replacing me in that part instantly brought back my pain. I screamed for a nurse who jabbed me with more morphine. The shots must have found their mark for they discovered me just in time as I was about to exit the hospital’s front door. “Where do you think you’re going, dear?” said Edith Cavell. “I’ve gotta p’foramze,” I slurred as she dragged me back to my room where I, at last, passed out.

  William Shatner, my rebellious understudy

  My periwigged orderly friend had been right. The next morning they strapped me to the table with great leather thongs which pinioned my arms and legs in a vice. They then began rubbing some sinister ointment on and around my genitals, which was laughingly supposed to ease any pain. Then, to my horror, I saw the High Priest insert a long, thin bit of barbed wire with a hook on the end slowly up my poor, unsuspecting Henry Fiff. Jesus! It didn’t stop; it continued on and on, farther and farther up as far as my heart I was certain, as I lay there paralyzed.

  When it could go no farther, the Marquis de Sade left the room instructing his vultures to keep me in that position, absolutely still, till he returned. The vultures folded their wings and surreptitiously stole away, leaving me alone on that hard, cold slab—my only companion a young student nurse who had been ordered to hold on to my dick for dear life. She was obviously terrified, poor thing, for each time the nerves in her fingers twitched, I would cry out as the jagged wire sent a fresh spasm of pain straight through me. I slowly moved my head to one side to catch a glimpse of her. Behind her mask she looked really delectable—Oh God! Chris! Don’t even think it! If you get excited now, you fool, you’ll pass out for good.

  After what seemed an hour, the Marquis returned and very slowly withdrew the long instrument of torture from its bruised and tender scabbard. O rapturous day! Niagara poured out of me. The never-ending stream didn’t cease. Respighi’s Fountains of Rome flooded my brain and borne away on the gushing spray of Old Faithful even the weariest offending stone within me was hurled somewhere safe to sea.

  Later, over coffee in the canteen, someone told me that Bill Shatner had scored full marks as Henry. Ignoring all my moves, he had made sure he did everything I didn’t do—stood up where I had sat down, lay down where I had stood up. He refused to copy—he was original to the last. I knew then that the SOB was going to be a “star.”

  A FEW DAYS LATER, I married Tammy Grimes. There seemed to be a matter of some small urgency. I learned this from her mother, Wool-lie, who had telephoned me and tactfully suggested in clear, nautical terms that it might be appropriate if we tied the knot. She’s probably right, I thought, for having children out of wedlock was still fairly frowned upon in those days. Now Tammy and I were quite dotty about each other; after all, we’d lived in and out of each another’s pockets for some time—she made me laugh a lot and I think once or twice I even managed to squeeze a couple of giggles out of her. “Ah well,” I thought, rather ungracefully, “marriage will be a new experience—why not? I’m game!”

  Tammy happened to be in Denver, Colorado, playing Anne de Poitiers in The Lark, which was touring the country with Julie H. She had called me to tell me that because she was so large with child her breasts, which had swollen to more than generous proportions, kept frequently popping out of her low-cut bodice in full view of the paying public, thereby authentically duplicating de Poitier’s famous portrait from Très Riches Heures. Wow! We’d better get a move on, I thought. I had only two days off from Henry, so I took advantage and flew to Denver.

  Tammy, with her usual sangfroid, had conned Tweet Kimball Ruddock (a wealthy acquaintance of a friend) to lend us her castle for the wedding. Cherokee Castle had been built entirely of Colorado stone. It stood five thousand to seven thousand feet above sea level on ten thousand acres of rolling mountainous country. Tweet had bought herds of Santa Gertrudis bulls from the King Ranch in Texas to see if they could survive a colder climate at such high altitude. She grazed them there on her land and the experiment proved such a success it was not possible to judge who became the more famous—Tweet or her bulls! Now exaggeration was quite common with our Tam, so I took all this with a grain of cattle salt—until I was driving up a long steep road in the foothills outside Denver. In the distance on top of a small peak—sure enough—stood a gorgeous and imposing heap, crenallations and turrets pointing to the sky, straight out of some faery tale! The rays of the sunset which bathed the mountain in a luscious warm light washed its walls with a staggering pink. It took my breath away. Good Ol’ Tam, she’d done me proud!

  As I recall, it was a tiny, private ceremony, only five of us present. Tweet and two of the Ruddock family had remained behind: one, to give the bride away, and the other to take charge of the food and booze. What turned out to be a Ruddock relation of sorts offered to marry us. He was the local honorary sheriff and as such had the authority to act as justice of the peace. He reeled off the service by heart, but it was not one I was familiar with. I could understand very little of it and was wondering to what denomination the j
ustice belonged when I noticed the scriptures he was holding were upside down. The man was clearly pickled. Tammy and I froze. Our eyes met—signalling an unspoken vow to give each other a cue when we thought it was the moment to respond. There was but one thing on our minds. Was this a ghastly omen? We didn’t dare look at each other for fear we might burst out laughing. Luckily the bizarre Brueghel-like ceremony was soon over, and we were alone in our turret chamber—a ravishing circular tower room with a spectacular view of Pikes Peak.

  Sipping champagne before a roaring fire in the beauty of that room we said little, lost in the awesome realization that our Gordian knot was firmly tied and that Team Plummer was officially on the scoreboard. The deep stillness of the mountain night took pity on us and a shyness that was both awkward and tender overcame us in a way we had not known before.

  A rising star and my first wife to boot

  IN ACT 2, SCENE 3 of Henry V, the Hostess at the Boar’s Head Inn says of the dead Falstaff:

  Nay, sure he’s not in Hell; he’s in Arthur’s bosom,

  If ever man went to Arthur’s bosom.

  Come season’s end our gallant company had crossed the pond and relinquished Arthur’s bosom for Arthur’s Seat. There could not be a more conspicuous spot for Arthur to show his seat. Permanently exposed, prominent by day, floodlit by night, it sits atop the famous cliff by the castle overlooking the lovely old town of Edinburgh for all its good burghers to gaze upon. Homage is paid at the famous festival’s conclusion with a spectacular and moving ceremony complete with son et lumière and bagpipes called a tattoo. I often wonder who it was that knew Arthur had a tattoo on his bum.