In Spite of Myself

by Christopher Plummer

  One springtime, I was standing by one of our stone walls at the top of the hill when a big beautiful blond golden retriever jumped up onto the wall and threw his arms around me. Every day he came to pay his respects. He had no visible owner, but we could sometimes hear him barking in the distance as he was doing his rounds at various people’s houses. I’m sure he knew everyone in the neighbourhood and they him. They’d feed him hors d’oeuvres at drink time—God knows how many cocktails he’d consumed. He was a complete hobo—a bum! But oh so beautiful. The only thing wrong with this great baby with the wicked smile was a nervous flinch if anyone raised an arm too quickly. He was also wary of brooms and rakes. I learned later that the wife of his onetime owner used to severely beat him and abuse him early on in his checkered career. But he had taught himself to rise above his misfortunes and was generally a happy laughing dog and the biggest coward when it came to the smallest things, shirking even the bare rudiments of animal responsibility. But it was quite obvious he had fallen head over paws for Briggie. Briggs was now a full-grown lady with a gorgeous stripe down her forehead. The golden stayed all summer, sleeping outside the kitchen, rain or shine, waiting to catch a glimpse of her first thing each morning. When she was in heat and male canines would appear out of the woodwork for miles around—Dobermans, bulldogs, labs, dachshunds, even overambitious Chihuahuas, he would gallantly see them off and in some cases fight them till they bled—he was one powerful Lothario. On sultry summer days we could see the two of them lying under a tree, just staring into each other’s eyes.

  With Rags, who taught me all about cowardice

  We had to give him a name, and news from down the street at the local bar which he frequented confirmed that his name was Rags—so Rags it was. Fuff kept telling me not to let him inside the house on any account. “Once inside he’ll never leave,” she insisted. One freezing winter morning I got up about seven and went downstairs to turn on the heat—it was a blustery zero degrees Fahrenheit outside. There was Rags still asleep in a huge snowdrift outside the kitchen, his head on his paws with icicles hanging from his eyelids and his mouth. For a moment I thought he might be dead, but he moved slightly and seemed to be smiling. Briggie was awake and we both stared at him through the window. “That’s it!” I said. “No one’s claimed him. I’m letting him in!” I don’t know who was more relieved, he or I. He was still shaking from the cold, but the first thing he did was to sit down and give me a paw. Rags was ours! And Briggie’s too, of course. They romped together in the snow all winter long and then one day he must have taken her deep into the woods to some secret place he knew (he was a romantic soul) and ravaged her because pretty soon our Briggie, now thin as a rail, gave birth to eight puppies, one after the other, in front of our very eyes.

  Adorable they were, of course, but God knows what kind of assortment— little bundles of black fur with occasional white spots—a predominance of sheltie in them, I’ll wager. Though they were placed in a large baby crib, these eight little monsters never stopped pooping—on walls, floors, anywhere they chose. Life had become chaotic.

  Into this morass came Janina Fialkowska to lend a much-needed hand. “Piggie,” as we so rudely called her, came straight from my old family background in Senneville, Quebec. Her great-grandfather had bought that old pile Boisbriant from my own great-grandfather back in the dark ages. Not only were we distant cousins by marriage, but our association was very much en famille. Her mother, “Biddy” Todd Clouston, while a Red Cross ambulance driver in World War II, had fallen in love with and married a Polish officer, George Fialkowski. Biddy had studied piano under the legendary Nadia Boulanger in Paris, but her ambitions had exceeded her talent and she was determined her daughter would excel where she had failed. Her intense disciplinary methods, not without a certain sacrifice, paid off.

  At the age of eighteen, Piggie had come in second in the Artur Rubinstein competitions in Israel. Her friend Emanuel Ax earned first prize. The chief judge was the great Rubinstein himself, and he and his wife, Nella, would soon take her under their wing. She lived with the Rubinsteins in Paris and in Marbella and learned a great deal from the master. In fact, Rubinstein had such confidence in her that he instructed his manager to arrange his contracts so that whatever engagements he undertook, Piggie would be given those same engagements the following year. This meant she would play major piano concertos with most of the top symphony orchestras—a daunting experience for a young girl, no matter how skilled. Now Rubinstein’s reputation as a lady’s man was universally known and musicians as well as conductors, believing she was just another of his conquests, treated her abominably in the beginning, without any justification. After all, Rubinstein was ninety-three. Once they heard her play, however, they changed their tune, but it was a little late, to say the least, and quite naturally the horrendous pressure on her did a certain amount of damage psychologically. However, Piggie rallied in the end after some hard knocks and was now travelling the world as one of its finest women pianists.

  An important position at the Juilliard School assisting the maestro in residence, “Sascha” Gorenitzky, made it mandatory to hole up in New York for a time, so she would visit us on weekends and help with the dogs she loved. “You can’t keep all these puppies,” she reasoned. “It’s ridiculous—you’ve got to give some away.” We did. We gave away six and kept a little beauty with an adorable white nose whom we called “Patches,” and an ugly mutt, the runt of the litter, with a hugely funny personality and speckled spots of white all over her like a toad, whom we of course called “Toadie.” Briggie, very Scottish indeed being part collie, was rather short with them and pretended not to show much interest, but Rags was a wonderful father, rolling with them in the grass and flower beds or cleaning them and washing their eyes. However, most everyone’s attention was centered on the odd one, Toadie, obviously her father’s favourite, and poor “Paddy,” as we nicknamed her, who never stopped trying to please, was usually left out of things and became very jealous of her sister. We had our hands full training them, just as difficult a time as they must have had training us. To them we were members of their pack and privileged to be so. I’d been used to the canine world all my life but never a family like this, a family in which I was included—with all its loyalties and dysfunctions, who would fight to the death for each other.

  Janina “Piggie” Fialkowska, la grande pianiste

  OF COURSE, it was necessary to go on earning money in order to keep our pack in the style to which we were accustomed. As a consequence of certain tax arrangements, in my country I had become what is known as Canadian content, which meant that any foreign film made in Canada as a coproduction would have to accept at least one or two Canadians in a principal or starring role. Canadian content sounded terribly cold and impersonal, like a prolonged prison sentence or a disease. “No I’m not an actor, I’m not even a person—I’m Canadian content—can’t you tell?” But it certainly was a useful means of security, and I found myself appearing in many a picture and television production made in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, as well as in Europe, which fortunately still beckoned.

  Toadie, drawn by dear friend Susan Hoquet

  Two engagements stood out as a study in contrasts—The Scarlet and the Black made in Rome, and The Day That Shook the World (Sarajevski atentat) made in Prague and Yugoslavia. The former was the true story of an Irish priest who was secretly fighting the Nazi occupation of Rome through the underground. The Nazi commandant in charge of the occupation searches high and low for him. They strike up a strange sort of unspoken bond, even a mutual respect, as in honour amongst thieves. When the Nazis are finally defeated and the commandant is in prison, he sends for his enemy, the monsignor, and begs him to convert him to Catholicism. The monsignor does so with all his heart in a small modest ceremony in the jail itself. The Nazi dies soon after in his very cell, his only sanctuary, at peace with himself. Gregory Peck, with whom I renewed my acquaintance, played the priest, Sir John Gielgud was Pius XII, the pope
who famously sat on the fence, and I was the Nazi commandant. Jerry London directed, it was a cracking good story, and it was my great fortune to work with Gregory and John, two of the most generous actors in our profession.

  The second project, The Day That Shook the World, was another story altogether—quite bizarre and utterly demented. It was a film about the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, by the young rebel Gavrilo Princip, the famous incident that ignited World War I. The film, an American, Czechoslovakian and Yugoslavian copro-duction, starred me as the ill-fated archduke and as my wife, Florinda Bolkan, a beautiful, charming, immensely statuesque actress from Brazil. Besides ourselves, it was filled with actors from Czechoslovakia, Germany, Austria and Yugoslavia. We began shooting the Hapsburg section of the story in Prague, that most beautiful of cities with its multisconced candelabras on every street corner; the grand Charles Bridge that spans the river Moldau, blackened from the cheap petrol; the little house where Kafka lived; the enchanting old Jewish quarter; the fourteenth-century square in the center of town with its famous clock tower from which moving figures strike the hour; the vast cathedrals, St. Stephen on the lower level and St. Vitus cresting the hill—altogether an elegant jewel of a city waiting patiently for someone to come along and clean it up. Very soon Prague would become a festival once again and a favourite location for many filmmakers, its own Barrandov Studios being one of the most prestigious film schools in the world.

  Of course, Prague had always been a major center for music in Europe, and though now restricted by the Communist takeover, its citizens were permitted the luxury of an odd concert. Fuff and I went one night to hear that most eccentric but brilliant pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli give a solo recital of Schubert, Chopin and Ravel. The place was packed; the townspeople spent what little they had on things cultural. We were all crammed in like music-loving sardines when an extremely tardy Maestro Michelangeli made his entrance. He walked on, the portrait of melancholy, dressed entirely in black—a black frock coat, black gloves, long black hair—Franz Liszt playing Hamlet. He took his sweet time removing his gloves, adjusting his stool, smoothing his hair and examining the piano keys before he finally began to play. His Schubert was metallic, hard, furious, cold, much too fast—he obviously hated the piano he’d been given. Everyone went out into the lobby at intermission and lit up. The amount of cigarette smoking in occupied Communist countries was dangerously high. As they puffed away, they shuffled about the room in a circle—like prisoners in a barbed-wire pen.

  A new piano had now been brought in (perhaps it was his and had arrived late) and Benedetti made the same sombre entrance and began testing the notes. As far as his melancholy nature would allow, a hint of a smile chased across his pale features and when he began the Chopin, he was another man—electrifying, mesmerizing. I have never heard Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, one of my favourites, played so magnifi-cently—notes in the left hand were sounded that I never knew existed. It was as if Ravel had written it especially for him and this was its pre-mière performance. I don’t know how long the audience stayed, but encore after encore was played until we left exhausted. That enraptured crowd of poor, deprived Czech citizens was so grateful and so moved, they simply wouldn’t let him go.

  I told this story years later to Terry MacEwan, the music world’s hottest manager at that time (among his clients, Pavarotti and Domingo) on a plane trip we shared. He then told me his Michelangeli experience; he had also managed the pianist for a while. There was a concert scheduled with the New York Philharmonic, with Michelan-geli to be the soloist. Terry picked him up at his hotel in a limousine. They are on their way. Michelangeli, in the backseat beside Terry, said, “E—Tayree fair ve goeen?” “To the concert.” “Fair?” “The Philharmonic.” “Vat ess playeen?” “Rachmaninov’s third piano concerto.” “Oh, oh—who plays dis?” “You, maestro.” “Me? Oh no, Tayree, Tayree. Oh no, let’s go cheenemah, Tayree. I vant go to cheenema.” It took several rides around the block before Terry persuaded him he must play the concert.

  The Czech government had allowed us to film in Franz Ferdinand’s hunting lodge outside Prague called Konopiste. I have never seen so many animal heads mounted on so many walls as in this massive and most depressing mausoleum. We also shot in and around an exquisite castle that had belonged to the Cardinal von Fürstenberg, and yet another castle, the nineteenth-century Gothic pile Castle Schwarzen-berg, deep in the woods. The Bohemian countryside that surrounded the city of Prague was very beautiful, soft and gently rolling. I was sad to leave it, for even in those stressful times it still reminded one of just how civilized a part of the world this once was.

  Our esteemed director, Veljko Bulajic, a tall, proud Montenegren (is there any other kind?) behaved as if he had complete control over not just the film but all the Balkan states as well. A powerful high-ranking member of the Communist party and one of Tito’s trusted right-hand men in the government, Veljko occasionally dropped little bons mots such as “My grandmother was queen of Montenegro, but I never use my title when I work.” He had made some important films in Eastern Europe such as the gigantic epic The Battle of Vareslava, so he was someone to be reckoned with. He had been most agreeably charming to Florinda and me while we were in Prague, but once the film unit moved to Sarajevo, more or less his home territory, he became a fiercely overbearing autocrat who trusted no one, especially, I am sorry to say, me. Even when I was speaking to my interpreter, George Petrarco, a multilingual American who lived in Rome, I could see in the distance Veljko, with daggers in his eyes, staring at me. I had one harsh disagreement with Veljko in which I felt he was trying to make the archduke merely a cardboard figure with no redeeming features. It was a mere discussion, only, but he never forgave me.

  Veljko, thinking up some diabolical direction

  However, the film was being made impeccably authentic. The massive Serbo-Croat army that Veljko had at his command seemed just as numerous as that of Waterloo. All military uniforms were magnificently reproduced and, through some miraculous arrangement with Vienna’s Museum of Royal Collections, I was able to wear the actual sword and medals worn by the archduke himself. Florinda was dressed superbly; she appeared the very picture of supreme elegance—far more ravishing than the real Sophie. All the vehicles used on the film for the procession were the actual open-roofed Tantras, a rare Czech car, the very motors that had carried the royal couple. There was a great deal to admire about the production and I liked the Yugoslavs very much—they worked with such enthusiasm. It was just Veljko, riddled with this strange persecution complex, who made the atmosphere so tense and unpleasant, shouting orders, screaming at his excellent camera crew whom he continually accused of being incompetent. They all thought him quite mad, of course, but what could they do? The man had power.

  The Archduke (me) and Princess Sophie (Florinda Bolkan) dreading Belko’s next direction

  Two nights were set aside to film a huge banquet scene. It was wonderfully arranged with a crowd of about one thousand. They had secured the actual speech Franz Ferdinand had spoken on that evening—I was to memorize it and deliver it in both English and German. We had started very early in the morning, but Veljko, for some pig-headed reason, refused to bring the camera round on me, his principal player. All day and night he shot reactions from the crowd—an unnecessary waste of film. The crew and the extras were utterly exhausted, and as there is nothing so tiring as hanging about waiting, so was I. It was 1:00 a.m. when he turned the cameras round on me. There seemed to be no rules or unions in this part of the world to set a time when to stop. I was so tired and angry my lips could hardly form words and by that time I’d forgotten everything I’d learned. I spoke up: “Veljko, I’m the only one with dialogue in this entire scene. I’ve been waiting all day and night to do this, but now it’s too late and I’m so tired I won’t make any sense. As we have to be here tomorrow anyway and your cameras are pointing in the right direction, why not shoot it first thing when I’m fresh?” H
e whispered something to George Petrarco who came over to me white as a sheet. “He says you will do it now. If you refuse he will have you thrown in jail.” That was the strongest and most direct note I’ve ever received from any director. He was deadly serious and I knew it. There was a long silence while I imagined Tito’s soldiers coming in to arrest me and carry me off. I did my speech—I was very bad, I’m sure—but I did my speech.

  Lucky Fuff managed to escape and fly back to Connecticut, and I would grab every opportunity to flee Sarajevo and drive the nearly five-hour trip through the hills to Mostar and then Dubrovnik so I could drink in the salty sea air and wake up on that spectacular coastline. But now the ordeal was just about over. Florinda and I were to shoot our last scene together—the assassination itself. We were to be filmed being driven through the whole town by two chauffeurs preceded and followed by several more cars and carriages of the period. We would stop momentarily at the town hall where we would be greeted by the mayor of Sarajevo, exactly as history recorded it. Then we would continue through the streets and turn a corner where the young assassin Gavrilo Princip would be waiting to put an end to us.

  We began our slow procession. The whole town had turned out to watch and they mingled with the extras perfectly. Florinda and I sat, in all our splendour, in the backseat of our “Tantrum,” as we nicknamed it, open to the skies. As we looked up to the rooftops where hundreds of people were leaning over staring down at us, I had the eerie feeling they had got the idea that it was really happening all over again—that the real Hapsburgs were returning to the scene of the crime. “Look at their faces,” Florinda said to me under her breath. She was right—their expressions were sour, unfriendly, perhaps even hostile. When we got out of the car and had finished the scene on the red carpet with the mayor, the publicity man came up to me and said, “Mister Plummer, there is someone from the crowd I’d like you to meet and perhaps take a picture or two with her.” He brought her over, an old peasant woman of ample girth with anger in her eyes. “This is Miss Princip—the sister of the real Gavrilo Princip.” I gulped audibly. She stared at me with a look of perplexity and mistrust. Here was I, dressed in full regalia as the archduke, her sworn enemy, with real sword, plumed hat and authentic medals, and here was she, my assassin’s sister! It was a swelteringly hot day anyway, and now my breath was coming short and fast. There was something sinister lurking in the air and Florinda and I could hardly wait to be shot dead around the next street corner—dead and free of it all at last!