In Spite of Myself: A Memoir

by Christopher Plummer

  To while away lunch breaks or free evenings, Kate, Barbara, Marian and I would hang about “21,” the smart harbour-front restaurant in Hamilton, where the action was, and watch the big private yachts glide in and come to rest. We would establish beachheads at the bar and mingle with visiting VIPs. Everyone who was anyone paid court at “21,” particularly during the famous Bermuda Cup races. Errol Flynn’s yacht was regularly moored out in the bay but only occasionally was one lucky enough to get a glimpse of the man himself, surrounded as he was by so many cronies plus entourage. We were never to get even close.

  There was tennis on the Princess Hotel courts, of which I took daily advantage; and in the big white house on the hill above, which the Farnsworths had lent us for our digs, we could eat, sleep and gossip in the damp, cloying rooms, compare notes and organize hanky-panky. Button-nosed Kate Reid was a marvel of morale-lifting joy. A combination of finishing-school deb, tomboy, Mother Earth and imp, Kate was prodigiously talented for one so young. She was already an expert at her own brand of light comedy, but every so often one could detect a vulnerability creeping through—a hint of the pathos which was to flood her work in later years.

  She was then married to the theatre’s founding partner, a tall, handsome Irishman who seemed more interested in upgrading his social status than lavishing his young spouse with attention. It was, I suspect, his method of running away. She was clearly too much for him to handle—her effervescent charms and rollicking sense of fun embarrassed him a little, and although I know they were happy for a while, their drifting apart seemed inevitable. I am not suggesting Kate was in the least promiscuous—she was above all else a one-man girl, but there was too much going on in that head and heart of hers to suffer such a tepid alliance.

  Kate had started to booze quite heavily. She was not an unhappy drinker—she enjoyed it immensely. Gradually however, this became an addiction. I have always thought in her case it was inherited, for her attractive mother, nicknamed “Babby,” a wonderful character with a fierce generosity of spirit, quite obviously had, for some time, a serious problem with drink. They were great together though, always holding up the hotel bar, singing songs till all hours with Mister Billie egging them on. They were terrific buddies, inseparable, always laughing. This drinking did not seem to affect Kate in the slightest; after all she was still young and pretty—it was much later that it took its toll, marking the last years of her life. She never lost her sense of fun right up to the end but back then, boy, was she a riot!

  I remember waking one Sunday morning, the air heavier than usual, the sultry breeze blowing through the windows, particularly warm and seductive. I sauntered into Kate’s room rubbing the sleep from my eyes; both of us confessed to feeling decidedly turned on and vowed then and there to take a stab at it. It began fairly smoothly, promising all the earmarks (if you’ll forgive the phrase) of success. Our kisses were becoming quite passionate when I, fancying myself as some irresistible Don Juan, a master of technique, must have made some clumsy, overly calculated “paso dobles,” for suddenly Kate burst into loud, uncontrolled laughter. I was mortally wounded, my libido quite deflated. To save face, I instantly feigned hearty indifference and, ignoring utterly the mating call of the tropics, joined in, as we rolled over onto the floor together, giggling away like fools. The noise must have raised the others, for it seemed the entire company was standing in the doorway leering at us in mischievous derision. That moment sealed our friendship, Kate’s and mine. Romance was never again broached and for most of her life we remained, like brother and sister, warmly and deeply close.

  Kate’s supreme creation that year was her transcendent Pegeen Mike in Synge’s loquacious verse drama The Playboy of the Western World. She was to give us a loveable Gabby, a tough but touching barmaid in The Petrified Forest, and acquit her bubbling self well in other fairly undemanding roles, but her Pegeen was the first clear affirmation of just how strong and powerful her real gifts were and how far they could take her should she wish to go the distance. Burgess (Buzz) Meredith was the transient star that week and a much too old Christy Mahon. It mattered not a jot however for his quixotic, pixieish charm, his speed and tenacity, convinced all about him that he could pass as a plausible but somewhat lived-in thirty.

  Buzz was then in his late forties, Kate in her early twenties, but as the ill-fated lovers they made a dynamic duo not easily forgotten. The part of Old Mahon, Christy’s father, was played by me. At twenty-one or -two, I was hardly the obvious choice. It was Buzz’s fault entirely; he had cast me. Christ! Here I was again—old before my time. But it was exciting to say the least, for it was the closest thing I had ever been to a really fine theatre actor—and there was one hell of a lot to learn from him. When as Christy he was roused, his intensity was electrifying. He was a mini tornado. With imperceptible ease he could switch from the lowest, most intimate conversational tones to soaring lyrical heights—all which this play demanded. He also had the confidence and experience to milk the big moments without ever spilling over into mawkishness. Buzz was American to the core, but with his instinctive musical sense of lilt and ear for cadence, he was born to interpret the great poets of the Emerald Isle.

  Our season was by now well under way and the celebrities who graced our stage included Jeffrey Lynn, Constance Cummings, Kay Francis (the Hollywood comedienne who could never pronounce her r’s; she insisted on calling herself Kay Fwancis) and the extremely bright playwright actress Ilka Chase. All were skillful, slick performers who delighted the audience and warmed them up for the rest of us; but the sun really came out the day Edward Everett Horton rolled into our lives.

  His polish and indisputable mastery of timing were light-years ahead of the rest of them. The response he drew from the public was extraordinary. They were drenched in affection for him. It was as if he had bought the entire audience and given them to us for a Christmas present. It was a constant challenge to keep Mister Billie away from him. All Billie did was to point at him and dissolve into helpless laughter. Luckily, E. E. stayed an extra week or two, for he had brought two plays with him—his old warhorse Springtime for Henry, which as a touring vehicle over the years had made him his second fortune, and a new play, an English version of André Roussin’s Parisian farce Nina. In Springtime, of course, he played Henry and he cast me as his crony and comic foil Jelliwell—a part that had been created many years before in the much straighter London original by my cousin Nigel Bruce. Not having a clue what to do with the role, I did the unforgivable thing and simply imitated Nigel. (I had seen enough of Nigel in the movies to sense how he might have sounded as Jelliwell.) Edward Everett didn’t seem to mind in the least as long as I accomplished to his satisfaction all the intricate “business” he had invented for Jelliwell to set up his laughs. There was so much “business” and precise timing to perfect, there was very little time left to learn the lines. It was my first taste of what vaudeville must have been like to rehearse and how painstaking the process; but Eddy’s style, though he had been trained by the great team of Weber and Fields, was several notches higher than vaudeville.

  Edward Everett Horton, the best double-taker in the business

  The prime lesson to be learned from Mr. Horton, I discovered, was just how real, natural and true one had to be in order to make comedy the supreme art that he proved it was. Those familiar with his delicious portrayals on the screen in the Astaire-Rogers musicals, bantering with Eric Blore, rolling eyes at Carmen Miranda, or in the early classics such as Ruggles of Red Gap, have simply no conception of just how much finer an artist Eddy could be, unless they had seen him on the stage. Although he quite clearly prepared his performances from the outside in, comfortably relying on a stupendous technique, ironically the results were quite Stanislavskian in their spontaneity and freshness. It was as if Eddy, like Gerald du Maurier before him, had anticipated the Method.

  I don’t think Ben Levy, the British playwright and MP, ever forgave Edward Everett for transforming his rather ordinary come
dy into a howlingly funny solo vehicle—but Eddy’s tinkering had virtually guaranteed Springtime’s huge success on the road, the royalties of which had helped fill Mr. Levy’s coffers. So somewhere along the line, he must have been grateful.

  E. E. had outrageously interpolated into the text several lengthy moments of silent clowning. Every night when I wasn’t on, I would stand in the wings and watch one particular mime sequence which was supposed to last approximately four minutes, but counting the public’s raucous reaction, would inevitably stretch to eight.

  Alone on the stage, he would sit absolutely still on the couch waiting for his attractive lady secretary and become suddenly fascinated by a small ball of fluff on one of the cushions. He would scrutinize it intensely from all angles, pick it up, examine it at much closer range, then finally pop it in his mouth and eat it. Increasingly bored waiting, he then started telling himself little stories under his breath which he obviously found excruciatingly hilarious, for he would buckle over in paroxysms of silent laughter. Tired of this, he began tapping his foot in growing impatience. Still tapping, he would then look around to see where the tapping was coming from. Was someone hammering outside? Tapping still and more irritated than ever, he would hold his hand out—was it raining in the room? Giving up the tapping, he unconsciously set about drumming his fingers on the table beside him and with his other hand turned up the lapels of his jacket, clutching them tightly together to avoid getting soaked by the gathering force of an imaginary downpour. He would take a sip of water from a glass and put it back on the table with a rather too-violent crack—scaring himself to death, convinced someone had taken a shot at him. The next few moments were spent in gingerly, ever-so-carefully searching for a wound. During all this he never once left the couch—it was a brilliant bit of improvisation, silly beyond all silliness but so intensely real. I can’t think of anyone else getting away with it and every night along with the convulsed audience, I nearly expired in the wings.

  Nina, our next project, was a slightly updated Gallic imitation of Design for Living. Marian Seldes was the apex of the triangle (the Bermuda Triangle, we called it), I was her lover, Gerard, and Edward Everett played her husband, Adolphe. As it was new to all of us, Eddy couldn’t find the time to decorate it with his customary frills. Instead he attacked it with a genuine conviction that made this modest bit of fluff all the more plausible and humorous. I couldn’t wait to walk on stage and play a scene with Eddy; he made it all so relaxing, so effortless. Sharing a dialogue with him wasn’t “acting” at all; it was simply a pleasant chat with an old friend.

  E. E. was a specialist, a unique specialist. He had not only invented his own style; he had invented himself. He took infinite pains to make certain the motive that drove his kind of comedy was always crystal clear—a man of logic and precision hurled into indignation and confusion by an unruly, unpredictable world that was neither logical nor precise. Whenever a little order came his way and restored the balance momentarily, his disbelief, gratitude and wonder were overwhelming, and for a second, we were touched beyond measure. Eddie was one of the great clowns. He had shown us the map of our journey, he had given us a reason to do what we do and the day he left the island, we aimlessly wandered about for some time after—lost children—wondering about our future and how we could manage it all without him.

  HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL. The gap was about to be filled, or at least partially filled, for help was on its way in the shape of two ministering angels. They didn’t manifest themselves both at once, thank God—they came “single spies,” each in her own inimitable form. In fact, that very morning my trusty little motor was delivering, none too smoothly, me and my extra-heavy head into the presence of the first visitation—a dark apparition clearly possessed of ancient, unknown powers, named Florence Reed. As I came through the lobby Mister Billie looked as if he’d smelled voodoo. She must have spooked him senseless! A fiery little witch, Florence was well into her seventies. Everything about her was black—her flashing raven’s eyes, her hair, her dress, her stockings, even the silver-headed cane she brandished about her like a scimitar. If we had not known she was the famous stage star who had been storming Broadway for decades, she could have been mistaken for an aged Spanish duenna or the mother superior of some old, obscure religious order. She had the deepest, most resonant voice I have ever heard in man, woman or beast—deeper than Paul Robeson’s, I swear. Rumor had it that Florence had taught Tallulah Bankhead how to laugh, but Talloo’s famous whiskey-barrel guffaw was a schoolgirl’s giggle beside Florence’s warlike roar. If Miss Reed thought something was really funny, her rumblings became phenomenal, and we would pretend to run—“Watch out for the rocks, guys. It must be a landslide!”

  Florence Reed

  The school of acting she suggested was that of Ada Rehan, Réjane or Modjeska—dark, forceful, tragic. She was about to rehearse us in Edna Ferber’s The Royal Family, a play about America’s famous acting clan, the Barrymores. I was cast as John Barrymore (alias Tony Cavendish). Florence herself ferociously gnawed the scenery as old Mrs. Drew (Aunt Fanny Cavendish). The Barrymores had fascinated me, and will for a long time, and here I was playing John, dear Diana’s father, that mythical rascal and great actor. I had a marvelous time making myself up to look exactly like him—our profiles were not dissimilar, so it was fairly easy, and when I wasn’t spending time practicing his voice I would stand in front of a mirror for hours hopelessly trying to raise one eyebrow in quizzical hauteur. I gave up, shaved my eyebrow and drew the damn thing in.

  Finally, I felt ready for the onslaught, convinced I was Mr. Barry-more’s living reincarnation. God, how proud Diana would be if she could see me now, I thought! Florence, on the other hand, was far from proud. She constantly accused me of mumbling. In front of the audience, she would cut across the scene and frequently shout, “Speak up—speak up—no one can hear you!” or “Louder boy—louder!” rapping my knuckles or giving me a massive crack across my knees and shins with her cane. By the end of the week’s run, I was black and blue. Yet I was crazy about the wicked old thing for apart from her hostile, warlike attacks, she had a big heart and her conversation was full of wonderful stories about the theatre and the Barrymores, particularly Jack.

  “That bastard,” she boomed and objects on tables began to rattle in terrified anticipation. “One minute he could be so marvellous and sweet and the next a monster from Hell! We were in The Yellow Ticket together in Chicago decades ago. I was manager and star—Jack was in second place. In the story, our characters had met already, had fallen in love, and I was waiting in the living room set where we had arranged a clandestine meeting. One night, I speak the cue that signals his entrance—no Jack! I go through my soliloquy one more time as slowly as possible, arrive at the cue—still no Jack! Now, his dressing room is right by the stage, so there’s no excuse for a late entrance. Suddenly I hear emanating from that room a stream of the vulgarest, lowest, filthiest cusswords I have ever heard shouted at the top of his lungs. The poor audience down to the last man cannot help but absorb it all—every syllable. It was Jack—totally inebriated. He had obviously passed out on the dressing room floor and the frenzied stage manager who was shaking him into consciousness became the object of this abuse. I tried singing—shouting—anything to distract the people, when just as suddenly as it had begun, all noise ceased.

  “There followed one long and awful silence. I was frantic. I started telling stories, but quickly ran out of ideas; I was just about to sit down at a piano which was mercifully part of the décor and play something—God knows what—when Jack appeared, at last, in the doorway. He was reeling badly, holding on to the doorknob for support. Half dressed, half undressed with a stupid leer on his face, his glazed eyes finally focused on me and, arching his eyebrow in that familiar manner of his, he said very slowly and very grandly, ‘Who the hell are you?’ I walked to the wings and snapped, ‘Take down the curtain’ and flounced into my dressing room. The theatre manager came out and announced that
there would be no more play because Mr. Barrymore had regrettably been taken ill. Only too aware of the situation, the audience exploded in laughter.

  “A year later, a very great friend who was ailing asked me to accompany her to a matinée of Pelléas and Mélisande, which was starring Jack and Constance Collier. I told her—not on my life. Never! Wild horses couldn’t drag me within miles of John Barrymore. She was dying to see it however, and had no one else to take her, so I relented. The curtain went up. I was fuming inside. All the past horrors with that rascal came back to me as I waited—dreading his entrance—but when Jack walked onto the stage that tense afternoon in winter, he brought such magic and beauty with him I not only forgave him everything but fell head over heels in love with him all over again—that goddamn son of a bitch!” To emphasize this last expletive, she cracked my shins once again with her cane. It was only then that the relieved objects on the tables settled down to rest.

  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.