In Spite of Myself: A Memoir

by Christopher Plummer

  In Dark Victory the part of her faithful butler was played by a onetime silent screen star from the Cecil B. DeMille epics. Ian Keith was a handsome, rugged American with a beautiful speaking voice. He resembled a much taller John Barrymore, was just as big a bon viveur and had a daredevil quality to him, that even in his late sixties, was most attractive. When England declared war on Germany in ’39, Ian left Hollywood, went straight up to Canada and enlisted in the Black Watch.

  Young Sylvia, my favorite picture of her

  At the end of each show, which was sponsored by General Motors, the three leading cast members were obliged by contract to stand beside the latest car, usually a Ford, and in a few choice words extol its praises. It was humiliating and awful, particularly for important stars like Sylvia, but we gritted our teeth and did it. On the first night of Dark Victory Ian, whose appearance was over in the first act, went out and got drunk. Professional down to his little toe, he returned promptly at the show’s climax to do his bit for Ford. Slapping the brand-new vehicle with a good whack, Ian, in that booming voice of his, shouted, “I want to tell you about my new little MG. She’s the best mistress I’ve ever had. Goddamn! I do love that car. If she was just a tad smaller, why, hell, I’d take her to bed with me. She sure beats this old piece of tin!”

  Warren Wade stamped on his fedora and hit the roof. Ian was reported to AFTRA and banned from ever working on television again. My heart went out to him. That lovely old rebel had done something we all had secretly longed to do but didn’t have the guts. He had separated art from advertising and mocked commercialism with its self-imposed pretensions. Jane insisted I go down to the union meeting and testify against Ian and his dastardly deed. “You’ve got to go, honey. He’s put us all in jeopardy.” I suppose she was right, but I didn’t have the heart—I never went.

  There was no end to disasters on TV in those days. My next assignment was opposite that beautiful Swede from stage and screen, Viveca Lindfors. The Riddle of Mayerling was a half-hour drama for Robert Montgomery Presents. It dealt with the suicide pact of those two famous lovers, Crown Prince Rudolf of Hapsburg and his mistress, Baroness Maria Vetsera. The show’s only set was the interior of the hunting lodge where their stormy deaths were to take place. The assignation arranged, Maria paced up and down the room waiting for her prince to arrive. On air night, Maria paced up and down for a much longer period of time than had been rehearsed. In fact, the entire show was running out of time. The reason? I couldn’t find my entrance. It was so pitch-bloody dark behind the set, there was nary a door or window in sight—no floor manager—no one to help. I panicked. Suddenly I saw a light in the distance, coming through what looked like a very low opening; with great relief, I made for it at once. It must have looked very strange indeed both to Maria and the nationwide audience when the crown prince in full dress uniform, jangling with medals, sporting a fur-collared Magyar cape greeted his lover by entering through the fireplace.

  The producer, Marty Manulis, normally a quiet and civilized man—turned into a mad, screaming banshee when the debacle was over. Martin had a walleye which always looked past you so you never knew who he was giving shit to. That night there was no mistaking the object of his abuse. He was so angry I thought at one point his eye would pop out like some frightened Pekinese!

  “Why the fireplace? Why the f-f-f-fireplace? Why come through the fucking fireplace?” he sputtered.

  “You’re fucking lucky I came through anything!” I hollered back. Afterwards, I was to see Marty every now and then in California. We always exchanged pleasantries. But I never worked for him again. I wonder why.

  A series of small Dunkirks occurred almost daily in our newfound medium—there was such intense pressure and so little time. I remember walking through an entire show on the air, cool, calm and relaxed only because I thought it was the dress rehearsal. I was not, however, TV’s only victim. Lloyd Bridges, after a sterling performance on some hour-long drama, upset over a minor catastrophe, let fly a barrage of four-letter words, not realizing the sound switch was still on—and the entire country listened, wondering if it was their fault.

  For some obscure reason, producing Westerns suddenly became a fad and the big studios in Brooklyn transformed themselves into little “Devil’s Gulches” or little “Black Rocks.” They also had room to stable horses. Most New York actors were not exactly trained to be cowboys so things got a little hairy down at Studio A. On one disastrous occasion, the cameras were forced to cut away from the main scene to a bunch of hams dressed as wranglers not knowing what on earth they were supposed to be ad-libbing. It was all too late anyway, for what the audience had just witnessed was Lee Marvin, on horseback, riding straight through a papier-mâché mountain and his frightened nag taking an instant dump at one and the same time.

  I once appeared in a quasi-classical Western written by the gifted Alvin Sapinsley. I played the male lead opposite Lee Grant. The rest of the terrific cast was made up of Franchot Tone, Boris Karloff, Frank Overton and a young Jason Robards. I remember we all kept getting our spurs caught in everything. Sapinsley had centered his main theme around some familiar lines of Swinburne and actually borrowed his title from them—Even the Weariest River. The poem would act as an offcamera prologue and epilogue to be spoken by Boris Karloff. Though he read it beautifully, of course, it was not the most ideal exercise to give Boris considering his famous lisp. This is how it came out:

  That dead men rythe up never;

  That even the wearietht river

  Windth thumwhere thafe to thea.

  I remember watching Maurice Evans give us his live television presentation of Hamlet for NBC with Ruth Chatterton playing Queen Gertrude, her last performance. When Mr. Evans, who was a most distinguished Hamlet, arrived at his famous soliloquy, “Now I am alone …,” he wasn’t. In mellifluous tones he continued to emote, blissfully unaware that only a few feet behind him in full view of the camera was a beefy, unshaven stagehand peering around a pillar chawing at an oversized deli sandwich. Whenever Mr. Evans decided to move, so did the stagehand. So did his sandwich. In fact, the entire solo piece became a trio. The hungry grip must have been thinking, “Who da hell’s dis weirdo wearing tights and a wig walkin’ around in my lunch break talkin’ to himself?”

  Frayed nerves and dementia were commonplace—especially for movie actors unaccustomed to learning long passages of dialogue. Noël Coward, producing and starring in a TV version of his own play Present Laughter, stopped the dress rehearsal dead cold and gave Claudette Colbert a severe dressing down for continuously muffing her lines. Miss Colbert flew into a rage. “If you ever speak to me like that again, I’ll throw something at you!” “Good. Why not start with my cues?” retorted the Master.

  The advertising world had by now completely taken over this overgrown monster of an industry and was bringing with it, rather inconsiderately, a horde of new young executives and so-called producers who knew next to nothing about the business of drama and were equally ignorant as to who anybody was. It was only certain casting directors like Marion Dougherty and Rose Tobias Shaw who, with extreme tact and knowledge, would eventually set them straight. Up to then, famous stars of stage and screen were forced to suffer the indignity of being interviewed, even auditioned by these ill-informed arrivistes. One young whippersnapper of that ilk, armed with an overextended ego and no past, theatrical or otherwise, had the temerity to ask Helen Hayes to describe her long career. “Please, Miss Hayes,” he whimpered, “tell us what you’ve done?” “After you—” invited the great lady with a gracious smile.

  Mildred Natwick, a much-respected character actress on both coasts, known for her quick wit, was being similarly interrogated by some other erstwhile executive. “And tell me, Miss Natwick, what have you done?” “About what?” replied Millie with a querulous look of wide-eyed innocence.

  My friend, the rebellious old dog Ian Keith, had become quite used to these humiliating sessions. At one of them, a cheeky young director of little exp
erience (over at Kraft Theatre) asked Ian the same worn-out standard—“And what have you done?”

  Ian decided to have some fun: “I don’t believe you caught my name, sir.”

  “No, sir, I didn’t.”

  Picking one at random, Ian chose a celebrated classical actor from a distant past. At his most grandiloquent, relishing every syllable, Ian pronounced magisterially, “My name is Holbrook Blinn!”

  None the wiser, the director barrelled on, “And what have you done Mr. Blinn?”

  “I’m dead, you son of a bitch,” Ian tossed over his shoulder as he swept from the room, unemployed but triumphant!

  Occasionally into this sea of chaos, redemption like an angel came with such chef-d’oeuvres as Patterns, produced by Fielder Cook and sporting a gem of a cast headed by Richard Kiley and Ed Begley. The Whooping Cranes in which E. G. Marshall as an old lighthouse keeper pines for that moment once a year when the birds fly over. (E. G. had me blubbing on the floor like a baby.) Rod Steiger gave two superb accountings of himself—one as the crippled genius Steinmetz and the other as Marty, Paddy Chayefsky’s touching study of a loser. Like vanishing phantoms, the Lunts were fleetingly caught by the roving lens. Shirley Booth and Maureen Stapleton brought us to tears, each in her own way, and Martha Graham and Fred Astaire separately awed us with their inventiveness and grace. There was brilliant work from the directorial batons of Sidney Lumet, Franklin Schaffner, Dan Petrie, George Roy Hill and the old-guard producers who actually knew what they were doing—Fred Coe, Robert Saudek, David Susskind and Hubbell Robinson chained themselves together like watchdogs to keep integrity from rusting.

  Live cameras candidly captured golden moments: cryptic old Joseph Welch’s famous rebuke to “Senator McCarthy (Have you no sense of decency?”) as he quietly swung the nation against the boorish Commie-baiter from Wisconsin; white-haired Toscanini in fiery old age, whipping his NBC orchestra into frenzies of excitement; Leonard Bernstein on Omnibus informing, with great charm, millions of average North Americans that classical music did not begin or end with Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. TV’s doctor of divinity, Archbishop Sheen, like some lisping medieval priest, filled our eyes and ears with his low-key fire and brimstone. For world coverage on an epic scale and as educator and guide in the right hands, early television promised to be of the greatest value in years to come; and even though it was just as fond of making messes as would any unruly child growing up too fast, there was one glaring truth which nobody could dispute—it was a bloomin’ miracle!

  “I Wasn’t Born; I Was Squeezed out of a Rag at Sardi’s Bar”

  OLD SARDI, Vincent Junior’s father, who ruled his domain with an iron hand and a steel fist was, to put it in the mildest vernacular—some hombre! Sardi’s—which winked at you from the far end of Shu-bert Alley and warmed the cockles of your heart on bitter winter nights with its red-trimmed front door, before which stood a doorman all in red and behind which a sea of red-uniformed waiters swarmed like bees—was the city’s foremost theatrical meeting place. It catered to audiences and performers alike and made damn certain they got in and out on time. Top artists, musical and “legit,” who had made it on Broadway, ate and drank in the front room, their recently drawn caricatures resplendently in evidence on the walls above them. They sat basking in the adoration of ever-loving fans and the public, who were relegated to the very rear of the establishment. Sardi’s was, in those days, the louder, livelier version of London’s Ivy or Le Caprice. It played host to a constantly buzzing theatrical Who’s Who from Europe to Hollywood and back. In fact it was, in many ways, the theatre itself.

  One smart, funny lady

  Of course, at my stage of life, I shouldn’t have gone there at all—I could ill afford it. But once a headwaiter or two took pity on me and grudgingly let me in, I slowly became what could be described as a poor man’s regular. Though way out of my league, at least it made me look and feel that I was a success like the rest—that I had reached a higher rung. I particularly loved lounging at the bar rubbing shoulders with Robert Preston, Gig Young, Bernie Hart, Harold Kennedy, Rex Harrison (whenever he was in town) and that duffle-coated raffish “Trupshawe” of an Englishman—old “Cootie”—Robert Coote. Elaine Stritch, representing, all on her own, most of the actresses in Equity, proved once again that she could drink all of us stalwarts under the table and still be the leitmotif of the room. Martyn Greene, whose throne was at the north end of the bar, took special pains to include me and make me feel I was “one of the boys.” With that big monocle in his eye and bigger heart in his chest, he never stopped introducing me to my favourite bartender, Cappy, who was part French Canadian, part “Stromboli” and part saint. My two actor pals, Robert Webber and Val Avery, were my faithful guides and ever-ready seconds should any unforeseen troubles arise.

  Old man Sardi was astonishingly kind to actors, young and old. Even when they were too proud to admit penury, the old man could smell it a mile away and would permit them to run up tabs indefinitely. He always managed to forgive and forget. Whenever I was lucky enough to eat there, I was generally herded into the back of beyond next to the kitchen, where the lesser tourists sat. One day down the road I would be swept to my table in the A room as close to my own caricature as discretion would allow, but now, as I munched gratefully on my hot Shrimp a la Sardi, far away in Siberia, I could only dream such things as with each mouthful my credit rapidly slipped away. I was now so much in debt, it was far too humiliating to face Mr. Sardi so for the longest time I didn’t go back. One day I gathered up enough courage to fight my way through the crowds at the door and the first person I fell upon was the old man himself. “Mr. Sardi—,” I began, sheepishly, my voice breaking ever so slightly, but before I could say another word he was all over me with that expansive bonhomie of his. “Come in please. You’ve been away too long—you are always welcome here.” “But Mr. Sardi—” I tried again. At that moment his son Vincent, who had already inherited his father’s celebrated hospitality, came over and whispered in my ear, “It’s okay. Jane Broder was here. She settled everything.”

  All the way from Fortieth to Fifty-fourth streets going north and from Sixth to Tenth avenues going west, there were hundreds of cafés and bars, a great many of them Irish and French, but mostly French from good old Café Brittany on down. It was as if every Frenchman who ever stepped off a boat onto the dock had instantly erected a restaurant right where he stood. There were also numerous tiny watering holes where actors and dancers could hang out. Those who didn’t wear ties, jackets or skirts and couldn’t afford Sardi’s generally convened at what was probably the smallest of the lot called, not too originally, the Theatre Bar. Squashed tightly between several other dives on Forty-fifth Street, it was, in its day, the most popular joint in the district. Two tough guys from Central Europe (if you could find them in the crush) ran the place like a soup kitchen. No one could ever remember their surnames—they were known simply as Patsy and Karl. They loved us gypsies and understood that most of the young ones were struggling and ten times out of six would buy them dinner—“Don’t vurry—eets all on us. Pay next time.”

  I practically lived there with Val Avery, Bob Webber and his wife. Stritch would be there with that wonderful raucous cackle of hers dropping one-liners by the bucketload at one end of the counter, while Jack Warden, just out of the marines, was busy getting laughs at the other. Maureen Stapleton and a statuesque Colleen Dewhurst (O women of Thebes) were sure to be present and accounted for. George C. Scott, about to explode upon the scene as one of the best actors America has ever produced, was forever getting into scraps of the most heinous variety. With his dangerous stare, smoldering passion and quick wit (generally mistaken for cruel sarcasm) he was the likeliest candidate in the room to start a brawl. Though everyone was terrified of him when he had a few too many, surprisingly, he ended up the loser every time. I don’t think George C. ever believed he’d really had a decent evening unless he finished it up on the floor in a pool of blood.


  Most of the others in the room were out-of-work stage actors waiting for their next gig, so there was a lot of pent-up anger and envy floating around; there was also an additional warlike atmosphere due to the two separate “schools” mingling at such close quarters—the Method boys from the Studio, the exponents of street acting in Brando-like T-shirts and torn jeans, and the more polished classical brigade, who dressed fairly well and spoke even better—each snubbing the other in utter disdain. It was a riot, and it wasn’t in the least surprising that fights would break out, with Patsy and Karl always in the middle—two refugee referees—trying to separate these frustrated, hot-tempered pugilists. Of course, when Lawrence Tierney (wonderful when portraying violence on-screen) appeared bombed out of his skull, the police automatically were called in. Like a madman, he would clear the bar of all glass and cutlery and, breaking a bottle over the counter, would threaten everyone in sight. This could happen late at night or early in the evening, depending on Mr. Tierney’s mood, so it was not much of a welcome for unfortunate audiences who had sauntered in for a quiet drink at intermission, only to encounter a drama far more petrifying than any they might have just witnessed on the stage.

  But thank the Lord for Patsy and Karl for keeping us alive. Their proud little warren could never be called dull and, looking back, I can’t believe what an astounding amount of talent was squeezed together in that narrow, sweaty little room. If someone had ever decided to hurl a grenade through its front door, the future of the American stage might have been erased forever.