In Spite of Myself: A Memoir

by Christopher Plummer

  “Chris—look—be nice. Learn patience, my friend. He’s a good boy—he’s talented—he takes his time. He’s searching; he’ll pull it together, but, in the meantime, why the fuck should we sit around looking like schmucks while that selfish prick learns on our time?! Fourteen trucks I could drive through his pauses! If he doesn’t get his finger out, I’ll stick a red-hot poker up his arse already! No! Better he burn at the stake instead of Joan!”

  I was crazy about Joe Wiseman—he was so contrary but was always loyal and caring. Known to most as a performer who specialized in kooks and weirdos, he oddly enough possessed a strange and mesmerizing lyrical quality. He had a poet’s head and a beautiful speaking voice, which, when combined as it was with the suppressed violence he kept simmering so near the surface, could have made him, had Fate pointed in another direction, one of our most passionate romantic actors.

  Boris, the gentle giant

  The character of Bishop Cauchon who presided over the trial, and Boris Karloff who brought him to life as such a moving and sympathetic figure, were interchangeable. They were really one and the same man and for everyone of us a kind of Father Confessor. Boris the giant—who had been used and misused in early silent pictures, cruelly taken advantage of, made to suffer grave physical hardships for little money, and then, surviving all, to carve for himself a celebrated career out of terror and pathos—was the gentlest of men. He even walked with an apologetic stoop as if he wished not to overwhelm with his massive frame and imposing presence. I don’t think Boris ever knew how blessed he was with that most extraordinary face, nor how handsome—he was so completely without vanity. When he spoke, his famous baritone voice with its attractive lisp was not in the least frightening but soft, musical and mellow.

  On-screen the world affectionately admired him as “the Monster” but most of it would never know how marvelous he was on the stage. Boris cared deeply for a thousand things, but one he cared for almost more than any other, except his darling wife, Evie, was cricket. He himself was an expert at the game, and as part of Hollywood’s Raj in the thirties, a valued member of their famed cricket team. Wherever he went one could see the English newspapers with the latest scores peeping out from every pocket; and he longed for those breaks when he could get back to England and watch the test matches at his beloved Lords. Boris asked for very little in life and was the kindest, most selfless and modest man. No small wonder then that each member of our large cast made it a ritual to call out goodnight to him as they passed his first-floor dressing room every evening. The old man regularly turned up at the theatre an hour before the curtain and all through the play’s lengthy run never once missed a performance.

  One night, after the half hour had been called, there was no sign of Boris. This was most odd as he was always so prompt. At the fifteen-minute call—still no Boris. Joe and I, worried sick, came out of our dressing room and gazed down toward the first landing below, waiting for news. The stage manager was outside in the alley pacing up and down, beside himself. Just for a second, I chanced to look up and there, above us, on the next four landings every member of the cast from featured player down to the smallest soldier, monk or “walk-on” was similarly peering over the balustrades, tense and anxious. Boris was our tower of strength, you see; we not only needed him, we already missed him. Just then he lumbered in through the stage door and, as one man, we gave him a rousing welcoming ovation. He looked up at us, beaming, with that wonderful twisted smile of his, and we all went back to our rooms as if we’d just been given a present.

  As I was struggling into my armour it came to me like a ray of truth that there are only the rarest few born into this world who are truly good humans and, I realized, with a sharp little pang of sadness and envy, I could never be one of them.

  THE MAID OF ORLéANS with her proud standard held high was reincarnated in the form of a little star called Harris. A will-o’-the-wisp, surprisingly fraught with fire, the freckle-faced gamine who as that captivating waif Frankie in Carson McCullers’s Member of the Wedding had stolen everyone’s heart and had also shown her soignée side in I Am a Camera was at last challenged by the range required of St. Joan. She met it head on, in a performance beyond praise. Not as demanding as Shaw’s maid, perhaps, nor as high-flown (Anouilh’s heroines are mostly cast from the same mould—subtler victims, whom critics impishly nicknamed “Little Orphan Anouilhs”) but it was still a substantial workout for an actress. Julie Harris was the Lark, and for more than two hundred nights she flew to Heaven’s gate and back with matchless conviction.

  There is a moment in the play when Joan, reliving her memories at the trial, suddenly bursts out screaming blood and encouragement to her soldiers on the field. In one swift movement she jumped onto her little stool as the lights went out on everyone leaving only a single spot on her. Julie shook her fists at her imaginary army and called out into the darkened theatre, the tears glistening on her cheeks while we stood there each night, spellbound in the dark around her. I made the ghastly blunder of letting her know how telling that moment was. She rounded on me and told me to shut up—that now I’d made her aware of it, she could never do it again. I learned a valuable lesson—but it did cross my mind that if ever one wished to ruin a performance, all one had to do was to constantly compliment it. Of course nothing could have ever shaken her commitment—it was grounded so solidly in truth.

  Julie Harris was and is the Peter Pan of actresses—she makes us all feel like children when we watch her on the stage and her special light has never been extinguished. She received the Tony Award for her Lark as best actress of the year and has since won more Tonys than most actors. The United States finally recognized her by presenting her with a Kennedy Center honour. For she is, without question, a national treasure and for more than fifty years has continued to illumine, strengthen and hold together what has now become the fragile fabric of our theatre. Anything short of canonization would be a colossal snub.

  I was to have the great joy of working with Julie on many another occasion, but during The Lark run we made our first television appearance together for Hallmark Hall of Fame in Little Moon of Alban. James Costigan had written a very touching story about a young Irish nun and a dying British soldier during the early uprising. The sister tries vainly to nurse him back to life and in spite of their differences, they fall in love. Julie (miraculous as usual), James and I were nominated for Emmys. Julie and James won for their pains but that year the categories were strangely conceived and muddled beyond comprehension—the best actor category suffering the most confusion. This was the lineup: Rod Steiger, Mickey Rooney, Paul Muni (all superb), me and, for some inexplicable reason, Fred Astaire, whose performance had not included acting but purely singing and dancing with his new partner, Barrie Chase. I sat (black tie) in the audience in New York awaiting my fate watching two screens representing both coasts—what a mess! Fred Astaire won! Now I’m his number one fan, but this was too much—the audience couldn’t believe it—neither could Fred, but it was too late. Outside in the street afterwards I bumped into Rod Steiger who with a wink and a shrug quipped, “Well! See you tomorrow at Arthur Murray’s.”

  Julie, a most memorable Joan

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  HENRY V

  KING HENRY: What treasure, uncle?

  EXETER: Tennis balls, my liege.

  The day I shouted, “Once more unto the breech,” at my fellow students somewhere back in the mists of the ninth grade, I would never have believed that ten years thence I’d be the youngest of my country to lead Canada’s Stratford on home ground and at the Edinburgh Festival as Harry the King himself. There was justice after all—I’d been paid back in full.

  A considerable amount of time had gone by since Laurence Olivier’s mighty motion picture established Shakespeare as a first-class screenwriter. Richard Burton at the Old Vic had soon thereafter made a sonorous, rough and ruthless brawler out of the young king, but no other major production of the work had since been given. Times ha
d changed. Henry would have to change with them.

  This attempt of ours, therefore, became the tale of an angry young rebel reluctant to shed his youthful debauchery for a throne he didn’t particularly cherish, only to discover on the eve of Agincourt he had grown up, not just another brawling soldier, but a king—and a king with some conscience. There were still heroic remnants of Churchillian propaganda which England in its finest hour had demanded of Olivier’s film—after all, it is a concerto for trumpet and orchestra. But it was also raw and very right for the midfifties—the emergence of Osborne, Arden and Wesker, the growing influence of Brecht and the birth of the antihero. Whatever it was, who cares—I had some of the best times of my life in it—it was like quaffing gallons of champagne.

  What made the production particularly unique was that our director and new boss, Michael Langham, had invited Quebec’s celebrated French company, Le Théâtre du Nouveau Monde (TNM), to perform their repertoire of Molière farces, on condition that they also play the French court in Henry V. It was a bold move and a fortunate one for, alongside our own rough-and-ready English, this stylish company brought to the play not just an added elegance, but a whole other life—a whole other world. This ingenious coup of Langham’s was a triumph both politically and artistically and marked in the arts the most significant and successful marriage of our two cultures within memory. Would that such a rare alliance had continued on an annual basis.

  My new and lasting mentor, Michael Langham

  The TNM was a thriving concern under the baton of two complete opposites—Jean Gascon and Jean-Louis Roux. Quebec Province was home base, but they toured their company extensively in Europe, especially through Belgium and France, where reports spoke goldenly of their bawdy and roistering Molière interpretations. As opposed to the static, somewhat lifeless Molière that La Comédie Française had recently been feeding everyone, theirs thrived on the kind of free spirit of improvisation and broadness of style that most likely would have been closest to the master’s heart. Les deux Jeans had collected a first-rate group of highly skilled exuberant Frenchmen, rich in comic invention, swift of speech and agile of movement. One or two members were from France—Guy Hoffman for one—a small, rotund creature with a mooncalf face and tragic eyes, a great clown with an irresistible sweetness about him who was now loyally bound to the New World.

  The difference between the two artistic leaders was vast. Roux was a fine director and a subtle actor of steel-like precision—an introvert and academic whose taste impeccably helped guide the troupe’s choice of repertoire. Gascon, gregarious with a gargantuan charm, an extrovert in the extreme, had an astonishing instinct for theatricality. A monstre sacré, he was an imaginative director and an actor of great artistic size in the vein of Pierre Brasseur and Harry Bauer. (He had begun in life as a doctor of medicine and had since been awarded honorary degrees from various universities.) He would impishly weave this information into one of his speeches from Molière:

  Je suis Docteur!

  Je suis le premier Docteur des Docteurs!

  Je suis tous les Docteurs à tous les Docteurs!

  Je suis le Doc des Docs!

  Je ne suis pas une fois Docteur!

  Je suis undeuxtroisquatrecinqsixsepthuitneuf

  DIX FOIS DOCTEURS!

  Gascon, in appearance, was a cross between Pantagruel and François Premier. I am happy to say he became one of my closest and dearest friends and his great spirit and even greater heart was a constant source of joy to me and to all who knew him. He loved life as passionately as life loved him. I can still hear his rich voice with the touch of whiskey blanc in it bellowing Racine and jaunty French chansons. As the Constable of France in Henry he glided across the platform with an insulting pantherlike grace and that same rasping voice boomed over the audience with savage power. His presence and that of his entire company on our “battlefield” was utterly and wonderfully alien. But what was abundantly clear was that Michael Langham had become the festival’s sole lifeline. If Guthrie’s genius and panache had given the enterprise a champagne start, Langham was to mature it into a robust, enduring burgundy.

  Jean Gascon, Renaissance figure who brought all of life to the stage

  All summer I dangerously shared a flat on Stratford’s main drag with my old pal Bob Goodier, who was the Duke of Exeter, my uncle in the play. Bob was in his late forties, a trifle portly but still an extremely handsome dog who loved the ladies. He nicknamed himself The Great Satisfier—and I don’t think for a moment he was exaggerating. Thanks to my lord of Exeter, the flat was always supplied with plentiful entertainment, and I fear that my role offstage was as boisterous and disreputable as the real Prince Hal’s. There was wassail all as the floorboards groaned night after night. Campbell, Gerussi, Hutt, Helpmann, Follows, formidable actors all, made me walk the plank. I was the new boy—it was tough being accepted into this fraternity.

  Toutes les nuits, the French connection, who by now seemed joined to us at the hip, behaved just as badly as we, if not worse. It was war between the Gauls and the Brits to see which side could outdance the other. Between us we had collectively consumed a great amount of sugar, so we could actually exist for quite long periods of time without much food. It was just as well for the choice of restaurants in the town was, to put it mildly, limited. There was the Golden Bamboo and Ellam’s Diner, and that was just about it. The Golden Bamboo was a Chinese restaurant which had not improved since the owner’s ancestors built the railroads. In fact, we occasionally took our washing there, justifiably mistaking it for a laundry. But when we did become ravenous, Gascon and his beaux frères would take turns cooking for us, whipping up sumptuous tourtières, cassoulets or pissaladières.

  That pure Protestant, Presbyterian town suddenly reeked with garlic. Things were looking up. The local liquor store (called a liquor commission, which was government-run) housed a pretty pathetic assortment of wine (Blue Nun and Manischewitz being their grandest offerings) so the sneaky Gauls, grâce à Dieu, imported for the entire company proper vino from Quebec Province (multiple choice) which we downed with grateful gluttony. The French boys quickly made friends with the liquor-commission lads, slowly but surely coaching them in the Art of the Grape so that by summer’s end the store was stocked to the ceiling with profoundly drinkable plonk, Pontet-Canet, Chambertin, Haut-Brion—all “Mis en bouteille au château.”

  Gascon and Jean-Louis Roux, overcome with summer madness, decided to put me in one of their Molière plays on my days off. I would take on an old man called Villebrequin in one of the farces. Ninety or thereabouts, he staggers on at the end of act 2 with a startling revelation that tears the plot to shreds and brings down le rideau. Now I’d played in French a few times before, but never Molière, and certainly not this Molière, performed as it was at such breakneck speed. There was wall-to-wall laughter from the audience, and the actors spoke so fast, I couldn’t hear my cue let alone understand it, so I had to be pushed on. The boys were so free, loose and funny in this mad farce, it was a joy to be onstage with them no matter how briefly.

  I shall never forget those chers méchants—when a few years later at a reunion party in Montreal, they presented me (maudlin tears running down our faces) with an award for my “courageous interpretation of Molière and Shakespeare.” I was convinced it was called “Le Prix Marc l’Escargot” and I thought it was all in jest. I even made a quip about the prize being named for some chef, until a friendly soul, to save me further embarrassment, set me straight. It was l’Escarbot with a B. It seems that on November 14, 1606, Marc Lescarbot, a young French nobleman, had written and produced the first known theatrical performance in our country on the eastern part of the Acadian coast. The occasion was to welcome both the recently appointed governor of New France and Samuel de Champlain, founder of the colony. French and Indians made up the cast, speaking in verse, some in standard French, some in Indian dialect and others in broken French. It signaled, quite unconsciously perhaps, the early bringing together of a bi
lingual populace and its presentation was clearly miles ahead of its time.

  Every time I look upon this handsomely mounted plaque, I am touched all over again. Because it was given in such a spirit of light-heartedness, this fraternal gesture made me feel more than ever a part of French Canada, and I cherish it above almost any bauble that has come my way.

  THE RIDE THROUGH that summer had its share of turbulence—it wasn’t all the “brightest heaven of invention.” Stiflingly hot under the tent flaps, especially when sporting Tanya Moiseiwitsch’s superb but heavy costumes, most of us lost a good deal of weight. After all, we had covered quite a few miles during each performance. Just about my favorite section was the night scene before the battle and that quiet moving soliloquy of Henry’s—“Upon the king …” But inevitably, when the most intimate moment of the speech arrived, the loudest train whistle would shatter the silence of the night. This happened repeatedly at every performance in precisely the same spot. It never failed to obliterate the famous words, reducing the scene to a shambles. Faking a tantrum, I shouted at Tom Patterson, the theatre’s founder, demanding he instruct the station to forbid the train from whistling. I couldn’t believe what happened. He did! He called them up and accused them of desecrating Shakespeare. They not only stopped the whistle—they changed the time of the train!

  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.