In Spite of Myself: A Memoir

by Christopher Plummer

  This was the dimly lit den where I began my pleasant associations with that beloved pillar of Broadway itself, caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, set and costume designers Oliver Smith, Boris Aronson, Ben Edwards and Jane Greenwood, Peter Larkin, Ringling Brothers’ elegant Miles White of the long cigarette holder and Ann Roth, pert and delectable, brandishing hers, the splendidly mad Irishman Sean Kenny, an aspiring cohort, and once in a blue moon, languidly lolling beneath his wide-brimmed picture hat, the very grand but warmly disposed Cecil Beaton. Superstar press agents Ben Sonnenberg (J&B whiskey, ocean liners, world governments and, it was widely rumoured, Mussolini had been his clients), Richard Maney, Henry Rogers, Warren Cowan, the smooth, laid-back Rupert Allan, who would one day look after me, and the infamous Jim Moran, who had once hired numerous bald-headed men and deliberately placed them in the Metropolitan Opera’s orchestra seats one particularly chic opening night in such a way that to the entire audience gazing down from the tiers above, they spelled S-H-I-T.

  As if we all came from the same side of the footlights, theatre critics could be seen hobnobbing with us actor folk—John MacLean of the Daily News, Henry Hewes of the Saturday Review, Kenneth Tynan (The New Yorker) and the Herald Tribune’s Walter Kerr. Two of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s mistresses visited P.J.’s separately, the diminutive and deceptively young Anita (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) Loos and the much-lived-in Sheila Graham (Hollywood columnist and author), who was a poppet and very kind to me. In that age of heavy gossip power, it was necessary to have someone like Sheila on your side to rescue you from the claws of such predators as Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper.

  Lillian Hellman occasionally slummed it, as did her archenemy, novelist Mary McCarthy on the arm of her brother Kevin. The wonderfully deranged Trevor Howard (brilliant British actor and friend) was there, outconsuming everyone from his customary place in the front bar which never lacked for action—the football teams heavily immersed in disagreements, every now and then a minor scuffle breaking out but always Trevor’s voice rising above the din barking mock military commands and greeting everyone with a jovial, “Ah, there you are—Sporting!” It wasn’t such a great idea to get into a sports debate with the boys in the front room. Once, a few years later, when Attorney General Robert Kennedy came in with Marilyn Monroe (there were more secret service than waiters), one of his security guards got into an argument at the bar and was thrown clean through the front door right under what used to be the Third Avenue El.

  As part of the passing parade you could easily bump into Steve Sondheim, Harry Kurnitz, Adolph Green and Betty Comden, and of course Billy Wilder, who had more right to be there than anyone. Like a clap of thunder, a deep resonant voice behind me yelled out, “ALLO! Mon T’i Coq! Camaw Sa Vaw! Chris de Calvert.” It was Franchot Tone in his best French Canadian joual accent, sharing a table with his latest demoiselle in distress. They were all so beautiful, Franchot’s ladies—the price he paid for having his heart slowly eaten away. And then all the city’s top cops it seemed made P.J.’s their hangout, heads of the vice squad, inspectors, homicide chiefs. The charming lopsided old brick building so bulged at the seams with constabulary, it was solidly guaranteed never to close.

  I remember one late Saturday night bash in the “after-hours” room below street level at which beloved composer Jule Styne shared the piano with Jack Lemmon, all of us belting our current favourites until 8:00 a.m. Sunday morning when, collectively, we melted into the streets like zombies under a blinding sun. Jack insisted on going straight to Mass. He was adamant! Not having a clue where to go, he staggered off in no particular direction. “But Jack,” we called out after him, “you’re not even Catholic!”

  For after-the-show pub crawls I sometimes forsook my Jag for Windows Hale’s motorcycle, he being the designated driver. Jason, who, with Maureen Stapleton, was currently starring in Lillian Hellman’s Toys in the Attic, or “Toys in the Cellar,” as he called it, would join us and we would hold on for dear life as Windows hurtled us through Gotham’s streets at warp speed. On one particular occasion, anxious to get to P.J.’s, the three of us decided it would expedite matters if we drove the bike right through the back door straight to our table without hurting anyone. This might have been accomplished with a certain flourish had not the bike hit the unyielding pavement with such jarring force we were instantly catapulted through the door and landed with amazing accuracy into three conveniently empty chairs. Without wincing or skipping a beat, we ordered triple Jack Daniel’s with beer chasers, the crippled bike still rattling about in agony on the pavement outside.

  AS EAGER TO WORK as I was desperate to play, I threw myself at the boob tube with a great assist from the ever-watchful Jane Broder. Young George Morris from her TV department had quit and left her in the lurch so the aging yet dynamic Jane, swallowing her pride, resigned herself to the shame of handling television which, of course, she managed as expertly as she managed everything else. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, a TV study of Oliver Wendell Holmes and his austere father, united me once more with Sir Cedric Hardwicke (playing Dad) and introduced me to my beautiful new leading lady, Anne Francis, the prettiest robot the screen has ever produced (Forbidden Planet). The iridescent Julie Harris and I did two shows back-to-back—Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, in which, as Nora, Julie touched all hearts, and Johnny Belinda, where she was equally moving as the deaf-mute. Desperate to differ from Lew Ayres in the movie version of Johnny Belinda, I played the doctor with a French Canadian accent you could have cut with a knife. The ever-faithful and tasteful George Schaefer, who directed both, had assembled for A Doll’s House Jason Robards, Eileen Heckart and Hume Cronyn, each one a superlative complement to the piece. Due to an overly long night, Jason and I missed the crucial camera walk-through on the show date, throwing everyone into a conniption, but wreathed in a profusion of apologies we made the ‘air’ all right and a slice of television history into the bargain.

  The cast of A Doll’s House—Robards, me, Julie, Eileen Heckart, Hume Cronyn

  Anthony Hope’s Ruritanian romance The Prisoner of Zenda in which I portrayed the dual roles of Rassendyll and the king, as close to Ronald Colman as I dared, brought me together again with my old friend John Williams, who had just recently as the inspector in Dial M for Murder successfully stolen Hitchcock’s film. My lady this time was the Swedish beauty Inger Stevens, the first girl I’d ever met who’d been forced to pay alimony to her husband, a somewhat sleazy Hollywood 10-percenter. I vowed if I ever met the cad, I’d nickel-and-dime him to death. Next came The Philadelphia Story, with that charming, gifted bounder, Gig Young, whose throwaway humour both on- and offscreen made him, in my view, the best light comedian in America after Cary Grant. The gregarious Fielder Cook was our director and, in the Katharine Hepburn role of Tracy Lord was pert, adorable Diana Lynn, whose prodigious accomplishments on the piano could, had she wished it, have rewarded her with a brilliant concert career.

  It seemed that every major television drama was conceived in that ramshackle old building on Second Avenue and Seventh known as Central Plaza. Like one big happy family we all worked, horsed around and practically lived within its peeling walls and often late into the night we would return there to hear Conrad Janis on his hot trombone pucker up some mean jazz with his group, which he called the Tailgate Five. Central Plaza was owned by a fellow called Bernie (no one ever seemed to know his last name) who, in the spirit of an old retainer, tended to our every whim. Everyone would gather at the end of a day’s work and crowd into his tiny office on the third floor where he kept an open running bar day and night. Perhaps he just wanted to be around show people; I don’t know and I don’t care, but Bernie to me was one of the kindest souls I’ve ever known.

  Everything was available to us at Bernie’s Second Avenue headquarters: Ratner’s downstairs for great kosher lunches thrown at you by traditionally insulting waiters; ancient Moscovitz and Lubowitz down the road for delicious Polish Jewish nosh; Jon’s on Tenth for Italian and up the street
historic McSorley’s pub (men only) which offered sawdust on the floor, cheese and onion sandwiches and a veritable Niagara of beer on tap. The best restaurant by far, however, was Luchow’s for top German and Danish cuisine, every known herring, every kind of aquavit, smoked sturgeon, succulent bratwursts, weiner schnitzels and a rich wine cellar. José Ferrer had introduced me to it, and it’s the one establishment I think I miss most in New York with its big round tables, its high beamed ceilings, dark panelled walls and the long ornate oak bar framed in gleaming brass.

  This whole section of town all the way down to the Bowery had once been ruled and dominated by the Yiddish theatre. These were the streets upon which Jacob Ben-Ami, Maurice Schwartz and the famous Adler family had all made history. This is where I had seen the fabulous Molly Picon, mama of all vaudevillians, and that slippery smooth comic, the sour cream on the Borscht Belt circuit, Myron Cohen. There were one or two derelict old theatres still standing, but most of them by now had gone away with the passing of tradition.

  Out from this cabal many years past had emerged the young Muni Weisenfreund, better known as Paul Muni, the Academy Award winner famous for portraying biographical figures. Mr. Muni had now decided to slum and do television. It was called A Letter from the Queen and both Polly Bergen and I played the young leads. It was fascinating to watch Muni’s work process. Now that he was older, he learned his lines by listening to a tape of himself reading the role. He brought this recorder to rehearsal and would stop every few moments to replay bits over and over again. Once in the studio, however, Mr. Muni came into his own—he took over. He knew every light on the set and where they should be directed, often suggesting adjustments himself. Though he was quite frail and extremely deaf, he still gave a really strong and remarkably touching performance, doubly moving because he paused before his every line and the expressions that chased across his face told stories of unimagined suffering and pain. Actually, the pauses were there simply because someone in the control room was reading each of his lines into his earphone before he spoke them. Muni was a master at hogging screen time—what a devilish old trickster he was! So indeed was Polly Bergen, for when it was all over, she instantly became a star turn on her very own TV show.

  I remember a TV adaptation of The Oresteia of Euripides, in which I essayed both the roles of Orestes and Agamemnon—my Clytemnestra, that powerhouse of lady performers, the statuesque Irene Worth. Irene, who spoke the English tongue with more precision and perfection than most Brits, was, ironically, an American, born in Nebraska, who had begun as a schoolteacher. This had not deterred her from taking out British citizenry and becoming one of England’s very finest classical actresses. Much later she would grace the Honours list as a Dame. There was still a residue of the schoolmarm about her, however, for when I resorted to some four-letter words in her presence, she chastised me by snapping, “Christopher, go and wash your mouth out with soap at once!” That was small-town Nebraska coming out and a trifle unfair, I thought, for just the day before I’d caught her using language that would have made a coal miner blush.

  THOUGH I WAS AS BUSY as a bird dog—actors live to be busy—I suppose I didn’t have much center in my life. I was about as restless as the time I was living in, driven along, God knows where. Sometimes I would go home to Bank Street, now mostly empty except for little Amanda and the nanny when they weren’t at her grandmother’s. Otherwise, I would stay at the Algonquin. Tammy, too, was rarely at home—we had really distanced ourselves and, after all, she was at the moment being the toast of the town. She was packing them in at the Plaza and the Blue Angel and Meredith Wilson’s The Unsinkable Molly Brown had opened to raves and had made her a Broadway star. She was to win all sorts of prizes, and Walter Kerr in his Tribune review had suggested that for everyone to be happy they should have a Tammy Grimes at home. Well, I had a Tammy Grimes at home and that was terrific and we’d had a baby girl and that too was terrific, but the theatre and our careers consumed our attention and we’d now grown further and further apart. I was a lousy husband and an even worse father and Tam’s and my life together was clearly over. In fact, she was now quite serious about someone else.

  Amanda P. about to leap into the world

  In the Algonquin lobby, I bumped into Kenneth Tynan. He was then drama critic for The New Yorker and was temporarily staying at the hotel. “I h-hear you and T-Tammy are separating,” he said with his famous stutter. “Well—” I began. He cut across, “So are w-we.” He was referring to his wife, Elaine Dundy, a bright young American writer, who had had her moment in the sun with a little book called The Dud Avocado. I couldn’t help thinking how like two dud avocados we both must look, and I think I said so.

  I had always admired Ken Tynan even though he represented the enemy. He’d been most complimentary to me in print upon occasion which, of course, made me admire him even more. His knowledge and intellect were streaks ahead of most critics, and as a master of prose he rivalled the great James Agate and Alexander Woollcott. Reading a Tynan review was sometimes far more entertaining than the show he was critiquing. When Vivien Leigh played a very slight, barely audible Cleopatra opposite her towering husband, Olivier, he wrote, “I am dying Egypt—dying to hear what you’re saying.” He had once aptly described Sir John Gielgud as “the glass eye in the forehead of English acting” and Noël Coward as “the monocle of all he surveys.”

  But now here we both were, at our most vulnerable, staring at each other in the lobby and Ken, a connoisseur of food and wine, took charge: “Let’s indulge ourselves in a g-great d-dinner! Afterwards, I’ll show you the f-funniest man I’ve seen in a long time.” The Forum of the Twelve Caesars was a hot, new and outrageously priced eating hole with a different course for every Caesar. Feeling sorry for ourselves, and ravenous, we demolished all twelve Caesars and staggered down to the Village Vanguard, where we sat, waiting for the hilarity to begin.

  Professor Irwin Corey, billed as “The World’s Foremost Authority,” was one of the funniest clowns on the scene. His irreverence for the audience, his rubber face, his outlandish clothes and his wicked mockery of all that smacks of pretension were, in themselves, a tragicomedy of gargantuan proportions. His lectures on the Bible, for instance, were masterpieces of sacrilegious nonsense. His opening alone was worth the price of admission. He enters and stands by the piano, hopelessly attempting to speak. His expressions change from confusion, longing and pain to complacency, boredom and exasperation. For a solid five minutes at least, there is utter silence until he finally breaks it with one single word—“However.” It seems another five minutes before we stopped laughing. In return, I took Ken to hear Mabel Mercer, whom I’d worshipped since Montreal days. She had her own “room” in town, which was filled to capacity every night with a loyal and elegant clientele. Mabel was a short stocky black lady who spoke in a broad North Country dialect which was as delightful as it was unexpected. When she sang, however, her velvet tones were cloaked in a highly sophisticated style—her phrasing quite unique and wonderfully off the beat. Often I would see Sinatra, Mel Tormé or Perry Como sitting amongst the crowd, listening intently, admirers all. Many of the great songwriters had written specially for her, Cole Porter among them, and when she sang her own particular favourites such as “Did You Ever Cross Over to Snedens,” “On the First Warm Day in May,” “Wait Till You See Her” or “Blame It on My Youth,” New York belonged to her.

  Kenneth and I had one or two more dates together as bachelors out in the cold, but it was getting depressing—it reminded us both of our losses. Was I to spend the rest of my nights dating male critics? I don’t think so! Tammy had found someone she cared for, so it was high time I secured for myself a steady companion from the ranks of the fairer sex. I found her—on the slopes of Hunter Mountain.

  SHE WAS RESTING on her skis—straight and tall, her ski poles in one hand. It struck me what great poise she had, unlike most girls her age or even older; and those wise, seductive, knowing eyes gave the instant impression that sh
e had seen the world. Susan Blanchard Fonda was the daughter of Dorothy Blanchard, a warm, strikingly lovely Australian lady, who had been happily married to the legendary Oscar Hammerstein. Susan was, therefore, Oscar’s stepdaughter. I had met her once before under somewhat strange and unpleasant circumstances. It was at the height of a very large and rowdy party and in the middle of all the raucousness stood this patrician beauty looking on with detached amusement and a dignity far in advance of her years. She was a trifle deaf, I discovered, and in order to speak to her I had to stand quite close, which was, to put it mildly, not the most unpleasant thing in the world.

  I asked if she was by chance related to Henry Fonda and she answered softly, “I was once his wife.” Having had several drinks too many, I did something so inexplicably rude and rash that I have never really lived it down. Spotting Hank Fonda in the distance standing at the bar, I grabbed her by the hand and pulled her over to him, saying boldly and loudly, “May I introduce you two? Susan—Henry, Henry—Susan! What the hell did you ever leave her for? She’s gorgeous!” (or words to that effect). Hank let out an ear-piercing scream of half-mock horror and I felt Susan’s hand leave mine as she turned and walked away. What came over me, I’ll never know! I was drunk, of course, and I suppose I had wanted to show off in front of her or get a laugh or something. I can’t imagine what, but never before had I felt quite so stupidly young. I left the party.