In Spite of Myself: A Memoir

by Christopher Plummer

  Me as Richard III in the wooing scene

  It was now dress rehearsal. We were to hear the background music for the first time. The composer, we were told, was very progressive, very fashionable, and was watching from “out front.” The lights went down. I stood in silhouette, my back to the audience, my hump elongated in an enormous shadow against the backdrop waiting for the opening bars to end before I was to speak the famous speech, “Now is the winter of our discontent.”

  The music began. Progressive? Fashionable? Musique concrète? Hell no! A musical concrete jungle. A pretentious twelve-tone wank! The introduction played on and on; I was so long standing there, I practically lost my hump! As I listened, I could tell that the composer was giving away the whole story of the play—the seduction, the coronation, the fight to the finish and Richard’s death. There was no need for Shakespeare or any of us to be present at all! Finally, the ghastly overture came to an abrupt end like a frightened hiccup. I couldn’t resist it. I turned around and uttered my first line, “Now is the winter of our discotheque!” There was an ominous silence; no one seemed amused, except for some muffled giggles coming from the wings. It was Edith, her eyes gleaming like a rebellious schoolgirl as she gave me a gleeful little round of applause and a mischievous wink of approval.

  As the rehearsal progressed, we discovered to our horror there were similar musical introductions for each major character as they first appear. “If this is allowed to go on, for the love of Will, the play will run six hours!” When Edith’s entrance music began, we all crowded into the wings to watch her reaction. A blast of hideous oscillators clanked together so unspeakably cacophonous that even Stockhausen would have cried out in pain, “Where’s the tune? Where’s the tune?!” Edith as Queen Margaret stalked majestically onto the stage and, precisely in rhythm to the musical horror, danced, for our benefit, the dirtiest, meanest version of the Twist I’d yet seen. The powers that be got the message—the music was cut and Richard and I went limping on quite happily without—thank you very much.

  RICHARD opened successfully, but a few nights later our madly complex duel at the play’s climax came to grief. Right at the start, Brian Murray and I both skipped a beat, failed to count correctly and froze! But the force of Richard’s adrenaline drove me back into action and I began to flail away with sword, ball and chain, improvising wildly. Brian simply stood still, every now and then attempting lamely to parry in self-defense. This was rather unfortunate as Richmond must be the victor. It was the opposite scenario to the famous Macbeth story of the well-known actor who, playing the tortured Thane, went so berserk in the duel one night, chasing Macduff all over the stage, that the stage manager had to yell at him from the wings, “You’ve got to lose!” In my case, I found myself hissing at Brian, “Kill me! Kill me, for Christ’s sake; you’ve got to win!” I finally decided to make one last desperate sword cut before pretending to run onto his blade. A great gash appeared where his left eye had been and blood literally burst from it like a fountain. With an agonized scream which was more than real, I pinioned myself onto his sword, fell back and died. Richmond then speaks the long victory speech that closes the play. Brian delivered it with an amazing authority, all considered, as I lay there not daring to open my eyes for fear he had lost one of his own. When it was all over he came to me offstage and told me it was all right. I had just missed by a hair. He was still bleeding profusely. The stage was, by now, covered in rivulets of red. I guided Dame Edith on for the curtain call. She tiptoed through the splatters, stepping high to avoid the gore (Lady Bracknell slumming it on Bosworth Field) and with grand hauteur whispered in mock disapproval, “A trifle eager tonight, were we?”

  Dame Edith (center) as mad Queen Margaret

  Personally, there was nothing grande dame about Edith whatsoever. She never seemed to have lost her childlike innocence; in fact, she was rather an untidy concoction of shyness and skittishness, fiercely practical on the one hand, deliciously potty on the other, and a bit of a flirt. But a very private person—after the performance each night she would return to the tiny little two-room mews house they rented for her, cook herself supper all alone and go to bed.

  The closing night of Richard III was Edith’s final performance of the season and the last time I was ever to see her. As the curtain fell, she asked me if I was hungry and, if I was, to come home with her and she’d make me something to eat. She’d always kept an eye out for me, convinced I needed saving from myself. I accepted with glee. It was fried! Fried eggs, fried bacon, fried sausages, fried bread, fried tomatoes, fried potatoes—the best! As the pan sizzled and we sipped our whiskeys, she rattled on a mile a minute telling me wonderful stories of the theatre and the extraordinary people and places she’d known. She also bombarded me with questions; she was always so interested in others. When we’d eaten, she shoved the whiskey bottle toward me and said it was mine to finish if I wished to. I fairly glowed. It was cozy in the little room tucked away from the crippling damp of Warwickshire. I began to regale her with some endless histoire and was having a whale of a time, when I turned to see how she was taking it—by God, if the old lady wasn’t slumped in her chair fast asleep. She’d been asleep all along! The little room was dead quiet except for a ticking clock somewhere and the crackling of the dying fire. I suddenly felt as if I’d lost a friend. It was all quite simple, really—she’d had a good time and then she’d had enough of me. There was no other way but to leave. As I reached the door, I looked back. She was still sleeping peacefully—all alone with her great art. With a new surge of energy, I ran out into the night.

  BECKET by Jean Anouilh, adapted by Lucienne Hill—a scene near the end of the play, Thomas à Becket and King Henry II are on horseback in the middle of the plain, the winter blizzard wails like a shrill dirge beneath their words.

  KING: You look older, Thomas.

  BECKET: You too, Highness. Are you sure you aren’t too cold?

  KING: I’m frozen stiff. You love it of course. You’re in your element, aren’t you? And you’re bare-footed as well.

  BECKET: (smiling) That’s my latest affectation.

  KING: (he cries out suddenly, like a lost child) Becket, I’m bored!

  BECKET: My prince, I do so wish I could help you.

  KING: Then what are you waiting for?

  BECKET: I’m waiting for the honour of God and the honour of the King to become one.

  KING: You’ll wait a long time then!

  BECKET: Yes. I’m afraid I will. (A pause. Only the wind is heard.)

  I shall always be grateful to Peter O’Toole for ditching the RSC in favor of a camel on the Sahara desert. He was to have played King Henry that year, but now, bless his heart, he was playing Lawrence and so Henry was mine! The London premiere of Becket at the Aldwych in the Strand proved the success of the season, and my Henry is probably one of the best things I’ve ever done. With the help of Eric Porter, who splendidly partnered me as Becket, Peter Hall’s free and sweeping production and a cast that represented the very finest in British acting, my modest invasion of the Sceptered Isle was at last justified. I won London’s Evening Standard Award for best actor of the year. (Big Van won best actress for The Lady from the Sea.)

  At the ceremony, Sir Donald Wolfit, the very first Shakespearean actor I had seen in my young Montreal days, presented me with my prize. Now the cycle is complete, I thought—how strange and how right. He gave a rather bitter little introductory speech saying he was sure he was merely a replacement for Sir Alec Guiness who was too busy sitting on an elephant making pots of money in Lawrence of Arabia where every other member of Actors’ Equity seemed to be employed. Then with deep Shakespearean intonation he informed us all that he had tried hard to see Becket but couldn’t get a ticket (what bullshit, I thought) and then very magnanimously followed up with: “And I have never seen Plummah act, but I understand that report speaks goldenly of his profit” and so on and so on. I’m afraid I did not accept it very graciously; he had put me into such a blue fun
k. I heard myself say, “But I’ve managed to see Sir Donald many times on the stage, with no trouble at all getting tickets.” I didn’t feel too bad, however, because later that night his behaviour remained consistent. He was insufferably rude to Eric Porter for when Eric greeted him with, “Hello, Donald, remember me? I played in your company for many a season,” Wolfit looked straight through him and said nothing. And when Eric asked after his wife, Rosalind, and where he might write to them both, the old ham bone responded, “Ah, my dear boy, you’ll find all that sort of thing in Who’s Who,” turned on his heel and left. But the rest of the night was a blast. I sat with Vanessa, Anna Massey and Eric—we all got smashed, and I promptly lost my award. My actor pal Peter McEnery found it much later somewhere and kept it for two whole years.

  The lovely Diana Rigg in her late teens and me as Henry II

  I loved Becket. It is still one of my favourite plays. Fictitious in most respects, it remains, however, a witty and passionate story of an extraordinary relationship between two demigods who, in their separate ways, ruled a great part of the medieval world. As many scenes take place on horseback, the use of hobbyhorses fully caparisoned, controlled by ourselves the actors wearing built-up bootlike hooves hidden under our robes, was an inspired piece of imagination and served to give the evening much added theatricality and panache. In the film, made some years later in which O’Toole marvellously reclaimed his role of Henry, it was, of course, necessary to use real horses so that much of the story’s originality and style went by the wayside. Anouilh’s light touch is very French and very theatrical. The reality of the film made it all seem too literal and at times inclined to take itself too seriously.

  All sorts of celebrated people came backstage to compliment me: the Oliviers, the Nivens, Ralph Richardson, even Donald Wolfit, who had finally got himself a ticket. I now felt most welcome in England. One night a rather posh group had assembled in my dressing room when suddenly O’Toole himself burst in. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “I thought you were in the desert.” “I have a week off from the bloody camels. They made me ride the buggers bareback.” As he said this, he proceeded in front of the speechless, po-faced group to pull down his pants and show us his ass. It was absolutely raw and riddled with welts. “Look at this,” he screamed. “It’s all your fault, you colonial prick. You’re playing my part and this is the thanks I get!” The horrified little posse quickly dispersed and Peter and I went to the nearest pub and got pie-eyed.

  Me in Becket and Vanessa Redgrave in The Shrew—was I ever in good company!

  Images of our production stay with me: young Ian Holm’s vital and touching performance as the little monk; the crude rough Barons led by George Murcell; the hilarious power squabble over Becket between Roy Dotrice’s Pope and Murcell doubling as the Cardinal, both armed with thick Roman accents; young and beautiful Diana Rigg as the Welsh girl; Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies’s Queen Mother; and Esmond Knight’s King of France. It all looked muddy, cold and very Middle Ages but moved with a swooping swiftness and boisterous humour that carried the actors and audience along with it. And Peter Hall had seen to that.

  Young Hall was then just about the hottest item on the British theatrical scene. Running both the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-on-Avon and London’s Aldwych Theatre, he juggled several seasons in one with the utmost “cool.” There were rumours that the BBC was courting him for their next Lord and Master, and many of us believed he might even make a fine prime minister. After all, he was young, progressive, politically astute, a skilled diplomat, an exceptional administrator and one who could “walk with Kings nor lose the common touch.” Already he was being feted in high circles and there were instances where important celebrities would turn up to watch our rehearsals. I remember Margot Fonteyn visited more than once and Princess Margaret with her Tony Armstrong-Jones in tow attended a run-through, Eric and I clowning away like mad for their benefit. Hall was also becoming a major director and one year hence his famous collaboration with John Barton on the entire Shakespeare historical cycle would place him at the peak of his profession.

  There was one small habit he was guilty of in rehearsals, however, that was slightly offputting—he very often neglected to watch what we were doing onstage and instead buried himself in the text. We would be working away feverishly up there and he wasn’t even looking. Were we that bad? Or did he not give a damn? What could we do to arrest his attention? Eric and I put our heads together and came up with a plan. One morning when we were on a roll and going at it full throttle, we happened to glance out front and, sure enough, Peter, eyes downcast, was busily immersed in the script. Without pausing, we unzipped our flies and took out our penises, letting them dangle in the open air while we proceeded to finish the scene. Surely, we thought, this ought to get some reaction. He never once looked up! As there was never enough heat in those freezing London theatres, we couldn’t wait to tuck them back inside before they shrivelled away to nothing.

  H. M. Tennant Ltd. in the person of Hugh “Binkie” Beaumont was the foremost producer in the London theatre. He dealt only with the top playwrights, top stars, directors and designers and all his productions bore that unmistakable “Binkie” stamp of elegance, stylishness and chic. Becket was doing so well that Binkie, forming an alliance with Peter and the RSC, transferred it for another few months to his own West End theatre, the Globe on Shaftesbury Avenue. There would be a hiatus, so we could all take a much-needed break before reopening. I looked at my pale body, which I had to bare down to my tights each night for the flogging scenes, and decided I deserved some sun. I had not a clue where to go that was close to English shores. I had only ever been to Paris and didn’t know the continent at all. They all told me to see Binkie, who knew the world and had amazing connections.

  With Peter Hall, the charmer

  His offices were on the top floor of the old Globe, so up I went to see him. As soon as I stepped into the rickety lift, all those legendary stories came back to me. The lift was so narrow it could only take one customer comfortably—if there were two, they would have to squeeze in to each other so tightly and closely that their faces and bodies would stick together like glue. Binkie, who was camp as a row of tents, used this as a means of recruiting young actors who hopefully were as gay as he. The easiest way to find out was to stick ’em in the lift with one of his gay stage managers who then would give the master a full report. Every ambitious young gay actor in town, talented or not, who knew about that lift looked upon it as their bread, bed and butter. This same scenario was hilariously parodied many years later in Mel Brooks’s classic film comedy The Producers.

  On the other hand, to hire the heterosexual hunks, Binkie employed a woman called Daphne Rye, a brilliant and notorious casting-coucher. No one could say that Daphne did not enjoy her work as she was reputed to have bedded most of the young studs in London—actors or otherwise. A lady approaching middle age, Daphne, I was told on good authority, was exceedingly proficient in a variety of adventurous sexual tricks and, it seems, was a bit of a contortionist to boot. These images couldn’t help but play in my mind as I went up in the little lift, mercifully alone. When I got there, Binkie could not have been more charming and suggested North Africa as a holiday, recommending Tangier, Casablanca and Marrakesh. He would get someone in the office to make the arrangements and would himself call the hotels. I couldn’t wait to corral my little tomboy friend, Janet Munro, and together we set off for the plane.

  Janet Munro, a fine actress and my tomboy friend

  Casablanca was a big letdown. It was dirty, uninspiring, no obvious action to speak of and absolutely none of the anticipated mystery or glamour. Tangier, on the other hand, was fabulous. Even though it had long passed its international glory days, it was faded and beautiful, simmering with intrigue, wildly decadent—a place where one was much more likely to come across Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre or Bogie and Bergman fanning themselves in some suspicious hidden café. There was also a shocking amount o
f poverty. I had never seen so many beggars; deformed children crouched in crumbling doorways and children whose desperate parents had purposely broken their limbs to make their begging more profitable. But there was sufficient beauty about to draw the eye away. Situated on a steep hill, the city commands a clear view of distant Gibraltar and from certain vantage points one can see where the three seas meet by their changing colours. The red of southern Spain is just across the water and from the dining room on top of the Hotel Velasquez, where we stayed, we had a spectacular view of the Riff Mountains; I expected, at any moment, to see Nelson Eddy burst into song.