In Spite of Myself: A Memoir

by Christopher Plummer

  Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage

  For he was likely, had he been put on,

  To have proved most royally.

  As I recall it now, my favourite scenes from the production were those with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the confrontation with Ophelia, filmed in Kronborg’s ornate chapel, the joyous burst of welcome to the Players, the remembrances of Yorick, the duel with Laertes in the Great Hall and dying in the arms of Horatio. Perhaps my very favourite moment is when Hamlet has a premonition of his own death and bares his soul to his friend:

  Give me that man

  That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him

  In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart,

  As I do thee.

  Michael Caine had painted such a true and moving portrait of Horatio throughout I could barely get through those lines without weeping. Caine, then a young man, was already on his way to being a formidable raconteur with his off-the-cuff Cockney humour. What surprised us, however, was the minute he put on his costume, he became this gentle, cultured aristocrat who had the look and manner of a Leslie Howard and whose speech was soft and beautifully accented. But once the take was over, out came that priceless Cockney rasp again and another twenty-five stories would have us collapsing on the castle cobblestones. What amazed me was that Mike could, if he chose to, summon up real tears and cry his heart out at the drop of a hat. Very few actors can do this on cue, Sir John Gielgud being perhaps the guiltiest of all blubberers—but so with Mike, the underhanded scene-stealing sneak!

  Michael Caine as Horatio

  It was while I was busy dying that I fell victim to those tears. Hardly had I breathed my last words—“The rest is silence”—when from somewhere above, ducts opened and Niagara poured down on me with full force. Caine, leaning over me, was speaking his eulogy to Hamlet with devastating poignancy: “Now cracks a noble heart. Goodnight, sweet prince, / And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” But this was accompanied by rivulets of water coursing down his cheeks landing mostly on mine, so that the two-shot of my death was somewhat marred by a series of facial twitches I could not control. We tried it several times, but Caine couldn’t stop blubbing. No Hamlet since Burbage’s time has had a wetter death.

  What a glorious play it is—how golden in its sentiments, its wisdom, its philosophy, its simplicity and its staggering humility. I honestly believe no other can match it and the role, which was carved out of such humanity, remains forever unchallenged. I was considerably better in this, my second go, but only now, at my exalted age, do I think I know how to play it, and why not? Edwin Booth was still playing it in his old age!

  I left Denmark and the lively jazz-filled nightlife of Copenhagen rather “fat and scant of breath.” This was due to my daily weakness for open sandwiches and gallons of Danish ale washed down with yellow aquavit. It was just in time, for my costume had begun to burst at the seams. “Hamlet at Elsinore” would be good to me; its residuals would buy and pay for a charming Queen Anne townhouse in Mayfair for Trish and myself, whose main walls were richly covered in pale seventeenth-century walnut panelling. A friend, Jon Bannenberg, an Aussie with movie-star looks, restored the panelling and transformed the rest of the house for very little money with his innate taste and talent, the same talent that would sweep him along to become for a time the most sought-after interior designer of ships and private yachts in the world.

  As poor Hamlet was haunted at Elsinore, so were we at 70 Park Street W1. On the top floor above the master bedroom was a small low-ceilinged attic space which we used for unwanted furniture and general bric-à-brac. There was a rocking chair, a small table or two and shelves upon which we neatly stored books and photo albums. It started soon after we settled in. In the dead of night, waking up, we could hear—clear as a bell—the sound of the rocking chair squeaking back and forth, and the next morning when we ventured up, the books and albums would be scattered all over the floor. Some of the photo albums were opened at specific pages, which obviously held some special significance. Every time we put the books back neatly—sure enough upon the next occurrence they were on the floor again! These minor hauntings happened regularly once every week, same night, same time, but they didn’t get any worse and we became quite attuned.

  Therefore, it was not due to this that I flew to New York soon after, but because dear Jane Broder had sent me a message that producer David Merrick and Tony Richardson, then the hottest director of the moment, both wanted me for the title role in Arturo Ui (the Hitler figure in Bertolt Brecht’s grizzly sizzling little satire on the Nazi regime). “Honey, I think you should do this,” she’d scribbled at the bottom. I accepted with enormous relish, waved au revoir to Trish and our ghost, and left the wealthy borough of Mayfair to fend for itself. It seemed only right in some bizarre way that I would relinquish Hamlet, the most sensitive of men, for one of history’s most brutally minded dictators. From Elsinore to Berchtesgaden in one swift flight!

  IF I WERE PLAYING the real, serious Adolf Hitler of history, it would be a fascinating exercise indeed, but somewhat gruelling I should think, as well as morbid and depressing. The führer as Brecht has written him, however, was an absolute lark to act—funny and outrageous. In George Tabori’s skillful, lighthearted English translation, there is a great deal of farcical poking fun, vaudeville-sized comedic moments by the tumbril full. Only near the end is there an ominous foreboding and, just seconds before the final curtain, comes the warning, dark and sinister. Brecht got the idea when he was living in Chicago in the thirties—during the actual early rise of the Third Reich in Germany—clearly prophesying things to come and mockingly portraying the tiny Nazi hierarchy as third-rate Chicago gangsters, Arturo Ui himself a cheap, shoddy version of Al Capone. The establishment, the old guard under Hindenburg, he called “the Cauliflower Trust.”

  With a vengeance, I went to work on my research. I buried myself in still photos, newsreels of the period, anything that showed little Schickelgrubber, the house painter from Austria at work or play or simply showing off. What stunned me most were those astounding documentaries photographed by the famed Leni Riefenstahl—Triumph of the Will or the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where the führer leaves the stands in a huff as the record-breaking black runner from the United States, Jesse Owens, wins his gold medal. I carefully studied Hitler’s gestures, his quirkish, almost effeminate mannerisms (was he really gay?), his playful smirk of triumph at the massive Nuremberg rally; the awesome display of celebration on Kristallnacht, the torches playing upon his expression of disdainful arrogance as he looks down at the beaten Hindenburg on the balcony beneath him; and the horrid little dance he improvised at the news of Poland’s fall. Miss Riefenstahl’s camera consistently flattered Hitler from below so that he loomed over everyone like the giant he was not! Everything—the salutes, the goose step, the tall banners inspired by Caesar’s ancient Rome—all were dramatically lit to illustrate beyond question Nazi omnipotence. Supervised by Goebbels (Hitler’s PR man), these amazing visual images, probably the greatest propaganda films ever produced, are poetic paeans to the new Aryan race, the Hitler youth and, as Brecht himself referred to it, as the “Resistible Rise” of Nazism. With their supreme showmanship, there is no doubt they successfully managed to brainwash and completely overwhelm the awestruck German youth of that time, a youth innocent of the consequences and too young to have known anything else.

  Tony Richardson and David Merrick hired the talented Ruben Ter-Arutunian to design and execute the cartoonlike costumes and sets. The clothes were baggy zoot suits, loud checks, broad shoulders, wide lapels, long coats, extravagant watch fobs on long chains and pointed two-tone shoes. The sets were painted backdrops giving everything an artificial and temporary look (no way would Nazi rule last a thousand years!). It was all very much over the top on purpose, and this offended a lot of critics who called it Guys and Dolls without songs, many missing the point entirely. I think it worked wonders. I even think Brecht himself would have appro
ved. After all, his preface to the work stated that he had written it for American actors to perform in the Chicago mobster mold.

  As Arturo Ui, I was surrounded by a gaggle of crusty talent who represented my henchmen. Göring (Giri) was played by that wondrous curmudgeon and a survivor of the Black List, Lionel Stander, he of the growling voice and veteran of God knows how many hundreds of films. My lady friend from early Montreal days, Madeleine Sherwood, was superbly funny as Mrs. Betty Dullfeet. Elisha Cook, Jr., was Goebbels, Givola, vaudeville fugitive Mervyn Vye was Ernst Röhm (Ernie Roma) and a mélange of excellent Method actors, remnants of the Group Theatre, made up the rest. Roger De Koven played the actor who taught Hitler to speak, walk, salute and generally inspire the country’s youth by his rousing theatricality. Of course Arturo himself was a complete stretch for me (something I’d never touched before)—a little guy with a Bronx/Brooklyn/Chicago rasp who rises from the gutter to become leader of the Fatherland. Al Pacino, who played the part many years later, was far more suited for it—to him it would all come naturally, but I was determined to master the school of Italian Street Acting, as my friend Jason called it, and to be as utterly unrecognizable as possible. With the help of much exaggerated clownlike makeup, hunched back and ghastly ill-fitting clothes, I managed this without any trouble. But how was I to do a convincing accent? I listened to the various “street” wood notes emanating from the company and suddenly there it was—the perfect sound to mimic—and it belonged to a marvellous little character actor called Tom Pedi. I clung to him, worked with him, drank with him, ate with him (I didn’t sleep with him). What a superb coach. In fact, it was almost too much; there seemed to be two Tom Pedis onstage. However, the result was extremely painful on my vocal chords as the sound came mostly from the back of the throat. And it was made all the more difficult at the end of the day when little Arturo, by now taken over by Hitler, has to change his voice in a flash to the barking clear piercing tones of Adolf the Orator. Even though I was about to lose my voice altogether through strain, I was saved for sadly the play closed. It had been much too uncommercial and daring for Broadway from the start. The reviews were too mixed to sustain a good run, and on the second week, as if to seal its fate entirely, President Kennedy was assassinated in Texas. Dorothea, my laughing socialite friend, had most generously lent her Fifth Avenue apartment to Trish and me, and one horrendous morning we woke up to see on television JFK sprawled in the backseat of his limousine, his distraught wife, Jackie, frantically leaning over him in her grief. No one who saw it as it happened live will ever forget it. Instantly, Public Television arranged a marathon tribute to the president on that Sunday by all the leading players in New York that season, which lasted into the wee hours of Monday morning. Improvised scenes were rehearsed on the spot. Among the many who performed, Frederic March read some O’Neill, Charlton Heston read from the Bible and I played Hamlet’s death scene with Albert Finney as Horatio. When it came to the lines, “Goodnight, sweet prince and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,” both of us could not stop the tears from coming. Once again, another wet death for Hamlet.

  Madeleine Sherwood (Mrs. Dullfeet) and Arturo himself

  The moment Merrick closed the play he holed himself up in his office and was totally unapproachable. If he’d had the guts to present it on Broadway to begin with, why couldn’t he bravely soldier on with it for a spell, particularly now that its underlying message was so patently apt? But because of the tragedy, stocks had seriously plummeted and there was next to nothing left in the till for the arts. To reopen the play, Lionel Stander, as was his fashion, organized a march of protest down Forty-fourth Street and up the lift to Merrick’s office. He had persuaded some of the press to join our little march, so with reporters and television cameras and some sympathetic actors from other productions, we all of us banged on his closed doors. They never opened. There was some talk of resuming it off Broadway; even a London run was discussed, but neither materialized.

  I remember the distinguished critic Walter Kerr, of the Herald Tribune, usually a staunch supporter of mine, not even mentioning my name in his unfavorable review. This could not have been more of a put-down as Arturo Ui is unquestionably the star part and hardly ever leaves the stage. He couldn’t have missed me if he tried. What miffed him was that I had completely disguised myself; there was no vestige of my own personality peeping through. He considered it a cheap trick and decided to punish me for it. As a consoling measure, his wife, Jean Kerr, some days later sent me her new play, a most delightful contemporary comedy, safe rather than daring, which Walter would direct. This gesture seemed to say, “If you do our play and join ranks, you will be reinstated in our favour.” At the time, I was convinced it was a kind of theatrical blackmail—I turned it down.

  Well, the marquee lights went out at the Lunt-Fontanne, my voice restored, there would be no more protest marches dreamed up by Lionel, but there was the usual empty feeling at the end of the run and I was sad to let my little runt Arturo go. It was probably for the best. I’d enjoyed myself to excess getting more and more over the top as the days went by. Tony Richardson had been such an inspiring force, and I can’t describe just how enjoyable he was to work with. Tony, who had married Vanessa Redgrave and sired their daughter, Natasha, was an exceptional man at an important time. He had encouraged and staged John Osborne’s early work Look Back in Anger, which had changed the face of the English-speaking theatre forever. As a movie director, he had filmed Osborne’s The Entertainer with Olivier and Joan Plowright, also a delightful pastiche of Evelyn Waugh’s called The Loved Ones and, of course, the megahit that solidified Albert Finney’s career, Tom Jones. In England in the sixties, Tony was there at the top. He treated his enormous success in the most casually matter-of-fact way, as if it didn’t matter a damn and he made everything he touched look so easy. I was about to work with him again on a new Osborne play, but it never happened. And then, it was only a matter of years before Tony, shockingly young, left us for good. I wish he was still among us—he made our profession such fun.

  Trying to look as small as I can

  And I shall ne’er forget the opening of Arturo Ui when that little musical dynamo Jule Styne, who had emerged from the early Chicago jazz days of his youth and who had now concocted for us a most wonderfully tongue-in-cheek score, insisted upon conducting it himself—on that first performance from the pit. It gave me such a rush to see that wide beaming face of his spurring us on across the footlights. Altogether it had been a brave, perhaps foolhardy venture, due largely to Merrick, for whom I will always bear a grudging respect, and dear cause-driven, black-listed, gravel-voiced Lionel, who looked like he could live forever with his huge sense of humanity and Pickwickian mirth. He was absolutely right when he fought for our play and the final message it contained:

  If we could learn to look instead of gawking,

  We’d see the horror in the heart of farce,

  If only we would act instead of talking,

  We wouldn’t always end up on our arse.

  This was the thing that nearly had us mastered;

  Don’t yet rejoice in his defeat, you men!

  For though the world stood up and stopped the bastard,

  The bitch that bore him is in heat again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “S & M”

  Watching The Sound of Music is like being beaten to death by a Hallmark card.

  —DOUG MCCLURE (ACTOR AND WIT)

  The Bristol Hotel, which still stands in the midst of Makartplatz at the center of Mozart’s Salzburg, invariably threw open its doors to artists of every shape and species, particularly musicians engaged by the world-renowned festival. The more gregarious of these, famous or infamous, regularly sought shelter within its walls. Upon my arrival at the front desk, back in the early sixties when we were shooting that celebrated film, I was greeted by a grinning desk clerk who informed me that two great nighthawks of the opera world, Giuseppe di Stefano and Ettore Bastianini (apparentl
y steady customers), had just checked in. With the prospect of such easy access to confidential information of this sort, the Bristol promised to be a welcome change from the somewhat austere Osterreichischer Hof down the street where I had begun my Tyrolean sojourn. The instant warmth and relaxed sense of improvisation about my new surroundings made me realize at once that here I could be as free as I chose. What I did not foresee was that in the next few weeks, in spite of my obnoxious shenanigans, I would come to be treated and accepted as a proud member of the family. There is no better way to describe the old place other than to say, quite simply, that I had come home. The reason for this was mostly due to a pint-sized powerhouse of a lady who possessed two entirely contrasting personalities—a fearsome steel-like authority and the softest heart in Christendom. Her name was Gretl Hübner.

  The Hübner family had, in the past, successfully owned and operated a chain of first-class hotels throughout eastern Europe. But times had changed, fortunes had been lost and they were now reduced to one, the Bristol, which Gretl, the last of her line, had inherited and was caring for with a devotion that only a mother might have for her ailing offspring. The hotel was, for her, both a toy and a roof over her head, which she shared with her American husband, a comfy old codger, General MacKristol, retired from the U.S. Occupation Forces in Germany after World War II. But the general rarely appeared, spending most of his days fishing at Bad Ischl and anyway, everyone at the hotel, staff and guests alike, were quite convinced that the real general was Gretl. She also ran the place as if it were a ship foundering in heavy waters, heavy waters she herself stirred up, if for no other reason than to keep things from being boring. Certainly during my stay it was far from boring. In fact, at times it rather resembled a reform school presided over by a strict, slightly wacky headmistress! Once inside the Bristol, there was something about the heady, pungent air that made you want to be naughty. Diabolically, Gretl seemed to encourage this just so she could come along later and straighten you out!