In Spite of Myself: A Memoir

by Christopher Plummer

  The Soviet crew and actors were always so eager to be welcoming, they regularly asked us to join them in town after work. But we were never allowed to fraternize. Intourist, the KGB, even Mosfilm saw to that. They also saw to it that their artists were housed in separate villages. The Russian kids and their interpreters were just as bewildered by these bigoted laws as we were. Curiosity was forbidden and if they became the slightest bit friendly or close to us, they were transferred somewhere else—we never saw them again.

  Things on the set were beginning to run amok. One morning, we arrived to find there was no sign of the army anywhere. We were told they had been ordered to settle a minor skirmish that had taken place near the border. With no time to change, they had taken off in their Waterloo costumes. To the enemy, whoever they were, the sight of nineteenth-century British red and French blue must have freaked them out of their minds. But more disaster struck—horses were dying all over the place. They had run out of fake “dead horses” and had started using real ones, old worn-out beasts, to whom they gave injections, sometimes overdosing them so they would lie still. There was no such thing as the SPCA in Russia. Then the hotel began to deteriorate even further. With the Georgians no longer there, it reverted to its old obnoxious self.

  We had barely got back to our “suite” one afternoon after a busy day in the stirrups when there was a knock on the door. It was a very sheepish Michael Wilding. “I’ve just had an epileptic fit.” Now everything he said was usually meant to amuse so we didn’t take him at all seriously. But he was shaking as he confided in us, “I’m prone to them, you know—please don’t tell anyone—it’s too humiliating. But I had to tell you because you’re friends and I’m going to need a doctor.” The only way to get a doctor was to check into the local hospital—as sure as hell a death warrant. But Fred the Vampire drove us over and we did just that. The hospital was a disgrace: filthy waiting room, filthy wards filled with dust and mice droppings on the floor and lots of worn-out army boots lying about. In the midst of all this stood Michael—elegant in a pair of white ducks, scarf around the neck, blazer and espadrilles. He looked as if he’d just come off a yacht. “I think I’m going to die here,” he murmured, trying to make light of it. “I’ll never get to see Maggie as Cleopatra. She opens next week at Chichester.” Michael, once married to Elizabeth Taylor, was now happily united with Margaret Leighton, one of Britain’s finest actresses. “You’ll be all right,” we said without much conviction in our voices. As we left him standing there with fear in his eyes, we wondered if he mightn’t be right, the poor old thing.

  In the meantime, Bondarchuk had come back strutting about like a proud rooster. Wellington and his little band were up next and for a second it looked as if we might be out of there. Michael as Ponsonby would have to wait a few days more to lead the Scots Greys’ charge. Terry, Willow, Jeffrey Wickham and I got together and decided we had to let Michael go first. He was too ill to stay on any longer, so we went to Bondarchuk and told him the story. Bondars was really quite touched and agreed. We got Michael out of the hospital, put him on a wooden horse (for the close-ups), and the day after, he was back in Chichester with his Cleopatra.

  Well, not everyone was done, but it was over for me—finally over! Farewell to Batty-Poo! Farewell to “Bondars the Bear,” to Armando and his camera, to Chemedurov the Firebrand, farewell to the little vampire Fred. As a parting gift I made him take my silk shirts that for some incomprehensible reason I had brought from London. He cried very melodramatically, but I suspect he would have preferred some of Elaine’s clothes instead.

  No ropy car rides this time. No sir. We took the train to Budapest—the same damn train I took with Kirby, I swear—the same broken-down compartment, the same wooden benches. For a moment it seemed we even had the same soldiers, only this time there were six of them, much more agreeable, with four goats tied to the cabin door. It was a jolly group, all shouting bawdy Slavic songs at the tops of their voices. The joy was contagious and we tried to join them in song—a rather difficult feat without the words.

  The sight of these six youngsters with their goats braying accompaniment made me realize how much I’d come to admire the Russian character beyond all expectations; these people who in their long history never once had it good, these talented, imaginative, passionate creatures who had given the world such greatness in music, literature and dance and who, no matter what regime had trampled them under foot, would rise up each time with fearless energy and an unquenchable appetite for life.

  Sergei Bondarchuk

  Elaine and I snuggled by the window to keep warm, and as we began to drift off, my memory brought me back to the battlefield, to Terry and Jeffrey, still there, no doubt busy controlling their nags; and Willow in kilts and monocle, drenched in vodka, sitting with his five-star generals happily dissecting famous battles from Poitier to Salamanca, from Waterloo to Crimea; to the terrible hotel, the filthy restaurant, Snake City itself; then those fateful hills and dear deaf old Stok, who carried me to safety each day, and the other long-suffering animals, the gallant little cavalry, the explosive fire-balls, the danger, the horror, the fear, and I knew I wouldn’t have missed any of it for all the world.

  Though Bondarchuk found it a bit of a wrench

  That the English had successfully conquered the French

  He couldn’t change history, it was far too late

  So he honoured the truth and told it straight.

  Then hold high your lance for la Belle Alliance,

  Cry your last boo-hoo for Ol’ Batty-Poo,

  But remember in battle if e’er you get beaten

  That the Brits won this war on the playing fields of Eton.

  On our return to London, before we could even catch our breath, Elaine and I had yet another Russian experience—the absolute flipside of the coin. Marina Bowater, a formidable lady with strong Russian connections, ran a small antiques shop on Kensington Church Street which contained bric-à-brac of all sorts from la vielle Russie—prerevolutionary objets d’art such as priceless icons and original costume designs for the Ballets Russes by Bakst and Alexandre Benoit. Her shop was always filled with old émigrés who had escaped the Bolsheviks in 1917 and settled in London. Marina, whose conversation sparkled in three languages, took pity on them and insisted on serving them small crested shot glasses of vodka, Russian tea from ornate samovars and delicious little cakes “on the house.” I was sipping away from my shot glass one morning, regaling Marina with the Waterloo saga, when she interrupted, “You know, ma chère, it’s Russian Easter next week and I’m having a party for some rather extraordinary friends. Why don’t you and Elaine come? C’est trés petite, mon apartment, mais, peut-être vous pourriez trouver la scène trés interessant.”

  The apartment was most certainly trés petite. When we arrived it was jam-packed to the rafters with bawdy, rowdy Russians, most of them drunk as skunks and having the time of their lives. But these were different Russians—White Russians—many of them exiled nobility who had come from Rome, Paris or Madrid to celebrate, not just their Easter but some other mysterious cause, the nature of which I could not fathom. It seemed like the gathering of a clan. There were Obolenskys, Moukhranskys and God knows who—all wonderful-looking people, tall and imposing, if a trifle shabbily dressed. The most boisterous of these were the ancient boyar princes led by the Golitzin family and their cousins, some of whom had travelled all the way from Brazil and Argentina. They were holding up the bar, joking, laughing and gawking at Elaine, who was wearing the briefest of hot pants—the then fashionable London attire. To avoid their gaze, she decided to retire to a nearby couch where she sat down beside a mercifully docile, handsome but unassuming man in his late sixties sporting a slightly frayed grey flannel suit. They seemed to be getting along nicely together, and I saw him give her a small silver trinket. It looked like something one might acquire at an airport giftshop.

  The party was now at its loudest, the vodka and caviar disappearing rapidly. The atmosphere
was electric—excitement high. I turned away for a second and caught a glimpse of the man in grey flannel. He was bowing very graciously to Elaine, kissing her hand, and then he got up from the sofa. Suddenly, as if on cue, everything stopped—the little apartment went deadly quiet—not even the clink of a glass. I looked about in astonishment—the entire room was standing rigidly at attention. As he moved slowly among them, nodding his gratitude and his good-byes, the man in the grey flannel suit, His Imperial Majesty, Tsar Vladimir Romanov, pretender to the Russian throne, quietly and modestly left the room.

  “HE WAS VERY SWEET and he spoke the most impeccable English,” Elaine said later when we got back to the house at Hyde Park Gate. We couldn’t wait to examine the little trinket. It was a tiny cup sitting in its own silver tray. Yes, there were the Romanov eagles engraved on it and yes, it was real silver all right, and yes, we’ve kept it polished ever since. But we still wonder if perhaps he hadn’t just picked it up at Heathrow Airport after all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  PEER GYNT WITHOUT PORTFOLIO

  After a long period of time in front of the camera there is nothing more satisfying to me than going straight back to the theatre. All my life I’ve been mixing things up that way, switching back and forth. It’s a trifle risky, for if you are busy in one medium, the other is convinced you’re dead. But it’s my preferred risk because I believe that replenishing one’s craft regularly is an absolute must and, of course, the stage is the one place where we actors can do that best.

  For some time Peter Coe and I had discussed doing a production of Peer Gynt together—he directing, me in the title role. Now this massive Norse allegory was, in Henrik Ibsen’s own words, a dramatic poem never meant to be performed, only read. It was a theatrical manager in Oslo who persuaded him to put it on the stage. Ibsen followed his advice and in the process wrote Edvard Grieg asking him to compose the incidental music. As it turned out, these two original geniuses created two separate masterpieces. But on its feet, in translation, even in Tyrone Guthrie’s famous Old Vic production with Ralph Richardson as Gynt and Olivier as the Button-Moulder, the play was always far too top-heavy to really do justice to Ibsen’s haunting tone poem.

  To properly perform Peer Gynt in its entirety would take untold hours. The dramatis personae is, in itself, a mob scene. There are so many characters that not only create a confusion of identity, they render any production virtually cost prohibitive. Only subsidized companies could come anywhere near being able to afford it, but, generally, as a live piece of theatre it sadly remains, even when edited considerably, a long and bumpy ride. Ibsen’s first instinct was probably spot on, but there are too many golden moments in it to be ignored, so Peter Coe and I together came up with what we thought might be a solution to this problem.

  Heavily influenced by Ingmar Bergman’s film Wild Strawberries, we both saw Peer as an old man throughout looking back over his past. Even Peer as a youth or Peer in middle age would be played old. He and Mother Aase (two old crones together) would spend the lonely nights in the little hut on that mountaintop by the fjords getting tiddly (to keep warm if nothing else) and tell each other stories. So the well-known tale of the ptarmigan and the deer that opens the play becomes a tale that Peer has told over and over, and over and over Aase has to pretend she is hearing it for the first time. They also play the game of Death repeatedly. Peer riding his mother to Soria-Moria Castle in her bed (the carriage) is an all too familiar improvisation, until one night she really does die, and not noticing, he still keeps whipping the bedposts (the reindeer) until finally he realizes it all too late.

  The whole play, therefore, is Peer’s dream. Everything in that little room, all his toys come to life—the big steamer that takes him to Africa and explodes is the little toy boat that sits in a corner, the stallion he rides with Anitra is the old wooden hobby horse by the door. All the people he meets on his travels are the same people he has known from his village. His father-in-law becomes the Troll King; the bad girls become Anitra; the priest becomes the Button-Moulder, and so on. The only one who never changes is Solveig—she is constant and has never aged. So at the play’s climax when Peer has peeled the onion down to its last truth, he finds that love and “self” have been at home waiting for him all along. In other words, he has lived his life’s voyage in his mind; in reality he never left his village.

  If done properly, it could work well, and what a money saver as far as casting was concerned. Really first-rate actors would now have much more incentive to appear in it as they would be playing several characters each. Coe took the idea to Sir John Clements who was then running the Chichester Festival and he “bought” it instantly. But who would adapt it? There were excellent translations in existence, most of which had already been performed, but they all tended at times to be somewhat literal. Then who best to create the new definitive English version and still make it his own? Christopher Fry, we chimed in unison. It was the obvious choice. Fry knew Norwegian, he was conveniently living near Chichester and he had the right poet’s brush to lift the whole thing off its canvas. So a lunch was arranged at the Garrick Club for the four of us—Coe, Clements, Fry and me.

  In love with language

  I had acted in three of Fry’s plays in the fifties: The Lady’s Not for Burning twice, The Dark Is Light Enough and A Phoenix Too Frequent. When I was a teenager in the midforties he was my very favourite writer. His gentle wit and his gift for language enthralled me, so what an added pleasure it was to find him a thoroughly charming and engaging gentleman. He seemed without ego and unlike a lot of academics was at once warm and human. He was what one would call a comfortable sort, with his pipe and his tweeds. Because I had some pretty strong ideas on how to play Peer, Coe and Clements suggested that Fry and I work together at least twice a week. What an honour! He listened with great courtesy and interest to all my ramblings and then we’d take a break or two and share stories. I had to pinch myself to remind me I was in the same room with one of my all-time heroes.

  Fry took hardly any time to accomplish his task, but the result for Peter and myself was a huge disappointment. We were staggered! All the poetry we’d expected from him had been denied us; instead the story was told in the straightforward manner of an Arthur Miller—very economical, down to earth and domestic. Where were the flights of fancy? For two decades Fry had given back to a limping lightweight English theatre all its missing profundity and beauty of language. But by the midsixties, his style had become outmoded and was considered too florid, gentle and obscure for a rapidly changing world. Reading his new Peer Gynt, we could see that Fry, all too aware of this, was determined to find an editorialized style that reflected the present and that might bring him a newfound popular acceptance. Understandable, of course, but everything we’d hoped for had been sacrificed. Skillful though his adaptation was, it was a “Fry-up” without the bacon, sausage and tomato!

  Coe and I kept mum for the moment, wondering what on earth our next step would be. Rehearsals were just around the corner, and it looked very much as if we would have to go through with it, that we were really and truly stuck. And then something occurred that rescued me from falling down the deepest, blackest fjord that old Gynt had ever “peered” into. One morning, I found myself in a studio recording some scenes from Much Ado About Nothing with Dorothy Tutin. It was to be for an LP promoting our new “St. George’s Islington and the Globe Theatre Restoration.” I had always had a crush on Dot Tutin and was a regular slave to her particular magic whenever she was on the stage. So I was especially proud to be acting with her for the first time and having the greatest fun being Benedick to her Beatrice.

  While happily emoting one of Benedick’s famous tirades, something grabbed me with such force it knocked all the breath clean out of me. It was as if an enormous claw of steel was crushing my back and chest. I had great trouble breathing, but I was too humiliated not to continue so I managed to finish the scene, gasp out a few incoherent apologies to Dot who was staring at
me openmouthed and left the studio doubled up and hardly able to walk. Thank God, Frank was there with the car and he drove me straight to my doctor’s office in Hans Crescent. Dr. Janvrin called the London Clinic, got me a room, gave me a huge injection of something and sent me on my way. In the emergency room at the clinic, they had a devil of a time trying to X-ray me—I couldn’t lie still—I was in such pain, the injection had long since worn off. Everyone—the interns and nurses—was convinced I was having a massive heart attack, which was not the case as they would one day discover. But in the meantime, it all seemed a mystery to them and I was taken to my room, heavily sedated and as usual when there was doubt instantly put on an IV.