In Spite of Myself: A Memoir

by Christopher Plummer

  So out went all the music and I think Doc was both relieved and grateful for such assessment and faith. In no time we were into previews at the Eugene O’Neill. Michael had worked tirelessly to whip us into shape. He proved without a doubt in those three short weeks that he was every bit as talented for the legitimate theatre as he was for musical comedy. We opened confidently and smoothly. Everyone was praised to the skies. Most critics recognized that Doc was trying to stretch himself and gave him huge credit for his subtlety and versatility. We were all convinced that he was now ready to write his “great work”! But Doc didn’t need to. He’d served up enough greatness in comedy already and, of course, he could never resist, God love him, getting just one more laugh. I enjoyed immensely being the Good Doctor not just for the superlatively skillful company of actors I was privileged to be with but because I loved my time, short as it was, with Doc—getting to know him, watching him at work, a kind, industrious man, one of the very finest comedic masters the theatre has ever known. We owe a lot of the joy in our lives to Neil Simon. And Michael “Whiz Kid” Bennett? That little tornado who died so tragically young leaving a gaping hole in the life of the stage that can never be filled with the same special quality and courage that was his alone. Yes, Michael B. had some greatness in him all right. Where is he now when we need him?!

  HARDLY HAD WE CLOSED The Good Doctor when Fuff and I found ourselves on the road to Morocco. Leaving Casablanca by car heading due east on that rustic highway brought back familiar memories of my first trip there so many years before with the late, lamented Janet Munro. The same rough desert road that passed through little scattered villages along the way, made up of huts, filthy, poverty-wracked, collapsing hovels. People would emerge like insects to stare at the car as it passed through. Dogs, some dead, some crippled, most starving, just skin and bone, littered the road. It all seemed so unjust and unfair when we finally reached our destination—that exotic, lush, wealthy oasis known as Marrakesh.

  Upon our arrival we were driven straight to Hotel La Mamounia—where else? Not much vestige remained of French influence except for the language, which many of the Moroccans still spoke. Otherwise, everything was now totally Arab; the hotel was Arab owned, serving Moroccan food, delicious, spicy, scented and much too much of it. We were housed in a lavish suite with a colossal bathtub, which when the water ran out through the pipes made the sound of a lion roaring. We played that game often after a bath, opening our mouths in lip-sync fashion, silently roaring as the tub emptied. Sadly, I’ve never found another bath that made quite the same noise though, God knows, I keep trying. The windows of our suite looked out toward the distant dark blue of the Atlas range and there in the town itself the tall tower from which the muezzin wakes the dawn.

  In the morning I was to have a session with John Huston, whose film The Man Who Would Be King had brought us there. Richard Burton had for some reason withdrawn at the last minute, and Janet Roberts of William Morris had persuaded John Foreman, an old friend and the film’s producer, that I should be cast in his stead. The part was Rudyard Kipling, who as the author of the story, appears now and then spurring on his famous protagonists—Dravot, played by Sean Connery, and Carnehan, played by Michael Caine. Some time ago, Huston and his loyal cowriter Gladys Hill had taken Kipling’s short story and enlarged it for the screen. They had originally wanted Bogie and Gable, now too old, of course. Instead of India as a location, which would have been prohibitive politically and financially, Morocco was substituted, a most suitable choice as it turned out.

  I was ushered into the presence of Mr. Huston, the Great White Hunter, with the long, angular head who stared at me for an eternity through those famous hooded eyes. Back in New York I had hired a student to do some quick research on the physical appearance of Rudyard Kipling as there was such little time to prepare. He had come up with a colour photo of the man which showed his hair as having a reddish tinge. I just as quickly got Paul Huntley, that superlative wig maker, to make me a “rug” resembling the photos as closely as possible. I now held it in my hand and showed it to Mr. Huston. “It’s the wrong colour,” he growled. “Kipling’s hair was jet black, not a bit of red in it.” I then showed him the photo. “It’s been tinted,” he snapped. “The Kipling Society insists it’s black.” I stammered lamely that I had paid someone four hundred dollars to research Kipling’s appearance. “Then get your money back,” he replied. “We shoot you in three days’ time. You have three days to get another wig.” He stalked out of the room followed by what looked like a retinue of beaters. With John Foreman’s help, we got through to Paul Huntley who performed some miraculous sleight of hand and sent a fresh black wig and mustache through the Studio pouch to arrive just in time.

  Michael Caine as Carnehan, me as Kipling and Sean Connery as Dravot

  I didn’t like Huston very much in the beginning and I don’t think he liked me. I knew that he was capable of assuming a courtly old-world manner when the mood took him, but to me he was nothing but brusque, terse and downright rude. He clearly resented the fact that I wasn’t Burton, whom he obviously wanted around for late-night drinking and good times. Fuff could sense, without my telling her, that I wasn’t going to have much fun. But how wrong we both were. For a start, with Michael Caine around with his vast bag of jokes and his natural wit, Sean, Fuff and I did nothing but laugh most of the time. The four of us were for a spell inseparable. A beautiful dark girl from British Guiana appeared as Mike’s new love. Her name, as everyone now knows, is Shakira and she of course turned out to be his future wife. Shakira and Fuff formed a companionship and they both entertained each other while we sahibs slaved away under the hot desert sun. I was now having a whale of a time playing Kipling and confident that I adequately resembled him, I did all I could to lose myself in the role. Unlike most film directors, Huston was very liberal with the dailies at the day’s end and welcomed all and sundry to come and watch the results. In fact, if one didn’t show up, he became quite hurt.

  One day, I was doing a major scene outside in the streets. It involved a rather lengthy bit of dialogue, so concentration was in order. Huston, unbeknownst to me, had placed a camel directly behind me as part of the background who every few seconds would nudge me with its head, sending me quite off balance and completely out of the shot. “Let’s do it again,” grumbled Huston in that well-known slow drawl of his. “Could the camel be moved a couple of yards back?” I pleaded. “No, Chris—he deserves to be in the scene just as much as you do. Actors and animals should get used to each other. They are, after all, one and the same.” If I hadn’t been the butt of his joke and the camel’s prodding, I would have enjoyed his dark humour a lot more. As it was, I laughed uncon-vincingly and valiantly made a few more attempts. The beast never stopped pushing me out of camera range as if he and Huston had from the start formed a conspiracy between them. Huston, obviously, found it immensely funny and he chortled away to himself from where he sat among huge comfortable cushions like some pasha. I swear it all was a kind of test to see if I had balls or not—everything in Huston’s camp was macho to the nth degree. When finally the scene was in the can, he got up, came over and congratulated first the camel, then me, in that order. After that, John and I got on just fine.

  As if he were some Arab sheik, a lot of his former wives would turn up out of the blue. I imagined he liked having them there just so he could mischievously sneak away in the night with his male tribe into the Atlas Mountains and camp out with the Berbers. His obsession was big game and once for days on end he was absent hunting elephants and tigers. While he was away, the irreplaceable Bert Batt, the very best assistant director ever, would take over the entire operation, still shouting the same affectionate insults at us actors, “All right, wind ’em up and bring ’em on.” Bert was truly amazing, able to organize hundreds of horsemen and a hundred camels in a matter of seconds and still have time to see that the British caterers taught the Arab caterers how to make bangers and mash.

  John Huston<
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  Then the Great White Hunter would return full of tales of conquest. He was an extraordinary personality, no question—a curious combination of latent cruelty and vulnerability—and when he was in action on the set I had to admit through somewhat clenched teeth that he was a great director. I could see something in him which he couldn’t hide that had made his films so unique, so memorable (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Red Badge of Courage, The Maltese Falcon and the last few moments of Moulin Rouge), and that something was an admiration and a passion for the rugged individual, the loner, cynical, disillusioned, who conceals beneath his bitterness a core of heroism that is pure, noble and utterly incorruptible. As a writer and filmmaker he understood satire, rare in an American (Beat the Devil, for example) and it crept into all his work as he continued to wink at the world. Like Hemingway, though never as beleaguered with problems, he possessed a goodly amount of sensitive genes which gave him his romance.

  Huston surrounded himself with top professionals in every department, from Oswald “Ozzie” Morris, the British camera ace, on down. The atmosphere on the set was never tedious but rich and exciting. Each morning I felt I was going to some sort of ritual, an adventure or a search for hidden treasure. Like a fine chef he worked purely on instinct and never followed the recipe of others. John never appeared to be directing at all, actually; he would say that “once the damn thing’s cast right, half the job is done—I can leave everyone alone.” Only the occasional word or two would pass his lips—sparse, economical but which spoke volumes. I was having trouble saying a very important line which I longed to make touching. He finally came up to me, and as gently as his gravelly accent allowed, he said, “Ah—ah—Chris, just take the music out of your voice.” And when at the end of the story Kipling stares in horror at the rotting severed head of his favourite character, Carnehan, what to do? There are no words, just the close-up camera. I tried everything from tears, to shock, to fear—what you will. Huston got out of his chair and whispered softly in my ear, “Don’t think at all. Drain yourself of feeling. Empty your head—then look at him.” By God, it worked. Those two bits of direction are the best I’ve ever received on any movie set.

  One day, we went up into Berber country where on top of a small alp, Alexandre Trauner, the legendary set designer, had built Kipling’s mythical kingdom of Kafiristan; Sean, as Dravot, was to be crowned there. Alexandre had designed many a European film classic, especially in France during the golden years of French cinema, including one of my very favourites, Les Enfants du Paradis. He almost outdid himself with the strange palace he had erected on the hill. It was an extraordinary feat and on a clear day could be seen for miles silhouetted against the mountains and the sky. Huston had gathered everyone there for a costume parade. He wanted to see them against the set before he approved them. They had been the work of Edith Head, that most famous of Hollywood designers. Edith was already there, pacing up and down, looking austere and in charge.

  The parade began and the male models were all trouped out, decked out in their period gowns and cloaks. Bright, gorgeously rich colours flowed by in reds, golds, royal blues—magnificent but awfully Hollywood, I thought, for such a pagan scene. Fuff, John Foreman and I stood at a distance. I looked at John F. who was not reacting. He had put on his “producer” face, but I knew damn well what he was thinking. Standing behind us in a circle watching the proceedings bug-eyed were at least fifty of the local Berber peasants. Suddenly Huston called out, “Stop right there for a moment. Come here—ah—Edith, darling.” With both hands on her shoulders he turned her around to face the Berber audience. “See those russet browns and torn cloaks? They’ve been wearing the same clothes since Biblical times—nothing’s changed! Yours are very pretty, dear, but hardly native. These are the closest thing to what I want.” I didn’t see Edith’s face, but she turned, walked off the set and soon went back to Hollywood. Smart lady! She’d made herself scarce, and so had her costumes. From a distance, most of the Berbers could have made quite convincing Indians; their apparel was similar. So in a matter of seconds many of them found themselves making speedy adjustments from audience to actors. Huston was fascinated by their dark, craggy, multilined faces. “Let’s go for dinner up in the hills tonight,” he would say. “I’m going to look at some old men. And we can smoke a hookah or two afterwards.”

  Now the Big Chief was one of those few directors who could demand “final cut” on a picture, but getting on in years, even he was losing his power and beginning to suffer from studio pressure—in this case from Columbia Pictures and Charles Bluhdorn’s Gulf + Western. Though John Foreman was getting reports all the time from the United States which he tried to shield from Huston, some inadvertently slipped through. One thing Columbia was insisting upon was that the role of Kipling should be deleted from the film. Foreman, Connery and Caine simultaneously blew a fuse. “The fools! They’ve missed the point—they’d be cutting all its atmosphere. The presence of the author contributes to the story. Dravot and Carnehan are motivated by the appearance of Kipling and would be lost without his pen to guide them. If Kipling is cut, the movie will become just another ordinary action epic. What are they doing to Huston’s script?”

  The studio continued to complain that it slowed down the action. Where have we heard that before? Huston just threw up his hands in helpless dismay. He seemed too tired to fight, but dear Sean Connery, Michael Caine and John Foreman took up the banner and were ready to go to war to save Kipling’s life—my life. The studio decided to fly its executives from la-la land to Marrakesh to sort us all out. Exhausted from their long journey, they finally arrived at the Mamounia early in the morning, only to find Sean and Foreman waiting for them in the lobby. “Hope you’ve had a pleasant flight,” grinned James Bond with teeth clenched. “We’ll go up in the lift wi-ye.” As Foreman told me afterwards, as soon as the elevator doors closed, Sean grabbed one of them by the collar, lifted him off his feet, pinned him against the wall and hissed, his Edinburgh accent becoming a menacing Glaswegian, “If Kipling ish cut from the fillum, I’m going back t’London t’morrow morning an’ ye’ll nae see me agin!” Me and my mustache remained in the movie!

  Another caveat the ever-interfering studio harboured was the choice of suitable background music. Bwana Huston had several times played us a tape of the music he had selected and approved. He had hired a British composer, a Mr. Joseph, to write the main theme of the movie, which would be simply performed on fife and drum. This would be the Dravot/Carnehan theme for the Brit side, which would be set against the wild haunting songs of India played on the sitar and many original native instruments—in fact, the famous Tagore poems set to music. The combination was irresistible, just another example of Huston’s wisdom and taste. It commented so brilliantly on the romance and wit of the movie. Lightness of touch was all, and Huston owned it in spades. The studio, however, rejected it at once and against Huston’s objections hired Maurice Jarre (the hottest film composer of the time) to write a huge epic score, just what the film did not need. Jarre had composed some fabulous sweeping music for many a famous movie, but The Man Who Would Be King was way out of his league—he attacked it like a bull in a china shop. Some people do not voice the same objections in this regard, but in my view Jarre’s music worked seriously against the film’s potential greatness.

  Huston now spent most of his time, while directing, in and out of an oxygen tent they had installed on the set. The emphysema that would eventually kill him was growing worse. Typically, however, like a mischievous, disobedient child, he would take his beloved stogies into the tent with him, close the flaps and light up. By the time I had left African shores principal photography was over and he was no longer on the picture. The devoted Bert Batt, Ozzie Morris and John Foreman finished it for him.

  I HAD GROWN UP on the works of the wondrous Rudyard Kipling and so had Huston. He could quote great chunks from The Jungle Book, the Just So Stories and of course Kipling’s numerous poems. One of Huston’s favourites a
nd mine too was from “The Young British Soldier”:

  When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains

  And the women come out to cut up what remains

  Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains …

  I think Kipling would have been so pleased with John Huston. No other film had ever captured his heart, his style and his essence as had The Man Who Would Be King. He also would have been most proud of Sean’s rich performance of Dravot and Caine’s marvellous Carnehan—one of his best performances ever. The Indian actor Saeed Jaffrey didn’t just play Billy Fish, he was Billy Fish, and Morocco’s major thespian, Doghmi Larbi, in the small role of Ootah the Terrible, gave a comic mime performance of sheer brilliance. Then there is the deeply atmospheric camera work of Ozzie Morris and its cleverly woven replication of India—its trains packed to the rooftops with natives and animals crushed together like ants—and Huston’s insistence on keeping it all a magical story for children and their imaginings, just as Kipling himself would have wished. In spite of Maurice’s jarring score, it really is a wonderful movie. And whenever I watch it I make sure I block out my ears so I can only hear in my mind the sound of the wailing sitar and the little fife and drum that the Great White Hunter had loved and wished for so much.

  By the old Moulmein Pagoda

  Lookin’ eastward to the sea,

  There’s a Burma girl a-settin’,