In Spite of Myself

by Christopher Plummer

  But thank the Lord for Patsy and Karl for keeping us alive. Their proud little warren could never be called dull and, looking back, I can’t believe what an astounding amount of talent was squeezed together in that narrow, sweaty little room. If someone had ever decided to hurl a grenade through its front door, the future of the American stage might have been erased forever.

  “WHERE ARE YOU LIVING NOW, honey? How can I ever get you—you never tell me where you are!” It was Jane Broder on the warpath again! Of course, she was quite right—though I had steady work from my soap, I was living ridiculously beyond my means, partying way into the night drinking and dining at hideously expensive restaurants (Le Volnay, Le Chambord) and, because of my early passion for clothes, running up accounts at Brooks Brothers, Tripplers and Weatheralls. Overextended beyond credulity, I kept checking in and out of cheesy hotels (the Van Rensselaer, the Pickwick Arms, the old Edison). If I couldn’t pay, I just left my clothes and moved to the next one; when I ran out altogether, Bob Webber and his wife, Sammy, took me in or if there was no room there I would end up on the floor of Jack Warden’s pad. When I’d finished confessing all this to Jane, she lost her patience completely, took me by the scruff of the neck and marched me straight down Forty-fourth to the Algonquin, made a deal with the manager and I was in like Flynn.

  “I can keep track of you better here, honey,” said Jane as she left me at the front desk. I didn’t move; I simply stood in wonder as I marvelled at the dark mahogany panelled lobby vibrating with the presence of the living dead—its Round Table truer and more famous than Camelot’s. The spirits of Dorothy Parker, Marc Connelly, George Kaufman, Robert Benchley, Robert Sherwood and Alexander Woolcott, much to my relief and joy, seemed more than alive and well—in fact they had never left. O’Neill had once been a fixture of that lobby, as had the Barrymores and Tallulah and Jane Cowl and all this was recorded for posterity in James Thurber’s and Al Hirschfeld’s witty caricatures scattered at random on the hotel walls. The Algonquin was now a favourite stopover for the visiting British acting-producing hierarchy—Donald Albery, Henry Sherek, Binky Beaumont and of course, Olivier, Richardson—most of the theatrical knights. Writers like Tennessee Williams, W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot and Norman Mailer lived there on and off. Robert Roark wrote one of his novels there. Oscar Levant came and went, as did critics Elliot Norton and Kenneth Tynan. It was quite amazing and uncanny but the past was so very present, there wasn’t much difference between customers alive or dead; they were simply guests getting along quite splendidly as they mingled together in that smoke-filled paneled lobby.

  Like some powerful elixir, this heady atmosphere had quite obviously inebriated the staff as well, who moved about the rooms with an extracharged energy and urgency as if floating six inches above floor level. Those wonderful bellhops and waiters, who never saw the light of day and never went to bed, would become my pals for life. So would Robert, the headwaiter in the Rose Room, or old Charlie, the busboy, an ancient Chinese rumoured to be in his midnineties who never spoke but smiled inscrutably as each day he performed his sole duty—placing a fresh rose in every finger bowl.

  The hotel was nicknamed the “Gonk,” or, when particularly effete members of our profession were in residence, the “Alicegonquin,” but what’s in a name?! This wonderful old inn was to be my new home, my headquarters for years to come. I couldn’t believe my luck. Immediately, I took advantage, establishing for myself a tiny beachhead in the lobby. I must have made a total nuisance of myself, but I was deliriously happy. The place spelt Broadway and The Theeahtah in capital letters—even the smell of it made me long to get back on the boards. The mad rush of television work was not only unsatisfying, it had quieted down considerably; my role on the soap had inconveniently run out; the little bank account Jane had arranged for me at Chase Manhattan was looking very sparse and I was overspending so horribly in my newly discovered haven, I found I wasn’t able to settle the tab. So one afternoon when I went up to my room, I couldn’t get in. Outraged, I ignored the elevator and ran down the stairs to the front desk three at a time. “Why is my room locked?” I demanded in a towering rage. The rather prissy new manager who had replaced the late Frank Case (famous for his patience and generosity) responded most unceremoniously, “We will keep your things here till you pay your bill. And I don’t want to see you till you do! Now go!” He turned his back on me and flounced away, leaving behind him a shower of dandruff which slowly fell to the carpet like snow in a crystal globe. I couldn’t think of where to go and I certainly didn’t dare tell Jane.

  I don’t remember where I spent the next several nights (some kind-hearted sucker like Jack Warden must have offered me shelter) but one morning window-shopping along Madison, I bumped into her. “The McClintic office called. They seem interested, honey. Get over there first thing in the morning!”—and she was gone. Well, this is it, I thought, this is it! I’m going to make it! Now I could thumb my nose at the Algonquin, at television—at the world. Here was a summons from Broadway’s highest peak. The Titans were calling. With a majestic thunderclap, the clouds had parted and, at last, I could see Olympus. Permit me then to jump several months ahead, if I may, in the same state of impatience and excitement with which I ran, like a long-lost son, toward the first stage door I could see.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A CANADIAN WETBACK AT MCCLINTIC’S COURT

  Spring 1955: New York–Paris flight. Four-engine Constellation. First-class cabin. Sole occupants—Judith Anderson, Stanley Gilkey (a theatrical manager), one rich American playboy, two snobbish Afghan hounds, Guthrie McClintic and me. Trip’s purpose—to present McClintic’s famous Medea by Robinson Jeffers at Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt with Anderson at her demonic best and me opposite her as a ludicrously far-too-youthful Jason. It’s probably McClintic’s seventy-fifth Atlantic crossing. This one takes fourteen hours—we’re into our sixth—McClintic still entertaining the cabin, regaling us from his bottomless trunk of sidesplitting anecdotes. Aided considerably by a half-killed case of Scotch, we’re all falling about in the aisle—all, that is, except the disapproving Afghans and Miss A., who somehow left us way back when and seems to be floating on nuage numéro neuf! With all the dignity we can muster the four of us hoist the great actress into her upper birth (a bizarre conceit of early first-class air travel) as McClintic, still absorbed in deviltry, never draws breath. While we lift her he is telling us how he and his producers—Robert Whitehead and Oliver Rea—finally dissuaded an adamant Miss A. from performing her tragic heroine authentically bare chested! “She may be getting on and she may have the face of Mrs. Danvers, but she’s still got two of the firmest, most remarkable boobs and she was dying to flaunt ’em! If I’d let her, she’d have closed every goddamn theatre!” Twenty-five vulgar stories later, exhausted from laughter, we report to our first Paris répétition—a line rehearsal. Location? The ultrachic Ritz bar. Elsa Maxwell holding the book.

  THE LAST FEW rehearsals back in New York had been, to say the least, chaotic (Miss A. condescending to appear only occasionally). Even the presence of witty Mildred Natwick, who played the nurse, didn’t help cheer me up. I would stand on the stage, a woefully under-rehearsed Jason, staring into the wings waiting for the Goddess of Thunder. I could see her sitting on an offstage bench casually going through her morning mail while emitting the two unearthly howls that preceded her entrance. She was of course merely “marking” it, but even at half speed those ear-piercing cries that daily rent the air at 10 a.m. never ceased to send shivers down my spine.

  I had tried so hard to hold my own and give the impression of masculine power in that improbable, wimpish role Mr. Jeffers must have bored himself to death writing. To look Greek I had gone to some sleazy salon to have my hair dyed blond. They had merely succeeded in singeing my entire head with second-degree burns. I was relieved I’d forgotten to have my chest hairs dyed too, and they remained a thick dark brown. Too cowardly to shave to make all consistent, I would have to spray them nightly with g
old dust. At any rate, the new Jason came out looking like a plucked chicken with alopecia—the only albino in the brood!

  The final run-through at the old New Amsterdam Roof before the cream of Broadway theatrical society (the Lunts, Helen Hayes, George Abbott, Katherine Cornell, Josh Logan, Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, Gilbert and Kitty Miller, etc.) was when Judith decided to pull out all the stops! She was electrifying! Attired simply in black sweater and black tights she prowled, stalked and slunk about the stage—hissing, spitting, breathing fire like some enraged dragon. She splashed the canvas of her extraordinary voice with every colour in the spectrum; now, soothing, seductive—now commanding, tempestu-ous—a cadenza of sounds culminating in a finale of frenzy! Truly, we were in the presence that day of a tragédienne of the first order—upon whose shoulders would surely fall the mantle of Rachel or Madame Georges.

  But, hélas! Once in Paris all was to change. It was the height of Le Festival International. Every theatre company of stature in the world was present—the Brecht Ensemble, Italy’s Piccolo Teatro, the Chinese Peking Theatre and the Kabuki from Japan. From Paris, there was the TNP, Jean Vilar’s great classic company, and to heighten tension even further, yet another Medea in the person of France’s own Marguerite Jamois. Normally this wouldn’t have disturbed Miss Judith for a second. Why, even without an appetite she could consume twelve Marguerites for breakfast! But on the Place du Châtelet at the famous Théâtre des Nations, now named for la Bernhardt, she was to inherit the Divine Sarah’s massive dressing rooms with their ornate double doors leading from the antechambers into the hallowed sanctum sanctorum still richly reverberating with memories of passion and glory.

  Judith stood in the midst of her vast new domain staring at the bare walls, the great windows and the high ceilings. Gone were the sumptuous Oriental rugs, the chaise longues, the chandeliers; gone—the majordomo admitting adoring kings, presidents and ambassadors; gone—the powdered, liveried footmen flinging wide the doors for “la petite Juive” to step forward, still in full costume and proffer her hand for their homage and obeisance. Nothing left now but the empty echoing rooms and far away in a distant corner under a single electric light-bulb, the meanest, most insignificant makeup table imaginable! Judith must have felt at that moment very much alone, a stranger with nary a friend in sight. She may have thought of her newfound home, America, the scene of her many triumphs; her native Australia and of course, England, where she had scored such successes at the Old Vic—three countries she was, in a sense, about to represent here in the city of light. Unwarranted as it may have been, the considerable weight of all this suddenly descended upon her—and that morning, the tough little sheila from dahn under—lost her voice.

  “Médée,” sans sa voix, est une image pitoyable—sans majesté, sans puissance. Throughout the Paris run the future dame of the British Empire never once regained her vocal powers but valiantly croaked her way through each performance—a pale shadow of her former self. The French press were glacially polite and loftily patronizing. Was this the famous Madame Anderson from whom they were to expect such marvels?! The frailer her voice box the more mine grew in strength, but it didn’t save me from the critical lambasting I rightly received. What the hell was a snotty-nosed college kid doing cast as the noblest Greek of ’em all? Was this a mate to match the Gorgon, the swarthy hero of the Golden Fleece?

  Guthrie was remarkable! He wasn’t going to take any of it lying down. He ranted and raved, defiantly defending us to the death, and he was wonderful to her. He filled her days with private viewings at museums, delectable lunches at top Parisian restaurants, arranged a meeting with Monsieur le Président, threw parties for her at both the French and American embassies (which I was allowed to attend) and showered her with gifts. He even found time to take me along with him to see the current plays—Gérard Philippe in Le Cid, Jean Vilar in Pirandello’s Henri IV and Pierre Fresnay in Les Oeufs de l’Autruche. This was showing at Fresnay’s own charming little theatre La Michodière which he co-owned with his wife, the famous chanteuse Yvonne Printemps. Guthrie took us backstage to meet Fresnay, who had once reduced me to tears as St. Vincent de Paul in a film called Monsieur Vincent.

  Guthrie also introduced me to the “Sardi’s” of Paris, the Elysées Matignon, where I met the two young farce writers who had penned Occupe-toi d’Amélie now known as Look After Lulu in which my then current girlfriend, Tammy Grimes, was to appear in New York under Noël Coward’s direction. I was hardly listening to what they were saying—I was too busy gawking at a very young girl who was making her way towards the bar. She was blonde, wore no makeup, was dressed in the shortest of short skirts and was fairly bursting out of a dangerously low-cut blouse. She was so beautiful—she stopped my heart. “Qui-ca?” I asked the two playwrights. They turned to look, shrugged indifferently, and one of them said, “C’est une petite vedette quelconque. Je crois que son prénom est Brigitte, je ne connais pas l’autre.” “Bardot peut-être,” gruffly offered the other, and they quickly dismissed this nouvelle arrivée and returned to the subject at hand.

  Judith had sent for a close friend of hers from the States, Anne Hunter, to console her and keep her company. She was cast as one of the Greek chorus. Anne was an exceedingly attractive woman in her forties, but when she arrived Judith was so busy being fêted that Anne was literally left on her own. We became friends at once. She knew Paris like the back of her hand and took great delight in showing me the sights—the Opéra, the Louvre, the Crazy Horse, Maxim’s, la Rive Gauche and all the little cafés, clubs and boîtes famous and infamous. She loved her food and drink so we had a fabulous time guzzling our nights away with gallons of wine, regularly staying up to watch the dawn creep over the Seine—surely one of the world’s most haunting sights. We watched it from a different “pont” each morning, and we would hold hands and feel very romantic, and that is as far as it went. She was so grown-up, kind and wistfully pretty. I would like to have gone further; it would have been the correct and natural thing to do in Paris—but I was shy and wary that her friend the Gorgon might have me boiled in oil! So Anne was mercifully spared.

  Judith, dressed as Medea, in Sarah Bernhardt’s dressing room; the lady behind her is Alice B. Toklas.

  The festival at last came to an end. For a parting fling, Guthrie threw a lunch party for Judith at the famous Grand Véfour. The party included Stanley Gilkey, Judith, the manager of the Bernhardt theatre, Millie Natwick, John Cabot Lodge, Anne and me. The Grand Véfour is that ancient restaurant that had been the gathering place for France’s literary giants since the eighteenth century. The tables along the wall had golden plaques encrusted in the backs of the upholstered benches—a famous writer to each table—Balzac, Alfred de Musset, Alexandre Dumas among them. We sat at Victor Hugo’s table and Guthrie ordered an enormous repast which included canard pressé with all the appropriate grands vins. It was a bubbling success—and as some flaming concoction to climax the meal was being prepared at our table, the maître d’ explained that the more recently honoured literary figures such as François Mauriac and André Malraux were relegated to the rear of the room—the latest and farthest-away table of all belonging to Jean Cocteau.

  Just as he was pointing towards the darkest reaches of the grand old restaurant, a tall, elegantly slim figure arose and emerged from the shadows—a tall figure with a leonine head and flowing hair, cuffs rolled back over his coat sleeves (the very signature of the man), a tall phantom heading straight for us and Victor Hugo! He only had eyes for Judith. Ignoring us, he came up to her, took both her hands in his, bent low, kissed them tenderly and in a soft melting voice murmured just loud enough for all of us to hear, “Ah madame! Thank you! Thank you! You make life!”—and then he was gone. It was Cocteau himself.

  That lunch and that moment alone had made Judith’s trip worthwhile. She just sat there speechless for the remainder of the meal. Her face shone with gratitude and pleasure—the powerful Medusa who could turn an audience to stone with one quick
sharp glance had now become a little girl again, exposed and vulnerable, and she began to laugh as tears of joy ran down her cheeks. It was the kind of occasion that Guthrie conceivably might have choreographed—he was most assuredly expert at this sort of thing. It has always been my suspicion that on this instance he was guilty.

  A few words about Guthrie and the not-so-tiny empire he created upon which for some considerable time the sun never set.

  1926. The curtain has just rung down on the out-of-town opening night of one of his first major Broadway productions. Instant crisis! The wunderkind knows he must fire his leading lady, that legendary megastar of bygone theatre glory, Mrs. Leslie Carter, making her long-awaited comeback but not knowing one word of the text! New York looms—he has no choice. Stealing himself for this daunting task, the youth breaks the sad news to the old lady in her dressing room. Without turning a hair she waits for him to finish, takes his hand, pulls him provocatively close to her ravaged, overly made-up face and whispers in a thick, whiskey-coated voice, “You always were a sensual little bastard!” Guthrie told me later, “I don’t think she ever once knew who the hell I was.” He replaces her with Florence Reed, who instantly becomes a star all over again. The part—Mother Goddam. The play—The Shanghai Gesture. The rest—history.

  Guthrie McClintic, a theatrical wizard and an early champion

  The brash young satyr from Seattle continues to take Broadway by storm. Adventurously he introduces new writers such as Maxwell Andersen and Sam Behrman, even early Tennessee Williams. The guttural-voiced pixie with the explosive temper holds the key to the magic box. He seems born with most theatrical tricks already up his sleeve. As a director, he stages beautifully and has an impeccable eye for casting, but his biggest talent is for producing. He is a true entrepreneur. With uncanny instinct, he knows how exactly to present his star—preserve the mystique, nurture the myth. He even marries her—the light of Broadway, the famous lady under Michael Arlen’s Green Hat, Katharine Cornell. Together, they form a partnership that takes them to the summit of their profession. For almost forty years North America is entertained by their sumptuous productions. Guthrie even takes time to produce, among others, John Gielgud’s Broadway Hamlet and of course, Dame Judith’s triumphant Medea, but it is on his very own “Miss Kit” that he most lavishes his care. He knows better than anyone around how to compliment her, make her stand apart, caress her with lighting, protect her from public scrutiny, keep Hollywood from her door, sustain the image—the image of a pure star of the stage and just about the last of the great actress-managers.