In Spite of Myself

by Christopher Plummer

  I asked if she was by chance related to Henry Fonda and she answered softly, “I was once his wife.” Having had several drinks too many, I did something so inexplicably rude and rash that I have never really lived it down. Spotting Hank Fonda in the distance standing at the bar, I grabbed her by the hand and pulled her over to him, saying boldly and loudly, “May I introduce you two? Susan—Henry, Henry—Susan! What the hell did you ever leave her for? She’s gorgeous!” (or words to that effect). Hank let out an ear-piercing scream of half-mock horror and I felt Susan’s hand leave mine as she turned and walked away. What came over me, I’ll never know! I was drunk, of course, and I suppose I had wanted to show off in front of her or get a laugh or something. I can’t imagine what, but never before had I felt quite so stupidly young. I left the party.

  It was becoming frigid on the slopes, and it was my one and only chance. Apologies poured out of me as I tried to find excuses for my repulsive behavior on that embarrassing evening. She looked at me for the longest time. The cold didn’t seem to affect her. There was an aura of serenity about Susan. She gave me the most wonderfully slow, forgiving smile and together we skied back down to the hotel.

  HUNTER MOUNTAIN was more of a hill than a mountain, but steep enough to warrant chairlifts and a couple of decent runs for skiers who didn’t want to always travel up to Snow Ridge, Stowe or Lake Placid. It was literally a snowball’s throw from Manhattan. Jimmy Hammerstein, with a few pals including Larry Hagman and John Mckay, had bought the mountain and converted it into a miniature ski resort complete with artificial snow, some cabins and a ski lodge. It was all rather “in,” everyone mostly knew everyone else. Susan and I saw a lot of each other up there that winter, and back in Manhattan, she took me to all sorts of parties—she was the most sought-after young lady—she even took me home to meet Dorothy and Oscar, who instantly made me feel I was part of the family. Susan was passionate about painting, cooking, music and theatre. She was terribly intelligent, marvelous company, listened so beautifully, fed the ego, and there was something deep inside her that was most calming, reassuring, comforting. I confess—I was smitten!

  The pace and urgency of that season had inspired other such partnerships. Jason and Lauren Bacall had now met, formed an instant tryst and seemed distinctly marriage-bound. Laurence Olivier, sans Vivien Leigh, had fallen in love with Joan Plowright, who had been playing A Taste of Honey in New York; they too were ready to tie the knot. Sometimes the six of us shared late after-show suppers at Orsini’s, watched over by its owner—that handsome princely Roman, Armando Orsini. Jase and Betty never ceased to jostle and maneuver the subject of marriage in Susan’s and my direction—once going as far as suggesting a double wedding!

  Susan came with me to California, where I was to play Black Paquito opposite Greer Garson in the Hallmark Hall of Fame’s production of Shaw’s Captain Brassbound’s Conversion. Dear, generous Greer, one of my favourite movie stars ever (Pride and Prejudice, Random Harvest) was a most remarkable woman; her ceaseless work for charity and the joy she got out of life were staggering. She kept saying how our little company of classically trained actors—George Rose, Liam Redmond and I—reminded her of being back at the Old Vic. “I started there, you know,” she said with great pride. Greer never stopped asking me to visit her and her husband, Buddy Fogelson, at their enormous Texas ranch and I could kick myself that I never was able to do so. Greer wrote me the most wonderful letter of encouragement I have ever received—I still keep it safe, under lock and key. This is one lady I wished could have been my friend. Of course, Greer instantly bonded with Susan, as I knew she would, and took up our cause at once, matchmaking with a vengeance. Poor Susan. I really couldn’t judge how she felt; she was always so quiet about private things—in fact I don’t even know if the subject had ever entered her mind. I knew she would make someone the most unselfish and devoted wife, but I also knew I wasn’t worthy of her. I needed to be made of sterner stuff. Still inclined to sow my wild oats, I simply wasn’t grown-up enough for the truly serious commitment she rightly deserved.

  Greer Garson, George Rose and me in Captain Brassbound’s Conversion

  So climbing down from our fictitious wedding cake, we remained instead, I like to think, the best of friends.

  “I GOTTA CALL from Alan Jay Lerner, honey. He wants to know if you’d like to be in his new musical.” It was Jane on the telephone. Alan had always seemed to like my work, for some reason, and I wasn’t about to give him an argument. It all began when, in 1956, he, Frederick Loewe, Herman Levin and Moss Hart asked me to do a number from My Fair Lady. They wanted me to take over Rex Harrison’s role of Henry Higgins in New York and then do the national tour. I had just seen this miraculous new hit a few nights before and had been swept away by it. It is still, arguably, the most perfect musical ever conceived. One moment of supreme theatre magic occurred when a young Julie Andrews as Eliza stands on the stage, alone and vulnerable, in a single spot and softly sings “I Could Have Danced All Night.” It was as if she’d flown all the way up to the balcony where I was sitting and sang to me alone.

  Alan Jay Lermer—determined to have me sing. Brave man!

  The other fascination was watching the polished Mr. Harrison give the performance of his life. The part of Higgins fitted him like a glove; he owned every Anglo-Saxon attitude of it. Rex’s rhythms were imbedded into the score forever. For Lerner, Loewe, Hart and Levin, I was to perform “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” What the hell was I to do? There was only one thing—sing where Rex talked and talk where Rex sang! It worked. The famous foursome were most complimentary until they were reminded I was a tad young at twenty-six, so we mutually parted company.

  Now Alan Jay was after me again. This time it was Camelot. They had not begun rehearsal and at this point it was titled “Jenny Kissed Me.” The whole thing was inspired by T. H. White’s The Once and Future King. Richard Burton and Julie Andrews were set as King Arthur and Guinevere and I could play Lancelot if I was a good boy and my singing passed muster. They first showed me the extraordinary costume designs the great Adrian had created. They were fascinating, subtle, mystic and distant—the watercolours of the Russell Flint illustrations. Lancelot had a dark swarthy look and, true to Arthurian legend, sported a withered arm. I was, needless to say, somewhat keen. In contrast to Burton’s conversational style, my songs were to have a wider range—but how on earth was I to manage this? Determined to give a good showing, I worked like a dog on “Till There Was You” from The Music Man helped along by a whip-cracking coach.

  The day arrived—I walked out onstage. Moss Hart greeted me like an old friend (he was such a gent); Alan and Herman waved to me from out front and “Fritz” Loewe was seated at the piano. I got through it the best I could, and when it was over, to cover the pause that hung in the air, I asked Fritz in what range he would place my singing voice. He looked at me with those wicked, cynical Viennese eyes of his and said, “Somewhere in ze middle—no highs—no lows!” Of course, it was all so foolish; I could never have achieved the operatic range the role demanded—I could just about carry a tune, for God’s sake—but I like to think that I pushed Robert Goulet into stardom. Goulet, mon compatriot Canadien, opened as Lancelot to popular acclaim, his powerful baritone soaring above the jousting fields like a windswept banner; dear Roddy McDowall wittily played the villain Mordred; Burton rumbled magnificently as Arthur and Julie A. was a Guinevere as fresh as an English rose. But sadly the great Adrian had passed away before the production had time to flower and his inspired, darkly muted designs were forsaken for a rather garish chocolate-box look that only put the accent on the word future in The Once and Future King.

  MEETING KATHARINE HEPBURN is like being hit by a warm sirocco. She is as natural a phenomenon as the Great Geyser or Old Faithful himself. I was summoned to her house in Turtle Bay on Manhattan’s East Forty-ninth, a street I knew well, for Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon lived next door but one, and I had visited there many times. Tea was being serv
ed and Miss Hepburn rolled in wearing a safari suit and sneakers. As it’s not possible to try to match a quarter of the force of her personality, I sat quietly like a marooned sailor and let the storm wash over me. She was about to play Cleopatra to Robert Ryan’s Antony and wanted me for Enobarbus; and though it would have been a rare experience to work with her, the truth of the matter is, I had better parts offered to me that summer. I was mulling this over and wondering how I could tell her when I remembered the story of how John Barrymore and she were at each other’s throats during the filming of A Bill of Divorcement. On the last day of shooting, as the story goes, Hepburn had allegedly said, “Mr. Barrymore, I shall never act with you again,” whereupon he allegedly responded, “Miss Hepburn, dahling, I didn’t know you had!” I also remembered once thinking that in an ideal world, what a marvellous Mark Antony Barrymore would have made—a ruined crater of a man. I mentioned this to Miss Hepburn and she curtly nodded in agreement. I then boldly inquired if there was any truth to the rumour that they were always feuding. Her voice became a tone higher. “Absolutely none whatever,” she flung back at me as if to close the subject forever. “John Barrymore was one of the gentlest men I have ever known, and he couldn’t have been kinder to me!”

  She continued, wound up now, in that famous voice of hers with its ever-present tremolo. “I was very young and had the lead opposite a man that every actress in the world would have given her eye teeth to work with. I had not yet met him—indeed I wasn’t to meet him until the day we shot our first scene together. George Cukor [the director] told me not to wear shoes as I was taller than Jack, so I complied and when everything was ready, I waited breathlessly for his entrance.” In the scene, Barrymore, as her father, comes home after being released from a sanitarium where he has spent many years with a severe loss of memory. He walks into the living room and carefully examines the objects on the mantel, photographs, knickknacks, anything that can remind him of where he is and who he is. He turns and suddenly sees a girl sitting on the couch. After a long and searching pause, he says, shakily, “I’m not sure but I think you’re my daughter.”

  Kate Hepburn waited as Jack’s stand-in rehearsed all this business over and over—still no Jack. Then finally it was time for the first take and at last Barrymore himself came into the room. Kate was on tenterhooks. He repeated the business exactly as his stand-in had rehearsed, turned, looked at Kate, said his line and she immediately burst into floods of tears. “Why? Because he was so marvellous?” I ventured. “No,” she replied, “because he was so bad. He was awful, mechanical, just going through the motions, and he looked so spent—so embittered. Cukor said, ‘Cut,’ and Jack came over to me, saw the look of disappointment on my face and said, ‘Young lady, I do believe you really care.’ Then he turned to George and said, ‘I want to do it again.’ He did the same thing and though I wasn’t supposed to, I cried all over again because this time he was absolutely wonderful! From that moment on, he went out of his way to let the camera favour me—he did everything he could to get the focus on to me. ‘It’s your picture,’ he kept saying. Dear, generous Jack—he helped make me a star.”

  Well, I had been properly chastened, and as I sat in that living room listening to Miss Hepburn tell her stories and weave her particular spell, I realized that this one afternoon with her alone was worth ten Cleopatras and that I would never forget it.

  THRUSTING MY REGRETS ASIDE, I opted for another dose of Shakespearean medicine at my favourite northern Stratford, this time as the Bastard in King John and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. To travel the nine-hour journey by road, and to satisfy my lifelong passion for cars, I bought myself a classic gem called an Invicta. Created in the twenties through the joint forces of Railton and Bentley, it was the first British car to reach 100 mph. Mine was a later model—a 1931 touring open sports E type classed as vintage—long, low and sleek. It was black with red upholstered leather interior, red spoked wheels and shiny chrome accessories. Its chassis was made of a metal as soft and malleable as suede and, with the exception of one Aston Martin carburetor, its otherwise original engine purred with authenticity, incredibly allowing the car to gather speed going up hills in high gear. I had paid a mere twenty-five hundred dollars for this museum piece from a madman called John Stix, who claimed he needed the money for analysis—I could understand why. For a spell, I derived great delight from driving it around Manhattan, stopping traffic all over town. At every red light people would come over and demand to know what it was. I finally got so sick of this that I mumbled incoherently to anyone who asked that it was a “Motherfucker 31.”

  Vincent Sardi, who collected antique cars, put me in touch with a master mechanic, the British racer Stirling Moss’s right-hand man, whom Time magazine had just named “Mechanic of the Year.” He happened to be working at Inskip (MGs, Rolls-Royces) in New York, so I brought him my beauty to look at. He approved, gave it a thorough once-over, told me to call him every so often and report progress. Too nervous to swing it alone, I commandeered Windows Hale to take turns driving and be my support. Good old Jane Broder, who had little or no interest in automobiles of any kind, gave it and me her blessing, waved good-bye and called out, “I’ll track down some warehouses, don’t you worry, honey, when you get back, it’ll have a roof over its head.”

  We had hardly reached the New York Thruway when the rains came! Like an idiot, I’d left the side flaps behind and though the hood was up it made no difference—we were drenched. The roads began to seriously flood but the old car behaved impeccably, even passing brand-new Cadillacs and Mercedes pulled over on the side. The sun came out around Binghamton, dried things up a bit, but suddenly blue flames began to spurt from the engine. I was sure we were about to blow up so, pulling over at a gas station, I called Moss’s man, as promised. “Stick wads of chewing gum in the exhaust,” the mad genius barked into the phone. Hardly convinced, I nonetheless obeyed orders and, wouldn’t you know, we rolled on without incident all the way to Stratford town as smooth as silk!

  HALFWAY THROUGH the rehearsal period, I was leaving the theatre one night when I noticed an attractive dark-haired girl sitting by the stage door. “Don’t you remember me?” she called out as I passed. I looked back—by God, if it wasn’t Memory Mellons from the Everglades in person! It had been only a year and a bit, but she was prettier than ever and, my, how she’d grown up. “Who are you waiting for?” I asked. “Who do you think?” she replied with that taunting little rebuke of a smile I remembered so well. Her deep tan looked oddly out of place beside us pale-faced theatre-bound victims, and clothes-wise she was clearly ahead of her time, for the briefest of skirts she was wearing anticipated the much later arrival of the infamous hot pants and mini-jupe. Of course, it was not solely for this I was glad to see her but for the casual and undemanding companionship she was to offer me, which turned out to be as natural and as effortless as waking up in the morning. My roommate for the second time, Uncle Exeter (Bob Goodier), whose wisdom in such matters was exceeded by none, gallantly withdrew, and I happily settled down to a summer dominated by my three romances—Shakespeare, Memory Mellons and the black and scarlet winged chariot that had so nobly borne me to it in the first place.

  King John is another of Shakespeare’s few plays that could have been written by committee. There is little of the familiar flow of language; it is staccato throughout. There is also at times an unaccustomed coldness and a totally foreign style. My character, the Bastard, though great fun to play, seemed not to belong in the story at all—there was no way to link him convincingly with the rest of the characters. Very much an outsider, he continuously comments in a series of tongue-in-cheek soliloquies on the play’s action rather like a cynical Greek chorus.

  A gentleman in a white tropical suit seated in the very front row one night was following the play by reading a copy of the King John text while we, poor sods, were trying to act our hearts out. It was clear that our performance meant nothing to him, for the moment we stopped speaking he would look
up and the moment we spoke again he returned to the text. As there were several major textual cuts in our production, the gentleman had terrible problems keeping up with us and would constantly lose his place; he would then make the most appalling racket as he violently turned his pages in a frantic effort to get back on track. This had begun to irritate the audience as well as ourselves. Not able to take much more of it, I waited till I was alone for one of my many soliloquies; then in the middle of it I walked up to him, snatched the offending text from his hand, held it up on the point of my sword so the entire audience could see, then with a great flourish, hurled it down the tunnel. I got an instant ovation and when the applause had died down, I looked back but the man in the white suit had gone.

  How things backfire! I later discovered that after leaving his seat, the gentleman had sought out the theatre manager, apologized profusely for the disturbance he had caused and asked if there was anything he could do to make amends. It appeared that he had just recently been released from prison for swindling a large amount of jewels, had loved the theatre all his life and that King John was the first play he had attended in all the years he’d been behind bars. It was one of the works of the Bard with which he was not familiar, and so the better to understand it, he had brought along his text. Well, I need hardly say, I felt so small I could have donned an archbishop’s mitre and walked upright under the pope’s cassock.