In Spite of Myself: A Memoir

by Christopher Plummer

  From my little seat in the “gods,” I had marvelled at John Gielgud’s immaculate and definitive The Importance of Being Earnest; I had seen the Abbey Players (Arthur Shields, W. G. Fay, Sara Allgood); Micheál MacLiammóir and Hilton Edwards’s Dublin Gate Theatre and Barry Jones and Maurice Colbourne’s company parading their specialty, George Bernard Shaw. And the actress-specialist who all by herself became a thousand people before your very eyes—the invincible Ruth Draper. Mother took me backstage (my first) to see the great lady, whom she had known in London. Miss Draper had been famous for her salons there, where intellectuals and artists the world over gathered to mingle with society and, if the mood was upon them, to occasionally perform. One night when Mother was present, Rachmaninoff and Kreisler got up and improvised for hours together and of course she never forgot it! Then I was spirited off to concerts—Heifetz, Ellman, Szigeti, Milstein and an extraordinary woman, a Mrs. Rosen, also Mother’s friend, who played the theremin. When the beautiful Mrs. Rosen died, she willed her estate outside New York, named Caramoor, to be used as a festival of music, which has since become world famous and where, many decades later, I was privileged to give a concert.

  Then off we would go to see the pianists—Horowitz, Backhaus, Casadesus, Egon Petri and Jesus Maria Sanroma! Montreal’s distinguished music critic Thomas Archer, who valiantly tried to persuade a wartime populace that just because Wagner was German, he wasn’t necessarily a Nazi, was a tall, cadaverous Englishman who loved his drink. Once, after a full dinner, he went to hear Horowitz and before the concert began, promptly dozed off in his seat and slept throughout the evening. To conceal his embarrassment, he gave Maestro Horowitz the next day a glowing review describing every nuance in minute detail. To his horror, he discovered too late that Horowitz had cancelled at the last moment and had been replaced by someone local.

  The Australian, Percy Grainger, for whom Grieg had written his Piano Concerto in A Minor, came to town very often—declined hotels and insisted on sleeping on his piano in a studio at Steinway Hall. He was most eccentric and would play only two encores, “The Man I Love,” as if Grieg had written it, and his own “Country Gardens.” I was also scared out of my wits by the angry pounding of Malcuzynski and Brailowski. I even saw Rachmaninoff when I was almost too small to remember—a very tall, sad-looking man with enormous hands towered over the piano, glowering at the audience for what seemed hours, till they’d stopped coughing. The rest was hazy, but the moment I heard him on disk with his magical touch, I bought all his records (charged them to Mother, of course) and would cart them to Polly’s Island—and Polly and I would listen all day long. I would imagine he was the last of the romantic composer-pianists and we were the last romantics listening to him.

  It was Rachmaninoff’s fault that I fell for the keyboard! Instantly, I saw myself as “le Grand Pianist” with leonine looks and dazzling arpeggios! I slaved away under several long-suffering piano teachers but was much too impatient. Why take lessons when I could pick it all up by ear?! Gradually, I found I was able to emulate the left-hand harmonies fairly accurately, and though my meager but growing repertoire may have been in all the wrong keys, I could duplicate some of the great concerti and solo pieces adequately enough to fool at least a quarter of the people a quarter of the time. I could also play my own arrangements of popular tunes and jazz. This questionable talent rescued me from having to fox-trot or jive at kids’ parties where I was so terrified I would freeze on the dance floor. I should have had a plaque hung round my neck saying, “Please don’t save me this dance.” So making a beeline for the piano, I would improvise madly. It worked! This is how I could get the attention I wanted—and girls!

  Proud Oscar Peterson with offspring

  I decided I’d do my practicing on the school grand at recess. Miracle of miracles! Soon I’d attracted a crowd of fellow students. One of them, a big, stout black guy wearing pants a little too short for him, shoved me off the piano stool and had the audacity to start playing himself. This routine became a daily occurrence. I’d begin—he’d shove me off! I wondered why he was drawing much larger crowds, but put it down to the fact that the collective tastes of the assembled multitude were far too bourgeois for my loftier contributions. Though I fumed with jealousy, I had to admit he played some pretty mean jazz, as well as classical. Everybody was calling him Oscar. “Sorry I didn’t quite catch your last name?” I condescended from some Olympian height. “Peterson,” he quietly replied. We formed a truce and struck up an acquaintance. He was most complimentary about my “doodling” and insisted I come to all the Saturday night dances, where he played for the school band. It was known as the Montreal High School Victory Serenaders. “You’ll love the trumpet player,” he said. “He’s just great! His name’s Maynard.” “Maynard who?” I asked. “Ferguson” was the cool reply.

  I often went downtown late at night to hear Oscar play at the Alberta Lounge. He also played intermission piano at a place called the Penthouse Club. The headliners were two fairly well-established comedians but the audience was restless and talked a lot through their act. The moment it was time for intermission, instead of going out they stayed in their seats, listening enraptured to Oscar, then very much at the foot of his rainbow. So it was not too far-fetched to assume that one day he would bring the house down at Carnegie Hall.

  Besides Oscar and Maynard, there was a considerable amount of raw talent about—hogging most of the spotlight! Darling little exhibitionist that I’d become, I vowed to do something about it. With my obnoxious gift for mimicry, I spent most of my time emulating others. I would ape their dress, their mannerisms, their voices—even their tennis strokes. I would sneak in and out of movie houses convinced I was Gable, Ladd, Colman, Bogie—even Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. I also knew most of their dialogue—God knows I’d seen those films over and over!

  FOR SOME TIME NOW I’d become fascinated by the libido. No doubt it had unconsciously begun several moons back when I’d had a nanny called “Mademoiselle.” She was French, of course, a handsome woman in her early thirties—very proper and correct. I must have been eleven or twelve. I kissed her once because I thought she looked so pretty. By mistake, it lasted a little longer than I’d intended. However, I rather liked it as, it seemed, did she. So it became a regular ritual. We began to look forward to these harmless little kissing sessions. One day she kissed me very hard, full on the lips, and her mouth opened. So did a door behind her and one of my aunts appeared. I never saw Mademoiselle again.

  As a family, we were always paying visits to the museum. In fact, Mother insisted on enrolling me as an art student. I couldn’t wait to sneak into the rooms where all the nude statuary was kept, where, like a dirty old man, I’d caress the stone teat of some unsuspecting Venus. Not too far down the road that same thrill would be multiplied a hundredfold when I was able to hold a real live one in my hands—but for the moment, alas, I was to be content with stone.

  It was about this time I became seriously distracted by my body! In fact, I thought about my body a lot and wondered what the hell to do with it. I started getting unexpected erections in the most awkward places—on trains, at public swimming pools, in hotel lobbies. Sitting with my family in a front pew at Christ Church Cathedral, I would stare up at the stained glass windows, mesmerized by their colours, and was just about to climb into one and disappear forever back through the centuries when bang! A great organ crash and everyone was on their feet singing Hymn No. Whatever and in my row, two soldiers standing at rigid attention—me and the one in my pants pointing heavenward. Regaining my seat, I naively supposed no one would notice as I piled every prayer book, hymn book, religious pamphlet I could find onto my lap to hide the embarrassment. It wasn’t so bad in class when the teacher wasn’t looking ’cause you could take it out and give it some air. All the guys would follow suit and at recess we’d bundle off to the locker rooms to compare our various sizes. This subject was discussed with clinical gravity, our voices at least an octave lower th
an normal to ensure masculinity and assume a carnal indifference.

  Girls took on an altogether new and different look now that they had something to challenge them, I smugly surmised. What taxed most of my brain power was what they would look like without any clothes. Each one I passed on the street, no matter what age, I would rape with my eyes, positive that whatever she was wearing would instantly fall from her like lead and there she would stand, for all the world to see—Ha! Ha! without a stitch!

  News of massive import hit Montreal High School like a tornado that one of the girl students across the quad wore no pants. It turned out she herself was largely responsible for this hot little scoop as she never ceased to inform the world of that fact. She was raunchy, petite, cheeky with a galvanizing little body and was thoroughly enjoying wreaking havoc with the male students and their concentration. One day, a bunch of us fellows passed her as she was reclining on the school steps, smoldering away seductively to herself. She saw us ogling her and at once began sinuously to spread her legs, lifting her skirt ever so casually at the same time. At the apex of two pale, graceful, well-shaped young limbs was the biggest black bush anyone is ever likely to see. On such a tiny creature, I couldn’t believe it; it wasn’t possible, but I was burning with envy, for when I got home and checked in the mirror, my own, compared to hers, was sadly sparse and inadequate. I rectified that at once. I ran to the fields, and after slicing off blond strands from the ears of corn, I hastily pasted them just above ma région de pays boisé. When corn was not in season, I would draw them in with a dark pencil or paint them on one by one with black paint from my paint set. Of course, it took forever to remove. What a lot of exhausting work! I couldn’t wait to come of age. O, to be hirsuite now that Pan was here!

  I started dating girls by taking them to the movies, what else? And afterwards I would cunningly lead them behind some convenient shrubbery and spout dialogue from love scenes between harmless kisses. Most of them got pretty fed up and left in a huff. I wondered why. A rather lovely, languid lass, a fugitive from the school play (one of the Bennet girls to my Darcy in Pride and Prejudice) proved much more in tune and cooperative. A would-be actress, she would strike all the appropriate poses, leaning against a tree, affecting a most tragic line whilst I, besmooching betimes, wouldst transform myself into Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights, showering her with such Brontë-saurean gems as “You’re still my queen?” or “Why isn’t there the smell of heather in your hair?” Though her dialogue recall fell far short of mine—she was most helpful, never once allowing the spirit of the moment to flag but skillfully and breathlessly coming in on cue with the occasional “Heathcliff!—Oh! Heathcliff.” Alas, our potential love tryst, which had reached the boiling point, was to be nipped in the bud, for by this time I was deeply immersed in my character—I was in full swing—I played all the parts for her. In fact, I did the whole damn movie while she sank to the ground, speechless, a look in her eyes that could only have read, “What have I got here … some kind of schmuck?!”

  THE DAMSEL of the Black Bush was chummy with another lass, her roommate, who was reputed to have “jousted” with most of the young knights in the school. Whether she was a student, a hanger-on or simply a “pro” no one quite knew, but she was decidedly a damsel in distress. Famous about the campus as the local nympho, raver, sex fiend, you name it, she was tall, skinny, long of leg, not pretty, but outrageously kinky! Having exhausted the majority of my male contemporaries, she finally got around to me. “Come over to my joint—no one’s home,” she offered subtly. Cursed by bad timing and my infatuation for celluloid, I suggested we see Laura—just out, and one of my favourites. Already I’d seen it six times and could give a pretty first-rate imitation of Clifton Webb and some of his sparkling dialogue. All that week, I’d worked overtime at becoming Clifton, dressing up like the dandy he was, sporting my grandfather’s cane, très dégagé, generally exuding sophistication and chic. “Okay,” she had said, “but let’s sit at the back of the balcony.” It appeared she didn’t have the time to be impressed by Otto Preminger’s stylish opus; her hands were everywhere, her tongue beating at the door of my taut, terrified mouth as I squirmed in my seat fighting to catch a glimpse of the screen.

  I walked her home. It was a cold, bitter winter night. She said she had no gloves and could she put her hands in my pants’ pockets? I wondered how Clifton would have reacted, but nevertheless, I acquiesced. She reached in and what she didn’t do with her fingers as we waddled along the streets was nobody’s business! I wanted so much to let go and relish the novel adventure, but Mr. Webb had taken over almost completely, and I heard myself saying priggishly, “Young woman, you must gain for yourself a modicum of control.” We’d arrived at her front door. She stormed in shouting, “You selfish fuck! All you think of is yourself!” Then Waldo Lydecker, Webb’s character in the flick, threw back his retort—a direct quote, “Yes. I find no other subject quite so worthy of my attention.” She slammed the door and a frustrated Clifton Webb was left standing all by himself shivering in the Arctic night as dry and celibate as the ice under his feet.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Jusqu’à la fin du monde

  Jusqu’à la fin du monde

  Nous dormirions ensemble la

  Nous dormirions ensemble

  —ANCIENT GALLIC SONG

  In my green years, long before the threat of separatism, we had been so close—the French and us—there was so much we shared. Our “Belle Province” offered every sort of distraction imaginable. If we felt inclined to skip school, we could always catch a matinée at the old Gaiety Theatre and ogle the great Queen of Strip herself, Lili St. Cyr (a daring, most erotic strip behind an umbrella and one unlocking a chastity belt). Or if we preferred sport of another kind, there was always skiing—skiing out of the crib, skiing to school, to church, slaloming through the trees, under the chairlifts, pulled by horses or across the ice-bound lake by Catamaran. We would all chip in for lessons from Lugi Foger, that pioneer of the stem turn who was the first to mount a camera on the back of his skis and who was always spouting his little jingle—“Bend ze kneece; vatch ze treece; seex dullahs pleece.” We even learned under Emil Allais, the great French champion who was visiting Tremblant, and once I won a case of Molson’s for coming first in the Hill 70 downhill dash at St.-Sauveur.

  Lili St. Cyr, the Queen of Striptease, a true artist in her field

  There was also hockey, of course (“Away, Away”—Boom Boom Geoffrion, Hull, Orr, Cournoyer), snowshoeing, lacrosse and that holdover from Scottish rule—curling. Many of us Anglos annually joined the sacred St.-Jean-Baptiste Parade and before the spring melt, our annual “sugaring off” would take place—the celebration of the first maple syrup with breakfasts out in the snow, sausages, bacon and eggs and “gummette” (the first oozing syrup that freezes like candy on the bark of maples) all mixed together—the best! In the Laurentians, at St. Agathe des Monts, St. Marguerite or Tremblant, high on the hills, we rested on our poles and listened to the church bells far below us. We could just make out little dots of habitants—old men driving their horse-drawn sleighs, the same old men, the same sleighs with which our top painters, the famous “Seven,” had peppered their landscapes. Later, when we became young blades, I remember bashing down those very slopes at hair-raising speed, soused out of our minds, once, immaculately attired in full evening dress! (I’ve always wanted to see that in a movie.) We did most everything together, the French and us, conspired together, laughed and fought together; we opened our veins and marked our allegiance; the two languages melted into one, no thought of parting ever. It was just “us”—nous deux—that made our space unique in the world, us twain that will keep it that way—if only someone will listen!

  D’où viens-tu bergère

  D’où viens-tu?

  Je viens de l’étable

  De m’y promener

  J’ai vu un miracle

  Ce soir arrivé.

  —ANCIENT CAROL

 
; And then Christmases in Montreal—engulfed in snow drifts as high as tidal waves, we toboganed all the way down from the top of Mount Royal, screaming like banshees, shouting every old Norman curse word we could think of! Even the priests joined us on their skis, barrelling down the hill fully decked out in their cassocks, looking like a flock of blackbirds. Then at night, the little blue lights, always blue, on all the Christmas trees, in a long never-ending line up the side of the mountain where they joined the stars in that northern sky—the darkest starlit sky of all—and music, music everywhere; French carols ancient as the hills, glorious concerts at Notre-Dame Cathedral—full orchestra, choirs and organ resounding around the Great Altar as it would continue to do right up through the Pavarotti years.

  Hochelaga was the old Indian name for Montreal. I linger here far longer than I should perhaps, simply because a lot went on in this lively northern town most people today know nothing of. In the thirties and forties, when I grew up, it was the second-most important city in the British Empire. It literally ran Canada from St. James Street. Being a seaport where many languages moored, it was a hotbed of international trade. It had more continental atmosphere than any other town in North America. It was cosmopolitan, stylish, sophisticated and fast!

  News came in two tongues. On the English side, the Gazette, the Herald, the Star; and on the French, Le Devoir, La Presse, Le Canada. The phone book read like a romance: names such as de Frontenac, de Repentigny, de Lotbinière, de Boutillier, de Gaspé Beaubien, des Rivières, and Boucher de Crèvecoeur de Perthes peppered the pages alongside Athelston, Mount Stephen, Featherstonhaugh, Shaughnessy, Knatchbull-Hugessen, Hamilton Gault, even, believe it or not, a Smellie-Bottomne or two. The brewery families were represented by Molson, Dow, and Dawes. Then the great Jewish names Sassoon, Sebag-Montefiore, de Soula, the Davises, the Josephs, the Judahs and the latest and most powerful of the new arrivals—the phenomenal Bronfmans, from bootleggers to billionaires. This somewhat mixed bag of local éminence grise would convene regularly at a cheeky little boîte known as Café Martin. I would hang in there after school and soak up the atmosphere.