“John Five” (the once and future senator)
CHAPTER SIX
She speaks poniards, and every word stabs: if her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no living near her; she would infect to the north star.
—MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Cachow! Thwack! A hot burning stab in the neck and the sidewalk came up and hit me—my nose indented in the pavement like a Grauman’s Chinese imprint. Not for long. I was roughly jerked back onto my feet; a burly, smelly, tattooed arm encircled my jaw in a pressure hold, which gave me a lip any Ubangi would have killed for! My leathery, swollen mouth still locked in that massive grip rendered conversation a definite no-no, I just managed a faint gargle as with one swift jab in the coccyx I was shot through the air into a waiting sedan. My female companion was faring somewhat better—she was still giving the other goon an evening to remember! Already she had winded him severely with a karate chop to the food basket—now, she was working on his groin. The two goons, by the way, were plain-clothes city cops, my formidable lady friend, none other than the Founder/Producer/Designer/Builder of The Mountain Playhouse, where I was currently appearing in support of that funniest of ladies and niece of one of America’s first cardinals—young Elaine Stritch. The performances were being given in summer atop Mount Royal.
Joy Thompson Asselin was one of those heroic, once-in-a-lifetime creatures who knows no fear, rides horses bareback, shinnies up flag-poles, wrestles, heaves the shot put and generally makes most strong men look like sissies! Behind this bionic facade she was exceedingly feminine—warm, gentle, kind and painfully shy. Because of her shyness which was agonizing to the point of speechlessness—she drank! She drank enough for twenty stevedores and then, God love her, no one was more hilarious, eccentric, daring or dangerous! This female Rambo, with her own money, energy and love, was one of the prime innovators and pioneers of professional English theatre in our country. An extraordinarily talented designer of sets, she insisted on building and painting them herself, working right through the long nights to meet her own hair-raising deadlines. She never slept. She chose the plays, directed them, bought old warehouses, converted them to workshops, gave encouragement and employment to young talent from all over Canada and imported her “stars” through her connections with New York’s famed Irwin Piscator Institute where she studied with and had become close friends of Stritch and Marlon Brando. In fact, she was built very like the young Brando—muscles rippling on a superbly circus-trimmed torso, Grecian in its perfection, not an ounce of fat anywhere! Strong as an ox, she was not one to be on the wrong side of; if she liked you she’d fight to the death for you, which, as it happens, she was doing at this very moment. The goon she was busy mauling finally managed to disentangle himself and join his partner in the front seat as our car lurched forward, tires screeching, its solitary prisoner, me, with the big lips in the back. Through the rear window I watched my female protector become a tiny dot in the distance, still covered in paint, still shouting obscenities!
After that night’s performance everyone in the cast had hit the town. Joy T. and I, the last upstanding braves, had ended up doing the “wee hours” joints. Outside a favourite slimeball dump called Aldo’s, we had both made a horrific scene ’cause the bouncer (a newly hired baby-ape) decided I was too young, wouldn’t let us enter and called the fuzz! Hence our predic!
Well, back at the ranch, the goons, positive they could simultaneously win at Indianapolis and Le Mans, were hurtling me to a station way out east of the city, bien loin, where they locked me up. Not wishing me to feel lonely, the sweet things thoughtfully paid me the odd visit every now and then just to rough me up again. I was getting pretty tired and bloody and couldn’t understand why “disturbing the peace,” which was what I’d been charged with, warranted all this violence. With every poke, punch and pummel they would shout in my face “Fargole! Faggot! Faggot!” I couldn’t understand that either till I caught sight of myself in the cell’s broken-down mirror. Christ! In my haste to leave the theatre, I had not only forgotten to remove my costume bottoms (tights, that is) but my makeup as well, so my face, what was left of it, was entirely smeared with lipstick and rouge! I looked, my dear Oscar, like some rumpled mangled version of your poor friend Dorian Gray!
Joy Thompson with a young John Gielgud
It was now 8:00 a.m. I could barely stand, bruised and beaten as I was by Montreal’s “finest,” when I heard a familiar voice yelling in the street outside. My heart leapt for Joy (no pun intended)! She’d found me! but how? Then I remembered her other last name—Asselin! Of course! I’d forgotten, she was still married to “Big Eddie” Asselin, Montreal’s commissioner of police. In a flash I was released, doors unlocked, boots echoing down corridors, heels clicking, goons bowing and scraping effusive apologies as Madame Asselin and her charge made their sweeping exit. It wasn’t as smooth and sweeping as we might have wished, however, for Madame had brought a flask along to keep her spirits up and by now was completement blotto! We kept ricocheting off the walls of buildings as we groped our way along the courtyard and she would every now and then turn back to scream at the goons, sheepishly but suspiciously watching us, “I’ll have your jobs in the morning you bastards—you sons of bitches—you filthy …” I can’t go on. At one point, her anger having stirred her to a new peak of frenzy, she started back toward them, threatening to have their lives all over again. My heart sank, for I knew we’d both be locked up for eternity. With all my remaining strength I roughly pulled her back, and the two of us, our heads splitting from the night’s revels, staggered out into the punishing morning sun, which like some harsh and unforgiving judge, granted no mercy in its rays.
Critic Herbert Whittaker, who gave us would-be young artists such confidence
A TINY NUCLEUS of such dotty and dedicated “angels” with their hearts in the right place did their level best for the arts in English-speaking Montreal. With loving care they managed to keep the standard of theatre, for instance, in spite of its being mostly amateur, remarkably high. Herbert Whittaker, the devoted reviewer on the Gazette (later, The New York Times and Toronto’s Globe and Mail) gave me a most encouraging notice for my Darcy in Pride and Prejudice at Montreal High back in 1945. It instantly went to my head. But I wasn’t alone. He literally scoured the country in order to discover and promote new talent and bring it to the fore. Herbie did something few critics ever do; without once forsaking his pen he became a “straddler.” He boldly climbed over the footlights onto our side and before you could say “George Spelvin,” he had established himself as a first-rate director and one of the country’s best set designers. He directed and designed productions for the Montreal Repertory Theatre, McGill’s Moyse Hall, and the Trinity Players; he paid equal attention to the creative ethnic development in the city, serving the local Negro Theatre, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association and a French Canadian company called L’Équipe where he staged plays of quality in French. In a land consumed with reticence toward its young artists, Whittaker stood by and encouraged all of us beginners. He did this both as a journalist and man of the theatre.
While most all local “crits” were busy snappin’ at our ass
Dear Uncle Herbie made us feel that we could be world class!
Another faithful supporter, my own high-school English teacher, Doreen Lewis, ran the Montreal Repertory Theatre (MRT) where, recommended by Whittaker, I began. The MRT had been created by Mum’s friend Martha Allan many years before, but now Doreen managed it as smoothly and professionally as if it had been the Theatre Guild. I made my debut there, age sixteen, in François Mauriac’s Asmodée, directed by a young genius only two years older than myself—a poet and writer who ran the aforementioned Théâtre de l’Équipe. His name was Pierre Dagenais and with his pale complexion and flowing scarves he resembled the dying Chopin or the young Coleridge. He once went to jail for refusing to pay the outrageous entertainment tax. Pierre, precocious from birth, would have inspired Rimbaud had they know
n each other and, like Rimbaud, he was taken from this earth disastrously young. I don’t recall how he died, but I’m sure it was from something characteristically romantic. There was a madness and an innocence about his prodigious talent that was pure gold and Canada is much the poorer for his absence.
Two years later, at the MRT, I played Oedipus in Cocteau’s La Machine infernale. “Un acteur de grande classe—une interprétation magistrale,” the critic from La Presse wrote. Because of this extravagance, my head had now swelled to grotesque proportions, and I had also collected along the way a few more devils of my own. To quell them I began to drink more heavily than usual.
My first Oedipus, age nineteen, in Cocteau’s La Machine infernale.
One night, young Oedipus turned up at the stage door, eyes like sockets blind before his time, far too inebriated to go on. When admonished, Oedipus made a terrible scene, insisting he was in peak condition and quite capable of being more brilliant than ever. I don’t really know what happened—they probably made an announcement of some sort, but I don’t recall—the whole night remains an utter blank. All I do remember is that the next day I knew I’d let down a lot of good people who had faith in me and had given me a chance—especially my mother. As usual she never showed it, God bless her; she was always so tired at the end of a day’s work, but I was slowly getting the message that she was worried sick.
In the eastern townships at Knowlton Quebec, Madge and Filmore Sadler, loving fans of the stage, ran a semiprofessional summer theatre called Brae Manor, which gave to a lot of talent its first thrust. A very young me replaced an ailing actor overnight as Faulkland in Sheridan’s The Rivals. I crammed in the car on the way out from the city, learned most of it, but once before an audience I dried up completely and utterly! In desperation, throwing all cares to the wind, I departed considerably from the elegant Restoration style and shouted at the cute little babe prompting in the wings, “What the hell’s the line, darling?” It brought the house down. I gained my composure and carried on, but the prompter, who had been shamefully perusing a comic book instead of the text, was so taken aback she passed out!
Young Mordecai Richler, satirist extraordinaire
Poets and writers of English prose furtively lurked behind the scenes before bursting out all over as did A. M. Klein, Irving Layton and a young up-and-coming Leonard Cohen. Straight prose on both sides was represented by the senior Hugh MacLennan, the younger Mavis Gallant, Gabrielle Roy speaking out so touchingly for the working-class French and, about to raise his head above the Jewish ghettos of St. Urbain Street, the youthful satirist Mordecai Richler, whom I was lucky enough to get to know. He was poised, ready to give us his Son of a Smaller Hero and Duddy Kravitz, warming us up for an abundance of treasures to come.
As far as English theatre was concerned, there were many basements and caves from which it fought to emerge, but the leaders of the artistic community were, quite naturally and quite properly, the French. Not as constricted as we “maudit Anglais,” they were far freer to express themselves. They also had quite considerable cause to gripe politically, which gave birth to a stable full of extremely gifted authors and playwrights. Quebec Province began to pour out French-language films of high quality and originality. In this regard, they were streaks ahead of the rest of the country.
Quite naturally I began to savor the Gallic flavour more than any other and became a staunch follower not just of the local films but of the great cinema from France in the thirties and forties. I would spend most of my time in movie houses mooning over such gems from Paris as Un Carnet de Bal, La Règle du Jeu, La Grand Illusion, Les Enfants du Paradis and all the Pagnol masterpieces. They were my inspiration. Instead of Gable, Tracy and the old gang, I now saw myself as Fresnay, Gabin, Raimu, Blanchar, Brasseur and Philipe all rolled into one! So, armed with this gargantuan and repellent confidence, I boldly planted both feet firmly upon those very “boards” where no man who has a modicum of wisdom in him should ever tread.
AN OFFSPRING of the Clouston dynasty, another child of Boisbriant, with the tuneful name of Rosanna Seaborn Todd, had formed a secret alliance with Mother to encourage me toward the stage. God knows they had to, for I was useless at anything else. Rosanna’s Cree blood (Swampy Cree, that is) had given her face its darkly striking beauty, but her personality left very little room for doubt that she came out of the womb “acting”! As a teenager with oodles of time on her hands, she had thrown herself passionately into directing, writing and “starring” in home movies, which boasted such epic titles as “Gone with the Birth of a Nation” and “Passionate Prairies”! In her formative years, when not enjoying a brief but successful sojourn on the London stage, she would restlessly roam the globe as a permanent unpaying guest carelessly dropping bits of her considerable wardrobe all over the floors of such houses as Max Beaverbrook’s, the Maharajah of Jaipur’s or her school chum Doris Duke’s. In her later years, she adopted a grande manière, part chatelaine, part film star. Lunching with her in a restaurant was like sharing a snack with Eleanor of Aquitaine. But I was entranced by her “glamour,” her theatricality—she was fascinating to watch and to listen to. No one so far had made the world of make-believe sound so magical.
Full of energy and enterprise, Rosie started her own theatre (also on Montreal’s mountain) which she called The Open-Air Shakespeare Company. It was modeled after Robert Atkins’s famous Regent’s Park Theatre in London and similarly dedicated to the Bard. She then assembled an astonishing assortment of youngsters, some who would become well-known names later in life, and managed to employ one or two distinguished directors from England to help polish us “rude mechanicals” from the colonies. But “Rose-Pose” insisted on playing all the leading female roles. Well, why not? After all, it was her show! She had an exquisite speaking voice, but her acting style slightly out-Pola’d Negri and out-Gloria’d Swanson. Although Shakespeare had furnished her with some fairly adequate material, the way she insisted on helping him along seemed to indicate it wasn’t quite good enough. As an entrepreneuse and rallier of spirits, however, she was splendid—a veritable Lilian Baylis! She also paid some of us—just as Joy T. had done. Think of it, at seventeen I had turned pro!
Rosanna Seaborn Todd, who convinced me the theatre had magic
As I was just too young to own a license, Rosanna became my chauf-feuse, giving me lifts back and forth from the theatre every night. Though she drove very slowly indeed (too busy talking to drive fast) she never stayed very long on her side of the road and, gesturing extravagantly, her hands off the wheel, she was too caught up in her own world to notice oncoming cars swerving crazily to miss us. One night, on the way back from the theatre, having had a tad too much booze, I suddenly felt somewhat overly affectionate. As any brash, lecherous seventeen-year-old would, I put my hand firmly on her leg, considerably above the knee. She froze and I instantly withdrew my paw. That seemed to be her only reaction except that the car had now left the road entirely and we were bumping along most uncomfortably through an adjacent cow pasture the entire rest of the way home in a tense and thoughtful silence.
“SWIFTER THAN ARROW from the Tartar’s bow,” the next year and a half (overcrowded with incident) simply flew by!! One of Rosie’s “distinguished” Brit directors, a dishevelled old sheepdog called Malcolm Morley, put me on the payroll (twenty-five bucks a week) at Canada’s only year-round professional repertory company, the new Stage Society, later the Canadian Repertory Theatre. The job—dogsbody, propman, small parts as cast; the location—a place once called Bytown, now Ottawa, the nation’s capital. Press fast-forward—sweet innocent little town on a windy hill, whose idea of sin was taking tea with a nun at the Bytown Inn. Two or three tall parliament buildings on its summit, that’s about all, except for tacky dilapidated old Catholic Académie La Salle (a school for priests) now quite properly converted to a theatre, my new home. One snag—the priests had to be consulted on censorship; they got to read all the plays first! The programme—a play a week; the co
mpany—very good-grand old refugees from Broadway, London and Dublin’s Abbey and a sprinkling of Canucks. Me a complete cretin as propman soon shared leads with fellow wetback Derek Ralston, a dazzling light comedian on- and offstage. Derek and I became partners in crime—did the town (what there was of it, nothing to do but drink)—found it easier across the bridge in neighbouring Hull (part of Quebec), open twenty-four hours a day—we worked like hell and lived like Hull! Always in debt—oh well, charge it to Mother—our memories began to collapse—we were so damned mixed-up—how could you learn Glass Menagerie and Private Lives at one and the same time? It got to the point that onstage, we couldn’t look each other in the eye without corpsing—how about giving bits of Hamlet and Charley’s Aunt in Room Service? So we fell about giggling. The poor weekly audience had by now caught on and forgave—result of confusion, we learned to ad-lib superbly, Derek quite spectacularly deft at handling his props, a veritable Cary Grant; my other favourites—sweet little Amelia Hall (Canada’s Helen Hayes) and a comforting old sod named Sam Payne who could charm an audience out of its socks even when talking rubbish, which he mostly did—“We get our kicks from Sam Payne, dear Millie Hall doesn’t thrill us at all, so tell me why should it be true, that we get a kick out of you!” Not true. Millie did thrill us—a dynamo as an actress.
In Spite of Myself: A Memoir Page 7