I was also finding stage work at the Crest Theatre. Canadian theatre pioneers Donald and Murray Davis had created the Crest as a showcase for the country’s top theatrical talent, including their gifted sister Barbara Chilcott and a mesmerizing, smoky-voiced leading lady named Charmion King. They had all performed together at Hart House, the esteemed theatre space of the University of Toronto, and they were the same fearless foursome who had formed the Straw Hat Players in Muskoka, the Ontario lake district which was well on its way to becoming the summer playground of the rich. The riveting Miss King (and make no mistake, it was Miss King, not Ms.) and her cohorts were fearless in their theatrical choices, from such classics as Three Sisters to Long Day’s Journey Into Night to such established crowd-pleasers as Hay Fever and The Man Who Came to Dinner – not to mention their now-legendary annual musical revue Spring Thaw. Consequently I was lucky enough to be cast as the love interest – the male ingénue, if you will – opposite Miss King when she starred in the title role of Jean Giraudoux’s Madwoman of Chaillot at the Crest in November 1961, eight years before Katharine Hepburn tackled the screen version. Giraudoux’s play has an unusually large cast of characters, and I was the new boy in a glittering company that included Barbara Chilcott, Bruno Gerussi, and Julie Rekai, as well as Miss King’s two former New York roommates, her two best friends Kate Reid and Barbara Hamilton.
In one scene Miss King was supposed to whistle through her teeth and, much to the general amazement of the cast, it was one skill she had not mastered.
“I can do that!” I said, quick to volunteer. So I would stand just offstage, and she would come close as close as she could without actually coming offstage, and she would stick two fingers in her mouth and I would whistle. And we would have nightly conferences on how that was working out. And because she had a car, a Vauxhall, she would give me a lift home every now and then, and then more often, and then every night.
I pinched myself. She had a car. She had the star dressing room.
I had a girlfriend with her own car.
It boggled my imagination.
Every other night, during the run of Madwoman, Miss King received a rose from an anonymous admirer. She never knew from whom, and over time came to suspect that I had sent them. When she questioned me, I would never admit it, but I would never deny it, either. Truth is, they were not from me. For one thing, I would have sent her a rose every night, not every other night, but even if I had wanted to send her a rose every other night, I hardly had the money to do so. Still, I was more than happy to take credit for it!
By now I had discovered that Charm and her soulmates Kate and Barbara were all cut from the same cloth. They were theatre people who worked in film and television to pay the rent, and were grateful for the opportunity to do so. But it was not the camera that seduced them, it was the footlights. Always, the footlights. Whether she was playing New Haven or Toronto, Stratford or Shaw, Charm was happiest when she was about to go onstage. While I was competing for parts in Winnipeg she was on Broadway, being directed by Tyrone Guthrie in Love and Libel.
Kate Reid, too, was more at home on stage than anywhere else. She was about to make her Broadway debut, playing Uta Hagen’s role twice a week in matinee performances of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It was a wonderful time for Kate, because she had trained with Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof in New York. The only drawback was her acute fear of flying. “I do not have a fear of flying!” Kate would insist. “I have a fear of crashing.” Consequently she despaired of her twice-weekly white-knuckle trips to Manhattan from Toronto, especially since she couldn’t allow herself to have a calming Scotch or six on the flight. She would go from the airport to the theatre to her dressing room to the stage, take her bows and taxi back to the airport as her mentor and benefactor Uta Hagen was preparing for the evening performance. But somehow it all worked out, and by the end of the decade Kate would be regarded primarily as a New York actress, winning Tony nominations for her work with Alec Guinness in Dylan and Margaret Leighton in Tennessee Williams’ Slapstick Tragedy, and would make another Broadway splash starring in Arthur Miller’s newest play The Price, with Pat Hingle and Arthur Kennedy. (Kate, New York Times critic Clive Barnes would note in his review, “gets the very most out of the play’s best conceived role.”)
Barbara Hamilton could set new box office records when she performed in original musical revues created to showcase her considerable comedic gifts. A seasoned actress with almost magical timing, she had joined the cast of the satirical revue Spring Thaw in 1958, and by the time I met her she had already established herself as the funniest woman in Canada. Future newspaper columnist Sylvia Train was her agent at that time, and would later insist that she had personally produced one of Barbara’s biggest hits, an original revue called That Hamilton Woman, at the Crest, “so I wouldn’t have to listen to her whine about not working!” By the end of the decade our beloved Barbara would originate the role of Marilla in the world premiere of the musical Anne of Green Gables at the Charlottetown Summer Festival, later picking up a London Drama Critics award for Best Actress when she reprised her role in the West End.
So my introduction to Toronto theatre was also my introduction to three powerhouse ladies. No, not ladies. Women. Very ladylike, in their way – unless you happened to get in their way. Which was, candidly, not a good idea. At any time. Ever.
Coming into that scene at the Crest, I suppose I could’ve been overwhelmed. But I wasn’t, not really, because I felt I knew these women. I had heard them on radio and seen them on television. That was the beauty of only having one or two channels. In Winnipeg I saw people on TV and knew their faces when I arrived. Jack Creley was in everything that Larry Mann wasn’t in. And Lloyd Bochner. And, and, and.
Amusingly – especially when I look back on it now – Charm had to answer to both Kate and Barbara, and Barbara Chilcott too, when she started driving me home every night. “You’re driving him home again?” But Barbara Hamilton secretly had a rooting interest.
“I told you about him, Charm,” she would whisper to Miss King. “I told you I saw him on television. He’s The One.”
It was Barbara, in fact – Barbara Ham, as she was affectionately known by all those who loved her (and probably by a few who didn’t) – who took one long hard look at Charm and me, on stage and off, and proclaimed, as only she could: “You two look like you belong together.”
I couldn’t have agreed more. But I didn’t want to mislead anyone – especially Charm.
“Did I mention that I was married?” I said one day, trying to sound as casual as I could. “To a wonderful girl named Irene. We had two wonderful children. But, with my life and hers, she wasn’t in the theatre and …” I shrugged. “It didn’t work out.”
Charm clucked her tongue sympathetically. “Too bad.”
“Yes, it was.”
Suddenly her eyes lit up. “Did I ever mention that I was married?”
I gulped. “No, I don’t think so!”
“Well I was!” she said. “For a minute or two.” She paused thoughtfully. “Now what the fuck was his name …”*
The Davis brothers, Murray and Donald, and their sister Barbara Chilcott, were very protective of Charm and not at all sure they approved of me. They seemed to me at the time to be a tight little club, the four of them, and I was the interloper, disturbing what I’m sure Murray and Donald saw as the natural order of their creative existence. I thought I could sense Barbara ever so slightly warming to me; she had a glorious laugh, second only to Charm’s. I believed they might have judged me by my rye-and-ginger – my drink choice at the time – and as such, thought I might have to endear myself to them in ways less grounded, so to speak. Might even have to learn bridge. But no, not necessary, as it turned out. Being invisible worked just as well. And I liked them for loving Charm. Because by now I was hopelessly smitten with the offstage Miss King. She was five years older than I was, and at least ten years more mature, but I was determined to enter her life b
y whatever road possible. In a stroke of unexpectedly and uncommonly good fortune, she seemed to be warming to me. Years later she told an interviewer, “Once I realized that the idea of having a relationship with him was even a remote possibility – that he was in fact free and, you know, out of puberty – I thought, well, this is amazing, this is great. And the more I got to know him, the more I liked him. I mean, I liked the person. I liked the man inside the pretty face.”
After Madwoman closed at the Crest Theatre I was doing my best to steal the show in a production of Edward Albee’s Roots – another ambitious undertaking – by seducing the audience whenever I could. Making the audience like you is the best way to make producers like you. And when you’re living from role to role, you keep hoping that your current job will lead to your next job, and that your next job will lead to your future job.
Audiences at the Crest seemed to like me, so I wasn’t completely taken aback when Stratford chief Michael Langham came backstage to see me one night after a performance. Would I be interested in joining his esteemed Shakespearean company’s 1962 season “as cast”? I wasn’t sure what “as cast” meant, but since he had made a point of asking me in front of the rest of the Roots cast – asking only me, you understand – was I about to quibble about what roles they wanted me to play? No. Well, maybe. I’d heard that it was going to be a big season for directors – Peter Coe, George McCowan, and Langham among them – and that Christopher Plummer was going to star in a new production of Cyrano. Maybe I could play Christian?
Michael Langham smiled. “But seriously, Gordon.”
Yes. Seriously.
“I’m afraid that’s gone.”
When I suggested I could be an ideal Macduff in the Scottish play, he smiled again, and told me he thought he might be able to guarantee me a couple of good understudy spots.
“Understudy?” I said, indignantly curling my tongue around the word.
“Yes,” he said. And then: “Will I see you there?”
Yes.
I said Yes.
I always said Yes.
By such twists of fate are entire careers made and lost.
As it turned out, Michael Langham had no interest whatsoever in me. Charm’s friend Kate Reid was one of the leading lights of Stratford, and one of those rare creatures: An actor who was also a box office draw. I think she was set to do Taming of the Shrew with John Colicos, and I think John Vernon was on deck at Stratford that summer too, so there was no discernible shortage of talented leading men. But Kate had asked Michael Langham for a favour and, wise man that he was, Michael Langham did not want to disappoint Kate Reid.
Consequently, I was invited to join his esteemed Shakespearean company, mostly as a supernumerary, which is theatre jargon for extra. Also called “background player,” mostly in Britain, or “spear-carrier” in opera-talk. So I got to stand around doing precious little in quite a few shows, frequently with Larry, who was in the same Shakespearean spear-carrying coterie as I was. But we were in exceptionally good company, with Dinah Christie, Tom Kneebone, and Louis Negin among our ranks, before all three went on to become major cabaret stars.
And talk about timing! On my very first day at Stratford I walked over to the rehearsal hall and there he was – Christopher Plummer in person, in the veritable flesh – stretched out on the grass, holding the script for Macbeth in his hands, learning his lines.
“How ya doing?” sez I.
Nothing.
“Whatzzit? Macbeth?”
Nothing.
“Want me to hold the book for ya?”
At which point he looked straight at me, and opened his mouth, and said something. A greeting of sorts. The twittering of the birds in the open Stratford sky drowned out the first word, but I could hear the second word quite distinctly:
“… off!”
As I walked to the stage door to go into rehearsals, I thought to myself, Well, Porky, pretty good! You’ve only been here one day, and already you’ve had a conversation with Christopher Plummer!
Chris was brilliantly touching as Cyrano and brilliantly tortured as Macbeth that summer. Me? I played a tree in The Tempest. But at least I got to understudy Bruno Gerussi, who was playing Ariel, in director George McCowan’s production.
George McCowan would later play a significant role in my screen career; this was our decidedly inauspicious introduction to each other. Did Bruno ever get sick and have to miss a performance so I could get my crack at playing Ariel? Did Bruno ever get so much as a common cold? Of course not! He was as strong as a horse, and already a shining pillar of the Stratford Festival. So I continued to play a tree, attempting to grow roots at the same time. I also played so many soldiers in the Scottish play that I ended up simultaneously attacking and defending Dunsinane. When at the next-to-last minute director Peter Coe decided he wanted a song to welcome the Scottish King, my hand shot up like a rocket. I got that job, too, and was doing it fairly well, I thought, until Louis Negin made me crack up onstage. “That’s not the King!” he hissed, stage-whispering in my ear. “I’ve got the King’s picture!” And my opening night jitters became opening night titters.
As predicted, I didn’t get to play Christian in Cyrano, or even understudy him. Instead I was assigned to understudy John Horton, who was playing the Vicomte de Valvert. Meanwhile, Chris was receiving a number of visitors that summer, including Paul Newman, and Geraldine Page and Rip Torn, who were still a couple then, and some VIPs from Hallmark who decided they wanted to capture Chris’ Cyrano on one of their classy Hallmark Hall of Fame television specials. The folks at Hallmark wanted to bring the original Stratford production to NBC, and for reasons I can’t recall, John Horton was unable to reprise his role as the Vicomte de Valvert. So his reluctant understudy – yes, that would be me – ended up in New York with Don Harron, Bill Hutt, John Colicos, and Eric Christmas. Hope Lange, who had made a Hollywood splash onscreen with Lana Turner in Peyton Place and Joan Crawford in The Best of Everything, took over the role of Roxane to give the show an extra hit of good ol’ American star power.
My big scene in the first act was a sword fight – a duel with Cyrano. It was a great sword fight, splendidly choreographed by an exceptional fencing master named Paddy Crean, famous in show business for doubling for Errol Flynn in all his big swashbuckler hits. Chris and I had been rehearsing with lightweight rapiers, but when we got to rehearsal on this particular day the real swords had arrived from Canada, and they were Spanish, and considerably heavier than the ones we had been rehearsing with.
The rehearsal studios on Second Avenue were all humming with activity that week. Down the hall from us, Greer Garson and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. were rehearsing for another classy TV series, The DuPont Show of the Week. When we bumped into each other in the corridor, Chris introduced me, and Fairbanks, whose father had been the most famous screen swashbuckler of them all, told us that he was looking forward to seeing our sword fight on camera.
I smiled. What a gracious thing to say.
Chris smiled too. “In that case,” he added, “would you like to see it now?”
Fortunately there were no cameras rolling in the hallway, because the look of panic on my face would have been a dead giveaway.
Fairbanks joined us in the rehearsal hall, and we did the sword fight on the spot, with the heavier Spanish swords. I was so out of sync that Chris must have thought he was duelling with Buster Keaton. After we finished, Fairbanks allowed that he had never seen anything quite like our version. God knows, neither had we.
I was somewhat chagrined because I had messed up a few moves, but I was perfect on the night we went to air. Ironically, Chris, who was flawless for Fairbanks, missed a couple of moves on show night. (Yes, it happens in the best of families.) Normally I would have been all over myself, cocky and confident and insecure and terrified about doing live television from New York. But all I could think of was getting home to Toronto and Charm. We were married on November 2, 1962. Barbara Hamilton was Charm’s maid of honour.
Barbara’s main squeeze, Ken James, was my best man.
Where did we honeymoon? In Niagara Falls. For forty-eight hours. After which we quickly came back to work. We were actors, first and foremost, and we were grateful to be working.
* Radio producer Alan Savage.
working man
MAYBE IT WAS DUE TO MY NEW MARITAL STATUS, AS I had just married my very own lucky Charm, but whatever the reason, suddenly my prospects seemed to jump from famine to feast.
After my stellar performance as a tree in his Stratford production of The Tempest, George McCowan gave me new roots with a running part in his trailblazing series Scarlett Hill, the first daytime soap opera ever produced for Canadian television. Then I scored another TV job in a children’s series called The Forest Rangers. It was the first Canadian series produced in colour, and the executive producer was a trailblazing lioness named Maxine Samuels, who also liked working with George McCowan.
As one of the adult leads I was fairly comfortable playing second fiddle to the kids, who were the real stars of the show, mainly because I was in over my head. Everyone I was working with seemed contentedly outdoorsy, while I by now had become a full-fledged city boy. Meetings to discuss the trappings for my role only added to my anxiety. Should the young RCMP officer I was playing, Sergeant Scott, ride a horse? Drive a car? Have a dog? Wear the Mountie red tunic? When asked for my opinion, I graciously acquiesced to theirs. “Whatever serves the story best,” I murmured magnanimously. Besides, since I couldn’t ride a horse or drive a car, and was easily intimidated by even a sleeping dog, I was personally rooting for the red tunic. Quintessentially Canadian and all that.
Happily they decided to scrap the horse and the dog, probably for budget reasons. It was all settled then; Sergeant Scott would drive up to the fort in a brand-new 1962 Ford, which may or may not have been tied to a sponsorship deal. And by the way – did I have a preference for standard or automatic transmission?
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