A Late Night Visit From Christopher Plummer

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Also, Plummer is not only a good actor who has gone on getting better and better as he grows older, he has that elemental drive about acting that really appeals to me—the ferocious desire to keep on working, whatever one’s age or the problems of one’s private life, and the ambition to reach out to every kind of part, from movie and television roles to the great Shakespearean ones. I mean, here is a man who played the male lead opposite Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music yet still managed to perform Richard III, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear on stage, and who, in his old age, was better at the part of playing Mike Wallace than Mike Wallace himself (in The Insider). As for range, Plummer has the gift of aging gracefully from star roles to becoming a great (and well-remunerated) character actor, always the fallback position of older British actors like Olivier, Richardson, and Gielgud; in his time, Plummer has played the Duke of Wellington, Oedipus (three times), King Priam of Troy, Rommel, John Barrymore, you name it. . .

Plummer is wonderful in writing about the theater—he has an apparently flawless memory, a vivid gift for recreating scenes, and great sense of narrative—there is none of the plodding feeling of reading through a collection of Playbills, as there is in most of his fellow actors’ autobiographies.

A brief word of confession is due here. While looking through the book I came across a photograph from Life magazine of my mother, playing Irina, the youngest of Chekov’s three sisters on Broadway in 1943, with Kit Cornell and Judith Anderson as her sisters (and Ruth Gordon as the dreadful sister-in-law). The very same photograph sits in a silver frame in my office, as I write this. The fact is that I have only met Christopher Plummer face to face once, when as a very young man on a visit to New York (I may have been on leave from the R. A. F. or on vacation from Oxford), I briefly stayed in my mother’s apartment at 344 East 58th Street in New York City while she was away somewhere for a day or two. Late one night I heard a loud knocking at the door, which I ignored, but it increased in volume and finally a rich theatrical voice cried out, “Gertie, Gertie, for God’s sake let me in!” I got out of bed, peered through the peephole, saw a shadowy figure kneeling on the doormat, and explained that I was Gertie’s son. Our downstairs neighbors were Patricia Nye, a robust and baritone-voiced actress who had once been a wartime Lieutenant-Commander in the WRENS (the Royal Naval Women’s Service), and a big hit as Ftatateeta, Cleopatra’s murderously protective maid in Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra (in which Vivien had played Cleopatra) and her long-time companion Polly Dick. Judging from the murmurings that followed from downstairs, I assumed that Pat and Polly were taking care of things—events like this were not unusual in the building, which housed several actors—and the next day, as I was going downstairs, Pat opened her door, fixed me with a glare worthy of Captain Bligh, and in her deepest, quarterdeck voice bellowed, “Not a word to your mother, young man!”

Well, I never did breathe a word about it to my mother—neither would you had you even seen Pat Nye as Ftateeta. It was not until several years later, when I saw Christopher Plummer in a film, that I thought I recognized the voice and the penny dropped. It did not escape my notice from then on that my mother always had nice things to say about Plummer, whenever the subject came up, and from the expression on her face when she mentioned his name or saw an ad for one of his plays or films, it was easy enough to guess her feelings for him, even though he had been 14 years younger than her when they both toured in W. Somerset Maugham’s The Constant Husband all over the United States and Canada. Even to the very end of her long life (she died at 94), my mother could still manage a hearty, good-natured and indulgent smile at any mention of Plummer, and it made me very happy that even as she slipped in and out of dementia, he still played a role in what were clearly among her happier memories. Good for her! I always thought. Good for him, too—Gertrude was always lively company.

Plummer quotes a long story from my mother about how my father had seduced her as a schoolgirl in Switzerland, but I am doubtful that it was entirely true, and suspect she was thinking of somebody else. My father was perhaps the least romantic of men, even when faced with a beautiful, blond English schoolgirl on the ski slopes, and I think Gertrude may have been mixing him up with somebody else, or perhaps wishing she had met him that way. There were more men in her life than she cared to admit (at least to my father), but she was not only a wonderful comedienne, she was also somebody who, if she had loved you, would go on loving you for life, whatever your faults, and yet still tell hilariously funny stories about you over a drink with her theater friends. Anyway, I was touched by what Plummer had to say about her, and like him even more than I did before reading his book, which is not always true of memoirs. Besides, he writes movingly, almost lyrically, about my friend Gloria Vanderbilt, who deserves every word.

Indeed, I read every page of his book with interest, pleasure, an occasional tear, and many rich guffaws: it is, frankly, a treat, not only for its theatrical stories, but also because Plummer is that rarest of actors, intelligent, thoughtful, hard-working, talented, imaginative, generous, dedicated to his craft, and occasionally struck by spark of thespian genius, as he was, years ago, when he starred in the film of Royal Hunt of the Sun (Don’t miss the story about how he got in shape for the role!), in which, as Margaret often points out to me, he was one of the three most handsome men she has ever seen on the screen (the others being Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia and Daniel Day-Lewis in Last of the Mohicans).

I know Gertie would have loved every page of it. So will anybody who still loves the theater.

New York Times bestselling author Michael Korda's books include Ike, Horse People, Country Matters, Ulysses S. Grant, and Charmed Lives. He lives with his wife, Margaret, in Dutchess County, New York.

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November 29, 2008 | 10:34am

Vivien Leigh, Christopher Plummer Autobiography, John Gielgud, Mike Wallace, The Insider, Sound Of Music, In Spite Of Myself, Chirstopher Plummer Memoir, Christopher Plummer, Michael Korda, Arts, Entertainment

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PattyMR

My God....the author of this article talks more about himeself than his subject! Talk about a narcissist. Who cares about his childhood and 'connections' via family to the actors mentioned or what books he published? Does he feel this makes him more qualified to review Plummer's book? It doesn't. Plummer's career and memories are more than enough to make this a read many will want to partake of.

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A Late Night Visit From Christopher Plummer

A Late Night Visit From Christopher Plummer