In Spite of Myself

By: Christopher Plummer

Narrated by: Christopher Plummer

A rollicking, rich portrait of a life. And what a life! By one of today’s greatest living actors.

He was born a Canadian on a Friday the 13th in 1929 - the year of the Crash. His boyhood was one of privilege: an ancestor was a Governor General; his great-grandfather Sir John Abbott was Canada’s third prime minister and owned railroads. There were steam yachts, mansions, and a life of Victorian gentility and somewhat cluttered splendor.

Plummer tells how "this young bilingual wastrel, incurably romantic, spoiled rotten, tore himself away from the ski slopes to break into the big bad world of theatre, not from the streets up but from an Edwardian living room down", and writes of his early acting days as an 18-year-old playing the lead in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, directed by the legendary Komisarjevsky of Moscow’s Imperial Theatre.

We see his glorious New York of the '50s, where life began at midnight, with the likes of Arthur Miller, Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams, and Paddy Chayefsky, and how Plummer’s own Broadway world developed and swept him along through the last Golden Age the American Theatre would ever remember...how the sublime Ruth Chatterton ("she might have been created by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis") introduced him to the right people in New York...how Miss Eva Le Gallienne gave Plummer his Broadway debut at 25 in The Starcross Story ("It opened and closed in one night! One solitary night! But what a night!"). He writes about Miss Katherine Cornell (the last stage star to travel by private train), who, with her husband, Guthrie McClintic, added to what experience Plummer had the necessary gloss, spit, and polish to take him to the next level. Guthrie bundled Plummer off to Paris for a production of Medea, opposite Dame Judith Anderson ("a little Tasmanian devil...who with one look could turn an audience to stone").

Plummer writes about the great producers with whom he worked - Kermit Bloomgarden, Robert Whitehead, and Roger Stevens - about Lillian Hellman, Leonard Bernstein, Elia Kazan ("If you weren’t careful, this chameleon of chameleons might change into you, wear your skin, steal your soul"), and the miracle that was the new Stratford Festival in Canada, where Plummer blossomed in the classics under the extraordinary Tyrone Guthrie. He writes about his (too brief) encounters with his favorite geniuses, Orson Welles and Jonathan Miller. He writes about his lifelong friendships with Raymond Massey and the wild Kate Reid, and with that fugitive from the Navy, "that reprobate and staunch drinking buddy, the true reincarnation of Eugene O’Neill, whose blood was mixed with firewater," Jason Robards, Jr.

Plummer writes about his affairs and his marriages, and about his daughter, Amanda, who "despite her slim looks and tiny bones could raise tempests, guaranteed to loosen the foundation of any theatre in which she chose to rage."

We see him becoming a leading actor for Peter Hall’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre, with a company of young talented players, each destined for stardom - Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Peter O’Toole, et al., collectively the future of the English stage. The old guard was brilliantly represented by Dames Edith Evans and Peggy Ashcroft and Sir John Gielgud. Plummer, the only fugitive from the New World, played Richard III, Benedick, and Henry II in Becket.

He writes about his film career: The Sound of Music (affectionately dubbed "S&M")...Inside Daisy Clover, which brought him together with the beautiful Natalie Wood...John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King (Plummer was Rudyard Kipling). He tells the story of accepting Sir Laurence Olivier’s invitation to join the National Theatre Company, playing in Amphytron directed by Olivier himself ("a great actor but lousy director"), and writes about falling deeply in love with and eventually marrying a young actress and dancer, Elaine Taylor - to this day, his "one true strength".

Seamlessly written, with stories that make us laugh out loud and that make real the fascinating, complex, exuberant adventure that is the actor’s (at least this actor’s) life.

©2012 Christopher Plummer (P)2012 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"A staggering parade of theater-world luminaries struts, swaggers, and, yes, occasionally staggers through this compulsively readable memoir.... Mr. Plummer seems to have worked with just about everyone imaginable - Ruth Chatterton and Katherine Cornell, Jason Robards, and Laurence Olivier, Julie Harris and Judith Anderson, Tyrone Guthrie and Edward Everett Horton (!) - and he has a tasty anecdote about onstage, backstage, or drinking-hole doings about every single one of them." (Charles Isherwood, The New York Times)

"[A] fascinating memoir… The book records so many trysts, pratfalls, drunken evenings - and afternoons - that it’s amazing he has survived…amply shows how Mr. Plummer has managed a long, successful career in spite of himself...." ( The Wall Street Journal)

"An enjoyable read, packed with anecdotes and amusing stories…this belongs on any library’s film or theater shelves."( Booklist)

Perfectly Wonderful!

The prose is erudite with wonderful quotes and references, yet down to earth and very companionable. The narration is beyond perfection; never lagging, always engaging, with spot-on voices for familiar fellow actors whom readers will recognize. I’m sorry it’s over. Thank you Christopher Plummer!

Christopher Plummer’s devotion to his career.

Christopher Plummer’s devotion to his craft and his career was evident throughout his life from an early age. Unlike the usual actors, he began with the most difficult acting in Shakespearean plays. To earn extra money and to keep his career on track, he took to read roles for radio and then act on TV. His first love always remained the Shakespearean theater. His life took several unexpected turns, but his determination promoted his success.

Completely charming

Plummer knew everyone in the theater and movies and tells the most delightful stories about them. I had no idea he was such a gifted mimic. His impersonations are loving and hilarious as he moves fluidly from voice to voice, many now nearly forgotten - Edward Everett Horton, Raymond Massey, John Barrymore, to name a few. Plummer brings tremendous depth to his memoir and at the same time, lightness. Knowing him best from The Sound of Music, I hadn't realized that for much of his career, he was a stage actor, mostly in the classics. That means his memoir is a virtual 360 degree tour of London, Hollywood and Broadway. I had assumed that Plummer was British, but he's Canadian, from a very old, respected and once-wealthy family, and some of his early memories sound straight out of Edith Wharton. Charming, witty and informative about a world of acting and glamor that is both current and gone forever. I'm delighted that his movie acting career has had a resurgence just lately.

Hilariously Honest

I picked up this biography not knowing much about the life of Christopher Plummer, I just wanted Sound of Music scoops. I think this book would appeal more to fans of his theater work, it’s all a little too high-brow for me, but still I enjoyed it overall.

I got so much more out of this memoire than I anticipated, who knew Christopher Plummer was such player... and not just on the stage. He’s a charming, boozing, womanizing, cocky, overconfident man (I would say Captain Von Trapp comes close to being his polar opposite!) but his writing is witty, self deprecating, packed with great one-liners and so hilariously honest that it was a pleasure to read.

I didn’t get very many Sound of Music scoops, but I love that he refers to it as ‘S&M’. ha! He also says that: “watching the Sound of Music is like being beaten to death with a Hallmark card”. Hysterical!

If I knew he was Canadian I had forgotten, so it was a real treat to read about Montreal (my city) in the ‘old days’; I found myself pining for a time I didn’t know.

I think to satisfy my craving for behind the scenes gossip, I’ll give the book “Forever Liesl” by Charmian Carr a try.

Brilliant

The Best Written memoir ever.
Beautiful, Lyrical, Wonderful.
Brilliantly read by the author. I'm off to re-watch all his films!

I never wanted it to end

I’m so happy I decided to read this as an audiobook. Chris had such an amazing life. A wonderful actor and story teller. I enjoyed every single minute of this, and I’m sad I’ve finished.

It... may be the best audiobook I've ever heard...

"In Spite of Myself" popped up as a suggestion after I finished Julie Andrews' "Home Work" (also a marvelous listen.) Just a few thoughts to share - I really don't want to give too much away:

1. The stories are so rich and Christopher's performance is so utterly enthralling, I constantly forgot that I was listening to a memoir. Rather, it felt like a masterpiece performance of some kind of lost Hemingway or Charles Dickens novel. Plummer's life was such an odyssey of happenstance and wild characters, most of them artists/actors/fellow drunks.

2. Although I suspect he was in his late 80's when he created this memoir, Plummer is NO prude. Some of the dirtier stories of his youth or his colorful way of describing things with minimal profanity left me blurting out belly-laughs while listening on the train.

3. Even if you don't know Christopher Plummer, there is still probably something in this memoir for you. This book is more than the memoir of an artist, it's just... a review of a vibrant, hilarious and occasionally sad life. Very human.

Good read

It's so wonderful that Christopher Plummer narrates the audible book himself as he has an amazing voice. He is so wonderful at accents and impersonations that it made me much more aware of what a truly talented actor he really was and it was wonderful to his story. My only criticism is that he goes into so much detail about his stage career particularly Shakespearen theater which was quite boring for me. I was much more interested in the movies he made and wish he had touched more on the movies he made later in life. Definitely worth reading.

Charming and very entertaining

I loved this book! I did not want it to end. Christopher Plummer’s use of the English language Is exquisite and listening to him read his own story is enchanting. His honesty, self deprecation, and humor give us great insight into this man. What a life he has led! He has enriched so many lives for those who have been fortunate enough to see him perform. I will listen to this book over and over again. What an absolute joy!