Christopher Plummer

I love well-written memoirs. For a while now (I'm so slow these days) I've been reading Christopher Plummer's "In Spite of Myself" which came out a year or two ago. It's a warm, funny, appropriately theatrical account of the author's career in show business, starting with the stage, moving into the golden era of TV (the 50s) and then films. Plummer paints loving portraits of the vast galaxy of eccentrics, show-stoppers and stars he's shared the stage and screen with over the course of his life. You sense him exaggerating sometimes for dramatic effect, which gives the book the tone of a play or performance, and when the curtain goes up at the end you want to stand up and give it an ovation. Plummer makes you miss bygone worlds you never knew, swept away by time but leaving such raucous memories and impressions. For someone who loves theater and the eccentric personalities and tall tales that go along with it, this book is a jewel. There are a number of passages where the writing becomes very moving and poetic, touching on deep sadness, then always galloping back into the comedy and spectacle of life that obscures and alleviates that sadness. One concerns the death of Plummer's mother. Another early passage (p. 88-89) that illustrates the excellence of the author's style describes Myrta Guinness, an oddball recluse, member of the famous Guinness family, who lived alone on an island in Bermuda, where he collected mechanical music boxes and lavishly entertained the young artists he liked to surround himself with. The anecdote continues:

He was, I discovered, a sad, shy and lonely soul, bereft of purpose and blessed with no particular gift of any kind save one: he played the musical saw more brilliantly and more hauntingly than could be dreamed possible. In the half dark, he would bend that menacing saw over his knee and with his bow delicately brushing the shining metal, he would transport us to another world, a world of high-pitched unearthly beauty. It was the song the Sirens sang - it had wrecked ships, it had lured men to their watery deaths. As he played, an extraordinary thing happened - his face visibly altered, he was suddenly vibrantly alive, he had brought his own youth back.