Canada's most celebrated and acclaimed actor lets loose in a magnificent memoir that will delight and enchant readers across the country.
A rollicking, rich self-portrait written by one of today's greatest living actors. The story of a "young wastrel, incurably romantic, spoiled rotten" — his privileged Montreal background, rich in Victorian gentility, included steam yachts, rare orchid farms, music lessons in Paris and Berlin — "who tore himself away from the ski slopes to break into the big, bad world of theater not from the streets up but from an Edwardian living room down."
Plummer writes of his early acting days — on radio and stage with William Shatner and other fellow Canadians; of the early days of the Stratford Festival in southern Ontario; of his Broadway debut at twenty-four in The Starcross Story, starring Eva Le Gallienne ("It opened and closed in one night, but what a night!"); of joining Peter Hall's Royal Shakespeare Company (its other members included Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave and Peter O'Toole); of his first picture, Stage Struck, directed by Sidney Lumet; and of The Sound of Music, which he affectionately dubbed "S&M."
He writes about his legendary colleagues: Dame Judith Anderson ("the Tasmanian devil from Down Under"); Sir Tyrone Guthrie; Sir Laurence Olivier; Elia Kazan ("this chameleon of chameleons might change into you, wear your skin, steal your soul"); and "that reprobate" Jason Robards, among many others.
A revelation of the wild and exuberant ride that is the actor's — at least this actor's — life.
CHAPTER ONE
I was brought up by an Airedale. I won't deny it, 'tis the truth and nothing but, Your Honour - a bumbling, oversized shaggy great Airedale. The earliest memory I have of anything resembling a pater familia, bouncer, male-nurse or God is that dear slobbering old Airedale. My sword, my lance, my shield, he never failed to stand at the ready to rescue me from all my early Moriarties! Wherever I happened to be - on the floor, in my bath or on the potty, there - looming above me, panting heavily, one large, drooling Airedale reporting for duty, sir! If I went for a ride in my little cart, I would look away and pretend there was no one there at all and then when I did look back, of course he was there. He was always there padding along beside me - how could I miss him? He was my only horizon - he filled the sky. Like Romulus or Remus, I was his cub and he was my Wolf of Rome. His name was Byng.
He was christened after another shaggy old Airedale, Field Marshal Lord Byng of Vimy, whom my grandparents had known when he was governor general; and also for the very good reason that if any of our household showed guts enough to sit down to tea or play a hand at bridge, the day's calm would invariably become a stormy séance as tables, taking on a life of their own, began to shake violently and with one quick loud explosion, Bing! they would catapult themselves ceiling-ward as teapots, cups, toast, crumpets, cards and markers flew madly across the room! My canine patron had, quite simply, decided to rise.
But I like Byng, my dog, because
He doesn't know how to behave.
