{"product_id":"book-atz8","title":"In Spite of Myself","description":"\u003cb\u003eA rollicking, rich portrait of a life. And what a life! By one of our greatest actors.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePlummer 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 \u003ci\u003eup\u003c\/i\u003e but from an Edwardian living room \u003ci\u003edown\u003c\/i\u003e,” and writes of his early acting days as an eighteen-year-old playing the lead in Shakespeare’s \u003ci\u003eCymbeline.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe see his glorious New York of the fifties, 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 twenty-five in \u003ci\u003eThe Starcross Story\u003c\/i\u003e (“It opened and closed in one night! One solitary night! But what a night!”). \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe writes about his film career: \u003ci\u003eThe Sound of Music\u003c\/i\u003e (affectionately dubbed “S\u0026amp;M”) . . . \u003ci\u003eInside Daisy Clover,\u003c\/i\u003e which brought him together with the beautiful Natalie Wood . . . John Huston’s \u003ci\u003eThe Man Who Would Be King\u003c\/i\u003e (Plummer \u003ci\u003ewas\u003c\/i\u003e Rudyard Kipling). He tells the story of accepting Sir Laurence Olivier’s invitation to join the National Theatre Company, playing in \u003ci\u003eAmphytron\u003c\/i\u003e 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.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSeamlessly 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.","brand":"Penguin Random House","offers":[{"title":"Audiobook","offer_id":49335614767408,"sku":"BDatz8","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0879\/2784\/9264\/files\/130661-atz8-Square.jpg?v=1733933642","url":"https:\/\/downpour.com\/products\/book-atz8","provider":"Downpour","version":"1.0","type":"link"}