In Spite of Myself
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Narrated by:
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Christopher Plummer
About this listen
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 AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Inextricably linked with the fatwa called against its author in the wake of the novel’s publication, The Satanic Verses is, beyond that, a rich showcase for Salman Rushdie’s comic sensibilities, cultural observations, and unparalleled mastery of language. The book begins with two Indians plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their airliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations.
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Use an audiobook to really enjoy Satanic Verses
- By David Edelberg on 11-24-12
By: Salman Rushdie
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The Cake and the Rain
- A Memoir
- By: Jimmy Webb
- Narrated by: Jimmy Webb
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Jimmy Webb's words have been sung to his music by a rich and deep roster of pop artists, including Glen Campbell, Art Garfunkel, Frank Sinatra, Donna Summer, and Linda Ronstadt. He's the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards for music, lyrics, and orchestration, and his chart-topping career has, so far, lasted 50 years, most recently with a Kanye West rap hit and a new classical nocturne. Now Webb delivers a snapshot of his life from 1955 to 1970, from the proverbial humble beginnings into a moneyed and manic international world of beautiful women, drugs, cars, and planes.
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This Book is Hard to Listen to
- By Robert Alexander on 01-14-21
By: Jimmy Webb
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By Myself and Then Some
- By: Lauren Bacall
- Narrated by: Lauren Bacall
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Abridged
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The epitome of grace, independence, and wit, Lauren Bacall continues to astound generations with her audacious spirit and on-screen excellence. Together with Humphrey Bogart, she produced some of the most electric scenes in movie history, and their romance on and off screen made them Hollywood's most celebrated couple.
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Wish it had been unabridged
- By Grace on 04-28-14
By: Lauren Bacall
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Furious Love
- Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century
- By: Sam Kashner, Nancy Schoenberger
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 17 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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He was a tough-guy Welshman softened by the affections of a breathtakingly beautiful woman; she was a modern-day Cleopatra madly in love with her own Mark Antony. For nearly a quarter of a century, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were Hollywood royalty, and their fiery romance - often called "the marriage of the century" - was the most notorious, publicized, and celebrated love affair of its day.
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Paul Boehmer needs more practice
- By Brenda Miller on 06-16-10
By: Sam Kashner, and others
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Size Matters Not
- The Extraordinary Life and Career of Warwick Davis
- By: Warwick Davis
- Narrated by: Gideon Emery
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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You may not recognize my name-or my face for that matter-but it's very likely you've seen me at work. I've managed to cram quite a bit into my thirty-year acting career. In fact I've helped put more bums on cinema seats than Will Smith or Tom Hanks. Who else can say that they've helped destroy a Death Star? Defeated an evil sorceress? Taught magic to Harry Potter? Become a Jedi Master? Reluctantly hitchhiked across the galaxy in search of the answer to the Ultimate Question?
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Sincere and heart-warming
- By Alice on 10-04-15
By: Warwick Davis
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A Stranger in the Mirror
- By: Sidney Sheldon
- Narrated by: Shannon Engemann
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Toby Temple is a superstar, the world's funniest man. He gets any woman that he wants, but under the superstar image is a lonely man. Jill Castle is a sensuous starlet. She has a dark and mysterious past and has an ambition even greater than Toby's. Together they rule Hollywood.
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Narrator sounds like Siri
- By Hillary Susan on 06-04-19
By: Sidney Sheldon
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Fifth Business
- The Deptford Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Robertson Davies
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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This first novel in The Deptford Trilogy introduces Ramsay, a man who returns from World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross but who is destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As we hear Ramsey tell his story, we begin to realize that, from childhood, he has influenced those around him in a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious way.
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Been waiting for this
- By Vinity on 12-10-11
By: Robertson Davies
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Famous Father Girl
- A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein
- By: Jamie Bernstein
- Narrated by: Jamie Bernstein
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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The oldest daughter of revered composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein offers a rare look at her father on the centennial of his birth in a deeply intimate and broadly evocative memoir. The composer of On the Town and West Side Story, chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic, television star, humanitarian, friend of the powerful and influential, and the life of every party, Leonard Bernstein was an enormous celebrity during one of the headiest periods of American cultural life, as well as the most protean musician in 20th-century America.
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Can't say enough good things
- By barbara on 10-10-18
By: Jamie Bernstein
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You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams
- My Life in Stories and Pictures
- By: Alan Cumming
- Narrated by: Alan Cumming
- Length: 3 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Described by the New York Times as “a bawdy countercultural sprite” and named one of the most fun people in show business by Time magazine, Alan Cumming is a genuine quadruple threat - an internationally acclaimed, award-winning star of stage, television, and film, as well as a New York Times best-selling author whose real-life vivacity, wit, and charm shine through every minute of his third book, You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams.
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We would be friends
- By Peg on 11-28-16
By: Alan Cumming
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American Rose
- A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee
- By: Karen Abbott
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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With the critically acclaimed Sin in the Second City, best-selling author Karen Abbott “pioneered sizzle history” (USA Today). Now she returns with the gripping and expansive story of America’s coming-of-age - told through the extraordinary life of Gypsy Rose Lee and the world she survived and conquered. America in the Roaring Twenties. Vaudeville was king. Talking pictures were only a distant flicker. Speakeasies beckoned beyond dimly lit doorways; money flowed fast and free.
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Well done biography of a complicated Icon
- By Moire on 01-27-11
By: Karen Abbott
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Double Life
- A Love Story from Broadway to Hollywood
- By: Alan Shayne, Norman Sunshine
- Narrated by: Ethan Sawyer
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Gay marriage is at the forefront of America's political battles. The human story at the center of this debate is told in Double Life: A Love Story, a dual memoir by a gay male couple in a 50-plus-year relationship. With high profiles in the entertainment, advertising and art communities, the authors offer a virtual timeline of how gay relationships have gained acceptance in the last half-century.
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Portrait of a Marriage--Before Gay Liberation
- By Susie on 03-06-13
By: Alan Shayne, and others
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The Museum of Innocence
- By: Orhan Pamuk, Maureen Freely (translator)
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 20 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Kemal, scion of one of the city's wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encounters Füsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Once the long-lost cousins violate the code of virginity, a rift begins to open between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbul bourgeosie - a world, as he lovingly describes it, with opulent parties and clubs, society gossip, picnics, and mansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy of decay.
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one of the very best I've ever heard
- By Rebecca Lindroos on 03-06-10
By: Orhan Pamuk, and others
What listeners say about In Spite of Myself
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Karen W.
- 03-30-24
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.
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- Jane E. Etter
- 06-20-23
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!
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- Marcia Iverson
- 08-07-18
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.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Simone
- 10-28-14
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.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Rob
- 01-22-15
Brilliant
The Best Written memoir ever.
Beautiful, Lyrical, Wonderful.
Brilliantly read by the author. I'm off to re-watch all his films!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-05-24
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.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-11-21
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.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Sheila
- 04-12-21
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.
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- Ann Alpine
- 05-13-24
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!
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