Review: Plummer Is Plummiest
The best show-biz memoirs are never written by the biggest stars; pick up, say, Marlon Brando’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me” for confirmation. No, they are written by the actors who have had A-list careers but who have not been destroyed by an A-list level of fame. To this select group, which includes David Niven most glitteringly, add Christopher Plummer, whose new book, “In Spite of Myself,” I devoured over the holidays like an inexhaustible Christmas pudding. Not only has Plummer, 79, worked with virtually everyone over the past 60 years; he remembers where the bodies are buried and how to exhume them. He is witty without being spiteful, intelligent without being drearily intellectual, and he can be self-critical when called-for. “In Spite of Myself” was beautifully edited by Victoria Wilson at Knopf, whose publication of “The Letters of Noel Coward” was the show-biz hit of last year’s holiday season.
