Quote of the Day (Robertson Davies, on Actors’ Memoirs)

“Good books of reminiscence by actors are uncommon: Alec Guinness wrote an excellent one, but Olivier didn’t; Gielgud covers his tracks in every line; Robert Morley simply gives a performance as himself. They can’t write for beans and you are a very good writer.”—Robertson Davies, Sept. 20, 1995, to English actor-director Tony Van Bridge, in For Your Eye Alone: The Letters of Robertson Davies, edited by Judith Skelton Grant (1999)

(Years ago, I was lucky enough both to be introduced to the work of the Canadian man of letters Davies and to hear him in person, at Fairleigh Dickinson University, before his death in 1995. I enjoyed one of his best-known novels, Fifth Business, as well as his amusing collection of ghost stories, High Spirits.

Davies was also a man of the theater, serving on the board of governors of Canada’s great Stratford Theatre Festival in its early years. In that context, I wonder what he would make of another alum of that festival, Christopher Plummer, who has recently issued his own autobiography, In Spite of Myself.

Plummer’s memoir has gotten excellent reviews, including one on the front page of the New York Times Book Review. I imagine that Davies would scrutinize it most carefully for Plummer’s views on Stratford before looking at it from the prism by which he judged Guinness, Olivier, Gielgud, and Morley.

I think Davies’ basic point is inarguable. I enjoyed John Houseman’s memoir, Front and Center, but offhand can think of few other memoirs by actors that really measured up. Yet those books keep getting published.

Part of the problem, of course, is that actors are trained to say words rather than write them—so, when it comes to penning the stories of their lives, a ghostwriter is invariably employed. But there’s another, less-noticed problem: the actor’s ego. The droll title of Joseph Cotton’s autobiography, Vanity Will Get You Somewhere, encapsulates thespians’ narcissism pretty succinctly, I think. That tendency, evidenced in their usual 9-to-5 preoccupations--"How was I? How did I look?"--leaves them little room to reflect on either their environment or the larger meaning of their world or times.

Then, once you get past the gossip that publishers are shelling out big books for anyway, there's rather thin gruel left over.)