| Buku Impor | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| DVD Impor | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| CD Impor | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| Pembelian Khusus | |||
|---|---|---|---|
|
| Cara Memesan |
|---|
|
Pencarian di Toko Buku, CD, dan DVD Impor Online ini sangatlah mudah. Untuk mencari, masuk ke halaman utama JuraganBuku.com.
|
|
|
Home
Books : In Spite of Myself: A Memoir
Back
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.43028092
EAN: 9780679421627
ISBN: 0679421629
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 656
Publication Date: November 04, 2008
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: November 04, 2008
Studio: Knopf
Related Items:
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
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 thirteenth 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 eighteen-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 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 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.
Rating:
- Great actor, good book.
If you're a Christopher Plummer fan, then this is the book for you. Obviously. There's very little that Christopher Plummer did that isn't documented here (although it doesn't come up to date other than generally). With such a long and distinguished career it's hardly surprising that despite the length of it, this autobiography seems a little cramped and rushed. What surprised this reader, though is how much of what we English call a "luvvie" Plummer is. I'd expected a much more serious tone. Everyone ... Read More
Rating:
- Needs fact checking
I picked this book up in Border's the other day and I randomly selected two pages.
On the first, it mentioned Elia Kazan who Plummber claims is Armenian but who is, in fact, an Anatolian Greek (i.e., a Greek from Turkey). I knew this without having to look it up, but a simple 20-second fact check with Wikipedia would have corrected this.
On the second, it mentioned that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor had their second marriage ceremony in Montreal. But they were married ... Read More
Rating:
- A terrific, literate and mesmerizing memoir
Mr. Plummer is a splendid writer who takes pains to reveal himself candidly and honestly, warts and all. For anyone interested in theatre in the last half of the 20th century, this is required reading. Though admirably frank about his own failings and failures, he retains a gentleman's charity when discussing others. About his various liaisons, he remains fairly discreet throughout. There is much to learn and even more to enjoy in this absorbing and beautifully written book.
Rating: - I Met a Man in a Bar.........
Reading this book is like being in a bar and listening to the guy on the next barstool who is very talkative and in love with the sound of his own voice. He has an extraordinary memory for colorful details, has known more than his share of famous people, and is very entertaining. You have to listen closely, as he also loves to use some fairly arcane words and metaphors, as well as English (or Canadian) colloquialisms. If you're a fan of theatre or movies, you'll enjoy the stories even more as you have ... Read More
Rating: - Why so expensive?
Perhaps I'd rate this book more highly...I certainly want to read it...but as yet the price is too high.
When do we get to the $9.95 part??
Arts & Photography • Biographies & Memoirs • Business & Investing • Children's Books • Comics & Graphic Novels • Computers & Internet • Cooking, Food & Wine • Entertainment • Gay & Lesbian • Health, Mind & Body • History • Home & Garden • Law • Literature & Fiction • Medicine • Mystery & Thrillers • Nonfiction • Outdoors & Nature • Parenting & Families • Professional & Technical • Reference • Religion & Spirituality • Romance • Science • Science Fiction & Fantasy • Sports • Teens • Travel •
In Spite of Myself: A Memoir
Our Price: 304,458.00
Prices excluding shipping charge.Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.43028092
EAN: 9780679421627
ISBN: 0679421629
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 656
Publication Date: November 04, 2008
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: November 04, 2008
Studio: Knopf
Related Items:
- Wishful Drinking
- Pieces of My Heart: A Life
- American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
- American Prince: A Memoir
- Outliers: The Story of Success
- see more
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
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 thirteenth 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 eighteen-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 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 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.
Average Rating: 
Rating:
- Great actor, good book.If you're a Christopher Plummer fan, then this is the book for you. Obviously. There's very little that Christopher Plummer did that isn't documented here (although it doesn't come up to date other than generally). With such a long and distinguished career it's hardly surprising that despite the length of it, this autobiography seems a little cramped and rushed. What surprised this reader, though is how much of what we English call a "luvvie" Plummer is. I'd expected a much more serious tone. Everyone ... Read More
Rating:
- Needs fact checkingI picked this book up in Border's the other day and I randomly selected two pages.
On the first, it mentioned Elia Kazan who Plummber claims is Armenian but who is, in fact, an Anatolian Greek (i.e., a Greek from Turkey). I knew this without having to look it up, but a simple 20-second fact check with Wikipedia would have corrected this.
On the second, it mentioned that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor had their second marriage ceremony in Montreal. But they were married ... Read More
Rating:
- A terrific, literate and mesmerizing memoirMr. Plummer is a splendid writer who takes pains to reveal himself candidly and honestly, warts and all. For anyone interested in theatre in the last half of the 20th century, this is required reading. Though admirably frank about his own failings and failures, he retains a gentleman's charity when discussing others. About his various liaisons, he remains fairly discreet throughout. There is much to learn and even more to enjoy in this absorbing and beautifully written book.
Rating:
- I Met a Man in a Bar.........Reading this book is like being in a bar and listening to the guy on the next barstool who is very talkative and in love with the sound of his own voice. He has an extraordinary memory for colorful details, has known more than his share of famous people, and is very entertaining. You have to listen closely, as he also loves to use some fairly arcane words and metaphors, as well as English (or Canadian) colloquialisms. If you're a fan of theatre or movies, you'll enjoy the stories even more as you have ... Read More
Rating:
- Why so expensive?Perhaps I'd rate this book more highly...I certainly want to read it...but as yet the price is too high.
When do we get to the $9.95 part??
Arts & Photography • Biographies & Memoirs • Business & Investing • Children's Books • Comics & Graphic Novels • Computers & Internet • Cooking, Food & Wine • Entertainment • Gay & Lesbian • Health, Mind & Body • History • Home & Garden • Law • Literature & Fiction • Medicine • Mystery & Thrillers • Nonfiction • Outdoors & Nature • Parenting & Families • Professional & Technical • Reference • Religion & Spirituality • Romance • Science • Science Fiction & Fantasy • Sports • Teens • Travel •
