Book Review by Samuel L. Leiter
Casual notes on show biz books, memoirs and studies, dust gatherers, and hot off the presses.
Brian Cox, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat: A Memoir (New York: Grand Central Publishers, 2022)
48th edition
Anyone who’s been reading this column over the past year and a half knows that many of the close to 50 books it’s covered have been about the lives of famous stage and screen personalities. The best professional biographers, those who spend years doing research, usually leave no stone unturned in their exploration not only of their subjects’ careers and artistic contributions, but of their offstage lives and personalities, and their professional and private triumphs and tragedies. Autobiographies, now more likely to be called memoirs, are rarely as comprehensive or precisely organized in their coverage, and, honest as they seem, can only go so far in discussing things only an analyst might expect to hear.
Yet, despite these limitations, memoirs like Brian Cox’s often prove how surprisingly well-written, charming, insightful, and informative they can be, and how delightful it is to spend so many hours in their company as they take us through their subjects’ lives, commenting on their backgrounds, their families, their work, their relationships, and their achievements and flops. Perhaps most interestingly for those obsessed with celebrity culture, are the famous people with whom they worked and hobnobbed.
Brian Cox’s Putting the Rabbit in the Hat: A Memoir is an excellent example of what I’m talking about. Its title perfectly encapsulates Cox’s view of acting as the ultimate magic trick—conjuring reality from illusion, making the impossible possible on stage and screen. This metaphor permeates his reflections on the craft he loves.
Published in 2021, after he had done three seasons as media tycoon Logan Roy in HBO’s “Succession” (it would eventually have a fourth and last season), it came out at a time when, in his 70s, he had reached perhaps the highest peak in his distinguished career as a stage, screen, and TV actor, not to mention director and sometime teacher. While never quite as overwhelmingly recognizable a force as those UK stars he’d worked with and admired, like Laurence Olivier and Albert Finney, he nevertheless crafted a prolific career and made himself increasingly known and respected by audiences as he aged and kept adding to his laurels.
All of which is to say that in Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, Brian Cox provides a life story rich in the UK and USA film, TV, and stage history he helped create, with dozens of stories about the greats and not-so-greats, interlaced with numerous details of his private life. Born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1946 to a working-class Catholic family, he was one of five siblings, brother to three girls and a boy. He paints a colorful picture of growing up after his father, who had become a prosperous grocer, died young, creating economic distress for his family, exacerbated by his beloved mother’s mental problems. An avid Scot, he is an advocate for Scotland’s independence, a position he says will disqualify him from ever receiving a knighthood, although he does possess a CBE.
As a cinema-loving teen, he left school to join the theatre, earning his stripes from the bottom up at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, which changed his life, eventually getting into LAMDA—London Academy of Dramatic Arts—(whose methods he favorably compares to those of RADA—Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts), along with others whose names would one day be known around the world.
An avid learner and student of his craft, he offers many observations of value about the actor’s work. He recalls the actors who most influenced him as a lad, like Spencer Tracy, Marlon Brando, and James Dean, although he himself does not adhere to the tenets of Method acting. Coming up at a time when British actors from similar working-class, rather than posh, backgrounds (like Finney) were making an indelible mark, he benefitted from the way their talents—and those of playwrights like John Osborne—were helping to move the stage and films into more egalitarian directions.
Cox’s book reveals a self-deprecating man of the people with few pretensions. Salty-tongued and down-to-earth, he doesn’t hide his amorous or financial difficulties, the bane of so many otherwise successful actors before they hit the jackpot. Actors will appreciate his acting insights, his perspectives on some of his most important roles, and his commentary on his relative fondness for film over stage acting, although he loves them both. Among other interesting comparisons he offers is one that contrasts British with American acting methods. And his feelings about actors, like Daniel Day-Lewis. who prefer to stay in character even when off-camera or offstage? Check him out.
Cox shows enormous respect for the greats he worked with, but doesn’t hesitate to deflate those, like director Peter Hall, who disappointed him. Such dismissals are not frequent, but they can sting, as when he brushes off Johnny Depp as “so overblown, so overrated.” He explains his personal struggles to overcome his “own arrogance and vanity,” and exposes his own shortcomings, not only as an artist, but as a husband (adultery) and father (absence). His romances also get space, especially his extended relationship with Peter Brook’s actress-director daughter, Irina.
Cox worked with most of the top British institutional theatres, including the National and RSC, and has many tales to tell of his experiences there. Stories abound of his own heavy (though usually controlled) drinking and the excesses of so many of his peers. If you’re seeking colorful anecdotes about theatrical and filmmaking people and conditions, this is the right place, especially as so many well-known names are dropped. How can a book be boring when its dramatis personae consists of actors and directors like Laurence Olivier, Michael Gambon, Nicol Williamson, Ian McKellen, Peter O’Toole, Michael Elliott, Lindsay Anderson, Alan Bates, Christopher Plummer, Mel Gibson, Spike Lee, Woody Allen, John Schlesinger, the Redgrave sisters and offspring, and Kate Nelligan (in a memorable tidbit about doing a sex scene with her). Cox’s remarks about some of these people don’t always jibe with our expectations, which is what makes them so refreshing.
This is a fulfilling memoir, which manages to mention more things Brian Cox has done on stage and screen than I ever knew of. There are so many it would have benefited from a complete stage and film list of his credits at the end. Fortunately, it has a good index and a substantial cache of photos.
Cox has played numerous Shakespeare roles, including Lear and Titus Andronicus, but also was the first to essay the evil Hannibal Lecktor (as it was spelled before becoming Lector) on screen. One role he insists he’d never play is Donald Trump: “There’s no dimension to it. That’s the problem with Trump. There’s nothing to be investigated, which would make him unrewarding to play.” He says this when discussing another power-hungry titan, Logan Roy, in a chapter covering “Succession,” which fans of that outstanding saga will relish.
A key to great acting, Brian Cox emphasizes, is the feeling one receives of “expiation” from it: “We immediately feel expiated because we see the truth in the situation and in the performance.” If a memoir can provide expiation, then Putting the Rabbit in the Hat accomplishes the feat.
Up next: Kathleen Tracy, Diana Rigg
