W.he manages to do it, although he actually doesn’t really know how to sing, next to seven vocal-powerful children clad in their own playroom curtains and a whirlwind of nannies dancing over cow pastures, running along Salzburger Alleen and plopping into the Leopoldskroner Weiher, constantly humming the he will marry later, to create a dignified, even more so, a memorable figure, he did something very right. Just like Christopher Plummer, the great, versatile Canadian actor as Corvette Captain Georg Ludwig von Trapp. Because of its male nobility, one likes to enjoy “The Sound of Music” again and again as one of the most popular films ever since it was released in 1965.
Incidentally, the American President Ronald Reagan considered the pseudo folk song “Edelweiss”, sung by Plummer (with the vocal aid of Bill Lee) and composed by Richard Rodgers, for the Austrian national anthem. And in good company with Rex Harrison, who actually only hits three Professor Higgins tones but is a mega successful musical actor, the great Shakespeare actor Christopher Plummer later appeared in a Singspiel on Broadway: in 1973 in “Cyrano” based on the play of the same name the long-nosed, shy poet de Bergerarc, for whom Anthony Burgess had written the book. That ended as a spectacular flop after only 49 performances, but an original cast album captures Plummer’s distinctively brittle singsang, which was even awarded a Tony Award for it. And the piece has just been filmed with “Game of Thrones” star Peter Dinklage.
Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer was born on December 13, 1929 in Toronto, the descendant of the Canadian Prime Minister Sir John Abbott. From an early stage on, he was a chameleon that could not be fixed to one subject, shimmered in many different shades of play, but always felt more comfortable on stage than in front of the camera that brought him world fame. So over a very, very long career he became one of the outstanding character actors of his generation, honored with two Emmys, two Tonys, a Golden Globe. And finally a very late, long-earned Oscar as the oldest supporting actor at the age of 82 for a late coming out, cancer-stricken father in “Beginners” (2011). When he received his award, Plummer said: “I have to make a confession: When I came out of the womb for the first time, I was already rehearsing this acceptance speech.”
The Canadian actor Christopher Plummer considers his Oscar for the best supporting role in the film “Beginners”
Source: dpa / Paul Buck
Plummer possessed wit and dignity, but above all greatness as an imposing theater presence that filled the room from the very first moment with a well-groomed, cultivated, resonant voice about which a critic once said: “You can really polish mirrors with this soft leather.” Highlights of his Shakespeare career, which spanned from Stratford-upon-Avon to Broadway, include the abysmal villains Iago and Macbeth (alongside Glenda Jackson) and, in 2004, another Tony-nominated portrayal of the gruff yet disturbingly approachable King Lear.
Christopher Plummer, who grew up in a university environment in Montreal, initially wanted to be a pianist, but was seduced into the theater by Laurence Olivier in “Henry V”. He made his stage debut in Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline” in 1948, and a CBC television production of “Othello” followed shortly thereafter. After moving to New York in the early 1950s, he worked extensively on television for live shows such as Kraft Television Theater, Hallmark Hall of Fame, Producers’ Showcase, Appointment With Adventure and Omnibus. He made his Broadway debut in 1954 in “The Starcross Story”. The following year he appeared in Paris alongside Judith Anderson in “Medea” and in New York with Julie Harris in Anouilh’s “The Lark” and in another production directed by Elia Kazan.
Christopher Plummer 1955 behind the stage of the Broadway play “The Lerche”
Source: Getty Images / Michael Ochs Archives
1956 began his long love affair with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, where Christopher Plummer was the first Canadian to triumph in a leading role as the boisterous Henry V. “From then on, my name was above the title of the piece,” he later remarked, proudly and self-deprecatingly. He quickly returned there in 1957 as Hamlet and the bizarre Junker Bleichwang in “Was ihr wollt”, as Benedikt in “Much Ado About Nothing” (1958) and Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet” (1960). In 1961, Plummer made his London West End debut as Henry II in Jean Anhouil’s once much-played, philosophical history play “Becket or the Honor of God”.
He made his film debut in 1958 in Sidney Lumet’s “One Day The Door Will Open”. But it did not gain worldwide fame until 1965 with “The Sound of Music”, which had long been unpopular in German-speaking countries, even cut off all Nazi allusions, “My Songs – My Dreams”. Bing Crosby, Yul Brynner, Sean Connery, and Richard Burton had been considered for the von Trapp role by 20th Century Fox, but director Robert Wise was keen to find Christopher Plummer.
He canceled several times, but then accepted when he himself was allowed to transform the somewhat insubstantial stage part into a stronger and more complex character with ironic humor and a darker side. Plummer always called the beloved and molested film “The Sound of Mucus”, but the more iconic it got, he liked to appear alongside Julie Andrews at regular anniversary meetings on American television.
Christopher Plummer wasn’t really happy with his sixties films like “The Fall of the Roman Empire”, “The Night of the Generals” and “Damned, Sweet World”, and most of them even called “terrible”. He felt more comfortable with “King Oedipus (1968) and“ The Fall of the Sun Empire ”. He was also struggling with two failed marriages and his alcohol consumption that was spiraling out of control. With the help of his third wife, former British actress Elaine Taylor, he revived his career.
Plummer in 1973 before his Broadway debut
Source: AP / Jerry Mosey
Among the most important of his approximately 120 cinema roles are those of the Duke of Wellington in Sergej Bondarchuk’s historical film “Waterloo” (1970), Sir Charles Litton in “The Pink Panther Returns” (1975), and in the same year the Nobel Prize for Literature Rudyard Kipling in John Huston’s “The Man Who Wanted to Be King”, that of an unscrupulous bank robber in “Your Partner Is Death” (1978) and Sherlock Holmes in “Murder on the Thames” (1980). This was followed by character roles in “12 Monkeys”, as an evil Klingon general in “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Land”, in the Stephen King film “Dolores” (1995) and in “A Beautiful Mind”, in Michael Mann’s thriller ” Insider ”and as Doctor van Helsing in“ Wes Craven presents Dracula ”. He was also seen continuously in television films, in “The Thorn Birds” and in the early 1990s in the US series “Counterstrike” for three years.
But again and again he needed stage air. In 1973 Christopher Plummer conceived and staged “Lovers and Madmen”, an evening with Shakespeare love themes. When he returned to Broadway in “Othello” in 1982, the “New York Times” critic Walter Kerr called his Iago “probably the best Shakespeare play that can be seen on this continent in our time”. So he followed in the footsteps of John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson. In 1996, Plummer achieved one of his greatest triumphs in the month-long sold-out and later filmed with him play “Barrymore” about the tragically famous American theater star John Barrymore, for which he was rewarded with the second Tony.
In his old age, Christopher Plummer became more diligent than ever in films and series, white hair looked good on him. He played in Terrence Malick’s “The New World”, in “Syriana”, but also the philosopher Aristotle in Oliver Stone’s sandal epic “Alexander”. He was in Terry Gilliam’s “The Cabinet of Doctor Parnassus”, played in “Verblendung” and was Oscar-nominated as Leo Tolstoy in “A Russian Simmer”. His distinctive voice was particularly memorable in the Pixar animation “Above” as the bitter inventor Charles Muntz.
In 2018 Christopher Plummer was nominated again for an Oscar for his role as oil tycoon J. Paul Getty in Ridley Scott’s “Alles Geld der Welt”. He had in the film about the kidnapping of his grandson Paul Getty III. Replacing Kevin Spacey after he was charged with sexual misconduct, remaking his scenes from scratch just a month before the film was released in December 2017.
Plummer’s penultimate film role in the Agatha Christie-like crime thriller “Knives Out – Mord ist Familiensache” (2019), where he is found murdered in bed the morning after his 85th birthday as a successful crime writer, already looked like a self-chosen dignified one – the winking finale of a terrific career. And Christopher Plummer’s last speaking part also seems to be a legacy. The cartoon, which has not yet started, is called “Heroes of the Golden Masks”.
On February 5, Christopher Plummer, who left behind his daughter Amanda, who was also acting, died in his 100-year-old farmhouse in the US state of Connecticut. He was 91 years old.
“Chris was an exceptional man who deeply loved and respected his job with great old manners, self-deprecating humor and the music of words,” said Lou Pitt, his longtime friend and manager for 46 years. “He was a national treasure who enjoyed his Canadian roots very much. Through his art and humanity, he has touched all of our hearts and his legendary life will endure for all generations to come. He will be with us forever. “
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source https://pledgetimes.com/christopher-plummer-is-dead-he-had-wit-and-dignity-but-above-all-greatness-welt/
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