I’ve been silent about celebrity deaths recently – otherwise, I’d never be off Facebook!
But I have to acknowledge, I am very sorry to learn of the passing of Christopher Plummer. A seasoned veteran of stage of screen, Plummer had one hell of a career, and he was much-decorated and acclaimed for it.
Even so, Oscar remained standoffish. He received his Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for “Beginners,” only in 2010. At 82, it made him the oldest person ever to be so recognized in an acting category. Six years later, he was nominated again, at 88, for “All the Money in the World.” He was now the oldest actor ever to receive a nomination.
Whether he was Iago, Cyrano de Bergerac , Sherlock Holmes, or Georg von Trapp, Plummer was a virtuoso, always in command of his instrument. That’s not to say he undertook everything in the service of art. In 1978, he appeared as the Emperor of the Galaxy in “Starcrash,” an Italian knockoff of “Star Wars,” because it allowed him a free trip to Rome. The film achieves its delirious apotheosis when Plummer assumes an authoritative stance and intones, “Imperial Battleship! Halt… the flow of time!”
In 1956, he essayed the role of Henry V at Ontario’s Stratford Festival. However, for one performance, he was laid low by an attack of kidney stones. This opened the door for his understudy, a struggling young actor by the name of William Shatner. Shatner and Plummer would later face off, with Plummer as a Shakespeare-spouting Klingon, in “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.”
Here’s a fine recording of William Walton’s music for the Laurence Olivier film of “Henry V” (1944). Plummer supplies the big speeches, and then some.
The Stratford Plummer-Shatner “Henry” story is recounted here:
His greatest role?
R.I.P. Christopher Plummer, dead at 91.
PHOTO: Plummer in Walton’s “Henry V” with the New York Philharmonic in 2011
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