Did Christopher Plummer hate his role in 'The Sound of Music'? Legendary Shakespeare actor dies at 91
Christopher Plummer, the prolific Canadian-born Shakespearean actor who starred in films including ‘The Sound of Music’ and ‘Beginners’, died on Friday, February 5, at his home in Connecticut. He was 91. His wife, Elaine Taylor, said the cause was a blow to the head as a result of a fall.
Plummer had a long and acclaimed career on stage, with two Tony awards. He played Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard III, Mark Antony and other Shakespearean protagonists. He also starred in ‘Hamlet at Elsinore’, a critically-acclaimed 1964 television production, directed by Philip Saville. In films, he was also known for ‘The Insider’, ‘12 Monkeys’, ‘Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country’, ‘A Beautiful Mind’, ‘Up’, and more. But he is perhaps best known for playing Austrian naval officer Georg von Trapp opposite Julie Andrews in the Oscar-winning musical ‘The Sound of Music’.
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But did Plummer ever like that role or the film?
The answer is a resounding “no”. According to the New York Times, Plummer disparaged the film, referring to it as ‘S&M’ or ‘The Sound of Mucus’. Plummer said in a People magazine interview in 1982: “That sentimental stuff is the most difficult for me to play, especially because I’m trained vocally and physically for Shakespeare. To do a lousy part like von Trapp, you have to use every trick you know to fill the empty carcass of the role. That damn movie follows me around like an albatross.”
“I think the part in ‘The Sound of Music’ was the toughest,” the actor explained in 2011 during The Hollywood Reporter’s exclusive actors roundtable interview. “Because it was so awful and sentimental and gooey. You had to work terribly hard to try and infuse some minuscule bit of humor into it.”
However, speaking to Vanity Fair in 2015, Plummer said, “As cynical as I always was about ‘The Sound of Music’, I do respect that it is a bit of relief from all the gunfire and car chases you see these days. It’s sort of wonderfully, old-fashionedly universal. It’s got the bad guys and the Alps; it’s got Julie and sentiment in bucketloads. Our director, dear old Bob Wise, did keep it from falling over the edge into a sea of treacle. Nice man. God, what a gent. There are very few of those around anymore in our business.”
Plummer’s life and legacy
Born Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer on December 13, 1929, in Toronto, he grew up in Montreal, where he attended the Jennings Private School. He made his stage debut in a 1948 production of ‘Cymbeline’ at the Canadian Repertory Theater in Ottawa. Soon after, he appeared on a CBC television production of ‘Othello’. Plummer moved to New York in the early 1950s and worked extensively on live television.
His Broadway debut came in 1954’s ‘The Starcross Story’. But he first received recognition and critical acclaim when he starred in the Stratford Festival production of ‘Henry V’ in 1956. He went on to do more Shakespeare plays like ‘Hamlet, ‘Twelfth Night’, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, and ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Plummer’s film debut came in Sidney Lumet’s ‘Stage Struck’ in 1958.
Plummer was married three times, the first to actress Tammy Grimes, the second to journalist Patricia Audrey Lewis. He is survived by his third wife, actress-dancer Elaine Taylor, and a daughter with Grimes, actress Amanda Plummer.