The Last Classically-Trained Actor

 Christopher Plummer died at 91, having triumphed on stage, screen, and television. He learned to act the old-fashioned way, through technique abd building on his innate personality and skills. Although he played Hamlet, Henry V, and Lear, all Shakespearean tragic heros with notable flaws, he seemed to have special relish for the villain's role, from Shakespeare's Richard III to endless evil characters in otherwise forgotten TV shows.

I always had an affinity for him because he had his first Broadway success in the first Broadway play I ever saw. It was in 1955 and it was The Lark, an English adaptation by Lillian Hellman of Jean Anouilh's play about Joan of Arc. If you look at the cast list today, it blows your mind. The stars were Julie Harris, herself launching a spectacular theatrical career, and playing a rare dramatic role on stage, none other than Boris Karloff. Plummer was Warwick, the English general, who was the principal villain, since the Bishop, who enables the English to burn Joanfor heresy, is torn by his conscience far more than the military man. It was ironic that the more complex role was filled by a far more classic villain, Karloff.

Also in the cast were a young Theodore Bikel as the local member of the nobility who becomes Joan's first convert, and Joseph Wiseman, who went on to play many wonderful supporting roles on Broadway and TV, usually as a villain. I remember him best in Child's Play, where he was one of two leads who were Catholic school teachers. Wiseman of course was the martinet and the nice guy was played by Pat Hingle, another frequent villain. One of Bikel's best roles was as Zoltan Karpathy, "that dreadful Hungarian," in My Fair Lady.

Plummer managed to win a lot of attention even among this stellar cast. He always added to the quality of the shows, movies, and TV programs in which he appeared. He was a mainstay of the two Stratford's--Connecticut and Ontario; at the former, sadly long gone, he gave what many critics called the best Shakespearean performance ever, playing Iago to James Earl Jones's Othello. 

He was also temperamentally suited to playing one of the greatest Shakespeare stars, John Barrymore, in the eponymous play, because like Barrymore, whose career was cut short by his early death from drinking and excess, Plummer hit the booze hard and lived the fast life for years, blaming himself for the end of his first two marriages. 

His most enduring role was the one he despised until he accepted that it would always be popular: Baron von Trapp in The Sound of Music. Reading how much he hated the part, my heart warmed because I'd always ahared his low opinion of the saccharine vehicle.  I recall a takeoff in a revue on Broadway long ago which featured Hermioned Gingold as the lead in "The Sound of Schmaltz"

He managed to win an Oscar as well as Tonys and recognized that he was lucky to be one of those actors who was instantly recalled by audiences even if they couldn't quite come up with his name. I only wish I had been able to see him more often onstage, where he likely did his greatest work.