CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER

                                                                Part 2

With a career that spanned seven decades, Christopher Plummer must have been in some pretty doggie movies, right? Of course. But we’re going for the good stuff, and there is still plenty of it.

The Man Who Would Be King (1975) features future megastars Michael Caine and Sean Connery as British ex-soldiers out for adventure. When they land in the middle of a civil war in an obscure country Connery’s character (Danny Dravot) is shot with an arrow but is unharmed because his bandolier stops it. The natives then think he is a god and he and his buddy have a grand time taking advantage of it. The story was written by Rudyard Kipling, and Mr. Plummer appears as Kipling- both on screen and as narrator. 

12 Monkeys (1995) is a sci-fi thriller starring Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis. It involves a virus which is killing everyone in the world. Willis’ character is sent back in time (!) to trace the virus to its source and stop it. Christopher Plummer plays the semi-mad scientist who developed the killer bug.

In the award-winning A Beautiful Mind (2001) Russell Crowe (nominated for Best Actor) is the brilliant but somewhat demented John Nash, a crackerjack mathematician. Christopher Plummer plays Dr. Rosen, a psychiatrist who tries to helpl Nash with mixed results. Ron Howard won an Oscar for directing, Jennifer Connelly won as Nash’s long-suffering wife, and the picture itself copped the Oscar.

The 2002 film of Nicholas Nickleby is pretty good, but nothing will ever equal the 1982 British TV series with Roger Rees as Nicholas. In the 2002 version, Chrisopher Plummer plays the cold-hearted and hateful Ralph Nickleby, who declines to give any meaningful help to orphaned Nicholas and his sister Catherine. He really makes you hate him!

Christopher Plummer appears as Arthur Case, one of the principal manipulators in Inside Man (2006) a banker with a dark secret in his lock box. He helps a big heist of the bank and hopes to protect his box. The elaborate heist investigated by Denzel Washingon (Det. Keith Frazier) does not end well for the robbers or Case.

Mr. Plummer may also be seen with pleasure in supporting roles in Night of the Generals (1967), The Spiral Staircase (1975), and Malcolm X (1992). His last notable appearance was in the American version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011) as Henry Vanger. 

All of the films in this article are available on DVD. All are for adults. 

                                            CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER

                                                    Part 1

        His career spanned seven decades and he became the oldest person to win an acting Oscar when he was 82. Need a distinguished older man for your movie? Get Christopher Plummer. He died at 91 and one of his films is still in production at this writing. 

The notable part of his movie career began in 1965 when he played Captain Von Trapp in The Sound Of Music. This was a wildly popular film that still has a wide audience today. Mr. Plummer loathed the film and his role in it, considering it populist pap. But it launched his spectacular career. Looking back on it later in his life he mellowed a bit in his attitude. 

Christopher Plummer’s lone Oscar win came in 2010 for the lead role in Beginners. He appears as Hal, a husband and father who came out at the age of 75 and spent quite a few years openly gay. His son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) is somewhat flummoxed by all this as he tries to make it as an artist. Mr. Plummer’s performance is just spot on - neither too quiet or too over the top. He is completely believable in a very difficult role. 

Mr. Plummer’s first Oscar nomination was for The Last Station (2009). He lost to Christopher Waitz for Inglorious Basterds. His portrayal of a dying Leo Tolstoy is very good. Helen Mirren appears as his wife, Sophya.  The plot involves a battle between Sophya and Tolstoy admirers. The latter want him to sign a will leaving all his work in the public domain, which will leave his family in penury. Watch and find out what happened!

Christopher Plummer’s last Academy Award nomination came just five years ago when he portrayed billionaire J. Paul Getty in All The Money In The World. This time he lost to Sam Rockwell who won for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2018). Getty almost never gave interviews or appeared in public, but Mr. Plummer makes him appear as most of us would imagine him. When his grandson is kidnaped by organized crime members, Getty refuses to pay the demanded ransom. He says it would only encourage more kidnapings. As time drags on, Getty finally agrees to pay one million of the seventeen million demanded. It is the most he can deduct for taxes! Further complications involve the cutting of the victim’s ears, and the involvement of a former CIA agent and the boy’s mother in a frantic rescue attempt. 

Mr. Plummer has the title role in Oedipus The King (1968), as one of the unluckiest characters in mythology. Although Orson Welles, Lilli Palmer, Cyril Cusak and Donald Sutherland also appear, the movie got mostly unfavorable reviews. Mr. Plummer’s performance was the only bright spot in the opinion of most critics. 

This is the first article about Christopher Plummer’s cinematic career. There will be at least one more. Watch this space!

All of the films in this article are available on DVD. All except The Sound Of Music are for adults. 

                                                            CICELY TYSON

She lived to 96 and worked well into her 90's. She won two Tonys, three Emmys, and a Lifetime Achievement Award Oscar. Entering show business when it was really difficult for African Americans, she nonetheless carefully selected roles that would accommodate her talent and her ambition. We won’t see the likes of Cicely Tyson again. 

Sounder (1952) is the dog of a poor sharecropping family in the South. This fine film gave Cicely Tyson her first big break and an Oscar nomination to boot. She lost to Liza Minnelli for Cabaret. But her exemplary portrayal of Rebecca resonated with casting directors and she was on her way. 

I don’t often use made-for-TV movies in my articles, but three of Cicely Tyson’s best performances are in those, so here goes. She is the whole show in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974). Playing  someone twice her age, she is mesmerizing as a woman who has seen it all. The 110-year-old former slave takes her interviewer through her life story, culminating in the civil rights movement and her participation in it. Taken from a novel by Ernest J. Gaines, the film won nine Emmys, including two for Ms. Tyson (Best Actress in a Drama and Actress of the Year).  

Another Gaines book is the basis for A Lesson Before Dying (1999). It is a familiar story about a an innocent Black man in the South convicted of murder and sentenced to death. But with the plot twist that Grant Wiggins (Don Cheadle), Tante Lou (Ms. Tyson) and others try to prepare the condemned man for the end. 

The last made-for-TV film for discussion is The Trip To Bountiful (2014). Cicely Tyson plays Carrie Watts, who lives with her overly protective son and his shrewish wife. She wants desperately to return to Bountiful,  the little town where she grew up.She outsmarts her relatives, befriends a young woman on the bus and gets a sympathetic sheriff to help her on her jaunt. There is an equally good 1985 film with the same title and story, but the people are white in that one. 

Cicely Tyson also had several good roles in theater movies. The best of these is The Help (2011) about a group of maids in a Southern town who agree to be interviewed for a tell-all book by  local girl Skeeter Phelan. Ms. Tyson is Constantine, whose firing by the writer’s mother is the incident that begins Skeeter’s decision to write the book. Viola Davis is also one of the maids and her interesting recipe for chocolate pie is not one you’ll want to try!

Cicely Tyson’s credits also include substantial roles in Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005) and Because of Winn-Dixie (also 2005). All of the films in this article are available on DVD. Sounder is fine for mature kids as is The Trip To Bountiful and Because of Winn-Dixie. The rest are really for adults.

                                                         CLORIS LEACHMAN

        The Mary Tyler Moore show was so popular that there were two spin-off series from it. Both were about the lives of Ms. Moore’s friends. The first was Rhoda (1974-78) with Valerie Harper as the star. The second was Phyllis (1975-77) starring Cloris Leachman. Ms. Leachman was a skinny blonde and not much to look at. But her comic timing and her acting chops put her in way more than 500 movies and TV episodes. She was still acting into her 90's. And she appeared on Dancing With The Stars when she was 82!

Though she had literally hundreds of TV roles, this article is limited to her movie career. And we’ll start with her home run.

The Last Picture Show (1971) is a splendid film that got eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. The French Connection won that one, but Ben Johnson won Best Supporting Actor and Cloris Leachman won Best Supporting Actress. Ms Leachman plays Ruth Popper, love-starved wife of the high school basketball coach. She has a one-sided affair with a high school kid and she breaks your heart. The film features many of the teens as they grow up and out of their dusty little Texas town. If you’ve never seen it, waste no time in dialing it up. It is an absolute must see. Texasville (1990) has most of the same actors grown older. They should have left well enough alone.

Mel Brooks, the king of wackiness, made Cloris Leachman a part of his actor stable. And she held her own against the likes of Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle et al. Her first Brooks effort is as Frau Blucher in Young Frankenstein (1974). She is the housekeeper at the Transylvania castle of the first Dr. Frakenstein. Gene Wilder portrays his great-grandson who has inherited the castle but want nothing to do with the monster stuff. Too bad! 

High Anxiety (1977) is a spoof of Hitchcock films that works intermittently.  Ms. Leachman plays Nurse Diesel, one of the staff of a very questionable mental hospital. .Ms. Leachman is pleasantly nutty as one of the nuts. 

Cloris Leachman is featured in another Brooks outing, A History of the World part 1 (1981), as Madame Defarge. Her character, an inn keeper, plots the French Revolution with her patrons. Despite the title, there is no sequel to this often funny, often not, Brooks effort. It’s worthwhile for the good parts. A trailer promises Part 2, which never happened, which would have included Hitler on Ice and Jews In Space.

Irene Ryan played Granny in the hit TV series, The Beverly Hillbillies. When they decided to make it a movie, in 1993,  Ms. Ryan had gone to that big mansion in the sky. Into the breach steps Cloris Leachman, who does a creditable job in a pretty bad movie. 

Never Too Late (1996) is nothing like the other films with this title that are about people having babies late in life. This one is about a crooked senior adult home director and the residents’ somewhat convoluted plots to try to catch him. Cloris Leachman is one of the residents, as is Olympia Dukakis. Advertised as an entertainment for old folks, it is exactly that. I’m one of them. 

You can also catch Ms. Leachman in a bit part in Spanglish (2004) and The Women (2008). 

All of the films in this article are available on DVD. All are for adults.