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. 

 

                                                       ORSON WELLES

At the ripe old age of 25, he was the hottest of hot-shot directors. He did things with movies that no one else had ever done. He was so far ahead of the curve the Hollywood moguls didn’t understand what they had. They cut his films to pieces and hung him out to dry. But Orson Welles never gave up, and left a legacy of films that still resonate. This article deals only with his directorial efforts. He made dozens more movies as an actor. 

His first such effort is widely regarded as the best movie ever made. Citizen Kane (1941) is on everybody’s top ten list, and at the head of most. This thinly disguised story of William Randolph Hearst featured Welles in the title role, Joseph Cotten and Agnes Morehead  for back-up, and dozens of new ideas that are now found everywhere. What you see is the film Welles made; he had complete control of this one. 

The very next year Welles directed The Magnificent Ambersons with Tim Holt (yes, the old cowboy star), Anne Baxter, Mr. Cotten and Ms. Morehead. A faithful adaptation of the Booth Tarkington story of a well-off family sliding into ruin, it is one of the best uses of black and white film ever shot. But the studio recut and reshot it without Welles’ permission. It’s still pretty good, but Welles was never given the opportunity to recut it the way he wanted. 

It took Mr. Welles three years to finish Othello (1952). It was shot entirely in Italy so he could retain control, and money considerations kept interrupting the filming. But it was worth it.  Welles is at the top of his game as the husband destroyed by jealousy, and as the director of one of the best Shakespeare adaptations ever put on film. 

When great films noir are discussed, Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958) is always mentioned. The story is darker than dark, and Welles’ portrayal of the sinister sheriff is almost the definition of corruption. He is truly chilling; a perfect foil for Charlton Heston’s honest cop (his best performance).  The version edited by Welles himself is available. 

The Lady From Shanghai (1948) is okay, and its’ hall-of-mirrors finale is justifiably famous. It is not up to Mr. Welles’ best work. Mr. Welles made The Trial (1962) all over Europe; it is a competent adaptation of Kafka’s masterpiece. But Anthony Perkins seems miscast and the story is somewhat confusing. 

All of the movies in this article are available on  DVD. All are for grown-ups. 

                                                                     HOTELS 

So how many movies are set in hotels? Oh, about 200. But never fear, Mr. Movie is here for you. If you’re yearning for a hotel movie (and, really, who isn’t?), you won’t go wrong with any of these. 

Let’s begin with the grandfather of all hotel movies, Grand Hotel (1932). I know, I know, it’s more than eighty years old. But it really holds up pretty well and it has a dynamite cast. Both Lionel and John Barrymore, Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford for starters! This film was once made in 1919 and has been shot at least five times since. But this one is the one and it won the Best Picture Oscar. Among many delights there are jewel thieves and a spirited game of romantic musical chairs. 

If you enjoy being scared witless, there is the terrifying The Shining (1990) with Jack Nicholson as a maniac killer gradually maddened by a sinister presence in the posh but empty hotel he has been hired to look after. Taken from a Stephen King story, the plot is a bit of a reach but it is still watched a lot. Remember the famous line as he breaks through a door? “Here’s Johnny.” Yikes!

Next chronologically is the quirky, fun Hotel New Hampshire (1984). Rob Lowe and Jodie Foster head a cast of wacky characters in a very good screenplay by Tony Richardson from John Irving’s novel. A family owns a hotel and weathers the storms of life to keep it going. The hotel is located, of course, in Austria. The bizarre characters and frenetic pace are ok if you just stick with it. 

Don Cheadle plays Paul Ruseabagina, a hotelier caught up in the middle of tribal warfare in Hotel Rwanda (2004). He is a Hulu but his wife Tatiana is a Tutsi. This doesn’t sit well with either side. Through a hair raising time of civil war, Paul desperately tries to save the refugees from both sides. This film is not for the faint of heart. It was nominated for four Oscars, but was shut out. 

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) is about the most fun you can have at the movies. The hotel manager is Dev Patel, (who turns up everywhere almost as much as Samuel L. Jackson!). The elderly hotel residents are a delightful group of eccentric Brits led by Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Maggie Smith. They have all moved to this hotel in India on the basis of a very suspicious flyer. Hijinks ensue! There is a sequel which is not bad.

I’m going to throw in a couple of more recent films, both of which are extremely offbeat. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and  Bad Times at the El Royale (2018) I would describe as acquired tastes. 

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

                                                              MR. PRESIDENT

There were two good movies about presidents in 2008: W and Frost/Nixon. My favorite actor-president is actually Martin Sheen in the late great West Wing. Shoot, I think I even voted for him a couple of times. There are lots of good portrayals of the Commander-In-Chief. 

The disgraced and enigmatic Richard Nixon is the subject of several movies. Frank Langella is fairly amazing in Frost/Nixon, but at least as good is Sir Anthony Hopkins in Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995). This film bears little resemblance to the truth (typical of Mr. Stone’s style), and I know Mr. Hopkins looks nothing like  Nixon. And yet, his portrayal seems so close to the real character of the man. Also, note Joan Allen’s amazing acting job as Pat Nixon. 

W  is Oliver Stone’s fictious account of George W. Bush’s presidency. It is, unsurprisingly, a hatchet job. But it's also a good film. And I must add here Vice (2018) which is really about Dick Cheney but features Sam Rockwell’s hilarious take on W. “So, we gonna do this or what?”

With not a whole lot to go on, Paul Giamatti fulfills our expectations of our second president as John Adams (2008), an HBO movie. And even better is virtual unknown David Morse as George Washington. If that’s not what Washington was like, well, it should be. 

Primary Colors (1998) is by Anonymous and just might possibly be about Bill Clinton, and he might just be about perfectly portrayed by John Travolta. Whatever your politics, this portrayal of the ultimate pol is a delight! Add in Emma Thompson, Kathy Bates, Billy Bob Thornton and Diane Ladd and we have a winner. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt is certainly an iconic figure in our history, and has attracted lots of Hollywood portrayals. Edward Hermann is quite good in Eleanor and Franklin (1976) but my vote would go to Ralph Bellamy in Sunrise at Campobello (1960).

Never heard of Alexander Knox? Well, although he was in more than 70 movies, you’re not alone. But check out Wilson (1944) and you’ll see as good a portrayal of Woodrow Wilson as there is. 

Our great president Lincoln (2012) portrayed by a Brit? Yep, and Daniel Day- Lewis makes this one go. The time is 1865 near the end of the Civil War and mainly concerns Lincoln’s push to get the 13th Amendment ratified. Sally Field is along as a ditzy Mary Todd Lincoln. There was a boatload of Oscar nominations but only Day-Lewis won. 

Last but far from least, there is James Whitmore’s amazing depiction of Harry Truman in Give ‘Em Hell, Harry! (1975). An absolute joy, and Harry’s reputation just grows year by year. 

Writers. producers, directors and actors have to be licking their chops to get at the presidency of the late, unlamented Donald Trump. Stay tuned!

All of the movies in this article are available on DVD. All are suitable for 12 and up, factoring in the boredom quotient.

                                                    THE GOOD DIE YOUNG

Each of them seemed to have everything to live for; each of them was dead before 40. What great performances we will never see!

Marilyn Monroe became the sex symbol of a nation. She had her pick of movie roles, and of men. To us, she had everything. And yet, she was dead at 36 from a self-administered drug overdose. You may be surprised to learn that she managed to appear in around 30 movies in her short life. In most of them she plays herself. But in The Misfits (1961) she joins Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift in a modern western with a good part for her. The Seven Year Itch (1955) is mainly known for her famous “blown skirt” scene. She is billed as “The Girl.” In  Bus Stop (1956) a cowboy falls hard for her and tries to drag her into matrimony. And in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959) she is Sugar, blissfully unaware of her sexuality. 

Heath Ledger absolutely blew the screen away as Ennis in the classic Brokeback Mountain (2005 ). And he won an Oscar. Just when the Batman franchise seemed dead in the water. Ledger burned the screen as The Joker in The Dark Knight.(2008). It is easily the best of the Batman flicks, and Ledger won another Oscar for his portrayal.  He left us, unbelievably, at 28. 

John Belushi was dead at 33 from a drug overdose. The dark-suited, dark-hatted, sunglasses-wearing Blues Brothers (1980) are still immediately recognized everywhere. Mr. Belushi and Dan Ackroyd created a cult classic. Otherwise- well, I guess Animal House (1978) was either the high or low point of stupid college comedies. 

River Phoenix was only 23 when he died of an overdose in 1993. And yet, what a legacy of good films he left. Stand By Me (1986) is a classic growing-up film from a Stephen King story. Running On Empty (1988) sympathetically  shows the family fallout from the renegade 60s. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) is the worthy last entry in that franchise (so far). And My Own Private Idaho (1991), though loathed by many, is a candid look at a youthful gay lifestyle.

Although it has been more than  50 years since James Dean died in an auto crash at 25, he is still a virtual icon of the silver screen. He made only three movies, and all are very good indeed. Rebel Without A Cause (1955) with Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood (who also died before her time), still strikes a chord with young people. East Of Eden (1955) brings to the screen the John Steinbeck classic about a conflicted California family. And Giant (1956) is from an Edna Ferber story of newly rich oil barons. 

Jean Harlow, one of the earliest and best blonde sex symbols, died at 26 in 1937. Hitched to the studio system, she had already been in over 40 movies! Some are quite good: Public Enemy (1931) with James Cagney is especially worth noting. 

Carol Lombard, another studio contract player, was only 34 when she died in 1942, but had already been in an astonishing 75 movies! To Be Or Not To Be (1942); Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941); My Man Godfrey (1936); Twentieth Century (1934); We’re Not Dressing (1934) are all very good. 

All of the movies in this article are available on DVD. There are too many to try to rate for the kiddies.