33 thoughts on “MCM: Christopher Plummer

    1. It’s a lot of fun, “C&C.” I’d also love to see Plummer as John Barrymore.

  1. I also really big puffy heart ❤ for Captain von Trapp and my other favourite is The Exception with Lily James.

  2. I remember stumbling onto Fall of the Roman Empire on TCM one day and thinking this movie feels familiar but I know I haven’t seen it before. Turns out it’s almost the same exact plot as Gladiator with Stephen Boyd playing the Russell Crowe role.

    1. I noticed that in reverse, having seen The Fall of the Roman Empire first, then Gladiator.

      1. I mostly remember Sophia Loren was beautiful as always and James Mason’s incredible voice. The rest of Fall is kind of vague. Wasn’t Alec Guiness Marcus Aurelius?

  3. Of course it doesn’t fit the category of historical films, but Christopher Plummer is my absolute favorite Klingon: the Shakespeare-quoting Captain Chang in The Undiscovered Country.

    1. Yes! “You haven’t experienced Shakespeare until you’ve heard him in the original Klingon.”

  4. I also love him as Captain von Trapp! He really plays quite the age range, and has for a while, doesn’t he? And only one Canadian role on this whole list–he always seems to be playing Brits or other foreign (for a Canadian) characters. I also read that he apparently had a great influence on making the Captain into a real, rounded character, since he knew the real von Trapps (although not the captain) and felt the stage play made him someone the real Maria wouldn’t have loved.

    The Scarlet and the Black is a good film but with an overbearing score. Not tons of costume content but he’s playing a Nazi so he’s almost always in uniform. Good story though.

    I remember watching some of Nuremberg when it aired. I’d have been about 14, and was very much in my all-things-history phase. But I’d already seen Judgment at Nuremberg, which is excellent, and they tossed in an adultery subplot which I was just disgusted by, so I stopped watching. shrug

  5. Plummer is one of the best things in The Thorn Birds. He plays Cardinal Vittorio and he is all compassion, elegance and wisdom. All his scenes are wonderful.

  6. He was my mom’s first crush and my first crush. In The Sound of Music. Decades apart. ;)

    I really liked The Man Who Invented Christmas. I felt understood for the first time in terms of how I write a novel; like Dickens, the characters just take over and drive their own narrative and haul me along for the ride. Now if anyone asks me how my brain works, I just tell them to go watch that movie. ;)

  7. Fun fact! When Plummer played Henry V in the 1956 Stratford Shakespeare Festival, his understudy was a pretty young actor from Montreal named William Shatner.

  8. I’ve seen less than half of his work, but I’d go for “Murder BY Decree,’ if only for the occasional comic moments, which he pulls off with a straight face. “Sound of Music” makes me want to vomit.

  9. What a fabulous profile! I didn’t reme!bet Plummer was in the Scarlet and the Black. I was too busy looking at Gregory Peck. BTW the real monsignor looked more like Karl Maudlin.

  10. No, they weren’t kidding about the colour of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s uniform. See here the uniform he was wearing when he was shot: https://europebetweeneastandwest.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/the-uniform-worn-by-archduke-franz-ferdinand-when-he-was-assassinated-in-sarajevo.jpg.

    The shade of blue used by the Austrian army was officially named ‘Kornblau’ (‘cornflower blue’). The movie tunic is a bit paler blue than the real thing, though to be fair to the costumers the photo / still may have been lightened: the whole background looks rather too pale and pastel for late Habsburg decor.

  11. “Royal Hunt of the Sun,” as I recall is pretty terrible, so bad that I suspect Plummer decided to just have some fun as the Inca king and play him like a shrieking drag queen, with poor Robert Shaw doing his best to keep a straight face.

  12. He has the most dreamy blue eyes.

    Also, he was damned sexy as the refined, aristocratic Klingon(!) General Chang in Star Trek VI. He can rock pretty much any uniform.

    1. I remember reading that his eyes are really hard to light…but they are beautiful.

  13. THANK YOU. This was the Man Candy Monday I didn’t know that I needed until you made it happen. Kendra, I say amen and hi-five, because the origin of my love for Christopher Plummer is also due to his role as Captain Von Trapp. For years I’ve theorized that every girl on plant earth has a crush on the Captain! Down to nostalgia, Captain Von Trapp is my favorite of his historical roles. He’s excellent in everything, so for my 2nd and 3rd choices I’ll go with the Kaiser in The Exception and Scrooge in The Man Who Invented Christmas because those performances are freshest in my memory compared to some of his other roles. Kendra …Christmas isn’t a bad movie; it’s in that paradoxical class of movies that is both corny and well done…plus, Christopher Plummer. Why did I JUST find out that Christopher Plummer played Sherlock Holmes!?&#@*!

  14. He really seems to be channelling Laurence Olivier in some of those early roles. Which is funny because they don’t look alike.

    Captain Von Trapp ❤️❤️❤️

  15. OMG you’ve never watched Thorn Birds?? You should really, really watch Thorn Birds it’s a goddamn rite of passage and passionate as hell.

  16. I have a pitter patter of the heart with his profile too. Recently watched “Barrymore” on one of the streaming services. It was really well done.

  17. I saw him in The Tempest at Stratford (Ontario). He was amazing.The cast was excellent but he just shone amongst them and he was really behaving as an ensemble actor, too. I ALSO saw him on Bloor Street in Toronto – TWICE. Be still my beating heart. Not tall, but what there is, is “cherce”! (quote – as you will know – from “Pat and Mike” 1952)

  18. So not one person is going to comment on the Google Image search suggestion? Noone?

  19. the latest is Knives Out on Amazon, great murder suspense movie. His voice Regarding comment on Thorn Birds, thats not the case at all. He was brilliant in it, and the scenes with Richard Chamberlain are they not only double dose of eye candy but most unexpected bromance on screen

  20. In a discussion about Christopher Plummer just after he died, I mentioned “Royal Hunt of the Sun,” which no one had ever heard of. I searched for photos and found one of him wearing body oil and feathers and posted it. You could hear the thuds as women fainted. Only Plummer had the gravitas to carry that off.

    I love him in too many roles to mention.

Comments are closed.