Christopher Plummer

Christopher Plummer0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:08

Yeah.

Christopher Plummer0:08

Christopher, you're a musician as well as an actor.

Presenter0:10

I'm a frustrated musician as well as as a frustrated actor, actually. I'll always be both, I think.

Christopher Plummer0:16

I think. Good half

Presenter0:17

Mm-hmm.

Christopher Plummer0:17

Ambitions to be a professional pianist.

Presenter0:19

Very much so. I I I think perhaps my ambitions

Presenter0:23

went a little towards the sort of r romanticism of being a professional pianist more than a serious musician, except I I I love music more than anything, more than drama, more than poetry, more than literature, and always and always will.

Christopher Plummer0:37

Do you ever regret having chosen acting instead of the piano?

Presenter0:40

Not a bit. Uh because I realize it's much easier for me, even though the road seems hard at times, it doesn't uh require that enormous sort of loneliness that perhaps the the career of a

Presenter0:53

a soloist, a pianist would have been. The practicing eight hours a day, the travel, the sort of very lonely life that

Presenter0:59

One does live and of course not meeting so many people. Now you're brought up in Canada bilingually.

Presenter1:05

There wasn't a great deal of live theatre, was there? How did theatre come into your life?

Christopher Plummer1:08

Uh Uh

Presenter1:09

No, well only through the through Nightclub really and and people like Edith and uh Americans like Frank Sinatra and people who came through marvelous marvelous entertainers.

Christopher Plummer1:16

My vis marvas

Presenter1:18

But that was theatre to us and and the only creative force in Canada at the time was French Canadian theatre, which I I'm afraid most largely artistically is the still the only creative force.

Christopher Plummer1:18

That was

Presenter1:28

Force in Canada, and of course a lot of radio. And a lot of radio, rather uh terrific radio actually in the 40s, which I got into.

Christopher Plummer1:30

And of course a lot of radio.

Presenter1:36

Three odds.

Presenter1:37

dramatic plays and things. So one had a lot of early training that way, but not uh not not in the theater, not until Stratford, Ontario really began.

Christopher Plummer1:38

So one half.

Presenter1:44

Mm. Did you feel at any kind of a disadvantage not having been to a drama school?

Presenter1:48

Absolutely none at all. I I couldn't bear school when I was at it and I certainly didn't want if I loved the drama, I didn't want the drama to be spoiled by going to school. Uh so I I my best uh teachers were audiences. Yes. What was your first Broadway appearance?

Presenter2:04

Well, my I um I don't like talking about that because that lasted only one night, so it doesn't take very long to talk about it, does it? Uh I I I was quickly educated to the

Presenter2:14

The The Butcheries of Broadway.

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by the critics and uh we closed in one night.

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But my early Broadway scene seemed to happen so quickly and success as it does in that

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or it did in that extraordinary city.

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Uh

Presenter2:30

was a very intoxicating champagne glass full of full of uh uh enticement.

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But I I remember Broadway most uh revealingly uh through Julie Stein, who was a composer.

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who was a who is a good friend of mine and who's always been very loyal to me and always asked me to be in his musicals and and for some reason I was very shy and said no, I I didn't think I would or something else came up or Julie shelved his particular project that and he'd rewritten so many lovely things that uh I I I chose uh a record for today that I thought would w would be suitable and reminds me of the best kind of Broadway writer

Presenter3:07

Julie Stein, because he was the most honest kind of Broadway musical writer. He came from Chicago. He came out of that terrific jazz world of the thirties. He knew more about that scene than anybody else did who was writing. Julie Stein really wrote honest Broadway musical comedy.

Presenter3:22

Now apart from the rotier side of Broadway show business, you were also in the classical theater. You played in En Madea and Annuise the Lock. And which was the first of the

Presenter3:33

American Stratfords you went to the Connecticut. It was terribly funny. It was called Stratford on the Hoosa Tonic. Yes. Or the Gin and Tonic. I can't remember what it was. But it it was the only

Christopher Plummer3:36

Pretty much.

Presenter3:45

river they could find in in Connecticut that sort of resembled uh the early avalanche.

Christopher Plummer3:49

Yeah.

Presenter3:52

And we opened to disastrous business in a very, very grand and very spectacular new theatre. But an extraordinary cast. We had Jack Palance, Raymond Massey, Heard, Hatfield, all sorts of extraordinary people in Julius Caesar, and nobody was playing in the same style at all. And the play was a complete bust. And I don't think that that venerable company has done very well ever since. I'm afraid we're all very guilty. And then you moved on to the Canadian Stratford, which meant working with Tyrone Guthrie. Yes, that was an extraordinary company because that was a miracle in a little tiny oasis in Stratford. And we've all heard of that miracle, so I don't want to repeat about it, anything about it. But it was there that I met both Michael Langham, who was a superb director and a great

Presenter4:34

uh a help to me in my career, and Tyron Guthrie, who of course was an immense and great visionary in the theatre, and whom I'll never, never, never, never forget.

Christopher Plummer4:42

Yes.

Presenter4:42

And then you came to the original Stratford, the one on the Avon. You must be the only actor to have starred at all three Stratfords. I think I'm one of them, but uh as years go by, I'm sure there have been many probably since, but I think I'm the only actor to have played leading parts in the other three actors. Still, I I I hope to hold that record. And then from Stratford on Avon you moved to the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Christopher Plummer5:02

company's Aldwych Theatre, who played Henry the Second and Announce Beckett.

Presenter5:06

Yes, that was fun. That was my first London play that I'd ever I'd done ever done here and uh what what a play to appear in and what a delicious part and and how lucky I was to to to have got it. Yes, and uh

Presenter5:18

It was it was very glorious and and a great, great, great season for me and I it's very difficult to top that piece of of theatre.

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And your first London play earned you the Best Actor of the Year award. That wasn't bad going.

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That of course opened up the world of films to you. How many have you played in that?

Presenter5:36

I haven't played in that many.

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Uh and

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None of them have been terrifically successful. They they've always had a sort of kind of quasi-distinction about them, but uh

Presenter5:45

And rather boring actually, but but uh I've enjoyed them and uh I've enjoyed travelling through them. There's one, of course, that was fantastically successful. It's made more money, it's said, than any other film. I wonder the sound of music.

Christopher Plummer5:54

I wonder

Christopher Plummer5:57

Yeah, what are we

Christopher Plummer5:58

Uh

Presenter5:59

Hush, I I hope not. Yes, it is. I think so.

Christopher Plummer6:00

Yeah.

Christopher Plummer6:02

That seemed a a surprise piece of casting. You're above all a classical actor.

Presenter6:06

Oh, I don't know. I think Hollywood sort of had a ha had a kind of idea that because I was a classical actor,

Presenter6:11

that I should play all the barons and earls and the dukes and things that that were going. And I still am doing it. I wish I wish I could find uh a kind of picture that would would eclipse that image of me, because I'm very good at light comedy and I'm quite good in a suit.

Presenter6:25

And nobody seems to to know that yet. And what else in the film world? You you had a success as Wellington?

Presenter6:33

Yes, I think that was a success. It was a success in Europe, certainly.

Christopher Plummer6:33

Yes.

Presenter6:36

And in The Royal Hunt of the Sun you played a different part from the role you played on the stage in New York. That must have been a little confusing. No, not at all, because I was trying to play the other role while I was playing the other one in New York at the same time, so I knew I had to take a crack at it at one time, to be fair. It attracted me from afar, and I wanted to do it on the screen, and I finally ended up doing it, and it was fascinating. You talked about films as an opportunity to travel. Do you take films seriously apart from that? Yes, I do. I'm beginning to much more.

Presenter7:05

No, it has nothing to do with money, because the money isn't the same as it used to be any more in films. That's all changed. So I am taking it much more seriously.

Presenter7:12

much less snobbishly than one did when it was in the theatre. We used to think of it as the sort of father art.

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And uh

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I think that's ridiculous, because it is the medium of our time.

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And unfortunately I'm afraid it's turning into a kind of art form.

Presenter7:26

Why unfortunately? Well, I maybe it's good. Maybe it's good. I don't know. It w I think it should reach everybody.

Christopher Plummer7:27

Well, I'm