1. --> June 2, 2006, Montreal Gazette, Back to his school days
2. --> May 18, 2006, McGill Reporter, Plummer's McGill ties run deep

June 2, 2006

[Photos by: Marcos Townsend, The Gazette
Photo: Christopher Plummer, 76, at the Ritz-Carlton yesterday after accepting an honorary Doctorate of Letters from McGill University. The star of stage and screen grew up in Senneville and on Pine Ave.
Photo: "When you play a hero, you've got to find the villain in him, or the humour in him, as well," Plummer says.]

An actor, by definition, must have a keen sense of timing. One of Christopher Plummer's calibre can be expected to have a particularly fine-tuned intuition.

As he spoke yesterday to 500 graduates and about 2,000 guests at McGill University, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate, he was using it. Slipping easily between English and French, he listed the impressive academic links between the university and his family. Among them, his great-aunt, Maude Abbott: she was one of the earliest women to graduate from McGill.

And he paused. "Et moi?" he said, letting another few moments go by, as twitters became chuckles. "I flunked my entrance exam." With that payoff, guffaws filled the tent behind the Roddick Gates, where the spring convocation ceremony for Arts and Religious Studies graduates was held.

Elaborating on the incident in his room at the Ritz-Carlton yesterday afternoon, Plummer, 76, remembered that future senator John Lynch-Staunton and he were writing the exam the same day.

"We both wrote on our foolscap papers, 'I haven't the faintest idea,' and handed them in. It was looking very inviting outside and spring was in the air. When they called me this time, I sure didn't think I deserved it. But I'm happy, because it means more to me than anything to have received it in my own hometown. It's the hardest thing to be recognized by your own hometown," he said.

Born in Toronto, Plummer grew up in Senneville and on Pine Ave. He attended Montreal High School, where he took on his first dramatic role, as Mr. D'Arcy in Pride and Prejudice. The school band, he said, included jazz greats Oscar Peterson, with whom he still keeps in touch, and Maynard Ferguson. "It was some hot school band, I'll tell you," he said.

The D'Arcy role defined his future: he would be an actor. Although his work over more than 50 years has covered theatre, film and television - two Emmys and two Tonys are among his many awards - the stage has a special allure. In 2004, he played King Lear at New York's Lincoln Centre and received a Tony nomination. "In spite of its tedious lifestyle, I still think the theatre is the most satisfying, because of the live response that you get," he said.

In recent years, his film career has also thrived. "I love working in the cinema now, since I've become an honest-to-God character actor, particularly when good scripts come my way - and in the latter few years, they have," he said.

His recent turn as a philanthropist trying to hide his Nazi past in Spike Lee's Inside Man is a good illustration of why he has been quoted as saying that the devil is more interesting than God. "The idea of a God-like figure - a hero, let's put it that way - is a do-gooder," he said.

"What makes Hamlet such a great role is that the writer has given him every dark colour that the devil possesses as well. Someone once said - and God! they were so right - when you play a hero, you've got to find the villain in him, or the humour in him, as well. And when you play a villain, you've got to find the sensitive hero in him."

Plummer's most well-known role is the most un-villainous Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music. While some sources have quoted him as saying he despises the movie, he hastened to deny it. "Of course, I'm going to take the cynical view when you play such a dangerously sentimental piece. It's a very well-made movie and (director) Robert Wise did it with great taste. It didn't slop over. It nearly did, but he saved it in time," he said.

"I'm still remembered for it, much to my chagrin - only because I've done so much more serious and interesting work. But at least it got me some of the best tables in restaurants all over the world."

Plummer laughed heartily at one biography's description of him as "the greatest survivor of the two-fisted-drinkers school of acting," which includes Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole and Albert Finney. He said he hoped the characterization rang true, citing John Osborne's Look Back In Anger, written in 1956, as the play that ushered in a new era. "We started to drink out of sheer rebellion. In New York, the same thing was happening with method acting. There was a rebellion, thank God, against that rather stuffy, dull period of writing (that preceded it). People were talking about real issues - human issues - instead of hiding behind French doors," he said.

Plummer credited his third wife, Elaine, whom he married in 1970, with saving him from the consequences of taking that hard-drinking image too literally.

Quoting Shakespeare, Plummer had ended his enthusiastically received speech by telling the McGill graduates to "take this silly old world by the scruff of the neck and, as the poet says, 'grapple it to your heart with hoops of steel.' But for the love of God, wait for me, because I'm coming with you."

Plummer, who has just finished working on Richard Attenborough's new film, Closing the Ring, told The Gazette he's nowhere near ready to hang up his hat. "I absolutely love what I do," he said. "I love words and keep an appreciation for great literature that will always attract me to take up that challenge."

bperusse@thegazette.canwest.com

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2006

When Christopher Plummer accepts his honorary Doctor of Letters on June 1, it will be a homecoming of sorts. Although the award-winning actor never attended McGill himself, his family ties to the university are strong.

From 1835 to 1846, McGill was led by Principal John Bethune, Plummer's maternal great-grandfather. Also on the McGill staff was Plummer's great-great-grandfather, Joseph Abbott, who, from 1843 to 1852, served as everything from registrar and bursar to vice-principal and chaplain. Joseph's son, John Joseph Caldwell (better known as Sir John Abbott), earned a B.C.L. from McGill in 1854 and served as dean of law from 1855 to 1880. Sir John Abbott went on to become mayor of Montreal and, of course, was elected Canada's third prime minister in 1891 following the death of John A. Macdonald.

Plummer's great-aunt Maude Abbott overcame being orphaned as an infant to blaze a trail as one of McGill's first female graduates. She went on to a brilliant career in medicine, earning a reputation as the world's leading authority in the field of congenital heart disease. Finally, Isabella Plummer, the actor's mother, was the secretary of the dean of science during the '30s.

Christopher Plummer Doctor of Letters
Thursday, June 1, 10 am, Faculty of Arts "A" and Faculty of Religious Studies

One of the world's foremost Shakespearean actors, Christopher Plummer has delivered acclaimed performances as King Lear, Macbeth and Othello's Iago, but is perhaps best known to film buffs as Baron Von Trapp in Rogers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music. He has appeared in more than 100 films and has won two Tony Awards for theatre and an Emmy for the television series The Moneychangers. He has a star on Canada's Walk of Fame, was awarded the Governor General's Lifetime Achievement Award in the Performing Arts and is a companion of the Order of Canada.