Road To Stardom Led Through Bermuda
Canadian theatrical and movie legend Christopher Plummer — who at 82 became the oldest actor ever to win an Oscar at the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday [Feb.26] — took an unusual route to stardom, one which brought him through Bermuda at the outset of his career.
Mr. Plummer, whose career spans seven decades, made his professional debut in 1948 with Ottawa’s Stage Society, performing over 100 roles with its successor, the Canadian Repertory Theatre. He then joined the Bermuda Repetory Theatre — a professional theatre company based out of the old Bermudiana Hotel in Hamilton — for its 1952 season. Performing for visitors and locals at a small theatre at the hotel, the Bermuda Repetory Theatre was for several years a magnet for young, up-and-coming American and Canadian actors.
Mr. Plummer performed in half-a-dozen plays during his time in Bermuda, playing Old Mahon, “The Playboy of the Western World”, Anthony Cavendish in “The Royal Family, Bermuda Repertory Theatre”, Ben in “The Little Foxes”, Duke Manti in “The Petrified Forest”, Father in “George and Margaret”, Hector Benbow in “Thark” and Bernard Kersal in “The Constant Wife.”
His success in Bermuda caught the attention of a US producer which led to Mr. Plummer being cast in a 1953 American tour of the play “Nina.”
But when the time came for him to leave Bermuda, he was reluctant to do so.
“”Whenever I’m about to say farewell to a place in which I’ve lingered too long and I know I must get out — damn it, if I don’t get hooked,” Mr. Plummer said of Bermuda in his 2008 autobiography, “In Spite Of Myself. “I’d known all along these jewels set in Azure waters were a romantic group of islands whose history was as baffling and mysterious as the triangle that bears their name.
“If Bermuda had been created by any other than some sea god, it had certainly been christened by a force called Shakespeare [in his Bermuda-inspired play 'The Tempest']. If it had been born merely in a poet’s mind — a poet who had never seen it — what a rich magnificent birth. But it did exist; it was real. In the beginning of time, the sea had belched it forth. It was Caliban’s island, wild, lush, painfully beautiful — I suddenly wanted to stay: ‘I’ll show thee every fertile inch o’ the island/I’ll show thee the best springs, I’ll pluck thee berries …/I prithee let me bring thee where crabs grow/… Wilt thou go with me’?”
The Original Bermudiana Hotel, Destroyed By Fire in 1958, Where Mr. Plummer Performed
Mr. Plummer said he spent his final days in Bermuda “on my well-worn moped, covering the countryside for all I was worth, searching for more ‘subtleties of the isle’ lest I forget. I would scour the reefs in glass-bottom barks gazing down into the laser-clear depths, watching the big morays undulate slowly: seductively — their mouths opening and closing in silent screams.
“I would watch for hours, paralysed by the underwater beauty of countless fish of all shapes and sizes and the never-ending sunken gardens reaching to infinity.”
After completing the tour of “Nina”, Mr. Plummer went on to make his Broadway debut in 1954 in “The Starcross Story”. He received widespread acclaim the following year in the New York production of “The Lark” alongside Julie Harris — another veteran of the Bermuda Repetory Company — and Boris Karloff.
He made his film debut in 1957′s “Stage Struck”, and notable early film performances include “Night of the Generals”, “The Return of the Pink Panther” and “The Man Who Would Be King”.
Toronto-born, Montreal-raised Mr. Plummer probably remains best known to movie audiences as the stern widower Captain Georg Ludwig von Trapp in the hit 1965 musical “The Sound of Music.”
His most recent film roles include the “The Insider” as CBS reporter Mike Wallace, the Disney-Pixar 2009 film “Up” as Charles Muntz and “The Last Station” as Leo Tolstoy.
Aside from this week’s Oscar for his performance as Best Supporting Actor in the film “Beginners”, Mr. Plummer has won numerous other awards for his work including two Emmys, two Tonys and a Golden Globe.
Christopher Plummer’s Post-Academy Award Win Interview:
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