Posted on 02/05/2021 4:11:16 PM PST by nickcarraway
Whenever Christopher Plummer was asked about “The Sound of Music” – and he was asked about it so often it made him dyspeptic – he quoted the actor Doug McClure, who once cracked: “Watching ‘The Sound of Music’ is like being beaten to death by a Hallmark card.”
If the movie popped up on television, Plummer, who died Friday at 91, “reached for the remote,” he once told me. “I avoid television at all costs around the holidays,” he added, with a laugh. Plummer became a movie star at age 36 playing Captain Von Trapp in “The Sound of Music.” But, as he recounts in his deliciously gossipy memoir “In Spite of Myself,” making it was a nightmare, the beauty of the Alps notwithstanding.
A prominent Shakespearean stage actor at the time, Plummer had never sung before when he was offered the role. He took it, he confessed, because he secretly wanted to turn “Cyrano de Bergerac” into a Broadway musical, and thought “The Sound of Music” would be good practice. He was horrified to learn that 20th Century Fox wanted him to start recording tracks with Julie Andrews even before he had his first singing lesson. He wanted to quit the movie, but the threat of a $2 million lawsuit brought him to his senses.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Watched Spartacus last night, for the first time if you can believe it. First rate.
OTOH, I liked Plummer, too. Mostly as an unfeeling villain.
Oh yes, me too! Well, I don’t know doe a deer by syllable, I admit it!
And the best thing about my recent viewing, I was all alone in the house and could sing along at the top of my very terrible voice!
Unfair! Unfair!
Plummer was great in the film Knives Out.
>>>actor Doug McClure, who once cracked: “Watching ‘The Sound of Music’ is like being beaten to death by a Hallmark card.” <<<
Priceless!
I was 16 going on 17 when that movie came out so the song of that title meant something to me...
Yes!
“Edelweiss” was the last song written by Oscar Hammerstein II before his death.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu-lcwhZcEs
Many native Austrians thought it must have been one of their own folk songs; but of course it was written by our great Americans Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.
You May Remember him From Such Medical Films As Alice Doesn't Live Anymore And Mommy, What's Wrong With That Man's Face?
Yes, he was. The movie, Knives Out, was terrible. Written by democraps no doubt.
Yes, plus he had to deal with NAZIs.
R&H largely didn’t do simple sappy stories.
Plummer’s best role, IMH, was in SILENT PARTNER as the creepy masochistic fem bank robber.
He had an interesting part playing a high ranking but weak-kneed officer in the Canadian television mini-series of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s FIRST CIRCLE.
No, R&H usually had a dark theme of some kind running through their happy musicals.
I don’t think Trampas from the Virginian (actor Doug McClure) was in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Or Alice the TV show.
Not necessarily “dark”, but serious.
Carousel’s loser abusive husband, SOM’s NAZIs, King & I’s clash of culture.
Of course, often some of the best musicals were rather serious, but they usually were also hopeful or positive in some way. Not like those since 1965 which are putridly serious.
The best quote from the article:
“At a children’s Easter party a few years ago, his hosts showed the movie. He cringed, but couldn’t sneak away. As he watched the movie, he succumbed to its charms. “I suddenly could see why it brought so much pleasure to so many people,” he wrote. “Here was I, cynical old sod that I am, being totally seduced by the damn thing.”
“You Have to be Carefully Taught” (racism) in South Pacific, and the degenerate Jud in Oklahoma.
Ah yes. Forgot about South Pacific. Including the biracial children.
I don’t mind that but I’ve found the premise of that particular song is bogus.
It's a play on the Troy McClure character from The Simpsons.
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