Henry V...

[fajrdrako]

Yesterday I had the interesting task of going through old clippings in the archives of the theatre where I work, looking for reviews of our plays from the past - preferably the distant past, but I didn't find much before the 1940s.

I did however find some interesting things, like this picture of Christopher Plummer as Henry V, on the cover of Saturday Night magazine from June 23, 1956.

The accompanying article reads like hagiography and therefore isn't very interesting. It compares Plummer embarrassingly often to John Barrymore, and makes a rather strained extended parallel between Plummer and Henry V, whom he was playing at Stratford that year. Yeah, right, a mid 20th century Canadian actor and a medieval warrior-Prince - I can barely tell them apart myself.

The article does have a couple of good bits:

Once, while appearing at the Brae Manor Playhouse at Knowlton, Que., in The Rivals¹, he forgot a line and didn't get a prompt. With no embarrassment, he paced over to the prompter's box and said quite confidently and audibly, "What's that line, dear?", then went on with the performance as if nothing had happened.

And:

It is, of course, difficult to know what any man of 26 is "really like".² Plummer hovers between conceit and modesty. His language like his personality emphasizes the unexpected. He carries the unmistakable mark of breeding,³ but frequently he will salt his remarks with popular four letter words. He is ambitious, but not recklessly so. He knows where he is going, or at least where he wants to go

I wonder if he got there.

~ ~ ~
¹ How I wish I could have seen that show!
² What an ageist remark. Are people any less themselves at 26 than at any other age?
³ Breeding? Breeding? This is a publication of 1956; it reads like 1856.

Comments

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested to see the 1961 (?) US TV version of The Prisoner of Zenda which he made, if it survives. He played the 2 Rudolfs.