Canadian Titan
RIP consummate actor Christopher Plummer, 91, comfortable on the big or small screen, stage and in voice-over work. His career spanned 1953–2021. His last work will be posthumous. He is one of nine actors to have won acting’s triple crown. He received three Oscar nominations and won for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for Beginners (2010). He was nominated for seven Emmys and won two: Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series Arthur Hailey’s The Moneychangers (1976) and Outstanding Voice-Over Performance The New Adventures of Madeline (1995). He received six Tony nominations and won twice: Best Actor (Musical) for Cyrano in 1974 and Best Actor (Play) in Barrymore in 1997. Here are other characters he played: Captain Von Trapp, Nabokov, Sherlock Holmes, Kipling, the Duke of Wellington, Rommel, Hamlet, Oedipus, Alfred Stieglitz, Van Helsing, Santa, Aristotle, Julius Caesar, Tolstoy, Prospero, Scrooge, J. Paul Getty. His memoir, published in 2008, is titled In Spite of Myself. Here’s a quote attributed to him: “Too many people in the world are unhappy with their lot. And then they retire and they become vegetables. I think retirement in any profession is death, so I’m determined to keep crackin’.” He is the father of celebrated actress Amanda Plummer, his only child. Awesome, sir. Thank you.
The timing was perfect for today’s session of the floating book shop. The skies were clearing as I was walking toward my car, and soon the day was spectacular. My favorite winter sound was prevalent — melting snow cascading into sewers. My thanks to the woman who bought two paperbacks in Russian, and to Alice, who purchased Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich; and to Maria, who selected Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential by Joel Osteen; and to the gentleman who chose a Reader’s Digest compilation of four condensed novels, one of which was The Fourth K by Mario Puzo. That set off a conversation about his other books and eventually led to a reminiscence. While at a party when the gentleman was very young, his father, an orthodox Jew and businessman, was discussing people who owed him money with a little man who seemed harmless. The guy offered to intercede. The man to whom I was listening said that his father turned green. Later, he asked why the offer hadn’t been accepted. His father wouldn’t discuss it. The kid never forgot it. Years later he asked about it, hoping the passage of time, the fact that he was now an adult, would lead to a revelation. The elder still wouldn’t speak of it. One day the son finally learned the little man was a ruthless gangster, a hitman who never worked on Shabbos, the Sabbath.
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