The Truth About Christopher Plummer

Yesterday, we sneaked one 100 percent true factoid into a pack of out-and-out, yet oddly believable, lies about Inherit the Wind star Christopher Plummer. Care to guess which one we didn’t make up? To recap:

A) Plummer had a tempestuous relationship with co-star Julie Andrews on the set of The Sound of Music, famously propositioning her multiple times during the shoot.

B) Like his contemporary Peter O’Toole, has never won an Academy Award.

C) He drunkenly bested Oliver Reed in an arm-wrestling match during the shooting of 1990’s A Ghost in Monte Carlo.

D) He actually owns one of the Yorick skulls used by John Barrymore in his acclaimed 1925 production of Hamlet.

The Truth: B. And it’s a damn shame. Plummer should have won playing iconoclastic showboater Mike Wallace in 1999’s excellent The Insider.

Christopher Plummer was reportedly standoffish during filming of The Sound of Music, no one could out-booze boozehound Oliver Reed, and though Plummer won the 1997 Tony playing John Barrymore in Barrymore, he doesn’t own any of Barrymore’s effects. — John DeVore

Earlier: Christopher Plummer, Human-Skull Owner?