Christopher Plummer, Human-Skull Owner?

The best reason to attend the Broadway revival of creaky classic Inherit the Wind (also known as Ambien for High-School Students) is to watch living legend Christopher Plummer devour the set. Whether onstage, as in last year’s textbook perfect King Lear, or onscreen in movies like Syriana, Plummer is a fire-breathing, old-school actor — the last of a generation of thespians who could purr Hamlet’s speeches three sheets to the wind and were able to perform their duties without need of constant fanfare, entourages, or buckets of moisturizer. In the current Wind, which pits two-time Tony winner Plummer against two-time Tony winner Brian Dennehy as rhetorical titans arguing the famous 1925 Scopes trial, Plummer gives a silver-tongued, borderline hammy, but damn fine Zeus impersonation. What else do we know about him? Well, we’re giving up four outrageous biographical details. Three of them are totally made-up, practically slanderous BS. One of them is precious, precious truth. Check back tomorrow to see which is which.

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 contemporary Peter O’Toole, he 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 the acclaimed 1925 production of Hamlet. — John DeVore

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