Oh Captain, My Captain: A ‘Sound Of Music’ Fan Mourns The Loss of Christopher Plummer

My hall pass has died. My husband has already offered his condolences.

I know you know what a hall pass is, but just in case you want to pretend you don’t, it’s the celebrity that you’re allowed to break your marital vow with, should the opportunity ever arise. My hall pass was also a nonagenarian, so while the news is terribly upsetting to me, it was not entirely unexpected. See, I have had a crush on Christopher Plummer, the Academy Award-winning acting legend, since I was 7 years old, so news of his death today at 91 is as debilitating as unexpectedly sitting on a pine cone at family dinner.

Also, just to clarify, I know that the space-time viability of my hall pass is a near impossibility, because I only care to be with Plummer-as-Captain von Trapp from 1965.

The Sound of Music is my favorite film, in part due to the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein, in part because of the majestic views of Salzburg and the Alps, and mostly because Christopher Plummer as Georg von Trapp is one of the most handsome and respectable men to grace the big screen. He is a man in uniform, a man of conviction who resists the Nazis, a man who plays hard to get, a widowed father, a decorated naval veteran, he has a sense of humor you have to crack through an impenetrably hard candy shell to find. Nothing comes for free with this man. It’s really enough to strip the repurposed curtain panties off of anyone.

Yet Plummer reportedly hated the role, saying that it was an “empty carcass of a role” and the film itself was “awful and sentimental and gooey.” I’m not sure he realizes that what he brought to the film was everything that counter-balanced the sentimentality and goo. What I adore most about Georg von Trapp is not the way he realizes his attraction to his children’s governess, Maria, as they dance the Laendler together on his patio, while his fiancee, Baroness Schrader, looks on. It is not the moment that he caresses the cheek of his former domestic employee ever so gently inside his gazebo once she acknowledges that their feelings are mutual. I’m attracted to war hero Captain von Trapp, the man who rips a Nazi flag down and tears it apart with disgust, a man who calmly tries to talk Rolf the messenger-boy-turned-Nazi-snitch into not blowing that whistle in the churchyard, the man who appreciates rule and order in his household and beyond. Maybe he was ahead of his time. My kids don’t come when I call them, maybe personalized whistle calls aren’t such a bad idea.

To me, The Sound of Music is near perfect. It’s a musical stuffed in a war movie folded into a romance. It’s a Cheesy Blaster on 35 millimeter. The Sound of Music is Julie Andrews’ film, no doubt. Her performance is iconic for myriad reasons, not the least of which is her incredible soprano. Plummer has considerably less screen time than she. But as Miles Davis once said about jazz, “it’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.” Plummer’s presence lingers even in the scenes where he is not, and is that not the epitome of a crush, to long for someone who is not there? Is that not the mark of a great actor, to portray someone so well that they leave you, an innocent seven year old, wondering why you’re so intrigued by this Mr. Big prototype, this man who by all accounts is a jerk, yet you are still charmed by him?

Plummer was more than Captain von Trapp, of course. He was a G short of an EGOT, having won an Oscar, two Tonys, and two Emmys, and his career spanned seven decades. But this film, and his role in it, served as a great connector, a bridge between many generations of fans — from boomers to millennials and beyond. Today, the world mourns his passing — to my fellow Plummer admirers, I know you share this love. I pray that you will never let it die.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Brooklyn. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.

Where to watch The Sound of Music