Elaine Taylor (actress)

Elaine Regina Taylor Plummer (born 17 October 1943) is an English former actress, best known as a leading lady in comedy films of the late 1960s and early 1970s.[1] She is the widow of Canadian actor Christopher Plummer, to whom she was married for 50 years.

Elaine Taylor
Taylor in 1985
Born
Elaine Regina Taylor

(1943-10-17) 17 October 1943
Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England
Alma materItalia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts
OccupationActress
Years active1950s–1990s
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1970; died 2021)​
RelativesAmanda Plummer (stepdaughter)

Early life

Elaine Regina Taylor was born in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. With the encouragement of her mother, Frances, she took dancing lessons as a child. In 1950, had her hair styled by hairdresser Raymond Bessone for the part of Will O'the Wisp. Taylor later studied at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts and joined the London Festival Ballet.[2]

Career

Early television and radio roles

In the mid-1960s, Taylor appeared in episodes of British television series such as The Benny Hill Show (1965), The Lance Percival Show (1966), in which she sang as well as taking part in comedy sketches, The Old Campaigner (1967), which featured Terry-Thomas as a womanising plastics salesman,[3] and Mr Rose, starring William Mervyn as a retired senior policeman (1968).[4] Her appearance with Benny Hill on 18 December 1965[5] included a gender-reversal parody of the 1956 film Baby Doll that Hill repeated in 1974 with Diana Darvey. Taylor is thought also to have been the announcer of a sketch in which Hill first performed his song "Those Days" in imitation of Sonny and Cher.[6] She worked again with Hill in the third series of his BBC radio show Benny Hill Time, which started on the Light Programme on 27 February 1966 and featured, among others, Patricia Hayes and Peter Vernon.[7]

Transition to film

Taylor was a "Bond girl" (with, among others, Jacqueline Bisset, Barbara Bouchet and Alexandra Bastedo) as Peg in Casino Royale (1967) and played on stage with Tommy Steele in Half a Sixpence and in the 1967 film version.[8] She was cast in the role of the "mod" Victoria Ponsonby in the comedy film Diamonds for Breakfast (1968), considered by Leslie Halliwell to be a "yawning comedy caper yarn embellished with sex and slapstick",[9] that also featured Marcello Mastroianni, in his first English language film, and Rita Tushingham. Around the same time, Taylor played Shirley Blair, pregnant fiancée of Tom Taggart (Christian Roberts), in Hammer's adaptation of Bill MacIlwraith's play The Anniversary (also 1968), a "high camp" black comedy[10] starring Bette Davis and Sheila Hancock. Tom Chantrell's famous poster for The Anniversary featured a front-on still of Taylor in brassiere and panties below the slogan (attributed to Davies' character) "I Spy with my little eye/Something beginning with SEX … and I mean to put a stop to it".[11]

Later career

Following her appearance as Cloris in the film Lock Up Your Daughters (1969), Taylor appeared in two more films, Michael Winner's The Games and the Warren Mitchell comedy All the Way Up (both 1970). She also starred in an episode of ITC's Jason King ("A Royal Flush", 1972) and The Organization (also 1972) in which she appeared in all seven episodes as secretary Veronica. This was produced by Yorkshire Television and written by Philip Mackie. She was cast in television dramas for the BBC, including Trelawny of the Wells (as Rose Trelawny, 1972) and Kingsley Amis' Doctor Watson and the Darkwater Hall Mystery (as Emily, Lady Fairfax alongside Edward Fox's Dr. Watson, 1974). In the mid-1980s she returned to television in America in The George McKenna Story (1986) and Sharing Richard (1988), and co-produced the 1987 film Love Potion. Taylor's last known appearance was in California-set true-crime television film Till Death Us Do Part (1992).

Personal life

In 1969, Taylor met Christopher Plummer, best known at the time for his role as Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music (1965), while they were both filming Lock Up Your Daughters in Kilkenny, Ireland. Plummer was almost 14 years older,[12] twice divorced, and had recently been partnering Richard Harris' ex-wife Elizabeth Rees-Williams.[13] Taylor's usually "mousy" hair, which was tinted red on location, is said to have appealed to Plummer.[14] For her part, Taylor agreed to meet him again in London provided that he reduced his consumption of alcohol.[15]

Taylor and Plummer were married in Montreal, Quebec on 2 October 1970.[16] The officiant, the Reverend Philip Moreton, had married Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in 1964. The two remained married for over 50 years, until Plummer's death in February 2021.[17]

In the 1970s, Plummer and Taylor moved to a rambling English style estate at Weston, Connecticut.[18] Taylor has no children of her own; her stepdaughter is the actress Amanda Plummer (born 1957), Plummer's daughter from his first marriage to Tammy Grimes. A few months after their marriage, Alan Bennett remarked wryly to Kenneth Tynan that Plummer was "his own worst enemy—but only just,"[19] while Plummer's own autobiography almost forty years later was entitled In Spite of Myself.

In 2012, Plummer identified "the key to lasting marriage" as "stay[ing] out of each other's hair" and reflected that while he and Taylor quarrelled a lot, they "always end up in laughter which saves the day".[20] More generally, he described Taylor's positive influence on his life:

a combination of Edith Cavell and Julia Child ... a nurse and a cook. I feel guilty sometimes that I denied her a wonderful life, that she's wasted it on some terrible old ham. She could have married a duke or a prince! And she knows it. But being British, you see, she never complains. She's very well trained.[18]

Other interests

Taylor is a gourmet French cook and she and Plummer renovated or designed houses in West Hollywood, Grasse and London before settling in Weston.[2]

References
  1. Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion (8th ed., 1985)
  2. "Elaine Taylor Plummer – biography". Pcez.com. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
  3. The Independent, 19 February 2001: obituary of Reginald Marsh. The casting of Terry-Thomas, then a considerable international star, was considered quite a coup for Robin Nash who directed the pilot episode for the BBC: Times obituary of Robin Nash, 9 July 2011.
  4. "Elaine Taylor". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
  5. "The Benny Hill Show: Season 7, Episode 3 Episode #7.3 (18 December 1965)". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
  6. "Benny's Place • Benny Hill: The Lost Years DVD Review – Bonus Benny!". Webcache.googleusercontent.com. Archived from the original on 25 March 2016. Retrieved 27 June 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  7. Andy Foster & Steve Furst (1996) Radio Comedy 1938–1968
  8. "Elaine Taylor : Biography". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
  9. Halliwell's Film Guide (7th ed, 1989)
  10. Time Out Film Guide (ed Tom Milne, 1989). The Sunday Express considered The Anniversary "undoubtedly sick", but "very funny too": see sleeves notes of Optimum Releasing's DVD (2007).
  11. The Times Saturday Review, 23 October 2010; Marcus Hearn (2010) The Art of Hammer: Posters from the Archive of Hammer Films. Towards the end of the film, Shirley, who, after removing her skirt and top, has slumped playfully onto a bed in front of her fiancé, is horrified to find a glass eye, the assumption being that her prospective mother-in-law (Davies) has placed it there in an attempt to shock her into a miscarriage.
  12. Who's Who (annually), entry for Christopher Plummer (born 13 December 1929)
  13. Nicholas Wapshott (1991) Rex Harrison. Elizabeth Harris became Rex Harrison's fifth wife in 1971 and in 2003 married the former British Cabinet Minister Jonathan Aitken.
  14. People Weekly, 15 March 1982
  15. Christopher Plummer (2008) In Spite of Myself: A Memoir
  16. "The Marriage of Christopher Plummer and Elaine Taylor". Marriage.about.com. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
  17. Iorfida, Chris (5 February 2021). "Christopher Plummer, 'Sound of Music' star and oldest actor to win an Oscar, dead at 91". CBC News. Retrieved 5 February 2021.
  18. The New York Times, 22 February 2004
  19. Kenneth Tynan, diary, 27 March 1971: The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan (ed. John Lahr, 2001).
  20. Times Magazine, 25 February 2012
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