What Fresh Lunacy is This?

by Robert Sellers

  Devastated by the collapse of her marriage, Kate had much to feel aggrieved about. Hadn’t she stood by Oliver during his years as a struggling actor? And now he’d achieved stardom she accused him of dumping her for a ‘younger and prettier’ model. Ollie blamed the failure of their relationship on the fact that they’d simply been too young and naive, something he’d told her to her face when she first got the marriage licence. They’d been desperately in love, though, and been a well-matched pair. ‘People would say they were a beautiful couple,’ says Mark. ‘They looked right together and indeed for ten years they were right together.’ Perhaps it was the concept of marriage itself that Ollie had problems with, in spite of tossing out proposals to the likes of Carol Lynley. It was, he said, an archaic institution, this promising to be faithful to one person for your whole life. ‘I can’t believe that it’s possible to be sure that you’ll live up to that vow.’ And, as we know, Ollie didn’t, couldn’t in fact. For him, the sensation of a new love affair ‘was more rapacious than my love for Kate’.

  In other words, he had a wandering eye. ‘Oliver was very keen on women,’ says Simon. ‘Even with all that Kate brought to his life, how alluring she was, she was unbelievably sexy. You see, Ollie wasn’t a great picker-up of girls when he was on his way up because he wasn’t very good at small talk. Put him in a nightclub or a coffee bar, he wasn’t great at that. He got better as he got more famous, but what happened was, he’d go on location with very, very attractive women and – well, you know the history – and so suddenly I’d see him around with what was a who’s who of actresses.’

  Inevitably Kate found out about some of them, as Oliver wasn’t exactly coy about what he was getting up to. Sometimes she would receive a call at home from one of these girlfriends and blast down the phone at them, ‘Oliver loves me, not you!’ How she put up with it for so long is anyone’s guess, especially when Oliver himself didn’t see his philandering as an issue. ‘To me, when I met a pretty woman, it was the natural thing to want to make love to her.’

  Some people did find it hard to forgive Ollie his treatment of Kate. Simon was particularly distraught. As a young boy he’d already bestowed hero status upon his brother, which only intensified when he married Kate, this glamorous model who was great fun to be with, who demanded attention and was a great bon viveur, and a little bit wild. ‘She left an enormous impression on me.’ As a consequence he found it difficult at first to warm to Jacquie, especially since he remained convinced that Ollie’s marriage to Kate was not irretrievable. ‘It had a lot of bad moments, but was it over? I don’t think so. Obviously Jacquie made it over, so there was part of me that couldn’t forgive Jacquie for a little while because Kate was my girl. When Ollie did that to her it was tough to deal with.’

  Ollie and Kate weren’t divorced until 1971. ‘He changed the locks on the house,’ confirms Simon. ‘It wasn’t great.’ Kate won custody of Mark and claimed 50 per cent of Oliver’s estate, after which he reportedly began sawing tables and chairs in half. The remarkable thing is that after the divorce they stayed in touch, because something strong linked them, and not just the fact they shared a child. ‘But she’d come back from having seen him on her own and go, “He drives me mad!”’ says Mark. ‘So these encounters often ended in further rows. By the early eighties my mother gave up meeting with him altogether as she found him impossible.’

  A year or two after the divorce, when Jacquie was living with Oliver, there was a curious incident. Oliver had gone to Italy to do a film and apparently Kate had got herself into a terrible state. ‘And because Kate’s family obviously loathed me,’ Jacquie recalls, ‘Kate’s sister phoned me up and said, “You’ll never guess where Kate is.” I said, “I don’t know.” She said, “She’s with Oliver in Italy.”’ The time came for him to return home and David was about to drive out to the airport. ‘I’m coming too,’ said Jacquie.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ David told her.

  Jacquie stood her ground. ‘No, I’m coming.’

  So there they were, waiting for the flight to come in, and standing just a few feet away, having already returned, was Kate. ‘Oliver came through Customs,’ remembers Jacquie, ‘paused, and did a double take. I suppose he couldn’t believe it. But actually he went and took Kate’s arm and went off with her. I’m a little bit feisty at times and I said to David, “They’re obviously going to the Dog and Fox. I think we’ll go there for a quick drink.” And we did, we walked into the bar and they were all there having a good time. Oliver saw me and came over, kissed me on the cheek, and asked how I was. I said I was fine, how was he? He was fine. And then I left. And he came back a few days later. But that’s how he was. It wasn’t just Kate, he had many liaisons.’

  One is left to ponder why Oliver wasn’t able just to sever the relationship with Kate and move on. ‘No,’ says Jacquie. ‘He felt that he owed her something. It was the first serious relationship of his life, they had a child quite quickly. I think if Oliver was alive and here today there would still be a huge concern for Kate.’

  While Kate was aware of Ollie’s affairs, rightly or wrongly she always viewed Jacquie as the person who destroyed her marriage, and never spoke to her again. A proud and strong woman, even though her marriage was at an end, Kate picked herself up and carried on. But she was never to remarry. ‘For her certainly he was the love of her life and that relationship was for ever,’ says Mark. ‘It couldn’t be replicated.’

  The Devils

  The phone rang: it was Ken Russell, and he was planning something sensational. If the noses of prudes had been put out of joint by a naked Ollie, he was going to outrage them even more with masturbating sister superiors and naked, devil-worshipping nuns. Was the world ready for what Russell was going to give them? The answer ended up being a pretty emphatic no.

  Aldous Huxley’s book The Devils of Loudun was published in 1952 and described the supposedly true events of demonic possession and sexual hysteria that took place in the small French town of Loudun in the 1600s; in other words, perfect Russell material. And the director had no qualms whatsoever about Oliver playing the lead role of Father Grandier, the parish priest of Loudun and its spiritual and political figurehead, constantly railing against the state in his bid to keep the town and its people independent. Yet he’s also insensitive and vain, preening himself and dropping pregnant lovers like crumbs from his fingers; he was a most unpriest-like priest. Such foibles and the making of political enemies ultimately led to his downfall. Falsely accused of witchcraft, he was tried and executed. A fascinating figure from the margins of history, Grandier was without doubt the most complex and testing role of Oliver’s career and he would rise to the challenge magnificently. ‘He worked so hard on that role,’ remembers Jacquie. ‘He did a lot of research on it, he was totally blinkered. He had a lot of dark moments over The Devils, he worried a lot about it.’

  As filming began at Pinewood in the winter of 1970 rumours quickly reached the outside world of diabolical happenings on Russell’s closed set, of orgies and wanton sexual abandonment. ‘I admit there was some naughtiness,’ Ollie later confessed. ‘And quite a few incidents of one kind or the other, mostly the other.’ No one, however, was made to perform any act against their will. Right from the off Russell informed the women what would be required of them, namely scenes of flagellation, masturbation and nudity. ‘I mean, there were some of those nuns who couldn’t wait to strip off,’ says actor Murray Melvin. ‘And there were some who were petrified.’

  Things did indeed get out of hand during the filming of a sequence that is now infamous beyond measure, the rape of Christ. One afternoon Russell brought on to the set a large prop of a naked Christ upon the cross, a very well-endowed naked Christ, and the female extras went bat-fuck crazy over it. God knows what Russell’s instructions were to them that day but they all whipped off their clothes and frolicked about with such wantonness that the plaster phallus split and fell off. Not surprisingly the shock value of this scene
was too much and the censor ordered its removal.

  Oliver wasn’t involved in this sequence but one would be forgiven for thinking that, with a dozen naked women writhing all over one another, he might have paid Pinewood a visit that afternoon. It is a suggestion roundly rebuked by Melvin. ‘No, no! He was too polite. He wouldn’t have embarrassed those performers more than they had to be embarrassed. It was his upbringing, his breeding. That’s why he didn’t turn up for those scenes. But that was Ollie, that was the Ollie you loved. It was part of his character that people wouldn’t dream was there, but it was and it was a very important part of Ollie, it was his whole background.’

  The special bond that Russell had cultivated with Oliver over the years was plain for all to see on the set of The Devils. ‘Ken adored him,’ says Murray. ‘There was a great rapport between them. And they often got smashed together.’ There was the odd barney as well, predictable given their raw emotional states during what was a tough shoot. Russell wanted Oliver to speak Latin in a couple of scenes, reams and reams of the bloody stuff. For someone who didn’t do too well at school and was dyslexic, such a task vexed Ollie, so much so that he told associate producer Roy Baird of his intention to quit the film.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Baird.

  ‘I am not a scholar,’ replied Ollie. ‘Had I wanted to be a scholar, I would have gone to Cambridge University. The only reason I didn’t go there is that I cannot spell, I cannot add up – and I sodding well can’t stand Latin. Now I want off this film because I didn’t sign to read a script that was full of Latin and you are in breach of my contract. So tell Ken Russell to piss off!’

  A compromise was reached: the Latin was drastically reduced. For the bits that remained, however, Ollie came up with a cunning plan, to secrete his lines in the loaf of bread he breaks during communion. It certainly fooled Russell. ‘That was absolutely marvellous,’ he roared after take one. But on the second take he noticed one of Ollie’s eyes peeping open when they should have been shut in prayer. Ollie was ordered to his caravan to learn the lines by heart.

  Co-star Brian Murphy saw the volatile and often playful nature of Ollie’s relationship with Russell first-hand. ‘He was a great practical joker, Oliver, and it seemed to me that he and Ken played games with each other. I remember one particular scene: Oliver had done several takes but Ken wanted more and in the end Ollie stormed off the set. Everything ground to a halt.’

  After a short delay, word reached Murphy that his presence was requested in Ollie’s dressing room, along with fellow actors Max Adrian and Murray Melvin. They all sat down and Ollie was grinning from ear to ear. ‘We’ll have a drink in a minute,’ he said.

  ‘Have you got something?’ Murphy asked.

  ‘No,’ Ollie replied. ‘But we soon will have.’

  There was a knock at the door and an assistant came in with a bottle of champagne. ‘This is from Mr Russell,’ he announced. ‘And when you feel ready for it, Mr Reed, we’ll see you back on the set.’

  Murphy and the other actors came away from this episode with the belief that Ollie was up to that kind of thing all the time.

  Another cause for heated debate was the film’s terrifying climax, in which Grandier had all his facial hair removed before being tortured and then burned at the stake. Ollie was fine with his head being shaved, even his legs, ‘although it was a bit embarrassing because it made me look like an ostrich’, but he drew the line at Russell’s suggestion that his eyebrows also had to go. ‘God!’ raged Ken, his arms gesticulating wildly. ‘We might as well not make the film at all.’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody silly,’ said Oliver. ‘It can’t make all that much difference.’

  This infuriated Russell even more. ‘Of course it’s important! They shaved off all of Grandier’s bodily hair and then stuck red-hot pokers up his arse!’

  Ollie finally relented but only on the condition that his eyebrows were insured (by Lloyd’s of London, no less) for half a million pounds in case they didn’t grow back properly.

  The burning climax was gruelling to shoot, not least the preceding torture scene, where Grandier’s legs are pulverized with a hammer by a religious maniac. Ollie’s legs were protected by huge oak planks, but even so poor Murray found it hard to take. ‘It just went on and on and on, and there was the screaming and the pounding, something went through you, your whole body was saying, we shouldn’t be doing this, this is wrong. Then Ken called the lunch break and I went outside and threw up. It was so horrific. And dragging a weak, bruised, battered, cut Ollie on that cart up towards the stake, God!’

  According to Murray, the burning finale took three weeks to shoot on the outside lot. ‘And it was freezing. Under my suit I had snow boots because you stood still for three weeks, from eight o’clock in the morning until six or seven at night, you just stood still and you froze. It was a toughie.’ By the end of it all, Ollie, already minus his eyebrows, was left with virtually no eyelashes either. It was a dangerous stunt with him tied to a stake and the fire was for real. At least he’d been given a safety device to hold behind his back that turned the gas off if he couldn’t stand it any more. ‘But Ollie,’ claims Murray, ‘over and above the call of duty, very often on takes didn’t turn the gas off and his face was scorched and the eyelashes all went. It was terrifying.’

  It’s a tour de force, a screaming, manic crowd and Ollie, raging against his persecutors while his face blisters and boils. With Grandier now a charred husk, nothing stands in the way of Loudun’s conspirators destroying its walls, and therefore destroying its independence. It was an important shot, and with the explosives in position and the effects crew waiting for Russell’s hand signal to set them off, the director grew anxious. Shouting, ‘I’m not having this fucked up!’, Russell stormed over to the main camera to take charge himself, but alas his frantic arm-waving was taken as the cue and the walls were blown without a single camera rolling. Ten days later, and the set rebuilt, it was second time lucky.

  It all sounds ghastly, a real horror show, but Murray’s memory of the shoot isn’t all funereal. He adored Ollie and the two of them grew close as shooting progressed. He did see, however, two very different sides to his personality, especially in the way he liked to have fun. After work Murray called into the studio bar for a quick Guinness before going home. Ollie was usually there. ‘And he was always arm-wrestling with someone. I’d say, “Oh blimey, look, the fifth-formers are at it again.” I always thought that Ollie’s playing up was a bit of the fifth-formers, a bit of bravado, and a bit of boredom. Anyway, he’d get up and say, “Come here, you,” and grab my arm. Now there was no way I could physically compete against Ollie, but he dragged me down on the table and he got my arm right back until it began hurting. I looked at his face, all twisted and red, and I said, “Ollie, when you break my arm I don’t think Ken is going to be very pleased tomorrow if I arrive in a sling.” He immediately let go. “Thank you, Ollie.” I got myself away and let them carry on playing and had my Guinness and went.’

  Russell was a stickler for punctuality, so at eight o’clock in the morning you had to be at the studio, ready and dressed, and woe betide any stragglers late from lunch and not on set dead on two o’clock. One afternoon Murray was in the Pinewood restaurant with Ollie and, as usual, lunch consisted of a few drinks; certainly it did for Ollie. ‘I was lagging behind a bit and Ken was there. Ollie orders another drink and includes me in the order, and I’m saying, “Oh, Ollie, no.” “We’ve got time,” he said. After a few minutes I noticed that Ken had got up and was returning to the set. I looked at Ollie. “It’s five to two and Ken is going back.” Ollie looked up. “Oh God, come on, let’s go the back way.” And we ran, in hysterics, him slopping his vodka and tonic, me with my white wine. We ran through alleys and corridors and got to the set just as Ken walked on to it. We calmly strolled up to him laughing and Ollie said, “Oh, Ken, when do you want us?” Not a word did Ken say: he knew what we’d done. And Ollie giggled about it all afternoon
. He kept saying to me, “It was a good run that, Murray, wasn’t it? Do you the world of good.” That was fifth-form, but joyous fifth-form. Silly, daft. And he had that in his personality.’

  On that movie Ollie cultivated another friendship, with Georgina Hale, a young actress who’d done plenty of television, but The Devils was her first feature and she gives a devastating performance as one of Grandier’s mistresses. Georgina has an astonishingly erotic voice; she can read Ryanair’s safety instructions and make them sound like a page torn out of Emmanuelle. She’s also refreshingly blunt and still clearly recalls the first time she ever encountered Oliver: ‘I remember this stunning face with piercing eyes that just looked straight through you and I thought, what a fabulous-looking guy. I think we had one or two dinner dates. But we never had a love affair, we never had sex, and never went to bed. On those two dates I was waiting for it to happen and it never did. Instantly you think there’s something wrong with you, but maybe that was his conscience pricking him: he was with Jacquie, wasn’t he? At the end of the day it didn’t matter, because I valued his friendship more.’

  As with his other leading ladies, Georgina remembers Ollie behaving like nothing less than a gentleman during their love scenes, sensing perhaps her nerves at having to appear full frontal for the first time on camera. ‘We rehearsed with our Marks and Sparks dressing gowns on and then when the time came, and, God, I was dreading it, I whipped off mine, and then when Ollie took his off there he was with his big white underpants on, which I thought was so unfair. But he was completely professional, he was wonderful.’

  Relations with his main leading lady, however, were rather stand-offish. Failing to land his first choice of Glenda Jackson, Russell had cast Vanessa Redgrave and it didn’t take much to get her political juices flowing. When the trade unions decreed a one-day strike in protest at the Conservative government’s anti-union legislation, Vanessa and her brother Corin tried to coerce the acting profession to walk off every set and TV studio in Britain in support. Vanessa’s primary mission was to get Ollie on board. ‘She knocked on my dressing room door looking very pretty,’ is how Oliver remembered it. ‘And tried to persuade me to “down tools” – I thought she was being personal at first.’ When Vanessa made the real purpose of her visit known, Ollie pointblank refused to have anything to do with it. ‘That’s typical,’ she responded. ‘You’re so selfish.’