What Fresh Lunacy is This?

by Robert Sellers

  When Ollie and Josephine arrived in Morocco in February 1999 for his first scenes on Gladiator, it didn’t take them long to grasp the magnitude of the production, the gargantuan sets, the hordes of costumed extras, and the stellar cast of Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix and Richard Harris. This was epic stuff indeed. After languishing in the cinematic wilderness for so long, Ollie was at last back playing with the big boys and, if the film was the hit he was expecting, it was going to completely resurrect his career. So it was no coincidence that Ollie now felt a desire to reach out to his family, to those he had estranged over the years or allowed to drift away, especially his two brothers.

  Since quitting as his manager, David hadn’t really talked much with Oliver. Nor had their parting been terribly amicable. ‘But then he suddenly rang me saying we must meet up. It was only because he was in work again, he was earning, he felt secure. So he rang and said, “David, we’re going to be in Malta soon. Why don’t you sail down?” I told him, “Do you realize how bloody far it is in a boat that only does five miles an hour?” So in the end we didn’t make it, but it was quite revealing that he wanted to touch base again.’

  Simon was also invited to visit the Gladiator set. His relationship with Oliver had been at best cool these past few years, after he’d had a coffee cup thrown at him in a restaurant. ‘I think he meant it as a warning shot. I’d said something flash. It clipped the side of my head and there was a bit of blood, nothing serious, but I said, “That’s enough, I’m not driving you home, you can make your own fucking way home. And I’m not talking to you any more,” and I left the restaurant. And we didn’t speak for quite a while.’

  It was an upsetting incident, because Simon had always shared a strong bond with his elder brother, even though there’d always been a little bit of healthy competition between the two of them. ‘Ollie wasn’t a jealous man, though he was always jealous of my youth, that I was younger than him. And I was quite successful with women, and he was pretty rude to most of the women I was with. But I don’t think that was out of jealousy, it was just Ollie being provocative.’ But things had never really got out of hand physically before. Well, maybe once or twice: Simon does recall another incident in a restaurant back in the mid-seventies. Joe Frazier was about to fight Muhammad Ali and the brothers got into an argument about who was going to win. Simon contested that Ali would never get caught, while Ollie fancied Frazier. ‘He’s not that fast,’ said Simon. ‘It’s like you and me, Ollie. You’re bigger than me, but you wouldn’t be able to catch me.’ Fuck, thought Simon, big mistake. ‘By this stage we’re outside and it got physical. I split his lip, and he punched me in the face, and some people broke it up because it was getting quite heavy. Actually it wasn’t too bad. Yes, we had a fight, but I think we were all right after it and got pissed. But when he threw that coffee cup at me we didn’t really talk much after that and then this conversation started happening about how excited he was about Gladiator and the future. And I was really thrilled because there had been a sadness in me about the period we didn’t see each other. I felt he was easing his way back.’

  After three weeks in Morocco, during which time Ollie never touched a drop, cast and crew moved to Malta, where the mighty Colosseum and other ancient structures of Rome had been spectacularly recreated at Fort Ricasoli on the north-east coast. Booked into a palatial five-star hotel in nearby Valletta, the island’s capital, Ollie and Josephine settled in for what was going to be a long stay. As they’d done many times before, on days off the pair loved to explore and do the whole tourist bit. And it was on one of these pleasant strolls around the winding and narrow streets of Valletta that they happened upon the Pub in Archbishop Street, a place Ollie immediately gravitated towards and began to use as his local. ‘Wherever Dad went he always tried to find somewhere that was like his little community watering hole,’ says Sarah. ‘He had to find that kind of pub environment wherever he was, just to make him feel at home.’ As a bonus there was also a good Chinese restaurant nearby. ‘So we would go to the Pub for a drink and then have a Chinese for lunch and then go back to the hotel,’ says Josephine. This became a ritual on their days off and at weekends.

  Ollie was delighted to learn that David Hemmings had a small role in the film and was staying at the same hotel. They hadn’t seen each other for a decade but soon caught up on old times. Hemmings noticed how splendid Oliver appeared. ‘With grey flowing hair, a silver beard and a white linen jacket, he looked the quintessential expatriate, swirling an arm at the assembled company, as if he were Her Majesty’s representative.’ Yet he was distressed to see that the old bad Ollie was still capable of rearing its ugly head. Russell Crowe had organized a cricket match between the cast and crew and a local team. Ollie was supposed to be playing but was instead found by Hemmings at the hotel bar ‘well beyond the danger level on his inebriation scale’. With Ollie refusing to leave and feeling the urge to chin someone, the hotel management moved in. Hemmings quickly explained that if they tried to get Ollie out now there’d be real trouble. ‘Let me give him a drink, then I’ll calm him down and get him upstairs without a scene.’ This was accomplished but, according to Hemmings, Oliver was subsequently banned from all public parts of the hotel except the swimming pool.

  It was for incidents like this that the British press had encamped in Malta. They seized on one report that while drunk Ollie challenged Crowe to a bout of fisticuffs but the Antipodean star refused to come out of his trailer until the baiting had ceased. Whether this was true or not, Crowe found Oliver difficult to get on with and has spoken about a ‘weird energy’ that seemed to encircle him. ‘I have seen him walk down the street in Malta drunk as a lord and just hit anybody he got near to,’ Crowe has said. ‘I just found that to be not impressive.’ A bit rich, coming from someone who, if as reported, once bit a chunk out of a man’s neck and spat it back in his face during a fight in a Sydney bar.

  Simon believes Russell’s dislike for Oliver probably stemmed from the fact that he saw in him something that was a little too close to home. And Mike Higgins, who was location manager in Malta, says that Ollie was nothing less than totally professional during his time on Gladiator. ‘I never saw him drunk on the set.’

  After five weeks on the island Oliver was looking forward to his final week of filming and going home. On the evening of Saturday, 1 May, Josephine and Ollie invited Hemmings and his wife Lucy out for dinner to a restaurant in Valletta bay. Ollie wasn’t drinking heavily, just a couple of glasses of wine. The conversation was merry, with Josephine describing their life together in Ireland in idyllic terms, but Hemmings couldn’t help feeling that Ollie was in ‘reflective’ mood that night. Back at the hotel, they enjoyed coffee in the bar, where the conversation continued but not for long, for Ollie complained of being very tired and he and Josephine went to bed. Hemmings later observed that he’d thought Oliver ‘looked worn out in a way I’d never seen him’.

  Sunday, 2 May was just like every other Sunday the Reeds had enjoyed during their stay in Malta: a bit of sightseeing, shopping, and a coffee in a charming café in the market. Ready for some lunch, Oliver and Josephine headed towards Archbishop Street but the Chinese restaurant wasn’t open yet so instinctively they headed for the Pub. Inside the television was showing the run-up to the Grand Prix from San Marino. A fan of the McLaren team, Ollie got some drinks in and settled down in his favourite chair to watch. He’d never see the end of the race. Even now, when a new Formula One season starts, Josephine gets a sickening, deadening feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  As the race got under way the door of the pub crashed open and a gang of Royal Navy ratings from HMS Cumberland burst in. Straightaway they recognized Ollie, who, unable to resist anyone in uniform, invited the whole bunch over to watch the race at his table. Out went the order, it was black rums all round, and, as the booze flowed and fuelled his bravado, Ollie challenged the youngsters to an arm-wrestling competition. He was in his element, he was loving every minute.

  After
about an hour the sailors got up to leave. Ollie happily signed autographs and then, suddenly overcome by exhaustion, fell asleep. ‘He was sitting on the floor,’ says Josephine. ‘So we propped him up on the bench while the rest of us carried on watching the Grand Prix. Then I realized something was wrong. I turned to see if he was all right and he wasn’t looking very good. He had gone rigid and he was blue around the lips.’ Immediately grasping the seriousness of the situation, Josephine asked for an ambulance to be called. As they waited, Ollie was given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and heart massages by the staff, but the only sign of any life in him was his fist repeatedly banging on the table. When the ambulance arrived, Ollie was bundled into the back. Josephine jumped in too and it sped off. Inside, as the vehicle made its way through the twisty, bumpy streets, the medics were violently buffeted backwards and forwards, so Josephine grabbed hold of their belts, terrified they might fall over and lose precious seconds in their battle to keep her husband alive.

  At the hospital, Ollie was quickly taken into an operating theatre. The wife of the publican had accompanied Josephine and sat with her during the long, unbearable wait until the doctors came out. It was the worst news imaginable. Ollie was gone. He was sixty-one. He’d probably never regained consciousness, and his last words had been spoken in the pub: ‘help’ and ‘hurt’. Josephine can’t remember him saying anything after that.

  Asked if she wanted to see the body, Josephine said yes, she would, and was led into the room. All was quiet as she stared down at Oliver for what would be the last time. He was at peace now, but his body still showed signs of the frantic efforts the doctors had made to bring him back into the living world. Josephine asked if they could at least remove some of the tubes, but it wasn’t allowed. ‘So I had to say goodbye to him with them all sticking out of his mouth.’

  Back in England, Simon was relaxing at home watching the Grand Prix when the phone rang. It was Josephine. ‘Simon he’s gone, he’s gone.’ There was Simon thinking, gone where? Left her? ‘He’s gone,’ the voice said again. ‘He’s GONE, Simon.’ For a few seconds Simon thought this was some sick practical joke and that Ollie would soon come on the line yelling, ‘Gotcha!’ ‘Because Ollie was indestructible. Having lived past forty, which I never thought he would, he was destined to be a ninety-year-old grumpy old man. So it made no sense. I thought Josephine was taking the piss, I thought this was a wind-up, so it took me a little while to take it in. Then I suddenly realized, fuck, he’s gone. He’s really gone. I couldn’t get my head round it, it just seemed so wrong.’ In a near daze Simon called Mark and then David. Walking out into his garden, he picked up a couple of small pebbles and, like a little boy, started throwing them hard against the garden wall.

  Mark was walking a dog on Wimbledon Common when Simon called. He’d shared a few drinks with his father just before he went off to make Gladiator and there was no sense of the tragedy that was waiting for him. ‘I remember him leaving my Wimbledon flat about three in the morning, walking down the stairs, and just catching his eye and saying, “I love you.” It’s a memory that I hold because it was the last time I saw him.’

  David was in Majorca working on his boat when the news reached him. It didn’t altogether come as a shock. ‘I think deep down we always knew that Ollie would die relatively young. When I ran that office in Piccadilly Circus as his manager there was a newspaper vendor outside and when I arrived some mornings there would be a headline like, Oliver Reed arrested for something or other, and I’d think, oh, for fuck’s sake! And I remember thinking that it wouldn’t surprise me if I left my office one day and the headline was “Oliver Reed Dead.”’

  Sarah was at work when it happened. Finishing her shift in a restaurant, she checked her answering machine for any messages and recognized Mark. ‘And I could just tell by the tone of his voice that something was wrong. I rang him and he told me and I behaved really awfully: I said, “I don’t believe you. I need to speak to somebody else.” He said to call Simon. So then I spoke to Simon and he explained what happened and that was that, the world had changed.’

  Sarah had rung her father when he’d been in Morocco and he’d asked her to come and see him there, but she couldn’t get the time off work. When she rang again he’d already left for Malta. ‘That’s how rubbish we were as a family: we didn’t keep up, we didn’t speak weekly.’ When she reached him in Malta, Ollie told her, ‘It’s horrible here, don’t come here. I’ll be home in a month’s time.’ Of course he wasn’t. ‘And I hadn’t seen him for a year, because it wasn’t always easy to be in his company. It was that whole thing that, as much as you wanted to see someone it wasn’t always pleasant, so sometimes you don’t put yourself out of your comfort zone. I regretted that for a long time because obviously I thought I would have many more years.’

  Sarah remembers the last time her father tried to talk to her on the phone, ringing her at work, but by the time she reached the phone he’d gone, having got bored of waiting, and Sarah never spoke to him again. A week later he was dead. ‘When he died I thought, I wish I’d got to that phone quicker.’

  Trying as best she could to compose herself, Sarah rang Jacquie. ‘Daddy’s dead,’ she said, her voice trembling. Jacquie was shattered. Like others, she couldn’t quite believe it was true. ‘He was the sort of person you thought would go on for ever, that he would always be there. I almost felt like saying to Sarah, “Are you sure?” But he died as he would have wanted to die. Josephine was with him and he was doing his usual arm-wrestling with the sailors.’

  Back in Valletta, Josephine had called her brother William, who promised to catch the first available flight. Until then she was on her own. It was David Hemmings and Lucy who came to the rescue. ‘They were wonderful, both of them sat with me for ages, just keeping me company, looking after me until I said it was all right for them to leave. Then I just curled up into a ball and waited for my brother.’

  As Josephine fell into a fretful sleep the news of Ollie’s passing was spreading around Malta. By morning, as the cast and crew of Gladiator rolled on to the set to begin another day’s work, everybody was devastated by what had happened. ‘They couldn’t believe it,’ recalls location manager Mike Higgins. ‘There was such a sadness on the set that day because Ollie had really endeared himself to the whole crew and everybody was really, really upset.’

  Word of Ollie’s death was also filtering out to the world and being taken in by friends and colleagues, most of whom were shocked by the seemingly sudden nature of it. ‘I was heartbroken when he died,’ remembers Murray Melvin. ‘I phoned Georgina Hale. I said, “He’s gone. The silly bugger. What did he bloody do that for?” We all loved him. He was a lovely human being. He really was.’

  Michael Winner had spoken with Oliver on the phone just two days earlier. A reporter was going over to see him and Winner had urged, ‘Do me a favour, dear, don’t throw her in the pool, don’t take her knickers down and hurl her round the room. Please just be very nice to her.’

  ‘Michael, I promise you,’ Ollie told him. ‘I’ve only got a couple more shots in the movie and they’ve offered me a great role on television.’ That role was in My Uncle Silas, produced by the team who’d been behind another H. E. Bates adaptation, The Darling Buds of May; it was something Ollie was really looking forward to doing. His replacement would be Albert Finney.

  Winner could sense in Ollie’s voice an optimism about his professional future that he hadn’t heard for so long. ‘He was just so thrilled because he thought he was washed up and now he was back. Then I got the call, Oliver Reed’s dead, and I just burst into tears. Terrible.’

  Carol Lynley was at home in California when a friend told her the news. ‘And I just started shaking. It was like a chemical reaction, of shock. I hadn’t seen him in years, but he was such a huge figure in my life. He was so full of life, and he should have had a longer life, but I don’t think he expected to live very long. He went out the way he would have wanted. I could never see Ollie sitting around
in an old people’s home.’

  Michael Christensen had the same feeling. ‘I thought, far better that than in a cancer ward. Arm-wrestling with the navy, in a bar, drinking rum, that’s the way he’d have wanted to go. But it was much too soon.’ And also totally unexpected. Oliver had undergone a strict medical for Gladiator, and passed. But Pat O’Brien recalls Ollie telling him, just before leaving Churchtown for Morocco, that he’d been having niggling pains in his chest and felt that he might have angina. Ollie had also paid a brief visit to Dorking to have some work done on his teeth and met Johnny Placett, who recalls, ‘I picked him up from the Hilton at Gatwick, where he was staying. We stopped at a café. He just had an orange juice, and I remember him saying to me, “I haven’t been too well. I’ve had to go off the drink a little bit. And I’ve been having some pains in my chest, but don’t say anything.”’ Then he went off to make Gladiator.

  As far as the family was concerned, however, there was no indication of any health issues. Later, though, a photograph turned up that was taken a week before he died, ‘And he didn’t look like a well man,’ says Sarah. ‘But I can’t imagine my father would have slowed down too much for anything, although he was terrified of death.’

  Back at the hotel, Josephine was awoken by her brother William. She was feeling a little stronger now with a familiar face by her side, and when Mark and Sarah arrived her resolve and fortitude were further strengthened. Already the world’s press had descended. Josephine remembers not being able to look out of her hotel room, ‘because I could see them lined up way down the street, with their huge lenses, so I just kept away from the windows. I suppose they were just doing their job.’ Mark and Sarah were less philosophical, having been harassed on their separate flights. And when they both decided to pay a visit to the Pub the next day they had to be smuggled out of the back door of the hotel. They spent a cursory fifteen minutes in the place, a bizarre and chilling episode. ‘I don’t know why we went there,’ admits Sarah. ‘It was quite a morbid thing that Mark and I felt we needed to do. I suppose we wanted to know where it had all gone wrong.’