Peter O'Toole

by Robert Sellers

  Outside, Forbes grabbed Brian Blessed, who was playing Banquo. As a loose friend of O’Toole’s he was Forbes’ only hope.

  ‘Do you think his bottle’s gone?’ said Blessed.

  ‘God help us if it has,’ said Forbes.

  ‘Leave him to me. Can’t promise what he’ll look like, but I’ll get him on.’

  By some miracle O’Toole got onto the stage, haphazardly dressed though he was, including for some bizarre reason jogging trousers and baseball boots. The costume designer was so disgusted that she was seen later that night scratching her name off all the posters outside the Old Vic. ‘There was madness in the theatre that night on both sides of the curtain,’ Forbes said. At first the audience were bewildered by what they were seeing, then as the play went on the giggles began. By the time of O’Toole’s much promised bloodbath they could contain themselves no longer. Traditionally Macbeth returns after the off-stage killing of the King with the actor having merely soaked his hands in blood. Not O’Toole. ‘In the wings was a tin bath with about a foot of Kensington gore inside it,’ recalls Quarmby. ‘Peter would stand in it and douse himself from head to foot, walk on stage with everything dripping, looking like Carrie, and say, “I have done the deed.” The effect produced on the audience wasn’t the uncomfortable laughter of people who are not sure whether something is being sent up or not, it was the laughter of disbelief and theatrical horror.’ As Forbes later confessed, ‘From that moment onwards the play was doomed.’

  Absurdity followed absurdity when stage hands came on the stage to mop up the fake blood because the actors complained they were slipping in it. When the safety curtain came down some members of the audience instinctively got up to leave, requiring Forbes to announce over the tannoy, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is not an interval. I repeat, this is not an interval.’ Something had to be done and it was put to O’Toole that perhaps he had overdone it slightly. Fulford clearly remembers hearing O’Toole shouting from his dressing room: ‘No blood! No show!’

  In the audience that first night was O’Toole’s old Bristol pal Patrick Dromgoole, by now a top television executive. Like the rest of the audience he watched with mounting incredulity. ‘In my view, Peter hadn’t got an angle on the part at all. He didn’t know what he was doing, it was incredible.’ Afterwards Dromgoole went to see him in his dressing room and there he saw a man, his old friend, not only physically laid low but emotionally teetering on the edge. ‘But not admitting it.’ Dromgoole brought his car round the back of the theatre and got O’Toole out, past a baying mob of journalists shouting, ‘What’s it like to be laughed at, Mr O’Toole?’

  In the following morning’s newspapers the critics did not hold back. ‘The performance is not so much downright bad as heroically ludicrous,’ said the Daily Mail’s Jack Tinker. ‘The voice is pure Bette Davis in her Baby Jane mood, the manner is Vincent Price hamming up a Hammer horror.’ The Sunday Times’ critic called it ‘a milestone in the history of coarse acting. Mr O’Toole’s performance was deranged.’ Perhaps The Times’ Irving Wardle hit the nail on the head when he said that O’Toole’s performance evoked the kind of thing one got from Sir Donald Wolfit on a bad night. ‘I view it almost like it was the closing volleys of the barnstorming actor/manager type,’ says Quarmby. ‘The death of the Wolfits. One actually felt that you were at the funeral of that style of performer and acting.’

  O’Toole realized that something was wrong when his housekeeper told him there was a scrum of journalists outside the front door. ‘What could I do?’ he later joked. ‘My shaver is electric so I could not cut my throat.’ Like the rest of the cast arriving at the theatre that night, O’Toole had to fight his way through TV crews and crowds besieging the box office for tickets that had already sold out. Although the overall mood amongst the cast was one of despondency, with many looking at each other for some kind of reassurance, O’Toole made a point of visiting every individual member of the company in their dressing room prior to curtain-up to present them each with a red rose and a private rallying cry: ‘We’ve had some bloody awful reviews, but I’m firmly committed to this production. I absolutely believe what I am doing is right. We do not change a thing. We don’t listen to those bastards. We carry on!’

  While there was certainly an element of everyone rallying around and getting on with it, having to go on night after night knowing that many of the audience were there for the wrong reasons, like motorists stopping to gawp at a car accident, was a demoralizing experience. ‘There was a real sense with many of us that it was like we were going through a sort of trench warfare,’ recalls Quarmby. ‘And we were being sent over the top every night and the general leading us hadn’t got a pair of glasses and didn’t know that we were firing in the wrong direction.’ The hope remained that there would be an attempt to at least put some of the problems right. But there were no further rehearsals, nothing. ‘It was farcically, scarily organized, or disorganized,’ says Quarmby. ‘It was a trial.’

  O’Toole continued to give the impression that it was all like water off a duck’s back, revelling defiantly in the controversy and criticism. ‘There has to be danger in theatre or it doesn’t work,’ he’d once said. ‘You can’t play safe.’ But inside it was tearing him apart. In a cry for help he wrote a revealing note to Patrick Dromgoole which read: ‘I’ve forgotten how to do it.’ He did feel terribly betrayed by the critics, who seemed hell-bent on giving him a really good kicking. ‘I was terribly upset for him because he was absolutely crucified over Macbeth,’ says Dromgoole. ‘And any lack of love was agonizingly painful to him. He loved being loved.’ Remarkably, out of sixty-odd performances of Macbeth, O’Toole did not miss a single one.

  Friends rallied round. Katharine Hepburn phoned with the advice, ‘If you’re going to have a disaster, have a big one.’ Burton called, too. ‘I hear you’ve had a bit of stick from the critics.’

  ‘Yes,’ O’Toole replied.

  ‘How are the houses?’

  ‘Packed.’

  ‘Then remember this, my boy, you are the most original actor to come out of Britain since the war and fuck the critics.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said O’Toole.

  Burton went on, ‘Think of every four letter obscenity, six, eight, ten and twelve letter expletives and ram it right up their envious arses in which I’m sure there is ample room.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said O’Toole, no doubt touched.

  Halfway through its London run Macbeth embarked on a short tour, playing Liverpool, Leeds and Bristol. The Liverpool Empire, a barn of a theatre seating around two thousand and usually reserved for mammoth musicals or rock concerts, was packed every night and the roars of laughter were even louder. In Bristol, Nat Brenner, who had just left his post as Principal of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, showed up one night and news filtered backstage that his opinion of the production was unsympathetic to say the least. ‘The word was that Nat really destroyed Peter with his comments,’ reveals Quarmby. ‘And I don’t know if it’s just in retrospect or whether I do remember Bristol being the only venue where one sensed a sort of crestfallen Peter. And I’m pretty damn sure it was after Nat came to see it.’

  Christopher Fulford recalls that the play seemed to receive a more favourable response from provincial critics. And his own opinion of O’Toole’s performance hadn’t changed. ‘When I had my moments on stage with him I thought he was fantastic, absolutely fantastic. I remember coming on stage once and he had something going on in his head that was so in the moment you almost reeled back from the force of it.’

  Playing Donalbain, Fulford was required to wear a wig because his own hair was too short. By the time of the tour his hair had grown sufficiently long enough that he didn’t think he needed it any more and went to see O’Toole. Knocking on his dressing-room door he entered and there was O’Toole doing press-ups on the floor. ‘Absolutely, no problem, get rid of the wig.’ He then looked at Fulford intently. ‘But you know something, you’ve got to get it a bit thicker,
yes, a bit thicker.’

  ‘OK,’ said Fulford.

  ‘You know what I use?’

  ‘No, what’s that, Pete?’

  O’Toole was dressed in his Macbeth costume and in his dressing room was a large circular table containing every conceivable spirit, plus mixers. They weren’t for him, but for guests who might pop in. On the middle of this table was a large carton of orange juice. ‘You know what I use, Christopher, orange juice.’ With that he poured some of the juice out into his cupped hand and splashed it onto his hair. ‘It’s marvellous. Marvellous,’ he said as he rubbed it all in. ‘And then he approached me to put some of the juice on my hair,’ recalls Fulford. ‘I said, “It’s all right, Peter, I’ve got some upstairs, it’s fine.” And he looked at me seriously, because he was a terribly sincere, wonderful man. I really admired him and liked him enormously. He said, “And do you know what’s so marvellous about it, Christopher?” I said, “What’s that, Peter?” He said, “It brushes out.” ’

  Installed back at the Old Vic, Macbeth continued to play to sell-out crowds until it finally finished its run just before Christmas. For the cast there was no cathartic release or sense of elation. ‘One really just felt so bloody relieved that it was over,’ says Quarmby. ‘Just absolute relief of being able to close the door on that chapter.’

  For O’Toole, however, the reverberations would last for years. In the short term his position at the Old Vic was untenable. Yes, Macbeth had made money, lots of money, but the bad publicity had damaged the reputation of the theatre and O’Toole, who had hoped to stage a production of King Lear next, had no choice but to resign his position as associate director and walk away.

  Months later, as the scandal died down, O’Toole was able to look back more philosophically on the event and recognize it for what it was – a total fuck-up. ‘My nose starts bleeding the minute I even think about the reviews.’ It had been a chore, ‘without any question, the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.’ Not helped by the fact he’d had to deal with the emotional stress of losing his mother, who died in January 1981. ‘It’s odd to feel like an orphan at forty-eight,’ he said.

  Forbes, too, was hurt by the play’s reception and the effect on O’Toole, of whom he had grown fond: ‘For I admire nothing more than true talent.’ In the end, Forbes put it all down to ‘a tragi-comedy of good intentions’.

  TWENTY

  One ironic result of the disaster of Macbeth, which made headlines around the world, was that it put O’Toole back into the international spotlight and turned him into a saleable commodity again. Hurriedly he was rushed over to Hollywood to help with the publicity push for The Stunt Man, which after over a year on the shelf had found a willing distributor and was earning rave notices. At first no one would touch it. ‘It didn’t fit into the wrapper that the distributors had prepared that they send their hamburgers out in,’ complains Rush. ‘They would always say when they saw the film, “What is it, is it a comedy, is it a drama, is it an action adventure? Is it a satire?” And of course I would say, “Yes! It’s all those things.” ’ Rush was also under pressure from his financiers to re-cut the picture; it got so bad that he suffered a heart attack.

  All this time O’Toole stood by the movie, remaining positive and always full of great ideas. When Rush sent him a copy of the poster art, of a devil figure sitting on a director’s chair looking through a camera, O’Toole called back to say that he took one look at the picture of this devil with that massive tail thrusting forward between his legs and his only comment was: ‘How did you know?’

  The Stunt Man remains one of the best movies about making movies ever produced. By turns crazy, sophisticated, surreal and base, it is a thoroughly entertaining jigsaw puzzle that demands repeated viewings. The cast are uniformly excellent but this is O’Toole’s gig. He dominates every scene he’s in and brings to bear upon the role his enormous intelligence as an actor, sharp sense of humour and boundless energy. Also that quality that all great actors must have, an enormous sense of danger. It’s there in so many of O’Toole’s performances, this ability to keep an audience off balance.

  O’Toole’s performance in The Stunt Man resulted in his sixth Oscar nomination for Best Actor. ‘Peter was staying at my house at the time of the Academy Awards,’ says Rush. ‘And he came out of his room that morning and said, “I am a movie star!” He was getting in the mood for the ceremony.’ He failed to win yet again, this time losing out to Robert De Niro for Raging Bull.

  Cursing his luck, O’Toole took solace in a new relationship in his life. He and Trudie Styler had parted, though remaining on friendly terms. Since his separation from Siân, O’Toole hadn’t really been looking for a long-term relationship and certainly didn’t think he would marry again. ‘I love company. I’m very gregarious. But I love to be alone. Always have. It would take an exceptional woman. I have an open pair of arms and an open mind. And low expectations.’ On relationships he once told reporters that any woman contemplating marrying him ought to be led gently to a place of safety. It was during a recent stay in Hollywood, however, that O’Toole met Karen Brown Somerville, an American former model fifteen years his junior. They began dating.

  After a tough few years things were beginning to look up on the professional front, too. He was preparing to start work on a film that would prove to be one of his most enjoyable and popular, a project that came his way through the generosity of his old RADA chum, Albert Finney. My Favorite Year was produced by Mel Brooks’ company and based on his own experiences as a young comedy writer on a TV show in the fifties when he was drafted in to keep Errol Flynn sober and out of trouble until he’d made his guest star appearance. To many, O’Toole seemed perfect casting for the role of a sozzled and faded Hollywood film star, but Brooks’ co-producer on the film, Michael Gruskoff, first sent the script to Finney. He got an unusual reply back. ‘Albert read it and said, “You’ve got the wrong guy, Michael. Peter would be better for this part than me.” ’ Finney even made sure that a copy of the script made its way to O’Toole, who upon first reading it knew this was something he could have fun with.

  O’Toole also took to Richard Benjamin, an actor making his debut as director, when they met in New York for talks. Benjamin recalled the very first day of shooting in Central Park. The light was fading and there wasn’t any energy in the scene, it was too slow, especially O’Toole. Then it hit him, he was now going to have to direct Peter O’Toole. As he walked over, all Benjamin could see was Lawrence of Arabia and Lord Jim and Henry II, and any second he was going to have to tell this legend to raise his game. ‘Peter, er, it’s really good, it’s all good, but—’ O’Toole interrupted. ‘You want it faster and funnier, is that it?’ Benjamin looked relieved. ‘That’s it. You’ve got it!’ After that Benjamin rarely had to do more than three takes with O’Toole. The only thing O’Toole insisted upon was not being called from his dressing room until he was absolutely required. ‘He just wanted you to be ready,’ said Benjamin. ‘And boy, he’d come out there and it was like howitzer shells.’

  It was much the same with Mark Linn-Baker, a young actor from a largely theatrical background who had been chosen to play the writer given the task of looking after O’Toole’s matinee idol, Alan Swann. Baker had done a few small roles in films but this was his first lead and his relationship with O’Toole in many ways paralleled that of the characters they were playing. ‘Peter very kindly took me under his wing. He gave me pointers all along the way, just little practical points of craft that you don’t know till somebody tells you. Anything I know about film acting I learnt from what he told me and from watching him in those few months.’

  Playing an Errol Flynn type swashbuckler, O’Toole was required to be fairly nifty in a couple of scenes with a rapier, so Gruskoff scheduled three two-hour fencing lessons. ‘Michael, we simply can’t do this,’ he said when told of the plan.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In order for me to pull this off I need at least ten lessons.’ He did
n’t miss a single one.

  However, O’Toole’s professionalism did come into question on of all days the singular occasion Mel Brooks showed up to watch filming. Ironically, the scene was Swann arriving late at the TV studio. The call time was 8 a.m. Brooks was there, Benjamin was there, the crew were setting up, but O’Toole was a no-show. ‘He must be a real Method actor,’ Brooks was heard to mutter. After an hour there was still no sign of him. ‘I’m going to his hotel and see what the hell is going on,’ Gruskoff told Brooks. When he arrived, the woman at the front desk told him that O’Toole had been on the phone for four hours with his daughters in London, there was some family problem he had to deal with. Finally a message came down that O’Toole didn’t want to see Gruskoff, he would see him later on the set. ‘At twelve o’clock he arrived,’ Gruskoff recalls. ‘The first thing he did was to come over and see me. “Gruskoff,” he said. “Sorry I’m late, but from here on in I’m carrying you on my back and we’re going to bring this movie home.” ’

  Not everyone on the film was aware that O’Toole no longer drank, but one incident confirmed how even a drop of alcohol passing his lips could prove dangerous. There’s a scene in My Favorite Year where Swann wakes up in bed with a stewardess and immediately downs one of those airline-size mini-bottles of Scotch. A whole case of little bottles had been prepared, each one emptied of liquor, washed and re-filled with coloured water. Somehow a real bottle slipped through by mistake and, according to Mark Linn-Baker, who was on set at the time, ‘Peter got immediately sick.’ It was several hours before he was well enough to continue work.

  There was caution too about just how much of the physical comedy O’Toole could manage, given his rather perilous state and frail frame. Quite a lot as it turned out, O’Toole was game for anything. In one scene he falls, dead drunk and rigid, against a bathroom wall so that his forehead strikes the tile. He did the take twenty times without complaint, thumping his head against the tile again and again. In another scene O’Toole and Baker gallop on horseback through Central Park. Before the first take O’Toole took Baker to one side. ‘Dear boy, there’s only two things to remember working on a horse. If I start to fall off, let go of me. The second thing is, if you start to fall off, let go of me!’ Two different animals had been brought in, a running horse and a horse that reared on command, the command being simply to brush one’s leg on its haunch. For the shot of them galloping over a bridge no one had seen fit to tell Baker they were using the rearing horse. ‘So we’re both on the horse, they’re getting ready for the shot, and I move my leg and the horse starts rearing and we’re falling off – and I let go. But we’re both still falling off. And as I’m falling my thought is, oh my God, I’ve killed Peter O’Toole! I land on my back on the ground. It looks like Peter has landed lightly on his feet and has a cigarette already lit and is staring down at me. “Dear boy, are you all right?” ’