This is something Basil Pao, one of the assistant directors and an acclaimed photographer, picked up on. Often he’d chat with O’Toole on the set about Chinese history and the current political climate in places like Hong Kong, where Pao was from. But most of the time O’Toole kept his own counsel and his own company. ‘He’d talk to people he was interested in,’ says Pao. ‘But he was definitely a man who lived in his own private world by choice.’
At one point during filming Terry Gilliam turned up in Beijing to talk to O’Toole about the possibility of him playing Baron Munchausen in a big-budget adaptation of the famous German stories. According to Pao they spent some time discussing the film, he even caught sight of the actor on walks brandishing a twig as if it were some imaginary sword. Though Gilliam deemed O’Toole ‘perfect for the part’, which indeed he was, there were concerns whether or not he would be strong enough to endure the long months of filming and the physically arduous role. John Neville was cast instead.
When O’Toole’s time on The Last Emperor came to an end he decided to return to England by way of the Trans-Siberian Express. The ticket was bought and he saw that he had several days before the train left. He was eager not to waste them. Whilst playing Reginald Johnston, a Confucius scholar, O’Toole had become increasingly interested in the philosopher’s teachings and declared an intention to travel north to Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius and where his body was laid to rest. It was a long journey and Basil Pao was assigned to accompany him. They travelled by sleeper train arriving early the following morning. Given a tour guide, and with scarcely another soul around, O’Toole and Pao wandered quietly, almost solemnly, through the barren cemetery finally arriving at the gravestone. In the terrible days of Chairman Mao and the cultural revolution the teachings of Confucius were banned and the Red Guard had smashed his tomb to pieces. Now it stood whole again, although the vandalism of the past was clear to see in the pathetic way the stone tablets had been put back together using iron brackets and cement. ‘Peter stood in front of that grave holding a wild flower he’d picked with tears in his eyes,’ Pao remembers. ‘It was quite a touching moment. But also very depressing, the senselessness of the destruction, the human stupidity of it and the effort to now commercialize the place after what they’d done to it.’
Feeling sorry for themselves, O’Toole and Pao went to a nearby hotel. It was beginning to get cold, winter was just setting in, and Pao decided to have a shot of brandy in his coffee to warm himself up. ‘I’ll join you,’ said O’Toole. As the evening progressed they moved on to sweet Chinese wine and well lubricated made their way to the train, carrying a few bottles which they happily shared with their fellow passengers on the way back to Beijing. It had been a memorable experience.
O’Toole had recently gone back on the drink, just the odd glass of wine and perhaps the odd binge. It was during a trip to Moscow. He found the Russian capital truly ghastly. ‘There were all these people queuing for cardboard shoes and everyone with forms and clipboards. I found a tea bar where they served sly vodkas. What else could I do.’ A little over ten years ago the booze had almost killed him. It was a remarkable recovery, a wonder of modern medicine, but the O’Tooles were made of strong stuff.
TWENTY-TWO
In April 1987, O’Toole accepted an offer to reprise his London success as Henry Higgins in a Broadway production of Pygmalion. It proved to be his first and only appearance on the New York stage and was not an altogether happy experience. The show ran till August, during which time O’Toole was felled by illness and poor health, resulting in him missing something like twenty-two performances. His understudy, Ivar Brogger, has never forgotten that first phone call from the stage manager: ‘Mr O’Toole has lost his voice – so you’re on.’ That was towards the end of the first month, after which O’Toole never managed to play a full week again. ‘He just could not bounce back,’ says Brogger. ‘So he would do a few shows and then he’d be out maybe for one performance, maybe three, it depended on how he was feeling.’
The rumour mill went into overload that O’Toole’s cocaine use was to blame. But Brogger firmly believes it was nothing to do with drugs or alcohol. ‘I think Peter physically was at a place where if something happened it was hard for him to recover easily or quickly.’ At one point Brogger confronted O’Toole’s personal assistant to ask if there was anything going on. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘He is not doing anything. When he comes home after the show he has a glass of warm milk and then goes to bed.’
When the producers began insinuating that O’Toole wasn’t really sick, that he just didn’t fancy doing eight shows a week, the hospital called to confirm his illness. ‘I found out many years later that Peter was really sick, that he could have passed away,’ confirms Johnnie Planco. ‘It was something to do with intestinal pain or internal bleeding. It was serious, no doubt about it.’
The effort and strain O’Toole exerted to get himself through that run Brogger saw first-hand. Often he was invited to his dressing room, where they sat and talked for hours, sometimes about acting. Brogger recalls O’Toole telling him about how one day he wanted to play King Lear. ‘I’ll never forget this particular night, Peter was really low, he wasn’t feeling good. He was about to get ready to go on stage and I think it was looking like Mount Everest to him. He was sitting in his chair in front of his make-up mirror. I put my hand on his shoulder and thought I’d get him onto a subject he might enjoy talking about so I said, “Tell me about your ideas for Lear.” And he put his hands over his face and said, “Oh Christ.” Then he looked in the mirror: “Just let me get through tonight.” ’
Besides being understudy Brogger was also cast in the small role of ‘sarcastic bystander’, who gives Higgins something of a hard time in the opening scene set in Covent Garden. At an early rehearsal O’Toole called Brogger to one side. ‘Ivar, do you know, I had some thoughts about the sarcastic bystander, and I think perhaps he slouches a lot, perhaps with a fag hanging out of his mouth and a cap on his head, hands in his pockets, never really stands up straight.’ Brogger’s face registered a degree of scepticism. It didn’t take long for a wry smile to emerge on O’Toole’s face. ‘Well, you see,’ he said. ‘The fact is, I want to appear very tall on stage and you and I are of the same height . . .’ Brogger cut in. ‘It’s perfectly OK, Peter, it gives me something to play as the sarcastic bystander, and if you want to be taller than me on stage that’s cool.’ O’Toole was nothing if not very canny.
After Brogger had appeared for O’Toole a few times he was called into his dressing room one night and asked how he was enjoying it. ‘Peter, I have to tell you, it’s a great role, and I appreciate the opportunity, but it’s not an unalloyed joy going on for you.’
O’Toole looked aghast. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I’ve never been in a situation where just my very presence is a disappointment to hundreds of people.’
O’Toole looked at Brogger, a veneer of sympathy on his face. ‘I know, dear boy. I know.’
‘He knew he was a star,’ says Brogger. ‘He accepted it like you need water to live.’
In the role of Eliza Doolittle, O’Toole had insisted upon Amanda Plummer, the actress daughter of Christopher Plummer. O’Toole and Christopher Plummer had been friends since the sixties and delighted in each other’s company. ‘They never worked together,’ says Johnnie Planco. ‘But boy when you saw them together they were like long-lost brothers. Whenever I used to bump into Chris the first thing he’d say was, “How’s Peter?” ’
An enormous fan of O’Toole, Amanda had flown from New York to London just a few years before, when O’Toole and Albert Finney were appearing in separate plays at the same time in the West End. ‘I calculated that I would only have a few pennies left after this trip, but I went, fuck it, I’ve got to go see this, I don’t care if I don’t eat for a year.’ After one show she went backstage to see Finney and he took her out for a meal. ‘Wow – that was so friggin’ generous, unbelievable. I didn’t quit
e get the courage up to go see Peter backstage. But then to end up working with him – shit!’
Before the read-through Amanda took it upon herself to invite O’Toole to dinner at her apartment. ‘I was in extreme awe of him, which is like the kiss of death, so I had to overcome this aweness. God I was trembling. Ding dong – oh shit, I could hear him coming to the door – oh my God I can’t talk.’ Graciously O’Toole put Amanda at ease, he had huge admiration for her abilities and became extremely fond of her. On stage the pair clicked. Amanda marvelled at O’Toole’s ability to change things from performance to performance, to make what was light, dark, to make what was dark, light and play with all the greys in between. But above all it was his energy. ‘Playing with Peter and looking in his eyes, it was magic, the energy around him – you just let go.’
Sadly, Amanda herself came down with an illness and had to take a break from the show. O’Toole took pleasure in playing nurse maid, putting her in his guest bedroom and making her drink a concoction of his own devising. Looking at it Amanda wasn’t so sure and wanted to know what was in it. ‘Don’t ask,’ she was told.
When Amanda’s understudy, an English actress, took over, O’Toole didn’t think she was up to the job. One night during the opening scene she said her line only for O’Toole to turn away to face Brogger and say, ‘Oh Christ, she’s acting again.’ O’Toole’s goading did not stop there. ‘Another night,’ recalls Brogger, ‘she said a line to him and he said – “What!” – and made her repeat it. She repeated the line and he said – “WHAT!” – and made her say the line a third time. This was on stage, in front of an audience.’ After the famous tea-party scene, where Higgins shows off the transformed Eliza to his mother, O’Toole literally shooed the actress off the stage like you might shoo off a bunch of chickens. Brogger confronted him about it. ‘But she does nothing,’ O’Toole said in his defence. ‘So I have to do everything!’
While in New York, O’Toole was able to have Lorcan come and live part of the week with him in his Manhattan hotel. Brogger remembers that O’Toole often talked about Lorcan and it was so very evident that he doted on the boy. ‘Lorcan was the apple of his eye. He loved Lorcan. To see him light up when Lorcan came into the room was wonderful.’ Even at the age of four, Brogger could see a little of O’Toole in the precocious lad. ‘There was the occasion when Lorcan arrived at the theatre all dressed up because they were going on somewhere after the show. Preening himself he announced, “These are my smashing clothes.” Another time he wandered a bit too far backstage and one of the stagehands had to tell him not to walk any further because then the audience would be able to see him. Lorcan turned around and looked at the stagehand and there was a mischievous twinkle in his eye like, oh yeah, you mean I could just walk over there and everyone will see me.’
While business was brisk, reviews for Pygmalion were mixed. Amanda Plummer herself thinks the production was too conservative and safe. The supporting cast were very much of the old school: Lionel Jeffries as Pickering and John Mills playing Doolittle. There was also Joyce Redman, best known for the eating scene with Albert Finney in Tom Jones, playing Higgins’ mother. According to Brogger, O’Toole doted on Joyce throughout the production. ‘He loved her, and no wonder. She was seventy-five years old but walked like – I still got it.’
O’Toole’s own idiosyncratic performance, according to Brogger, divided the Broadway theatrical community: ‘I think a lot of people thought he was drunk or they were not overly receptive to what he was doing. Then there were others, and I’m certainly in that camp, who thought he was so original in that role that he was a joy to watch.’ When he was not nominated for a Tony Award, O’Toole defended himself in his usual manner. ‘Not knowing what a Tony was until I had not been nominated, I wasn’t disappointed.’
When his time on Broadway was at an end O’Toole returned to Clifden and his beloved house and garden and his trips into town. ‘When we were making The Stunt Man,’ recalls Steve Railsback, ‘Peter told me that when he was in Ireland he would go to the pubs and he would just recite poetry. This was his life. What a wonderful thing.’
He had also found a new passion, something that perhaps gave him a sense of locality and identity, breeding the famous Connemara pony. He owned three or four of them, which he’d enter in the annual Connemara pony show, held in Clifden every summer. This was like Oscar night for O’Toole. There he would be every year, always the centre of attention in his tweeds. ‘Peter was funny because at home he would come in with a dirty old rain mac and a pair of chinos and a jumper,’ says Paul D’Alton. ‘But then in the Connemara pony show, because he was then on stage, as it were, he’d dress up and it was hilarious. Although he always said he was an Irishman and patriotic, he’d dress like the full English country squire, the tweed outfit was perfectly pressed. It was like a Silicon Valley millionaire going shooting in Scotland, the Barbour jacket wouldn’t have been handed down and dirty and torn like all of ours, it would be spotless.’
According to D’Alton, O’Toole didn’t really know very much about horses, ‘and was nearly decapitated when his stallion Dr Slattery half dragged him across the show field at the Connemara pony show as we died laughing’. O’Toole thought he was on to a winner with Dr Slattery, telling everyone who’d listen what a great stallion it was. When it failed to win the top prize one year that was the last anyone heard or saw of the beast.
By the end of the year he had accepted another movie role, in the comedy High Spirits, playing the owner of an Irish castle in danger of repossession who decides to turn the place, with the help of his staff, into a haunted house for the tourist trade. The studio wanted Sean Connery, but when he pulled out director Neil Jordan replaced him with O’Toole. It was his first lead in a film for several years and it was now plainly obvious that he was no longer first choice in many Hollywood producers’ minds. In truth, his box-office status had been waning for more than a decade now, but his name and presence could still add gravitas to any production.
Jordan pulled together an impressive cast. Joining O’Toole were Steve Guttenberg, Daryl Hannah, Ray McAnally and Liam Neeson, whose girlfriend of the time was hovering around the set most of the time, a young actress by the name of Julia Roberts. Filming began with interiors at Shepperton and O’Toole’s dressing room quickly turned into the social hub of the movie, coming as it did with a well-stocked bar. Most of the Irish actors, once made up and in costume, hung out there, drinking and playing cards. O’Toole held court, either talking about cricket or studying the papers and putting bets on the horses. Often he was in raconteur mode. ‘He told us lots and lots of drinking stories,’ recalls actress and singer Mary Coughlan. ‘About when he was in the desert with Omar Sharif and they hired motorbikes from a local guy and just fucked off for three days.’
On set O’Toole was friendly and amusing, and Guttenberg has always appreciated the one piece of advice he was given. ‘He’d say, always do something different, whenever you’re acting, whenever you’re creating, always pop out from another hole.’
One day on set Guttenberg talked to O’Toole about the frustrations of the profession, that it had the capacity sometimes to make you so angry you got home and kicked the dog. ‘How do you avoid kicking the dog?’ O’Toole thought for a while before replying, ‘Don’t have a dog.’
During location filming around Limerick, O’Toole took Guttenberg to a rugby match, one presumes it was Munster, the team both he and Harris followed. It was a memorable experience for the American, the passion of the crowd and being with someone whose love of the game was matched by his knowledge of it.
Although High Spirits was panned by critics and flopped at the box office, Mary says it was ‘absolutely great craic to make’. Guttenberg, too, enjoyed his time on the film and working with O’Toole. ‘He was so theatrical in himself. When he was ordering tea he was Peter O’Toole, he couldn’t help the equipment he was born with.’
In Limerick his room was directly below O’Toole’s and every mo
rning he could hear him methodically going through his vocal exercises. ‘Even after being in the business for so long and having done all those movies, every job was important to him.’
Over the last few years Lorcan had been shuttled back and forth between his mother and father in England and America. It must have been an intolerable situation for O’Toole and Karen, and a deeply unsettling one for the young Lorcan, having continually to say goodbye to one or other of his parents. ‘There were always tears and it was hard for me. Sometimes I think the happiest time was sitting on the plane that took me across the Atlantic because I was midway between them.’
It had now come to the point where the joint custody arrangement, set up when Lorcan was a baby and under which both parents alternated custody of him every three months, had become unworkable and both parties were arguing for a change. In April 1988, O’Toole allowed his judgement to be clouded once again when he refused to release Lorcan after his visit was over. Karen immediately ordered the courts to force him to return the boy. He refused. Tough New York lawyers threatened O’Toole with a daily fine of $1,000 from his earnings on The Last Emperor if he failed to hand over Lorcan to his mother. Karen then upped the stakes even higher, getting her lawyers to ask a US federal judge to issue an arrest warrant and a ruling that O’Toole was in contempt of court, which meant he could be arrested the moment he entered the United States.
A month later, O’Toole and Karen sat barely thirty feet apart from each other in London’s High Court, the two former lovers refusing to even look each other in the face. It was an appearance before the world’s press that O’Toole could well have lived without, he looked frail and nervous. The judgement, when it came, was a devastating setback. The son he adored had to return with his mother to America pending a further court hearing when it would be decided once and for all which parent should get sole custody.
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