Hellraisers

by Robert Sellers

  It was also made clear to Siân that her husband’s career would be the only one really tolerated in the O’Toole household. When O’Toole and Siân set up a company together, Keep Films, with the producer Jules Buck, Siân was ‘mortified to realise that my work hardly figured’. The enterprise was totally geared to O’Toole’s ascension to movie stardom; Siân was merely there to be the loyal wife. Buck once told her that it was all right for her to work in her spare time, ‘or if I didn’t get in Peter’s way’, Siân later recalled. In a joint interview when a reporter asked Siân how she combined her busy private life with a career O’Toole answered on her behalf. ‘She doesn’t have a career, she has jobs.’

  Such was Peter O’Toole’s reputation by the mid-60s that he was chosen to represent the new breed of British actor in the inaugural production of the National Theatre – Hamlet directed by Laurence Olivier. At first O’Toole didn’t want to do it. ‘But have you ever tried to argue with Olivier?’ O’Toole confessed to the press after agreeing to the offer. ‘He’s the most charming, persuasive bastard ever to draw a breath.’

  Actually the origin of O’Toole’s Hamlet can be traced to an afternoon’s boozing session with Richard Burton. ‘We were neither of us entirely sober,’ O’Toole later admitted. They got around to discussing Hamlet. Both had played it and agreed that they hated the damn thing. Then Burton said, ‘Let’s be masochists. Let’s do Hamlet again and get it out of our systems.’

  They discussed their common admiration of Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, then fell to arguing which of the duo they would like to direct them. In the end, they tossed a coin. Fortunately, as O’Toole tells it, before they had recovered their sobriety, they telephoned the two old masters and O’Toole ended up playing Hamlet in London under Olivier’s direction and Burton in New York under Gielgud’s.

  The stress of performing the five hour version, every night save Sunday, with two matinees, was punishing. Yet O’Toole still persisted in staying up late and drinking. He also downed three or four pints of beer prior to going on stage; although O’Toole once said he never drank while working. When he was at a party, and feeling depressed about performing the following day, a woman gave him a green pill from a fancy silver pillbox. ‘I was on the ceiling for 48 hours. I was cuckooing and crowing from chimneys, hurtling about and gambolling and skipping – and I never stopped talking. I wept at weather forecasts.’

  O’Toole’s Hamlet was not well received and there were stories of numerous antics backstage, such as during one matinee when he forgot his lines and had to swat up on them between scenes in the wings only to re-emerge on stage with his glasses still on, causing the audience to snigger. But O’Toole’s star name still guaranteed packed houses.

  In 1962 Oliver Reed met a director who would become not just a friend but a big professional ally, Michael Winner. Winner was casting a film called West Eleven and wanted Reed for the lead role. ‘But the producer thought he was a B picture actor, which in Oliver’s case was true. The same producer also thought that Sean Connery was a B picture actor, we couldn’t use him, Julie Christie was a useless blonde bimbo, we couldn’t use her, and James Mason was a has-been.’

  Winner’s next film was called The System (1964), and tackled the thorny subject of young men mingling among the seasonal tourists at a seaside town in search of sexual conquests. Installed as producer this time Winner could cast whom he pleased, and he wanted Reed. ‘And from then on we were very close. He and Burt Lancaster were my dearest friends in the industry. I absolutely loved Oliver. He was the kindest, the quietest and the gentlest man in the world, and the most polite and well behaved, except when he had a drink. But I very seldom saw him drunk on set because he knew I didn’t like that. Once or twice he may have had a bit of a hangover from the night before, but nothing remotely serious; not like today where half of them are on drugs. But he was a menace at night, no question. He was very professional on the set – in the evening a disaster.’

  Winner was never much enamoured of drunks so tended to stay away from Reed during social hours. ‘Drunks on the whole are immensely quiet and dignified when they’re sober. But when they’re drunk, they’re drunk. They’re two people; they’re Jekyll and Hyde. I remember once I met him in a restaurant and he went out and challenged someone to a fight; he was always doing that, and he always lost the fight. So he went out into Hyde Park in a beautiful Savile Row suit to fight this bloke and came back having been thrown in the round pond, he was soaking.’

  One young actor making an early appearance in The System was David Hemmings, who made the mistake of going out boozing with Ollie and fell unconscious. When he woke up he was hanging upside down and 60 feet over a vicious set of spiked railings. Reed was holding him by his ankles, dangling the terrified actor from the sixth floor window of the Grand Hotel, Torquay. ‘How do you like this, boy?’ Ollie growled. ‘Wanna come up, boy?’ Hemmings did indeed and was hauled back in. But the memory of that incident haunted Hemmings for years and for the duration of his career he was terrified of Reed. ‘He could drink 20 pints of lager with a gin or crème de menthe chaser and still run a mile for a wager,’ said Hemmings of his old nemesis.

  Reed was also starting to gain a reputation among journalists as being not the most orthodox of interview subjects. One such journo who had a close encounter with the young Reed was Barry Norman, showbiz reporter for the Daily Mail before his move to television. ‘I went round to Ollie’s house in London,’ recalls Norman. ‘It was only about eleven o’clock in the morning but he was well into the beer already. And we talked for a bit and then he suggested that we go off and box each other. At that point I made an excuse and left because he was in much better shape than I was and I wasn’t about to be knocked around by him.’

  By 1964 Richard Burton and Liz Taylor still found themselves under severe media and public gaze over their scandalous affair. One night in London they went with O’Toole to the theatre, Liz sporting a particularly garish turquoise hat. In the interval Liz wanted to pop next door to the pub rather than enjoy drinks in the secluded privacy of the manager’s office as pre-arranged. Outside the street was heaving with onlookers and she was instantly recognised. ‘The bitch!’ cried a woman. ‘I’m so close I could spit on her.’ Taylor ignored it, lamenting to O’Toole, ‘It’s so awful not being able to go anywhere in peace.’ To which O’Toole replied, ‘It might help a bit if you took off that fucking turquoise busby.’

  As for Sybil, to escape the endless media intrusion about her being abandoned by her husband for the world’s most glamorous female star, she left England and bought an apartment in New York, becoming the toast of the city’s artistic fraternity. At one lavish party she bumped into the English actor Edward Woodward, in town with a play. Terrified of putting his foot in it he decided to steer clear of controversial subjects and talk about how hard it had been to find his character’s very distinctive suit. ‘Where did you get it in the end?’ asked Sybil. ‘Burton,’ said Woodward, suddenly realising that he had said the word he had been at such pains to avoid. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It could have been worse. You could have said Burton the Tailor.’

  Burton was still drinking very heavily. During the filming of The VIPs (1963), he allegedly drank half a gallon of cognac in one day. The publicist on his film Becket later said that he’d never seen anything comparable to Burton’s boozing. ‘It was something to behold.’ Staying at the Dorchester Burton drank himself stupid one night and while reciting poetry in the foyer violently threw up. ‘Oh my dear,’ said an equally inebriated Liz. ‘I think you have a fever.’ The famous director Otto Preminger happened to be checking in and offered assistance. ‘Fuck off!’ Burton screamed at him. ‘Just fuck off.’ Preminger fled, never to forgive nor forget.

  Leaving the hotel Burton went to record an interview for the influential Ed Sullivan Show in America to publicise Becket. He turned up at the TV studios hours late, still pissed out of his mind and struggling to put on medieval tights over his t
rousers, with Liz laughing uncontrollably nearby. He staggered onto the set, forgot where, when and why he was there, and promptly left again. A major publicity coup for the film was blown, and Burton never even knew it.

  With his film career at unprecedented heights Burton returned to the stage, Broadway in fact, in Gielgud’s production of Hamlet that broke box office records. To amuse himself during the long run he’d try out several off the wall interpretations of the role on the audience, sometimes even inserting bits of dialogue from other plays or speaking a few lines in German, just to see if anyone noticed. He even once drank a quart of brandy during a performance. ‘The only visible effect was that he played the last two acts as a homosexual,’ wrote one critic.

  One night, however, Burton was shocked when a man in the stalls loudly booed him. Returning to his hotel suite he said to Liz, who was engrossed in a film on TV, ‘I was booed tonight.’ Hardly lifting her head up Liz said, ‘Really?’ Burton grew annoyed. ‘Turn that bloody thing off,’ he roared. ‘Shh, I can’t hear,’ said Liz. ‘Don’t you understand,’ Burton carried on. ‘I was actually booed on stage.’ Liz was still glued to the box. ‘Yes dear, never mind.’ Burton stormed out of the room, emerging minutes later in his pyjamas. Incensed to see the television still on he ran across and kicked it over with his bare foot. The set bounced off a wall and several of its knobs fell off. Seeing it lying defenceless on the floor Burton kicked it again for good measure. Unfortunately his foot struck an exposed metal screw that gashed his big toe. Burton let out an almighty scream as blood poured onto the carpet. Patching him up Liz could only see the funny side of it, which made Burton even madder. The next night he went on stage with a pronounced limp and grumbled, ‘Some critics have said I play Hamlet like Richard the Third anyway, so what the hell is the difference.’

  Richard Harris’s success in This Sporting Life did much to turn him into something of an idol with teenagers, mainly those of a rebellious nature. Harris never had the matinee looks of an Errol Flynn; one journalist described him as being built ‘like a beer truck, with the face of a thousand Irish navvies’. The film also brought him to the attention of one of the world’s most fashionable directors, Michelangelo Antonioni. But relations between the two men on the set of The Red Desert (1964) were so strained that the film went three months behind schedule and at one point Harris punched Antonioni full in the mouth and knocked him out. Harris was constantly arguing about new script revisions and confusing direction from a man capable of speaking English but who preferred to communicate by wild gestures and the occasional guttural Italian expletive. It was getting desperate. Phoning his mate Ronnie Fraser Harris said, ‘This may kill me, so keep an eye on the obits.’

  It didn’t help that in Italy Harris experimented with LSD, almost killing himself anyway in the process. ‘I went berserk and was stopped at the last minute from jumping off a balcony. I never took it again.’ Harris wanted out, despite the charms of his beautiful co-star Monica Vitti, and got his wish when Sam Peckinpah cast him in the western Major Dundee (1964). It was due to start filming in just a few weeks but Antonioni wouldn’t let Harris leave insisting their movie wasn’t finished. It was for Harris. ‘I just thought he was having one long wank with Monica holding his balls. It went on forever, and he was enjoying it too much.’ Harris worked frantically for the next few days, round the clock, even sleeping on the set, woken at five each morning with black coffee laced with brandy. At the end of the week he confronted Antonioni. ‘Look, what you have is great, so – adios.’ Grabbing a unit car he drove to Milan airport and headed for LA. Antonioni was forced to hire a Harris lookalike to finish the picture. The actor’s passing remark on working with Antonioni was that if the director hadn’t made a career in movies, he would surely have been head of the Mafia.

  Harris missed his direct flight to LA so jet hopped there via London, New York and St Louis, desperate to make Peckinpah’s rehearsal dates. In London he drank for six straight hours to stay awake. Arriving in LA 17 hours later, he was barely conscious and collapsed at the studio. Harris was hysterical when he came to, fearing he’d suffered a heart attack. Ever since his malnutrition-induced collapse at drama school he’d nervously awaited the next one. He underwent medical tests but the doctors found nothing and misleadingly gave him the all-clear. It would take 15 years and many more collapses until hyperglycaemia was finally diagnosed.

  Major Dundee re-teamed Harris with old nemesis Chuck Heston. A family man with a legendary reputation for discipline, Heston did not approve of Harris’s hellraising notoriety. Harris sensed that Heston looked down on him like a preacher, ‘or some high-handed twat’. And although he tried to get on with the star most of Harris’s time was spent figuring out how he could slip LSD into Heston’s coffee to loosen him up a bit. Harris would sum up Heston as having ‘issued from a cubic womb’, for being so conservative.

  With insurance cover of $4m riding on Harris and a unit doctor in constant attendance zapping him daily with vitamin injections, work began on location in Mexico. Heston started making a big deal out of the Irishman’s tendency for lateness. ‘He used to sit there in the mornings and clock us in with a stop-watch like some dreary great head mistress in enormous, gangling drawers.’ Pissed-off Harris positioned dozens of alarm clocks around Heston’s make-up trailer and set them all to go off at the same time in an explosion of noise. The star almost leapt out of his skin when he opened the door. ‘Just clocking in,’ Harris cracked, but Heston wasn’t amused. ‘He had no sense of humour, not a bit,’ Harris later remarked.

  Such incidents made an already fraught production even more tiresome. Harris argued with Heston and both actors argued with the director. Finally Peckinpah left the set and drove into the hills at night, declaring that he’d rather sleep with the snakes than with his stars. In his diary Heston wrote that Harris was, ‘Something of a fuck up, no question.’ Later he softened his position: ‘If he was a fuck up, I was a hard-nosed son of a bitch.’ Still, Harris decreed he’d never work with the American again. He didn’t.

  Some respite for Harris came from his friendship with co-star James Coburn; they’d frequently hang out together and booze in the local cantinas. ‘When he wanted to, he could hit the liquor like no one I knew,’ said Coburn. One afternoon the two men went to a bullfight but Harris got into a disagreement with someone seated nearby who’d knocked over his bag of sweets. Harris retaliated by smashing the stranger in the face, receiving howls of approval from fellow spectators. Even with Elizabeth’s arrival in Mexico Harris remained in a state of despair. When Lindsay Anderson visited the set, he suggested they all make 8mm short films, each about Mexico: Coburn shot bulls, Anderson landscapes, Elizabeth the locals. Harris recorded a child’s funeral, to everyone’s utter dismay.

  When it came to booze Peter O’Toole rarely met his match. But he did in Richard Burton. O’Toole saw Burton immediately as a soul mate, someone who shared his love of booze. Both came to the film Becket (1964), a historical drama focusing on the relationship between Henry II and his archbishop, with notorious reputations, so the crew was surprised to see them both holding nothing but cups of tea for ten days. Finally Burton said to O’Toole, putting on an Irish accent, ‘Peter, me boy, I think we deserve a little snifter.’ They drank for two nights and a day and appeared quite blasted for the scene where the King places the ring on Becket’s finger thus making him Chancellor of England. Luckily there was no dialogue, but O’Toole had a dreadful time putting the ring on. ‘It was rather like trying to thread a needle wearing boxing gloves,’ Burton later recalled.

  After that it was non-stop drinking for the remainder of the shoot. The director Peter Glenville just about coped with his two stars periodically turning up for work pissed, but visiting executives from Hollywood were far from pleased with the spectacle. Obviously there to see how their investment was going the executives were horrified to see Burton and O’Toole reeling about pissed and slurring their speech on the set one morning; but when the cameras ro
lled the two stars instantly sobered up.

  It was O’Toole who introduced Burton to the numerous pubs situated conveniently close to the studio in Shepperton village such as the Hovel, whose eccentric landlord displayed on the bar a shrunken head in a bottle, as well as a pickled penis. There was also the King’s Head where the landlord, Archie, greeted the stars on their first visit with a steaming lunch and the words, ‘Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this leg of pork.’

  During another pub-crawl, this time in London, O’Toole and Burton got seriously sloshed. ‘Richard was in a bad state,’ O’Toole later recalled, ‘worried about his career. “Oh Pedro, what am I doing?” That night he had fallen into a bottle of scotch and I wasn’t far behind him.’ Staggering home at three in the morning, O’Toole tried to carry his friend but he was too heavy and both men stumbled and fell into the gutter. Somebody stopped beside them on the pavement. It was Alan Bates, O’Toole’s ex-RADA colleague. ‘Peter,’ he said, ‘today I’ve just signed up for my first commercial picture.’ ‘We both looked up,’ recalled O’Toole, ‘and said, “You coming down to join us, then?” And we just lay there laughing.’

  It was exactly this kind of going on a bender that Liz Taylor hoped to put an end to between her husband and O’Toole. For years the two actors had lived around the corner from each other in Hampstead – pre Liz. ‘He’d come to my place or I’d go to his,’ said O’Toole. ‘And then we’d carry each other home. Elizabeth wasn’t keen on that. She probably thought I led him astray. I don’t know. She didn’t approve. That was a bone of contention between me and Richard. I said, “If you now need permission to come and see me, then you go fuck yourself, you old git!”’