Harris once admitted that it sometimes seemed as if he were two people. One was quiet and gentle, a lover of literature, serious theatre and writing poetry; the other was the hellraiser. What most worried him was that the two separate parts of his personality hated each other.
The violence that spilled out of him when the booze took over alienated friends and lost him sympathy, even his own staff, not least chauffeurs. Some drivers told of how Harris might kiss them goodnight of an evening, while in the morning they might be on the end of a torrent of abuse. If they weren’t quick enough in opening the door they might also receive a swift boot up the arse. Many handed in their notice after just a month.
But the playful side of Harris was never far away. Appearing on a TV chat show, when his name was announced he walked though the curtains on to the set, straight down the aisle, out of the studio and into the street where he hailed a cab to take him back to his hotel where he went to sleep. ‘It’s different,’ he explained.
But his barnstorming antics and cavalier lifestyle came with a price and by the end of the 60s Harris was bankrupt. Little wonder really, when he used to rent Lear jets to take parties of mates to Paris for the weekend and pick up the tab for 18 suites at the swankiest hotels. But never for a second did he ever regret the excesses of the decade. ‘I have an unrepentant past,’ he once claimed. ‘I loved the excitement of my drinking days. Life is made from memories, which is a pity because I don’t remember much; but we entertained the world.’
Essentially a private man, Peter O’Toole rarely gave interviews and when he did he usually insisted they take place in a pub or at home where he could drink in comfort. Inviting one journalist round he showed him a bottle of mountain-brewed Calvados that an artist friend had sent over. ‘You drink it?’ enquired the reporter. ‘You must be raving mad,’ said O’Toole. ‘This is for taking the rust off car bumpers.’ He told the journalist that his friend washed his brushes in the stuff, then with a wry smirk said, ‘Great though, don’t you think?’
O’Toole knew the amount of drink he was consuming was not doing his body any good, even joking that the only thing he got from booze was a hangover and a grim look from the wife. But he resented the general impression given by newspaper articles and the like that he was a falling down drunk. ‘Too many people make me out to be some kind of drunken sot,’ he complained, ‘but I’m not at the meths stage yet. I like booze because it anaesthetizes pain and makes everything a little less nightmarish. Another thing, I’ve only ever met decent men at the barrel-head.’
During the course of the 60s O’Toole blazed a mighty trail of hellraising, but as the decade came to a close he was approaching his forties and some wondered if he was now getting tired of lugging around his reputation as a piss artist and general crank. ‘The damage has been done,’ he lamented. ‘There is a legend: there is a myth: to protest is daft.’
He still enjoyed getting up to mischief, causing chaos and general lunacy. There was a period of time when, drunk, he’d wander around buying the same book. ‘My life is littered with copies of Moby Dick.’ Or take his two young daughters into pubs under his coat just as his father had done with him. Such eccentricity is charming in itself, and however bad O’Toole’s behaviour was, few could fail to forgive him completely. But at home things were different. Siân still felt a second-class citizen within the O’Toole household, expected to cook, clean and iron. She was also living, essentially, with two people. Whenever O’Toole was preparing for a job he was ‘a hard working, moderate, benevolent presence’. It was just that when the work was over, ‘He became a different person, erratic and unpredictable.’
More often than not he’d lose himself in drink, but O’Toole always insisted that he never needed booze as a stimulant to have fun. ‘But what could be better than waking up and asking yourself, how the hell did I get to Marseilles? I used to cry with laughter.’
Women in Love (1969), director Ken Russell’s screen adaptation of the D. H. Lawrence novel, is notorious for cinema’s first ever full-frontal male nude scene between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates. Both actors were nervous about doing it. ‘I was scared stiff,’ Reed admitted. ‘And that’s definitely not the right word as anyone who has seen the film will confirm.’
Russell originally set the wrestling scene at night in a meadow by a river so the audience wouldn’t see much, the actors ending up in the water anyway where you’d see even less, but it could still look very beautiful and evocative. ‘And then one night I was having dinner at home and Oliver came in with a girlfriend I’d never seen before and announced, “She says they wrestle in his house not in a poofy meadow, in the poofy moonlight.” I started to argue the point with Oliver and then suddenly I was hurtling through the air in a Japanese wrestling throw and crashing to the ground. “You’ve convinced me Oliver.”’
But when the day arrived to shoot the scene both actors wanted to chicken out. ‘Oliver said he had a cold and Alan said he’d sprained his ankle. They said, “You should do another scene tomorrow because we ain’t gonna turn up because we’ve got doctor’s certificates to prove our illness.” Oh yeah, I thought, because they’d just done one scene perfectly without limping or coughing. Then much to my surprise the next morning they turned up on the set in their dressing gowns, cast them off and set to. At lunchtime Oliver’s stand-in came up to me and said, “Ken, gonna buy me a drink?” I said, “I always buy you a drink, what’s it for this time?” And he said, “Well I got ’em wrestling, didn’t I?” I said, “You did it.” He said, “Yeah, they’re not the best of friends but they ganged up on you and went to the local pub to drown their sorrows and they drank pint after pint as I knew they would. I encouraged them. Sure enough the time came when they had to go to the outside loo which was beautifully moonlit and they stood side by side and they pissed and they glanced to the left and right and saw there wasn’t much in it.” It was all a question of ego, each was afraid his manhood would be outdone by the other’s. But in the event Ollie cheated: before every take he disappeared behind a screen and gave nature a helping hand. In a way they made history.’
On the morning of the shoot Reed had knocked up the landlord of his local pub and got him to sell him two bottles of vodka which he then took to Bates’s caravan where the actor sat looking deathly pale. ‘Drink some of this,’ said Reed and they polished off a bottle each. The scene took three days to complete, during which time the continuity girl, sitting on a low stool, had a bird’s eye view of Reed’s cock. Giving it a towel down between takes, ‘Trying to get a semi on so that it would look more purposeful and stop all my girlfriends saying “why bother” and deserting me,’ Reed noticed the continuity girl watching him with mounting interest. She broke out in embarrassment when Reed returned her gaze and went even redder when he suggested she go fetch a ruler to measure it. ‘Just for continuity, of course,’ he joked.
It’s difficult today to appreciate just what impact that scene had on audiences. Now of course it’s terribly tame, quaint even. Russell described how a friend of his went to see the film again at a revival screening a few years ago in a small town. He was the only person in the auditorium save for two old dears in front of him. When Reed and Bates stripped off and started throwing each other round the room one of the pensioners said to the other, ‘Nice carpet.’
Reed remained pretty philosophical about that scene, relishing the honour of becoming the legitimate cinema’s first full-frontal male nude. ‘It will be something to tell my grandchildren, that I was once seen stark naked by millions of women all over the world.’ He expected to run the gauntlet of insults and mickey-taking wherever he went after the film opened. ‘In fact, the only embarrassment I suffered was when an old fruit wolf-whistled me in the King’s Road.’
Reed was flown over to attend the Paris opening of Women in Love and arrived at his hotel with a bunch of roses for Russell’s wife, only to be informed that he wasn’t staying in the building proper but the annexe. ‘No I’m not. I’m staying here,’
blasted Reed, who lay down in the middle of reception, using the flowers as a pillow, and started drinking champagne. The manager arrived. ‘Will you please desist from bedding down here for the night.’ Reed refused: ‘If this hotel was good enough for Oscar Wilde to die in, it’s certainly good enough for me to sleep in.’ The manager finally relented and a room was found.
Walking up the grand staircase Reed spotted associate producer Roy Baird ahead of him. Manhandling him from behind Reed pulled down the man’s trousers, causing him to fall backwards down the stairs. Like a big soppy dog Reed bounded down after him, pulled him up and started landing soggy wet kisses on each cheek. Only then did Reed discover the man wasn’t Roy Baird at all but a lookalike, a lookalike who just happened to be an important French businessman. Reed tried to explain that he hadn’t pulled the gentleman’s trousers down because he fancied him, but this proved rather difficult as he knew not one word of French. Suddenly the real Roy Baird walked in and Reed gesticulated frantically to the Frenchman that this was the man he’d mistaken him for. The businessman finally twigged and broke out in laughter.
After the premiere Reed got really quite dreadfully pissed and, being driven back to the hotel by Alan Bates and his fiancée, started to sing bawdy rugby songs. Bates took great offence to this, ‘not in front of my fiancée Ollie if you don’t mind’, and in the end chucked him out into the street. ‘So I ended up singing to a crate of horse’s heads in a French market.’
Back in London Reed made headlines when he landed in a fight with the new James Bond, George Lazenby. Reed was in a party of friends that included Lazenby at a posh West End restaurant when the Australian began to get quite offensive in his language. ‘Come off it, George, ladies present,’ said Reed. But Lazenby ignored the advice and continued to profane so Reed leant across the table and slapped him gently on the face. Ten minutes later, wham, Lazenby threw a surprise punch and knocked Reed to the floor. Momentarily dazed, Reed then swung into action and the two men demolished what was left of their meals. The headwaiter rushed in. ‘Please, Mr Reed, not here!’ Finally they were pulled apart and Lazenby made his exit. Covered in custard, Reed wanted to finish the job but his friends refused to divulge Lazenby’s address. Instead Reed sought medical attention for a badly cut lip. Somebody knew a doctor in nearby Eaton Square so off they went at three in the morning. The doctor himself had only just got back from a cocktail party and emerged at the top of the stairs equally intoxicated; a fact confirmed when he fell head-first over the last dozen steps to land in a pile at their feet. Reed, patched up and walking back home, visited a string of pubs, for the second time in his life having to drink his beer through a straw. As for Lazenby he understandably went to ground, fearing reprisals.
The Sozzled Seventies
Throughout the late 60s and into the 70s Richard Burton drank like a fish. In one interview he said, ‘I was fairly sloshed for five years. I was up there with John Barrymore and Robert Newton. The ghosts of them were looking over my shoulder.’ Liz Taylor was drinking too and the rows were getting worse. They’d fly off the handle at each other, arguing just for the hell of it sometimes, she blasting him for being a talentless son of a bitch, and he calling her an ugly, fat dwarf. In his diary Burton wrote, ‘I have always been a heavy drinker but during the last 15 months I’ve nearly killed myself with the stuff, and so has Elizabeth.’
But Burton still couldn’t help showering his wife with gifts, most notably the famous ring. Burton was determined to claim the world’s most fabulous piece of jewellery and bid a cool million dollars for it, beating Aristotle Onassis who bailed out at $700,000. Then Cartier topped Burton’s bid by $50,000. ‘The bugger,’ yelled Burton, who upped his price to $1.1m and won the day; the whole transaction conducted on a pay phone outside a pub with Burton reversing the charges. Not surprisingly the ring was shipped over by security guards armed with machine guns. After all that ballyhoo John Gielgud was visiting the Burtons one day and was amused while helping with the washing up to find the ring lying on the draining board next to a saucer. Years later Liz auctioned off her diamond ring from Burton to raise money for an AIDS charity.
In 1970 Burton was told by doctors to stop drinking for three months because at his present rate of boozing he’d have sclerosis of the liver within five years. Later he liked to joke, ‘I don’t have much liver left and very little bacon to go with it.’ An appearance on television also disturbed him. ‘I looked at myself and was appalled, horrified. Could this bloated, corpulent, puffy-faced monstrosity be me?’ He hit the wagon for three months, and then fell off. ‘You’re lucky I’m sober,’ Burton said one day to director Andrew Sinclair on the set of Under Milk Wood. ‘Define sober,’ asked Sinclair. ‘Never more than one bottle of vodka a day,’ replied Burton. He wasn’t joking.
Making Villain (1971), a brutal London gangland film, he was knocking back two, maybe even three bottles of vodka a day. But his sheer presence was still enough to leave a lasting impression on a young stunt man working on the film, Vic Armstrong. ‘Burton was so aloof, like this God-like figure. He’d only come out of his trailer every now and again to sit in the car and say his lines and then go back leaving his stunt double to do the rest. I’ll never forget lunchtimes; Elizabeth Taylor would turn up with the Rolls-Royce and the boot would open and there’d be a Harrods hamper with champagne and old Richard would get hammered and be unable to work any more.’
Burton’s drinking was also evident on the set of Liz’s film Zee & Co. Burton was permanently at the studio, spending most days dozing in his wife’s dressing room. At the wrap party Liz’s co-star Michael Caine bumped into Burton and wished him a merry Christmas. ‘Why don’t you go and fuck yourself,’ said Burton. ‘With less than the usual festive spirit,’ Caine recalled. Years later the two men became friends, though Caine never did ask the cause of Burton’s hostility to him that day. Caine was also taken aback by the sheer scale of the Burton/Taylor entourage: hairdressers, make-up artist, secretary. On the set the studio joke was that if the retinue alone went to see Zee & Co the film would have to make money.
The Burton and Taylor entourage had grown so large by this stage that old friends found it increasingly impossible to get in touch with them. One day, however, Burton’s old Oxford chum and now successful actor Robert Hardy got a call out of the blue inviting him to lunch at The Dorchester. Hardy hadn’t seen Burton for some time and had always previously refused such offers, unable to cope with the multitude of hangers-on that flitted around the Burton/Taylor honey pot. ‘Don’t worry,’ Burton assured him. ‘There’ll just be us and the children.’ It was agreed and Hardy arrived at the private suite only to discover it overflowing with around a hundred people. In the middle of the room was the largest mound of caviar he had ever seen; it stood some five feet high. As the evening grew old and the crowd whittled down Burton jumped to his feet. ‘Right, that’s it.’ It was now four o’clock. ‘The rest of you can go now; I’m going to fuck my wife.’
The next day Hardy wrote a brief note to his old colleague thanking him for a memorable evening. ‘But getting to see you nowadays is rather like getting through the protocol of a mid-eighteenth century minor German court.’
There was one positive about the travelling road show that surrounded the Burtons: many of them were from his own family. ‘At one point Richard was supporting 30 people on the payroll, 20 of whom were members of his family,’ says director Tony Palmer, who made a documentary on the star shortly after his death. ‘All surviving 12 brothers and sisters had benefited, had been brought out of the mines and poverty, had been looked after and set up, and all the nieces and nephews, by Richard’s largesse.’
Since Camelot in 1967 Richard Harris hadn’t made another film, although he’d found unlikely fame as a pop singer with the top five hit ‘Macarthur Park’ (one critic referring to his voice as sounding like ‘coal being shovelled’). He did accept a part opposite Michael Caine, an actor he didn’t particularly care for, in the war drama Play Dirty. Ha
rris’s contract stipulated that his role could not be tampered with once he’d agreed to appear, but arriving on the set he discovered four of his major scenes cut to ribbons. No way was he going to play second fiddle to Caine. Outraged, Harris confronted producer Harry Saltzman, blasted ‘You are a contemptible, low life fucker,’ and caught a plane home.
More bad news arrived when his divorce from Elizabeth became official. He’d later admit that his first marriage was, ‘An absolute, catastrophic fuck up because of my behaviour.’ Harris acknowledged his freedom by touring the brothels of Amsterdam and Hamburg ‘fucking for Ireland’. As for Elizabeth, she did temporarily mourn the loss of Harris. ‘This is a dull bore,’ she declared at one party. ‘What it needs is Harris to liven things up.’ Another time she was dining in a restaurant when she heard a commotion on another table. It was a drunken Oliver Reed who had somehow fallen into an American tourist’s tomato soup while reciting poetry to anybody who would listen. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said Reed, but the American’s wife was not amused. ‘Don’t be sorry. Just pay for the cleaning bills.’ So Reed took out some money, put it on the dining cloth, then stood on the table and clapped his hands to demand the attention of the whole restaurant. ‘Excuse me. Not only would I like to apologize to this man but, seemingly’ – he picked up the American’s wine bottle and looked at the label – ‘if he doesn’t facilitate himself of the opportunity of having his clothes cleaned at least he’ll be able to afford a better bottle of wine. Good night, sir,’ and walked out. As Reed reached the door a waiter handed him a note from Elizabeth who had scribbled, ‘Thank you for the show. It’s very good, but it’s not as good as Richard.’
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