Hellraisers

by Robert Sellers

  Tinto Brass, who O’Toole infuriated by calling Tinto Zinc, oversaw the whole sorry mess and on the first day of shooting approached O’Toole and said, ‘How you like to be paralyzed in picture?’ O’Toole thought about it and replied, ‘Anything you like, smiler.’ ‘So I got myself a naked Sumerian girl to lean on from start to finish. She became known as Betty the Collapsible Crutch.’

  According to Guccione O’Toole disliked Tinto Brass on sight, nor did the actor endear himself much to Guccione when he told the producer of his intention of launching a girlie magazine to rival his own Penthouse. It was to be called Basement and would include such features as ‘Rodent of the Month’ and ‘Toe Rag of the Year’. ‘I don’t think I ever saw him sober,’ said Guccione about O’Toole years later, getting his own back. ‘He doesn’t drink any more, or at least he wasn’t drinking then, but he was strung out on something. From time to time it took a little longer than usual to get him on the set, and when you’ve got six or seven hundred people standing around, his little habits can become goddamn expensive.’

  Gore Vidal had written the script with good faith and high hopes but was soon asking for his name to be taken off the picture when Guccione inserted some choice slabs of hardcore porn to spice things up; all to no avail. ‘As for being erotic,’ said O’Toole, ‘I’d say it was about as erotic as bath night on HMS Montclare.’ Malcolm McDowell was appalled, though, and has never forgiven Guccione. ‘It was absurd, because the footage didn’t even match. There would be a shot of me smiling, looking at what was supposed to be my horse or something, and then suddenly they’d cut to two lesbians making out. It was just awful.’ Incredibly the final cost of the film came in at a little over $17.5 million. ‘For that kind of money, I could have made over 200 porno films,’ lamented Guccione.

  With performances such as he gave in Caligula O’Toole was fast becoming a parody of himself: a caricature faded film star, though he’d never given two stuffs about fame. Interviewed in a Los Angeles hotel beside a swimming pool he saw only too well the absurdity of it all, of asking a lackey for a drink or indeed anything else he desired. ‘I tell them I’m a film star. They don’t give a fuck, but somehow I amuse them. I told the pool man who was cleaning here earlier that I was a movie star and he couldn’t have cared less. He probably cleans Zsa Zsa Gabor’s pool, and I can get stuffed.’

  A film that was in a similar vein to Reed’s most recent box office hit The Three Musketeers was The Prince and the Pauper (1977), which reunited him with his Oliver! co-star Mark Lester, and was filmed in Budapest where he couldn’t resist getting into trouble. In order that Reed couldn’t cause too much damage the producers wisely kept him away from everyone else in a separate hotel. ‘Budapest is essentially two towns divided by a river,’ says Lester. ‘We were in the old town and Ollie was across the river in a hotel alone so that he wouldn’t upset too many people.’ On Reed’s days off he and Reg Prince would go boozing in Budapest’s roughest nightspots, expeditions that usually ended in brawls. One local came back for revenge the next night only to be knocked out again by Reed. The police intervened and both men spent a night in the cells.

  Even on set Reed was hard to handle. One afternoon he was scheduled to meet a journalist but never showed up. The film’s publicist sent out a search party but he couldn’t be located anywhere. Finally when he did surface Reed wasn’t exactly clear about the previous 36 hours; save for the fact that he remembered standing on a bridge over the Danube debating whether he should jump in or not for a bet.

  Mark Lester turned 18 on the film, an event he’s never forgotten. ‘The producer had laid on a huge dinner for me, all the cast and crew were there and Ollie brought me a present from the streets of Budapest, it was a Hungarian hooker. Ollie, who was completely paralytic, dragged in this poor girl and she took one look at everybody, gasped in fright and then legged it. Fortunately for me, because Ollie didn’t have the best taste in women, I think he had his beer goggles firmly on at that time. Ollie then joined the party. He got up on the table and decided to do some antics which involved putting a cake in one of the producer’s faces and then falling backwards off the table. When he worked Ollie was completely straight and very professional, but there was this other side to him. It was more than just naughty schoolboy type pranks, it was actually things that were so embarrassing you wouldn’t expect the local rugby team to behave in such a manner, jokes not appreciated by everybody.’

  More antics followed. One evening Mark Lester joined Reed and 20 other people from the film for a slap up meal in a restaurant, only Ollie decided to have the meal in reverse. ‘We started off having brandy and a cigar, Ollie was drinking all the time this bull’s blood wine, but we were all fairly merry. Then when the chocolate pancakes came one of the camera crew lobbed his pancake across the room and within minutes there was this huge food fight and everyone was just covered in chocolate and the manager came over and just threw us all out. We were literally thrown out into the street.’

  Amongst The Prince and the Pauper’s galaxy of stars, that included Rex Harrison, Charlton Heston, and George C. Scott, was Raquel Welch. She and Reed had dramatically fallen out on the set of The Three Musketeers when Ollie turned her down at a party, preferring instead to dance with her hairdresser, an affront to Raquel’s sex symbol status. ‘Raquel is someone I can live without,’ Reed told a reporter at the time. ‘She loathes me and I can’t say she’s one of my favourite people. We’ve got some love scenes together and I am dreading them!’

  Reed mischievously sent a telegram to Richard Harris boasting of his forthcoming love scenes with Miss Welch and offering him a job as his stand-in, providing his wig didn’t fall off in the clinches. ‘With his toupee and her falsies they would be perfect for each other.’ Reed was always sending telegrams of that sort to Harris and receiving a few back in the same vein. It was a curious relationship, as the two men never socialized. Reed raised the stakes a few notches when during an interview he challenged Harris to a punch up. ‘Never mind Richard Harris, or Mr Ireland, or whatever he calls himself. Bollocks to him and his Mayfair punch ups. Next time you see him, tell him that if he wants to meet a real England heavy, he should meet me.’ Harris’s reaction was to send Reed a recently published book of his poetry. On the flyleaf he wrote: ‘To Oliver – Mr England. Since you have not yet attained superstar status and salary and therefore cannot afford to buy this book, here is a copy free.’ It was signed ‘Richard – Mr Ireland.’

  This rivalry and mock backbiting continued with both stars playfully slagging off each other, much to the delight of Fleet Street. ‘People say Richard Harris and I have been having a great feud,’ Reed jested. ‘It’s not true. After all, how could we be feuding for years? I’d never heard of him until two weeks ago.’ When Reed was in LA and heard that Harris was in town he rang to invite him over for drinks at his hotel. ‘I dare you to accept.’ ‘Don’t move,’ said Harris. ‘I’ll be right over.’ Reed sat in the hotel bar for two hours steadily getting pissed but Harris was a no-show. As Ollie wearily got up and left through one door, Harris, pissed himself, arrived through another. Feeling stood up Reed challenged Harris to a fight at the Royal Albert Hall.

  Harris responded swiftly with another letter: ‘It appears Mr Reed, that you are having some difficulty in locating me. My address, should you require it, is Buckingham Palace and the flag is still up with the monarch still reigning. If I decide to abdicate, I will let you know.’ With the letter, Harris sent Ollie a ‘gift’ neatly wrapped in brown paper. Inside was a pair of Victorian crutches, one inscribed with the name Glenda Jackson and on the other the name of Ken Russell. Attached to them Harris had written a note stating, ‘In my Royal opinion you should not dispense with these, otherwise you will fall flat on your arse.’

  By now the press were having a whale of a time, not bothered if the feud was real or merely an elaborate hoax fixed by the two stars for publicity purposes. Who cared, it was great copy. In interviews they’d ask each of them for thei
r opinion of the other. When questioned directly about Reed, Harris simply replied, ‘I always ignore bores.’ And there was a rocket from Reed directed at Harris: ‘I’m the only public school actor there is. Harris is very uneducated. He’s Irish.’

  ‘Harris!’ went the voice on the other end of the phone. ‘When I see you I’m going to kick the shit out of you and I’m going to stamp on your face and break both your arms.’ Harris guessed it was Reed. ‘Where are you?’ he demanded. ‘El Pedrino’s,’ replied Reed. ‘Don’t move.’ Harris arrived at the LA bar just minutes later. The big encounter had at last arrived. ‘Do I start with you,’ Harris asked a muscle-bound minder who’d come to stand next to Reed, ‘or do I begin with Oliver?’ ‘You begin with me,’ said Reed, waving away his aide. Onlookers gasped as the two stars squared up and glared at each other. Then all of a sudden Reed asked politely, ‘Drink?’ ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ replied Harris courteously. Both men shook hands and gave each other a massive bear hug before getting down to some serious drinking. ‘Sober he was a great guy,’ said Reed of Harris. ‘Drunk, he was even better.’

  Since his first encounter with Richard Burton way back in 1950 producer Euan Lloyd had carved out a successful career, notably the coup of casting Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot together in the western Shalako, but had always harboured a desire to work with the Welshman. Then in 1976 a book called The Wild Geese came into his possession. ‘Despite the battering he had taken in the 26 years since we met, here, at last, was my chance. From a single reading I determined that Richard Burton and only Richard Burton would play the leading role. The character was a booze-ridden mercenary leader, past his prime, who is set on rescuing an African president from certain assassination. A man who has been there, seen it all, but is determined to succeed on one final mission. I could see no other actor in that part.’

  It was common knowledge that Burton had appeared in some duff movies of late, that a lifetime on the booze had badly dented his image, possibly beyond repair, and that he was in poor health due to a crippling back problem; consequently getting insurance cover for the ageing star was highly doubtful. ‘I had cautioned Burton’s agent that setting up a potential epic production with Richard in the lead would be a hard slog. I needed a categorical assurance that Richard no longer slept with a bottle at his bedside. I need not have worried, he was now firmly on the wagon.’ And drinking Tab by the bucket load. Burton asked if his favourite soft drink could be made available on location. Since it wasn’t sold in South Africa Lloyd had to import 2,000 bottles from the US.

  Casting the remaining leads became a huge challenge. Burt Lancaster was suggested for the role of second in command Rafer Janders, but then Lloyd got a call from a Hollywood agent. ‘When he suggested Richard Harris in place of Lancaster my heart stopped beating. I had heard that Harris had recently made a film, which suffered greatly from his drinking. The completion bond company concerned had vowed never to “cover” Richard again. But Richard’s skills as an actor had long impressed me and I considered it worth fighting for him.’

  Lloyd was told bluntly that no insurance company would be mad enough to offer the Irishman cover. It had become general practice in the business that once told Harris was in their film directors added a week to the schedule as an insurance against drunken days he couldn’t work. For Burton they automatically added three weeks. But so determined was Harris to play the role that he agreed to defer half of his salary as evidence of his determination to behave and not drink. Still, Hollywood thought Lloyd had flipped his lid hiring two of the biggest hellraisers around. ‘Why in God’s good name would you want to have two famous drunks in one picture?’ he was asked.

  Lloyd ignored the dissenting voices and bagged a third star for his film, Roger Moore. ‘Now Roger enjoys his drink more than most,’ says Lloyd. ‘But unlike any star I’ve known he can handle it without the slightest hiccup. I have seen him down six martinis in one evening and remain as articulate as ever. But I did catch him unprepared one morning on The Wild Geese when, driving to the location around dawn, I passed Roger’s apartment and caught him standing on the front lawn in his underpants, eyes tightly closed, his right hand holding a garden hose over his head! It must have been a late night.’

  Filming got underway in northern Transvaal under the supervision of veteran action director Andrew V. Mclaglen. ‘He had the awesome responsibility of getting great performances from Burton and Harris when they were both fighting demons within,’ says Lloyd. ‘Whenever you feel like a drink,’ Harris said to Burton one day on location, ‘do like I do, jump up and down.’ For the rest of the production both men were seen daily in all sorts of unlikely situations hopping like kangaroos. ‘Both had been told by their doctors to ease up on the booze,’ says John Glen, the film’s second unit director. ‘In Burton’s case it was essential because he was really very ill, his liver was absolutely gone; another drink would’ve probably killed him. But those were wild days when those guys were young and they had everything at their feet. All that fame, it has a price, doesn’t it?’

  Lloyd had been expecting trouble during filming. Could Burton and Harris be trusted not to misbehave and go on the ultimate bender? But he was pleasantly surprised when they acted more like angels on set. The reason may have had something to do with the local ganja that was in prodigious supply. Ronald Fraser, cast as one of the fighting mercenaries, recalls a gardener mowing the lawn outside his rented home and then traipsing in with five bags of cuttings. ‘What the hell are you doing bringing this stuff into the house? Take it outside,’ he yelled. ‘It’s not for burning,’ the gardener told him, ‘it’s the stuff you roll in paper and light.’ Harris, Burton and Fraser happily indulged, rolling deadly joints of Durban poison. ‘We were all so happy,’ Fraser recalled. ‘Convinced we were doing Shakespeare.’

  To make everyone feel at home in the African bush the art department converted a large rondavel into a typical English pub, christened The Red Ox. Halfway through production, delighted with the film’s progress, Lloyd organized a party there. Things went smoothly until midnight approached and he pulled the plug in the interest of filming at dawn the next day. Come morning the third assistant told Lloyd that Burton wanted to see him urgently in his trailer. ‘When I knocked at the door a burst of expletives came forth and I entered to find a seething Richard, red in the face, glowering at me. No request to sit, I stood and suffered the worst abuse imaginable. “I have only one thing to say to you. You are a shit. How dare you insult me like that in front of the crew?” Totally baffled, I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about. Then it came out. He thought that I had pulled the midnight plug on the party to make sure he would not be drinking.’ Lloyd told Burton that he’d misunderstood his actions, but if any offence had been caused he apologized. Still not pacified Burton grunted, turned to his script pages and allowed the producer to make a quiet exit. ‘Around six o’clock in the evening Richard knocked at my door, entered smilingly and promptly gave me a huge bear hug. “Forgive me, old chap, for this morning. That was downright stupid of me. I’m afraid the gremlins were at work inside me. It happens sometimes.” It was never mentioned again.’

  The film company managed to get full insurance on Harris, and the star was told to behave, or else. To make sure he did, a nightly report was sent to the London insurance company confirming that the actor had ‘performed to the letter of his contract’. Lloyd had never encountered such a condition being imposed on an actor in a film before. All went well until two-thirds of the way through shooting when the stunt men invited the whole cast to dinner. ‘Once again the third assistant knocked at my door soon after shooting had commenced the next day,’ says Lloyd. ‘The boy looked very upset when he asked if I could see Mr Harris urgently on the set. I drove into the bush at once and found Richard sitting silently on an exposed root of a tree, head in his hands. With great trepidation I approached and stood over him. Slowly he turned his head to gaze at me. “Richard,” says I, “are you ill? What’s t
he trouble?” He rose and whispered, “Guv, I was a bad, bad boy last night. I was out with the lads and somehow I fell off the wagon. But I promise you, and this I mean to keep, it won’t happen again, EVER.” I was convinced he meant it. I said this incident would be a secret between us, and so it was. Thereafter, he went from strength to strength in the role.’

  Burton and Harris could often get irritable at the sight of others drinking when they couldn’t touch a drop themselves. One night both were at a restaurant with their wives and the crew were boozing it up nearby and being boisterous. ‘These men are all drunk,’ Burton suddenly announced. ‘Drunken men are such bloody bores.’ Ann Turkel burst out laughing because only the previous night Harris had said to her, ‘I can’t bear being with all these drunks. They’re so bloody boring.’ The wives asked their husbands, ‘I don’t suppose you thought you were boring when you were drunk?’ Both stars looked briefly taken aback. ‘Of course not,’ they finally replied. The wives looked at each other and then at their husbands: ‘You were. You were both bloody bores.’ Harris later came to accept the accusation grudgingly. ‘But I would never have dreamt I was a boring drunk at the time.’

  Both Burton and Harris were delighted with how The Wild Geese turned out and with its commercial success in the summer of 1978. ‘I’d been plodding through sewage,’ said Harris. ‘And then at the end of the tunnel, there it was, a romp with the boys, a night on the town. Was The Wild Geese a movie? I thought it was a summer holiday.’ Those weeks spent in the South African bush also deepened Harris’s fondness for and friendship with Burton, whom he idolized till the day he died. ‘There was talent!’ One day on the set Harris sidled over to Burton and said, ‘You know, I’ve made this picture before, when I was in Limerick as a kid. I would always be daydreaming that I was off in Africa. Or fighting people, or saving my gang.’ Burton smiled. ‘So was I, a little kid in Wales, always in the trees with a machine gun.’