Strolling Player

by Hershman, Gabriel;

  It seems ridiculous now, but this was, remember, the pre-sexual-revolution early sixties, and then as now Finney was a very private person. But it was getting dangerous to park by the lake in Central Park and I was amassing parking tickets.7

  Finney took his womanising seriously. ‘I used to deal in bulk. There is nothing wrong with that. Why not? It was a lot of fun. I tended to hunt alone, like a U-boat, going about quietly to operate,’ he once said.8

  Peter Ford, son of Hollywood veteran Glenn Ford, remembers gatecrashing a party at Finney’s apartment over Christmas 1963:

  Inside a bacchanal was in progress, awash with beautiful people partying with uninhibited zeal … I can remember bits and pieces of the evening which didn’t end until daybreak. Was that Elizabeth Ashley French-kissing me as I sat in Finney’s living room? Who were those naked women in Finney’s bedroom (with Finney passed out on the bed) singing Christmas carols to him?9

  Finney may have played the Protestant Luther, but it seems he was a man of Catholic taste. Finney’s list of conquests in the sixties was impressive. The relationship with Samantha Eggar proved short-lived and Finney was moving on. There were legions of beautiful women across the high seas. So it was, after the enormous success of Luther and Tom Jones, Finney decided that a ‘sabbatical’ was in order, well away from the madness of celebrity, awards and movies. A year of free living followed. Oscars be damned!

  7

  SLOW MOTION

  I have no regrets about the choices I’ve made. What I’ve done is what I should have done.

  Albert Finney.

  Jack Lemmon hosted the 36th Academy Awards, held on 13 April 1964. Frank Sinatra presented the award for the best picture to Tom Jones. Rita Hayworth announced the best director as ‘Tony Richards’, a faux pas for which she was mortified. And Anne Bancroft presented the Oscar for best actor to … Sidney Poitier for Lilies of the Field.

  Finney had been favourite to win the Oscar. Yet at that moment he was thousands of miles away. Finney was seriously involved in the hedonism business while the awards rolled. He once told a story to Michael Blakemore that summed up his mood. Blakemore relates the tale:

  When Albert made his million on Tom Jones and went on his sabbatical trip around the world, he stopped in Acapulco. One evening he was drinking Dom Pérignon on a balcony with the most beautiful girl in Mexico. He took her into the bathroom and put his cock into her. With every thrust, he said, out loud: ‘That’s for Dad, that’s for Mum, and that’s for Uncle Ted, and that’s for Cousin Jim, and that’s for Auntie Marion …’ A whole working-class family shared that fuck.

  Back in 1964, it wasn’t quite so compulsory for nominees to attend the Oscars as it is today. Nevertheless, Finney had done himself no favours by his absence. Yet this was just the start. Finney did no work for the remainder of 1964 once his run on Luther ended in January. His agent, keen to capitalise on his young client’s success, was appalled. Finney later reflected:

  I remember my then-agent in New York. He said, ‘But Albert, they won’t remember who you are.’ I said, ‘They didn’t know who I was six months ago in New York, so what’s the difference?’ What I realised in that eleven months of travel was that I want to get outside the profession now and again … I learnt that lesson in ’64, that I need to be able to get away from it for a while and just be without thinking: How is the character I’m trying to learn about? How would he be at this point? You have to remember how YOU are at that point.

  And despite grumbling from those who had something to profit from Finney’s lucrative period, he never regretted the year off:

  People told me to cash in on my success while I was hot. But what I wanted to do then was go around the world. I’d been acting for about eight years and had only had one vacation. So I decided to take a year off after my contract in Luther ended. I’d always wanted to travel. Captain Cook had been a hero of mine when I was a kid, and I thought it would be exciting to go to some of the places in the Pacific where he’d been. That’s what I did. I have no regrets about the choices I’ve made. What I’ve done is what I should have done.1

  Finney was in Hawaii on Oscar night. He had already visited the islands the year before and had befriended Eddie Sherman, Hawaii’s premier journalist. Now he was staying for an indefinite period. As the red carpet was being unfurled at Santa Monica’s Civic Auditorium, Finney called Sherman:

  He asked me what I was doing on the night of the Oscars. ‘Just gonna watch the show’, I said.

  ‘Then how about joining me? I’ve got some birds [girls] I’m taking out on a catamaran.’

  I told him I’d only go if I could bring a radio along so I could listen to the Academy Awards. If he wins, I figured, I’ll have me a nice scoop.

  Finney agreed. He didn’t care to see or hear the show. He just wanted to go sailing. I found a nice spot on the tarpaulin above the deck of the catamaran to observe the action and listen to the Academy Awards. Finney was having a great time, tossing down the Polynesian drinks and dancing with his ‘birds’.

  Finally, ‘best actor’ was announced. Sidney Poitier was the winner. When I yelled down the information to Finney, he stopped the dancing and asked everybody to raise their glasses in a deserved toast to a great actor: Sidney Poitier. That was class. Then the music started up again, and the dancing and the fun continued.

  It was dark by the time we sailed the cat back into Waikiki. A bunch of lights from shore hit the vessel. TV reporters were waiting. Finney asked if I would talk to my contemporaries on his behalf. So I jumped off and said to them, ‘No story here. Sidney Poitier won for Lilies of the Field.’

  But the reporters were persistent and Finney reluctantly talked to them.2

  Tom Jones had won four Oscars in total, for best film, director, adapted screenplay and music. Finney seemed genuinely underwhelmed. During his Hawaiian sojourn he told Sherman:

  I realise that when one gets famous there is a public responsibility. But I don’t quite know how to handle it. Basically, I’m a stage actor and have been earning my living on the stage since I was 19. People don’t usually bother stage actors but it’s different in films. Right now I just want to travel anywhere in the world I want. I want to see places and people. I don’t want to be tied down with commitments. If I knew I had a picture to do, five months from now, I’d be worrying about the part and couldn’t enjoy anything else.

  And travel Finney did, beginning in Mexico, and exploring Hawaii, Fiji, Australia and Hong Kong. Finney’s enthusiastic lovemaking in Acapulco, even more enthusiastically related second-hand by Michael Blakemore, was marred by a nasty incident at sea. Artist Annette Nancarrow3 recalls the encounter:

  When I met him he was in great pain as he had been scuba diving and had stepped on a sea urchin and the poisonous spines had entered the sole of his foot. I could see he was suffering from a fever. I took his pulse and immediately took him to a doctor friend of mine who applied a primitive remedy known in Acapulco. This doctor lit a pork wax candle and let it drip on the foot where the spines had penetrated the skin. Miraculously, the spines came out. The doctor also put him on antibiotics, and Albert Finney recovered very quickly.

  Throughout this period Finney had plenty of time – between navel-gazing, making love to exotic beauties, Tahitian dancing, swimming, sailing and sinking mai tais – to define his philosophy. He wanted to remain (primarily) a stage actor and he wanted to be free to do whatever he wanted. ‘I don’t want to be a victim of supporting a lifestyle that you have to get huge salaries to support, even if you do things for nothing,’ he’d say later.

  Sure, there would be some films, but he would choose them carefully. So it was, in ensuing years, he declined the chance to work with Julie Andrews on (ironically) Hawaii and on The Molly Maguires with Sean Connery.4 Richard Harris starred in both instead. Finney also opted out of John Huston’s The Bible.5

  Finney was away travelling for almost a whole year. By the end of 1964 he felt, as he later admitted, so ‘wound down�
�� that he barely had the motivation to open a book. It was time to get home. Predictably, he resisted juicy film offers to tread the boards. Finney was realistic enough to know that he had to ease himself back gently. So he played Don Pedro, a relatively small part, in the National Theatre production of Much Ado about Nothing at the Old Vic, directed by Franco Zeffirelli.

  It was his first performance for the National. He told Clive Goodwin that he felt he needed to get his breathing equipment into gear again. ‘I couldn’t quite time when to take my breaths anymore. I felt that it took me about three months of being back in the theatre to feel match fit.’ Not that colleagues or audiences thought Finney was out of practice. He seemed as brilliant as ever. Ian McKellen, playing Claudio, remembered, ‘I couldn’t believe that Albert Finney, such a star, was playing what I took on the page to be the supporting part. I hadn’t realised that Don Pedro is probably the best part. Couldn’t keep my eyes off Albert, just riveting.’

  Derek Jacobi, playing Don John, later inherited the part of Don Pedro from Finney. He found Finney a hard act to follow:

  Albert Finney as Don Pedro was unequivocally marvellous and as part of his performance and throughout the run he smoked cigars – provided free by W.D. & H.O. Wills. At the end of the play there were two banquettes on stage, on either side, and Don Pedro would be left on his tod, puffing thoughtfully on his cigar. Albert would blow a smoke ring and the smoke went curling slowly round, expanding beautifully into the auditorium. He was such a master and it was a lovely moment.

  Sometime during the run, which went on for years, the cast changed and Ronnie Pickup took over Don John from me. I took over from Albert the part of Don Pedro. There was a great drawback here because I couldn’t blow smoke rings, and also by now they had to buy the cigars for me – no Albert’s name on the programme!6

  A more testing role for Finney was as John Armstrong in John Arden’s Armstrong’s Last Goodnight, directed by John Dexter. Among the forty-strong cast were Graham Crowden, Paul Curran, John Hallam, Ian McKellen and Geraldine McEwan. Set in sixteenth-century Scotland, it tells of King James’s attempts to establish authority over local barons. It was a complex play with various Scottish dialects to differentiate between the gentry and the common folk.

  Native Scot Iain Cuthbertson had played Armstrong to perfection at Glasgow’s Citizens’ Theatre. The Guardian’s Benedict Nightingale preferred Cuthbertson’s approach:

  Finney emphasises the sullen, brutish side of the character; he appears to take one line of the play, that he is violent, proud and abominably selfish, entirely literally. He misses the warmth and generosity of heart. At the end, when poor Finney dangles dead from a tree, it’s difficult to feel concerned.

  Lindsay Anderson, who had been disappointed by Finney’s refusal to accept This Sporting Life, stayed with Finney in Chichester. The director, it seems, was determined to castigate Finney and everything he appeared in. He described Finney, in his diary entries:

  … boringly constricted in taste and conversation, completely closed. The acting also: closed, technical; uninteresting … I was bored with Armstrong which I find tiresomely affected – all this ridiculous Scottish accent and vocabulary – and atrocious construction.

  Anderson, from this point onwards, always painted Finney as a spoiled dilettante, corrupted by money and fame. Newcomers to Finney territory, however, like actor William B. Davis, found him to be the complete opposite: likeable, generous and grounded. Finney was also endearingly honest when a part wasn’t working for him. Davis, who was treated to the ‘egalitarian’ dinner that featured in our prologue, was startled to see Finney interrupt director John Dexter during Armstrong’s Last Goodnight, before a particularly long speech, to tell him that he (Finney) didn’t know how to play it. Davis remembered it was close to a full dress rehearsal. Davis never forgot the lesson:

  What has stuck with me to this day is that there’s no point chattering on with a long speech if you don’t know what gets you into it. I often tell students to rehearse the start of a monologue – no point rehearsing the rest of it if you don’t have the beginning working.7

  Underlying all Finney’s behaviour was a rare humility in such a big star. Take Armstrong’s Last Goodnight. The Daily Telegraph critic W.A Darlington had earlier slammed the Chichester production:

  If your idea of a well-spent evening is to listen to slugs of talks in an ersatz dialect of medieval Scots for more than three hours here is your play. You get some decapitations thrown in, a bit of murder, some elementary pageantry and a realistic hanging. But speaking quite personally, I don’t know why anybody wanted to write it or anybody wanted to put it on.

  When Darlington saw the play at the Old Vic, however, in a restaging by Finney, he reversed his view completely:

  The whole atmosphere of the piece is subtly changed. The action seems closer knit, the dialogue less uncouth, and more easily followed, the characters more human and individual. How much of this startling change is due to the more intimate kind of staging I cannot guess. It is pretty clear, though, that great credit must go to Albert Finney, who re-staged the original Dexter-Gaskill production, for the warmth and humanity the piece now has.

  Darlington was surprised to receive a letter from Finney himself, which the critic described as ‘reflecting an attractive modesty in the writer’. In the note, Finney disclaimed the credit for the improved production. Instead he paid tribute to Dexter and Gaskill’s work and said it was the Old Vic itself, with its greater intimacy and the closer concentration of a proscenium theatre, which accounted for the improvement.

  Finney, although ever conscientious at the National, still had a healthy work/play balance. Julia Goodman, later to become an actress (best known for The Brothers) was a teenage usher at Chichester in 1965. She recalled heading back to the flat of Finney’s great friend, Norman Rossington, (who had co-starred with him in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning) for an eventful evening in which Finney and Norman were busily proving their manhood. The carnal pleasures, I must hasten to add, did not include Julia. She was busy chasing an enormous moth out of the premises.

  Julia’s uncle was the racehorse trainer Gordon Smythe;8 she would subsequently introduce Finney to him. All these years later, she believes that it’s clear that ‘Albert has never had a full-on acting career. His real love was horses.’ Nevertheless, Julia remembers first-hand the impact of his performances. She thought Finney was marvellous in Armstrong’s Last Goodnight and has a particularly vivid memory of Finney bellowing ‘you’re nothing but a whore!’ in a thick Scottish accent.

  For Julia, however, the highlight was Peter Shaffer’s Black Comedy, performed in a double bill with Miss Julie. Black Comedy, which opens on a darkened stage, related the misadventures of a young artist, Brindsley Miller (Derek Jacobi), saddled with an idiot fiancée, who has invited a millionaire art collector round to see his work. He smartens up his flat by pilfering furniture from a gay neighbour, Harold Gorringe, played to the hilt with hand-on-hip hysteria by Finney. Julia remembers ‘a distinctly podgy Finney, dressed in a pink shirt, outrageously camp … no one had ever been so funny in the part.’

  Derek Jacobi was in awe of Finney and Maggie Smith – the latter cast as his ex-mistress. So Finney, perhaps sensing Jacobi’s diffidence, tried to allay his anxiety by inviting him out to dinner. ‘You’ve got the bigger part, so don’t you worry about Maggie and me. We can look after ourselves. This is your play and your big part. Get on with it,’ Finney told him.

  Jacobi remembered Finney’s quick-wittedness:

  In the play I hide Gorringe’s [Finney’s] Buddha statue under his raincoat. Gorringe enters in a fury, carrying his lighted candle, sees his raincoat, grabs it, and pulls the statue on to the floor, which then breaks. But one night the business went arse over tit. Albert came on, seized the raincoat, pulled it off the table, the Buddha hit the floor but it didn’t smash as expected. Albert went ‘Ah’, blew out the candle, all with the speed of light, a fantastic moment of inspiratio
n.

  Black Comedy was a great success, triggering laughter in surprisingly high places. Shaffer recalled a funny incident on the night of 10 March 1966, just before the curtain rose at the Old Vic. He was leaving the theatre when he saw the Queen arriving. ‘I’m so looking forward to this, your farce, because my sister [Princess Margaret] came last week and she almost died laughing,’ the monarch told him. Shaffer replied. ‘Well, I hope you do too.’9

  In Miss Julie, Strindberg’s classic study of a duel between servant and mistress, Finney was praised for his ‘subtle compound of materialism and social pretension’.

  An interesting encounter during a production of Congreve’s Love for Love, which starred Laurence Olivier as Tattle, was with Anthony Hopkins, then Colin Blakely’s understudy. Hopkins was expected to take over from Blakely when he went away on tour. Finney took the role instead at short notice. But Hopkins remembered his first meeting with Finney because they would rehearse songs together. ‘“Hello”, he said, “I’m Albert Finney. Can yer sing? No? Welsh, aren’t yer?”’

  It’s worth comparing Hopkins to Finney. In the eyes of many, Hopkins became Britain’s greatest modern actor. He certainly eclipsed Finney in fame, becoming an Oscar-winning international star. Hopkins is also much less choosy. Hence, although they are both about 80 (Finney being nineteen months older), Hopkins has twice as many screen credits. He is a household name to American audiences in the way that Finney no longer is.

  Back in 1965, however, the reverse was the case. Finney was the big name, mature and self-confident in only his late 20s. Hopkins, by contrast, was a late starter. It wasn’t until he turned about 35 that he really came into his own. Nowadays the internet occasionally buzzes with the kind of fun-filled comparison that keeps keen movie fans busy. Who was the better actor, Finney or Hopkins? Both are tangibly great modern actors with many acclaimed stage and film parts to their credit. Occasionally they have vied for the same role. Both were considered, for example, for Under the Volcano and, at various times, were in the running for Gandhi.