I won’t forget in a hurry the fine cut screening we all viewed at Shepperton. I knew he rarely looked at cuts but we invited him and he came readily. I travelled to the studio with Albert and afterwards he and I were concerned that a scene late on in the story had been cut resulting in a less than successful denouement. The executive from Rete Italia, our Italian partner, Riccardo Tozzi, agreed as did the producer, who had become a good friend, Fernando Ghia. Albert did feel strongly, though he put forward his view quite gently and he was right. It wasn’t just an extra shot, it was an entire scene, and we went to Scandinavia to shoot it. There was money left in the budget to do so. The scene was shot a fortnight later, directed by Albert, and added to the final cut.
Benson remembers Finney fondly, ‘I enjoyed his company, admired his utter professionalism and leadership of the company … a truly great British star who opened the door for so many other actors from outside the metropolis.’
Ray Loynd, in the LA Times, described the final production when it aired:
Finney’s intelligence agent draws up memories of Richard Burton’s grainy portrayal in arguably the best spy movie ever made, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965). TV has rarely presented a spy tale this devious. But beware: Forbes’s Muse here isn’t so much John le Carré as the game Scrabble. Fitting the pieces together will keep your head spinning for the length of this 120-minute movie. Even when it’s over, ending in Moscow, you can’t make sense of everything you saw.
The Endless Game was a bit of a yawn. Soon after, thankfully, a midnight telephone call supplied Finney with one of his most memorable film roles. It would shore up his credibility as an international star.
20
FINNEY IN A PINNY
I never heard him talk about acting.
Gabriel Byrne on Albert Finney.
A sudden death gave Finney the opportunity to give one of his best performances in cinema. Trey Wilson died tragically young, aged just 43, of a cerebral haemorrhage as he was about to start filming Miller’s Crossing. The role had been specifically written for Wilson. But Finney, who had always admired the Coen brothers’ work, quickly agreed to replace him.1 The result was a marvellous mobster movie, aided by a memorable theme tune that seemed to evoke life’s vicissitudes. Finney made the part so much his own that the Coen brothers now admit it’s impossible to imagine anyone else as Leo. And perhaps that’s the ultimate arbiter of success.
Finney played a gangland chief in an unnamed US city (the accents are definitely not New York) who dallies with the girlfriend of his best friend, Tommy (Gabriel Byrne). Tommy has also fallen in with rival Johnny Caspar, with whom Leo has fallen out over the influence of a manipulative bigshot, triggering a gang war.
The film captivates you with its images: big men in trench coats and massive machine guns strolling through an autumn forest, their hats floating in the wind. But it’s the characterisation that makes the whole violent mayhem so enjoyable despite some sadism and pathos.
Great actors create a character in seconds, and the late Jon Polito (as Caspar) and Finney do so magnificently, albeit aided by a brilliant script. It’s clear that Caspar is a nasty guy. He rues that if you can’t fix a fight these days, what can you do? As if complaining that the trains are unreliable! Finney, as Leo, just sits there, eyeing him cynically. It’s a brilliant first scene. Polito later recalled it with some irony. He had always admired Finney and was looking forward to working with him, yet in their opening dialogue Polito does all the talking while Finney just looks at him.
Finney and Byrne adopted Irish accents. ‘The characters are of Irish extraction but their parts weren’t planned to be spoken with an accent,’ said Joel Coen. ‘When Gabriel [Byrne] read the script he thought it had a style, a rhythm, that was authentically Irish, and he suggested trying the lines with his accent. We were sceptical at the start but his reading convinced us. So Finney took on the accent too.’2
Finney plays one of the gangsters in the Bogart/Cagney films he saw as a kid. This, though, is no Fatty Harold but an altogether fitter Finney, slim as a razor blade, hair slicked back, a severe parting, the air of a no-nonsense crime boss in a city that’s got too big for two mobsters. Polito’s gangster is a slouchy, dopey grease ball, at one time lamenting that his fatso son is overeating and then casually ordering the murder of ‘the Jew’ who’s got into his way. A clash of egos ensues but Caspar underestimates Leo, to his cost.
The Coens have a brilliant set-piece. Leo is lying in bed, smoking, bespectacled and bedecked in a silk red dressing gown. The idyllic scene, complemented by the strains of Irish song ‘Danny Boy’ in the background, is shattered when several of Caspar’s henchmen launch a midnight assassination. Leo notices the smoke rising up through the floorboards, dives under the beds, blows their kneecaps off and then jumps down from the terrace to kill the remaining mobsters in the bedroom. He then chases several others down the street amid a flurry of machine-gun fire.
The Coens hired Irish tenor Frank Patterson to perform the song. After the scene was edited, Patterson went into the studio with an orchestra and watched the monitor so he could match the lyrics to the growing corpse count. When Finney, smoking a cigar, sees all the assailants die in flames, you hear Patterson sing, ‘I will sleep in peace … until you come to me!’
The Coens shot the sequence over several weeks. Scenes were re-filmed countless times because they felt that the characters’ deaths were insufficiently vivid or that the music was out of kilter. So much so that Finney became a regular fixture in New Orleans, a copy of The Sporting Life close at hand.
Finney made a convincing tough-guy, likeable but with a steely stare, marking him as a guy not to be crossed. His catlike grace and sangfroid, casually disposing of opponents like pesky mosquitoes, all adds to the fun.
The Coens’ career contains a few misfires, such as Intolerable Cruelty and Ladykillers, but also wonderful films such as Fargo and No Country for Old Men. All signature ingredients are served piping hot here – striking images, close-ups of unpalatable characters and grisly humour. John Walker liked Miller’s Crossing, calling it a ‘sombre, solidly made thriller, directed with a macabre skill’.
Gabriel Byrne found Finney a joy to work with, popular with the crews and other actors alike:
We shot that in and around New Orleans, and I think if they’d had an election for Mayor that year, Albert would’ve won it, hands-down. He led the St Patrick’s Day parade and was up and down Bourbon Street every night. The last thing you’d think of Albert after talking with him was that he was an actor, which is the greatest compliment I can give him. You’d talk with Albert about racehorses, football or politics, what was going on down the road. I never heard him talk about acting, and I’m not someone who likes talking about acting, either, or talking about the business. We had many great conversations. I remember after we shot that scene in the park, we were two hours from New Orleans, and myself and Albert came back together in the van. We didn’t have separate cars in that film, everyone just went in the van together. It was great. Coming back, I just sat with Albert for two hours and he told me all about where he was born, and where he was brought up, what working in England was like in the fifties and sixties … he told me how he turned down the lead in Lawrence of Arabia. I said, ‘Did you regret it?’ He said, ‘No Gabe, I didn’t regret it, because the next year I won the Oscar for Tom Jones’.3 [Finney probably meant this metaphorically. In fact, he was only nominated.]
Polito remembered Finney as ‘a master on the set … and a total master to watch … he should have been nominated.’ Marcia Gay Harden found him a great teacher. She remembered him coming up to her and saying, ‘Darling, I don’t want to be the old soldier but if you want to ask me something, do’. She said she learnt more from just watching him, both on- and off-screen, ‘And it doesn’t have to be about acting. Maybe it’s how to conduct yourself in the business.’
Memory, however, can play tricks. You probably think Miller’s Crossing was a box office
hit, but it didn’t make much money. The New York Times was full of pernickety criticisms. Now, as Polito commented in a recent interview, the same newspaper calls it a classic.
Finally, have you ever seen Finney in drag? If you have seen Miller’s Crossing, then you have. He appears in the powder room scene where Tom (Byrne) barges in on Verna. ‘Close your eyes, ladies, I’m coming through.’ The dames make a hasty exit, including Finney, to Byrne’s immediate left near the door, wearing a black and white pinafore.
From one great movie Finney went to another, one that became the most award-nominated show in HBO’s history. Finney had read Brian Rehak’s script, an indictment of modern trial by TV media, while shooting Miller’s Crossing. The Image focused on a news anchorman, Jason Cromwell, played by Finney, who becomes bigger than the stories he exposes. As an investigative reporter and presenter, Cromwell is a kind of American Roger Cook – judge, jury and executioner – as he uncovers wrongdoing. There’s also a touch of Peter Jennings, Dan Rather or Walter Cronkite about Cromwell. He likes to think he’s a Mr Clean, blowing the lid off the greedy and uncaring. But does he always get it right? Cromwell, in his eagerness to break the big story, to win the scoop that will keep his ratings high – a trend even more familiar in 2016 than in 1989 – is now sentencing ‘suspects’ on camera. ‘Who set you up as God, Cromwell?’ complains another suspect.
Cromwell, cheating on his wife (Marsha Mason) with a colleague (Kathy Baker), in between swooping on his targets, is a total narcissist – arrogant, unscrupulous and indiscreet. And yet, as often with a Finney character, he is perversely likeable, enhanced by a smidgen of self-loathing. ‘I make a real nice living from other people’s disaster,’ sings Cromwell to himself one day in his dressing room. His reputation unravels when a suspect in another supposed scam, one unfairly vilified by Cromwell, commits suicide. The cynical reaction in the studio – ‘Why would he do it? The show got good reviews.’ – is all too believable.
Cromwell is confronted by the victim’s widow and falls out with his long-standing producer friend Irv Nicholson (played by fellow Brit John Mahoney who, coincidentally, played the very first Harold in the Steppenwolf production of Orphans). It all ends with Cromwell delivering a live diatribe against scurrilous journalism.
The Image is particularly believable in its portrayal of backroom backstabbing, the endless quest for higher ratings and cost-cutting. The delight is the minimalist, naturalistic joshing between Mahoney and Finney. These two really seem like good friends and long-time collaborators. The story may not have been new – bigshot TV anchor suddenly gets conscience pangs – but it’s all in the handling. Apart from a slight lurch into English at the beginning, Finney’s portrayal of Cromwell is authentic. The Image received many awards.
(One question haunted me – why do Americans frequently call even close friends/lovers by their surname? Even his best friend and mistress both address him as ‘Cromwell’. Answers in an email please …)
Actor Dennis Haskins, best known for his role in Saved by the Bell and its sequel, Saved by the Bell: The New Class, only had a couple of lines in The Image, but he has never forgotten Finney’s warm welcome:
I took this part because I got to have one speech with Albert Finney … And Albert goes – ‘Hi Dennis, nice to meet you. Watch out for this one, he’s a scene stealer.’ And he goes. Well, the person that was the scene stealer was John Mahoney, who ended up being the dad on Frasier and a lot of other wonderful roles. So, I had a scene with John Mahoney.
So, the director after the scene said, ‘you know what – we want you to stay. We’re gonna put you in a couple more scenes.’ So, I had to stay that night. I had only the clothes on my back. I was just gonna go back, you know, the next day. Wardrobe gave me shirts to wear the next day. So, I’m in this sleepy little train stop hotel.
I’m going down to eat dinner with whatever money I’ve got in my pocket, which wasn’t much by the way. And down the stairs comes Albert Finney. Albert looks at me, remembered my name from many hours before, says, ‘Dennis, mind if I join you?’ And I said, ‘Please!’ And two hours later, I had the most wonderful evening that I can remember as an actor listening to Albert Finney tell me stories of all the wonderful actors in England and different things he’d done.
So, then we go to the wrap party for The Image, and Mr Finney is there. And I walk up to him, and I said, ‘Albert, I just want to thank you for making me feel so welcome.’ And he got serious, and he said, ‘I see myself as the host of the party, and if you’re having fun at my party, we’re going to have a pretty good party.’ And I took that with me.4
Kathy Baker, playing Finney’s lover in The Image, was another fan of the actor. ‘He’s so down to earth. So incredibly … it’s just hard to describe. You know what Finney does? He directs, he sets up the lights, he changes the words, he’s in everybody’s face and we all love it. He’s magical.’
But, off-screen, Finney had another diversion in The Image – Marsha Mason. In her autobiography, Mason revealed that Finney crossed her path at a vulnerable time after her divorce from playwright Neil Simon:
Albert seems to have a great time with life; he’s a flawless actor, a kind and terrific man who loves being social. He loves good food and great wine; he’s deliciously funny, full of energy and a great flirt. His joie de vivre became enormously appealing to Marsha, the Couch Potato Celibate. His love of life was charmingly contagious. Dammit, I decided I want some of that! He made me laugh and I started to feel sexy again!
‘I think it’s time we try on a new pair of shoes, don’t you?’ I asked all my selves in the mirror one day. (I’m addicted to shoes too.) Surprisingly, everyone was in agreement. He was the perfect person to lose my virginity with. Again. I’ve sometimes been rather straightforward when it comes to asking for what I want in the romance department. ‘Would you like to spend the Fourth of July weekend with me?’ I asked straightforwardly, smiling all the while. If only I had some of that brazen quality when asking for what I needed in some other areas of my life.
‘Why, I’d be charmed,’ he answered, charmingly. ‘You take my breath away,’ he added, kissing my hand, being Tom Jones all over again. What a great adventure. I was definitely pleased. I told him I planned a big party on the Fourth for the whole cast and a bunch of my friends, that I had arranged everything and that he could sit by the pool and relax.
‘Nonsense, I’ll help,’ he replied. And help he definitely did. He brought coffee, juice and toast to bed in the morning and patiently answered the zillion questions I asked him about his personal and professional life. I was way too earnest but he was forever gracious. We spent the next day picking up food and drink and setting up table by the portale by the pool.
Then, mysteriously, even to me, I became withdrawn. Personal growth, hitting walls, celibacy, and sudden intimacy were a bit too much for me, even though men and sex still made me a bit frivolous. Frivolous. Withdrawn. Poor guy. I was hard to figure.
We finished all the preparations for the next day’s party as the sun was setting and twilight was creating magic. Albert decided he wanted to water the grass and the hill so that everything looked perfect. I came down the hill, where I am now, and cut flowers for the table. Looking back and seeing him watering everything so intently, I was struck by the domesticity of the scene and how nomadic an actor’s life was, and how important it was to have some creature comforts in our lives when we’re on the road, working hard. He was having as pleasurable a time watering the lawn at twilight as I was having surreptitiously watching him.
The following morning after coffee and more fun in bed, Albert left to return to his hotel, dress and then come to the party with John Mahoney and a couple of guests. When he arrived we greeted each other as if he’d never been here. It was delicious having this secret together. Albert was the hit of the day as twilight darkened the sky, everyone stood at the edge of this hill and watched the various fireworks displays in Malibu, Long Beach, and a huge one right in front of us
at eye level. Watching the colourful explosions, I thought that this celebration was a gorgeous ‘stepping out’, celebrating the end of celibacy with a grand display of fireworks no less.5
Mason was right; Finney was a vagabond player who had spent most of 1989 living out of a suitcase. He needed to have a little luxury around him while on the road. By the time The Image wrapped in the summer of that year, he was preparing a return to the London stage after several months in America.
Finney’s second West End collaboration with Ronald Harwood, after the faltering JJ Farr, was altogether more successful. Another Time, which opened in September, had an intriguing way of handling the story of two generations of a South African family. The first act takes place in the fifties in South Africa. Finney plays a poverty stricken, sickly salesman who cadges cigarettes and spare change off his son (Christien Anholt), a promising concert pianist.
Finney was wonderful – the grimacing, whining self-pity and self-loathing as he fumbled through empty pockets. At just 53 he impersonated an older man extraordinarily well. In the second act, flash forward thirty years, he played the son, now London-based, who has become an internationally famous concert pianist.
The play examined a theme familiar to liberal South African exiles. Should he perform in apartheid South Africa? Being a Jewish family only compounded the dilemma. (We quickly gather that this, in some way, is Harwood’s autobiography.) Yet the second act was perhaps less interesting if only because the emotional soul-searching and the ‘our boy made good’ story is a bit clichéd. One day, a dramatist may write about a riches-to-rags family and the difficulty of adjusting to reduced circumstances.
Changing fortunes, however, were not really at the heart of Another Time. It was essentially about South Africa, the wistfulness of estrangement from one’s own country and the difficulty of facing up to a regime that you loathe but are powerless to challenge. Overall, it was thought-provoking and thoroughly enjoyable, a well-deserved hit.
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