Chapter 5
1 Brian Viner recalled this anecdote in a letter to the Independent after Keith Waterhouse’s death in 2009.
2 Daily Mail, 7 August 2009.
3 This was way off the mark. Jack Hawkins played Allenby and Omar Sharif played Ali.
4 Keith Waterhouse, writing in 2009, recalled the two actors’ different approaches to the role. ‘Albert Finney played the part for nine months before Tom Courtenay took over. It was fascinating to contrast their performances – Finney’s extrovert “I am a star” Billy, Tom’s introvert “I wish I were a star” Billy. Both interpretations were equally correct, for locked in Billy Fisher’s tangled psyche are both characters, star and nonentity, battling it out.’
5 Finney and Courtenay’s portrayal of Billy Fisher impressed not only British actors. Australian actor Terence Donovan (father of Jason) who subsequently played the part, remembered the play’s impact: ‘Finney and Tom Courtenay – they played it and I just adored what they did and I went to everything I could see for them because they were just measures of excellence, you know. And, of course, they came from a real working-class background and our business was not always like that. You always had to have a very polished voice, you know, or something like this, [Terence puts on a posh accent] and that’s really bullshit [Terence laughs] and those guys came from working-class backgrounds and they were just blokes on the street showing they could cut the mustard and that’s fantastic.’ Interview with Terence Donovan, 2006.
6 Almost a Gentleman by John Osborne.
7 Quoted in The Cinema of Tony Richardson: Essays and Interviews by James M. Welsh and John C. Tibbetts.
8 Parky:My Autobiography by Michael Parkinson.
Chapter 6
1 Hugh Purcell in The Nine Lives of John Freeman: ‘There were two weak interviews, with the actor Albert Finney and the playwright John Osborne. Freeman seemed unprepared and, for the first time, lacked drive and persistence. As a result the interviews fell flat.’ Later, Freeman reportedly conceded that his new post as editor of The New Statesman had made him soften his adversarial approach. Ironically, Freeman was just as publicity shy as Finney. Purcell wrote to him asking for his co-operation in writing a biography, but Freeman politely refused. ‘I wish everybody would forget I was alive,’ he said, shortly before his death, aged 99, in 2014.
2 This was long before video cameras and mobile phones made life even harder for actors. And Finney’s outburst seems restrained compared to, for example, George C. Scott, who once jumped off the stage and ran up the aisle to seize a camera off a theatregoer.
3 Actor Rodney Bewes puts Finney’s dissatisfaction more crudely. He claims that Finney described the film, while making it, as nothing more than ‘Richardson wanking through Dorset’.
4 Film versions were made in 1970 and 2003, starring Mick Jagger and Heath Ledger respectively.
5 Hard-drinking diminutive actor Michael Dunn (1934–73) won an Oscar nomination for Ship of Fools. He died in London while filming The Abdication with Peter Finch.
6 Coincidentally, Finney would also have been in New York, performing in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, when Martin Luther King was assassinated on 6 June 1968.
7 Shelley 2: The Middle of My Century by Shelley Winters.
8 Interview with the Daily Mail, 29 December 2002.
9 Glenn Ford: A Life by Peter Ford.
Chapter 7
1 New York Times interview, 26 July 1981.
2 Frank, Sammy, Marlon & Me: Adventures in Paradise with the Celebrity Set by Eddie Sherman.
3 Annette Nancarrow, American painter (1907–92).
4 The Films of Martin Ritt: Fanfare for the Common Man by Gabriel Miller. The director of The Molly Maguires, Martin Ritt, had wanted Finney for the role of McParlan and Sean Connery for the part of Kehoe. Finney, however, declined. He said the film ‘was full of promise’ but he was ‘unsure of what he wanted to do in the future’.
5 Early in 1964, Finney apparently sent his London agent Philip Pearman a postcard from Fiji in which he cited all the parts he had been offered and marked ‘no’ beside them all. Pearman, the husband of actress Coral Browne, died in October of that year. Finney’s subsequent agent was Laurence Evans (1912–2002) who also managed, among (many) others, Laurence Olivier, John Mills, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud and Alec Guinness. Evans, speaking in 1990, said, ‘Of all my clients, Albert is in the most demand. He gets one or two offers a week. Only Olivier surpassed this.’ When Evans retired in 1993, Finney gave him a valedictory send-off at the Ivy restaurant.
6 As Luck Would Have It by Derek Jacobi.
7 Where There’s Smoke. Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man: A Memoir by William B. Davis.
8 Gordon Smythe (1926–2004) saddled Charlottown, the winner of the 1966 Derby at Epsom, in his first season as a trainer.
9 Peter Shaffer (1926–2016). Finney, Simon Callow and Patrick Stewart were among the stars taking part in Chichester Festival Theatre’s celebrations in 2014, to mark its long association with the playwright.
10 When Hopkins was interviewed on LBC radio, just before Silence of the Lambs, a caller rang in to say that she had once met the actor’s parents. Hopkins replied, instantly, and with a note of contemptuous dismissal in his voice, ‘Small world!’
11 Playboy interview with Laurence Grobel, 1994.
12 Charon subsequently directed a film version in 1968 with Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts.
13 Vidal: The Autobiography by Vidal Sassoon.
Chapter 8
1 American Prince by Tony Curtis.
2 Quoted in The Times, 13 June 2015.
3 The Bitter End: Hanging Out at America’s Nightclub by Paul Colby.
Chapter 9
1 Clive Goodwin (1932–78).
2 Billie Whitelaw (1932–2014) interview in the Independent, 2 June 1997.
3 George Best (1946–2005) interview with Sean O’Hagan in The Observer, 21 July 2002.
4 Blakely was a fine, underrated actor, and modest with it. I went backstage to see him during the run of A Chorus of Disapproval in the summer of 1986. He was already ill with leukemia. It was subsequently revealed that he was in such pain he had trouble standing. But he forced himself to run up and down the theatre aisle in character as the manic director Dafydd Ap Llewellyn in this hilarious play within a play. He died in May 1987.
5 Vamp Until Ready: A Life Laid Bare by Kate O’Mara.
6 New York Times interview, 26 July 1981.
7 Mike Leigh, a fellow Salfordian, wrote, ‘Occasionally Finney turned up in his Range Rover with his stunt double bodyguard and tied up the location payphone making calls to his bookie. One day he brought his new wife. “This is Mrs Finney.” It was Anouk Aimée. “Call her nookie,” he said.’
8 Director Peter Medak said that Finney was the first choice for the film but did not want to play it again. He thought that Finney had been ‘brilliant’ in the play. Peter Nichols, interviewed in 2011 in the Herald, judged that Finney was ‘too big’ in performance terms for the part. He thought that Clive Owen, who played Bri in 2001, was ‘quite fantastic’.
9 Harold Clurman, New York Magazine, 29 April 1968.
10 The Observer, 1 May 2000.
11 Author’s interview with Robert Sallin, 12 February 2016.
12 Douglas Hayward (1934–2008) was a tailor who dressed many famous stars in the sixties, including Peter Sellers, Terence Stamp and Richard Burton.
Chapter 10
1 Director Ronald Neame’s version is lightly different, however: ‘We were going to have Richard Harris. He was going to play the lead. And he had to go and make a film in Israel, I think. Something went wrong with it and he had to take it over, and he had to direct it. So we couldn’t get him. The company who were financing the film said, well, if you can’t get him, there are only two or three other names that are acceptable to us. One of those names was Finney – who turned it down. He said, “I don’t want to make a film just now.” So we thought, Rex, Rex Harrison. R
ex could sort of play Scrooge. So we gave the script to Rex and he liked it very much and we cast him. But there was a problem. Because he was at the end of a play which he was working on in London. He had three weeks more to play. We had to start in two weeks, because of weather conditions, summer and winter scenes. So this three weeks was really a nuisance, but we had to face it. And then we decided we would pay the theatre off. We’d pay for the three weeks, and we’d get Rex earlier. And then one day, we had a phone call from Alby Finney, who said, on the phone, I have just read your screenplay, in my office, because my partner is playing a small part, and [he said] you know, I would love to play it. And we said, Oh, Alby, oh goodness me! We’ve cast Rex Harrison. And he said, Oh well, it’s my fault, but I would have loved it. And we did a terrible thing. Slightly ashamed to tell you. We told Rex that we hadn’t got the money to pay off the theatre, but we had to start shooting the following Monday. Rex didn’t mind very much. And Alby played the part.’
2 The Music Man: The Autobiography of Leslie Bricusse.
3 Annabel Leventon interview with the author, 29 December 2015.
4 My First Movie by Stephen Lowenstein.
5 Maureen Lipman, interview with the author, 4 December 2015.
6 Carolyn Seymour interview with the author, 3 December 2015.
Chapter 11
1 Finney was filming Looker in California when he heard of Rachel Roberts’s death. ‘I was at the Bel Air Hotel, when I heard – David Lewin woke me with the news. I was appalled and shocked. If he hadn’t indicated there was a strong possibility of suicide, I’d have suspected it was murder.’
2 Stephen Rea in the Irish Times, 2 October 2015.
3 Poirot and Me by David Suchet.
4 Albert Finney in Character by Quentin Falk.
5 Sidney Lumet interview in The Times, 19 March 1974.
6 The Times interview, 19 January 1974.
7 Lindsay Anderson Diaries by Lindsay Anderson (1923–94).
8 Albert Finney in Character by Quentin Falk.
Chapter 12
1 In a 1996 interview Finney appeared not to regret his decision to take over the stewardship of the National, noting that it was now impossible for an actor to run the place because of ‘all those bloody meetings … like the National Health Service there are more people running these places than there used to be’.
2 Peter Hall diary entry from 2 July 1974, ‘Albert Finney came to the Barbican flat this morning. An excellent meeting. He said he now felt ready to take on the big parts. He wants to try to examine a rougher, more instinctive form of classical acting. He would like to do Tamburlaine and Hamlet. It is five years too late for Hamlet but he wants to try. I think he must. Tamburlaine is perfect for him, and Hamlet must assuredly be entertaining.’
3 Quote from Stage Blood by Michael Blakemore.
4 The Times obituary of Nicol Williamson, 26 January 2012.
5 Jill Townsend, interview with the author, 12 December 2015.
6 According to Robert Gore-Langton, ‘After “how all occasions do inform against me”, he [Finney] would go off and have a Guinness, a smoke and a snooze before coming back on for the Gravedigger.’ Daily Telegraph, 28 September 2010.
7 Kiss Me Like A Stranger by Gene Wilder.
8 Carol Comes Home by Carol White (1943–91).
9 Kenneth Hurren (1920–1993). This kind of acidic review with its false humility ‘… my modest requirement is …’, a haymaker delivered by a velvet glove, does make one sit back and appreciate the resilience of actors like Finney who put themselves in the front line.
10 Many years later, Bernard Levin was one of Maurice Allington’s – alias Finney’s – guests in the BBC adaptation of Kingsley Amis’s The Green Man.
11 Gielgud’s Letters, John Gielgud in his own words.
12 Interview in the New York Times, 26 July 1981.
13 Quoted in The Stage, 30 April 2015.
14 Young Winstone by Ray Winstone.
15 Peter Hall diary entry from 19 January 1976.
16 Making an Exhibition of Myself by Peter Hall.
17 Brian Cox remembered the production as ‘horrendous’, if only because of the eight-month rehearsal period during which the opening of the Olivier Theatre was constantly being put back.
18 Hill Place. Interview with Cristina Raines, 2014.
19 Key Changes: A Musical Memoir by Denis King.
20 Interview with Albert Finney in Times News, NC, 4 August 1977.
Chapter 13
1 Tony Richardson, interviewed in 1977, thought that in Britain ‘there’s a ludicrous desire to see other people fail. Look at the treatment the press have recently given the National Theatre.’
2 Now renamed the Dorfman Theatre after philanthropist Lloyd Dorfman.
3 Impossible Plays: Adventures with the Cottesloe Company by Jack Shepherd and Keith Dewhurst.
4 Actress Susan Littler (1947–82) was just 34 when she died of cancer. On 24 October 1982, Finney hosted a special programme in Littler’s memory at the National Theatre. Proceeds were donated to cancer research.
5 Amanda Waring – interview with the author, 8 January 2016.
6 Tom Bell obituary in the Guardian, 6 October 2006.
7 Letter to Polish-born photographer, Slawek, 25 May 1977.
8 Albert Finney in conversation with Peter Lewis. Quoted in Architecture, Actor & Audience by Iain Mackintosh.
9 1988 was Peter Hall’s final year as Director of the National Theatre. His successors were Richard Eyre (1988–97), Trevor Nunn (1997–2003), Nicholas Hytner (2003–15) and Rufus Norris (2015–).
10 Review by Simon Callow of Michael Blakemore’s Stage Blood.
11 Rivette made the same film twenty-seven years later with Emmanuelle Béart and Jerzy Radziwiłowicz.
Chapter 14
1 Interview in the New York Times, 26 July 1981.
2 Don Shewey interview with Gregory Hines in 1986.
3 Author’s interview with John Quested, 8 January 2016.
Chapter 15
1 Albert Finney in Character by Quentin Falk.
2 Albert Finney interview, Photoplay, August 1982.
3 Alan Parker interview in Photoplay, August 1982.
4 Albert Finney interview, Photoplay, August 1982.
5 Quoted in the New York Post, 5 December 2010.
6 Serving Albert Finney by Jack Stierer, Executive Chef.
Chapter 16
1 New York Times interview, 26 July 1981.
2 ‘This Might Possibly be Albert Finney’ – Rolling Stone profile by David Rosenthal, 24 June 1982.
3 Author’s interview with Peter Allis, 4 January 2016.
4 Teeing Off by Ken Bowden.
5 Great actors are always astute observers and Finney is no exception. He once said in a 1964 interview, ‘If somebody told me my best friend had died, a part of me would feel the pain. But the actor part of me would be watching and taking notes and saying, “So that’s how it feels! Remember! You can use that in a performance”.’
6 Daily Mail, 10 July 2012.
7 Peter O’Toole: The Definitive Biography by Robert Sellers.
8 Ronald Harwood Screenwriters’ Lecture, 1990.
9 Peter Yates quoted in Photoplay, April 1984.
10 McKellen’s Norman was slightly less prissy than Courtenay’s. Hopkins could not quite convey the mental confusion that made Finney’s portrayal so compelling.
11 New York Times, 4 December 1983.
12 Many actors interviewed for this book also cited Finney’s performance in The Dresser as his greatest.
13 Great Britons of Stage and Screen: In Conversation by Barbara Roisman Cooper.
14 Peter Yates quoted in the New York Times, 4 December 1983.
15 Henry Jaglom reported these comments from Orson Welles when The Dresser was released, ‘I have no intention of seeing it. I know it’ll be good, and I know Finney will be great in it. That’s why I won’t see it. Why should I make myself sick? If I had any hope that it was ba
d, I’d go.’ From My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles by Peter Biskind.
16 ‘The Outrageous Confessions of an Upper-Class Lolita’ – the Daily Mail, 12 March 2013.
17 Perhaps much of Pope John Paul’s appeal can be attributed to his voice. When he visited London in 1982, I remember his voice resounding around Westminster when he gave an address outside the cathedral. Finney managed to capture the timbre perfectly.
Chapter 17
1 Malcolm Lowry (1909–57).
2 L.S. Lowry (1887–1976). One of Salford’s most famous sons.
3 Richard Burton’s diaries contain several references to Under the Volcano. For example, 1 December 1971, ‘What I must really get after is Under the Volcano. That, if any film can be considered so, is an important piece.’ The Richard Burton Diaries, edited by Chris Williams.
4 Quoted in The Times, 5 October 1983.
5 One of the funniest (presumably straight-faced) commentaries on Finney’s performance is in the book Movies of the 1980s by Jürgen Müller. It says, ‘For his depiction of the alcoholic Geoffrey Firmin in Under the Volcano, Finney spent a period of time drinking excessively, in order to register the physical and mental changes brought about by addiction.’
6 Jeannine Dominy interview with the author, 23 October 2015.
7 The Times, 5 October 1983.
8 Some people might have thought that Villiers was better placed to play the consul but I couldn’t possibly comment. The funniest story involving Finney and Villiers is in Peter Bowles’s autobiography. The occasion was Brook Williams’s 21st birthday in 1959. A car containing various actors, including Villiers, Bowles, Williams, O’Toole and Finney, was pulled over by the police in London after some dodgy manoeuvres. Villiers explained the cause of the erratic driving to the policeman. ‘We are very sorry, officer, but the fact of the matter is that whilst travelling in an easterly direction, Mr Albert Finney broke wind and, in the ensuing panic, which as you can imagine was quite considerable in such a confined space, Mr Brook Williams, in his endeavour to open a window, lost control immediately and struck an Austin.’
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