Biography Of Peter Cook

by Harry Thompson

  Drink had once again started to affect his stage performance. ‘I was getting really peed off with his getting sloshed every night,’ says Dudley. ‘I didn’t like working with him in this way. He’d changed a great deal from what he had been, and had become much slower. Everything was slower; oh it was painful, painful. I remember one day he didn’t turn up at all, and people were having to break down the door of his apartment and drag him out. He was really out of it and he was saying “I’m fine.” I had to entertain the audience by playing the piano for about forty-five minutes.’ An announcement was made that Peter had been delayed ‘by a traffic accident’. Eventually, he appeared in the wings ‘like a ghost’, and gave Dudley the thumbs-up sign. ‘And the funny thing was, there were people in the audience whom I’d invited, who didn’t notice Peter’s drunkenness.’18 Either that, or America didn’t seem to care.

  Alexander Cohen, however, was furious, and became increasingly disillusioned with his star. ‘It was unheard of in the theatre’ he told Moore’s biographer Barbra Paskin. ‘It was irresponsible and unprofessional – which is the worst thing I can say about a human being. After the performance, Dudley remonsated with Peter and it was a very ugly moment. It was horrible and terrible, and you could tell that this was going to be a tough go. But I think part of what held them together was financial. I was paying them a great deal of money.’19Cohen allocated Peter a minder called Tommy, to ensure that he got to the theatre on time in future. Peter, who had lost none of his charm or sense of mischief, merely enlisted Tommy as a drinking companion instead. Dudley suggested psychotherapy; Peter refused outright. ‘I have a feeling that what I’d find I wouldn’t like in the least, and nobody else would either,’ he said.20

  There was still a great deal of affection between Peter and Dudley, but the counterbalancing friction had begun to outweigh it. Judy remembers that ‘Peter and Dudley would be arguing as they left the stage, and they could keep it going across New York, in the cab and into the restaurant: Peter was angry at Dudley getting a joint writing credit, as he wanted recognition that he was the main writer. It really fucked him off that Dudley wanted to take that credit, and that Dudley refused to acknowledge that Peter had written nearly all the stuff. So that was the basis of a burning resentment and an enormous antagonism. But the irony was, Peter couldn’t do it without Dudley, and Dudley used to tell him so. And of course, Dudley needed him too. This row had begun as a mild grit in the wheels in Australia, and had built up in London. Like a problem in a marriage, it took a while for it to build up into a full scale row. The trouble was, they were both completely right.’ Peter’s increasing desire for a solo writing credit was a measure of a growing insecurity, directly connected to his increasing inability to generate new material.

  To complicate matters, Dudley had now begun an affair with Tuesday Weld. A Hollywood starlet with a severely disturbed childhood, she had been a heavy drinker at ten, had lost her virginity at eleven and had made her first suicide bid at twelve. She had already been married once, to the screenwriter Claude Harz, and had an eight-year-old daughter. Although intelligent, she could also be childishly petulant and provocative. Her past romantic history with Peter brought an uneasily flirtatious and incestuous atmosphere to the occasions when Peter and Dudley had to go anywhere with their respective partners, and so helped curtail their joint social life. Judy remembers having to go to a party given by Lee Radziwill: ‘On the way both Peter and Dudley played footsie with Tuesday in the cab, right in front of me. It wasn’t a normal situation. I just accepted it as part and parcel of a star’s lifestyle.’

  Peter and Judy’s wedding, which had already been scheduled once for the spring of 1973, and cancelled because of difficulties in finalising Judy’s divorce papers, finally took place on Valentine’s Day 1974 amid the red leather banquettes and theatrical prints of Sardi’s, their favourite New York restaurant. Peter did not ask Dudley to be his best man – Alexander Cohen stood in – because Judy thought it was all getting too incestuous. Dudley was bitterly upset, and refused to come. There was a scrum of cameramen and television crews, who demanded the ceremony be restarted because the lights needed to be re-adjusted, but otherwise the day passed off well. As soon as the ceremony was over, Peter had to leave at once to do a TV appearance; but despite this apparently unromantic gesture, he was still very much in love with his bride. When Judy’s medical problems resurfaced and she had to return to London, he missed herso much that one night, after the show, he had the New York police stop the traffic, sped to the airport by taxi, flew to England, crept into her bed, then flew back a few hours later in time to catch the next night’s performance.

  He could also be unkind to her when depression gripped him. On one occasion he took her to a peep show in Times Square and was ejected for trying to chat up one of the strippers. He admitted too that ‘I can be verbally very vicious. I can be extremely nasty. I said to my wife: “You know nothing. Keep it to yourself.” It doesn’t make you very happy when you’re told that.’21 On another occasion, when Peter was entertaining a dinner table, Judy was laughing so much that her mascara was running down her face. Peter suddenly stopped in mid-flow and said coldly, ‘I wouldn’t laugh like that unless you intend to change your make-up.’ According to Gaye Brown, ‘When Peter got angry during the 70s there was something acidic about him, wicked, unnecessarily so. But we all know what that is. It’s hitting yourself, when you’re being that vile to people.’ Michael Bawtree, who saw Peter for the last time in New York, had also noted a change in his old school friend: ‘The bitterness that haunted his talk in later years had already begun to gnaw at him, I think: the satirical cast of his humour had become a little blacker and more hurtful.’22

  On stage, meanwhile, Good Evening was going from strength to strength. By January 1974, it had broken the Plymouth Theaters box office record. In April, Peter and Dudley were presented with a special Tony award, and a Grammy for the show’s soundtrack. On 30 November, by now transferred to the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, they clocked up their 438th Broadway performance, a record for a two-man show. On 14 February 1975, in another ironic reversal, the Foreign Office feted Peter with a special lunch to celebrate his first wedding anniversary, hosted in his honour by the British Ambassador Sir Peter Ramsbotham. The BBC, whose attitude to Peter had also come a long way since the early sixties, was now openly begging him and Dudley to do more episodes of Not Only . . . But Also. The pair agreed only to provide linking material for a compilation of old material, entitled Pete and Dud in New York, to go out as a Christmas special in 1974.

  Jimmy Gilbert flew out to direct the show, but soon ran into unexpected problems. The US broadcast trade unions refused to allow a BBC entertainment crew to operate on American soil, so the entire programme had to be shot on board the Jonathan B, an elderly tug, in the middle of the Hudson. Peter and Dudley dressed up in their cloth caps and plastic macs, and Dudley’s piano was loaded aboard. Peter constructed an elaborate plot about the Isle of Wight ferry getting lost and finding itself off Manhattan but, admits Gilbert, ‘It was so convoluted that it didn’t really work.’ It was around this time that, unknown to Peter, Gilbert made the horrible discovery that most of the Not Only . . . But Also programmes had been wiped. ‘People were asking “Where the hell is it?” – and it was all gone,’ he recalls uncomfortably. Similar union problems were encountered, incidentally, by another BBC crew who came out to film a special documentary celebrating Peter and Dudley’s theatrical success; they were not allowed into the theatre, and had to film the entire programme on the pavement outside, and at Sardi’s restaurant.

  Aer breaking the New York performance record in November, both Peter and Dudley were weary and bored and keen to come home; but Alexander Cohen badgered them persistently to stay on and undertake a national tour of the USA. ‘Dudley truly didn’t want to go on,’ remembers Cohen,23 but somehow the reluctant pair found themselves persuaded. Fortunately for Cohen, they feared that they would lose the proceeds of all their ha
rd work to the Labour Government’s 90 per cent tax rate on high earners. Peter and Dudley were given two months off, after which Good Evening would resume in Washington, DC. Their director Jerry Adler held a big Christmas bash, at which Peter had too much to drink and asked Tuesday Weld loudly in front of several people, ‘How does it feel to be the only woman in town who’s fucked the entire company of Good Evening?’ Relations with Dudley descended another notch. The straight-laced Alexander Cohen was horrified.

  In January, Peter flew home to see the children, and took them to see his parents, where he, Lucy and Daisy camped in the back garden. He didn’t know them well enough at the ages of nine and ten to guess what sort of presents they’d like. ‘He bought us these ridiculous capes,’ smiles Lucy, ‘like bicycle capes, but they were sort of Army surplus – he thought we’d be really chuffed with those.’ Then it was back to life on the road, and the claustrophobic boredom of touring in front of all those unchallengingly delighted American audiences. Peter kept up a running commentary to his parents by mail. From the Jefferson Hotel, Washington, he wrote to tell them unenthusiastically of the show’s massive, sold-out success. They were off to Detroit next, ‘God help us.’ From the St Regis Hotel, Detroit, he wrote: ‘Believe me, this is the ugliest, most boring city I have ever visited. I feel I have done five years’ penance in four weeks.’ Judy remembers that ‘In Detroit we were so bored we used to lie in the hotel room, taking bets on lifts going up and down. Peter’s drinking had led to him over-eating and putting on weight. He kept going on these “death diets”, in which he allowed himself one steak and one salad a day. Then we went on to Toronto, and Tuesday joined us. Suddenly there were four of us on tour, and that completely altered the dynamic.’ The incestuous feeling intensified. ‘Peter and Dudley’s obsession with each other increased. Whatever Dudley had for breakfast, Peter had to know. Whatever Peter was wearing, Dudley had to know.’

  By the end of April the tour had reached Philadelphia. Dudley wrote to his mother: ‘Frankly, I wish the show were over. I have performed it enough times to satisfy my wildest enthusiasm.’ They had been reciting the same lines now for three and a half years. Peter and Dudley took bets from each other on anything they could think of – for instance, a thousand dollars on whether Vichy water was naturally or artificially carbonated. Tuesday announced that she was so bored she was going home to her mother; it later transpired that, without telling Dudley, she was actually going home to have an abortion. Judy, who continued to commute between England and the States, flew home at the same time. Left to their own devices, Peter and Dudley did what they always did in such circumstances, namely give in to their insatiable, almost narcotic craving to sleep with as many women as possible. On one occasion, Peter phoned Judy in London, only to be interrupted by another woman’s voice on the line, shouting ‘Get your arse out of here if you’re going to call your wife!’ Peter apologised to Judy: ‘He was telling me how awful she was, and w much he loved me, and how he couldn’t remember how he’d got there. Later he phoned when he got home and said he was sorry, and he was so funny that even though I was taken aback and shocked, I couldn’t help laughing. I suppose part of me was excited by him, although I’m not sure it was a healthy excitement.’

  Peter had begun to make an increasingly severe distinction between the females he loved – his wife, his daughters and his mother, whom he worshipped and adored – and the females who threw themselves at him in bars or after the show, for whom he had virtually no respect, and whom he regarded as worthless. He took to picking up such women by abusing them, as if to make clear from the outset that what followed would mean nothing whatsoever to him. ‘Peter and Dudley had very different attitudes to women,’ explains Judy. ‘Dudley was very charming to all women and talked psychotherapy, wanting to know their real feelings and their problems. He would listen all night if necessary. It was a very seductive method. Peter could be insulting to women, and some women actually liked this. He had this devastating combination of amazing good looks and a mind too fast for his own good. He read them very quickly and then got bored with them. Peter and Dudley had a ghastly rivalry between them to pull the birds; they were always insulting each other as well.’ Their behaviour had absolutely come to mirror that of the two conflicting pop singers in Bedazzled.

  Soon after the end of the tour, Peter and Dudley gave a remarkably frank interview to Penthouse magazine, in which they openly argued in front of the interviewer about each other’s method of picking up women:

  Peter:

  The secret of success in the States, in my limited experience, is to be fucking rude. The only method. Kindness and civility and everything else was treated as a waste of time. Tell them they’re dirty fucking cows and stupid to boot. That’s because the American male has spent the last fifteen years reappraising his role in society, and getting more and more nervous about how badly women have been treated.

  Dudley:

  It doesn’t seem to me to be true at all – I mean, your attitude seems to be quite exceptional. I don’t know many men who go up and say ‘You’re a dirty fucking cow,’ and then expect them to go to bed with you. That wasn’t my experience at all. I said, ‘I think you’re absolutely––

  Peter:

  – a marvellous human being––

  Dudley:

  – and they go to bed.

  Peter:

  Yeah, but it takes longer.

  Dudley:

  Speak for yourself.

  Peter:

  If you go through your whole life history – this tedious tale – also get into what star sign she has, read their fucking palms, give them your psychiatric history, then at about four o’clock in the morning there’s a possibility that you might be able to meet her next weekend for a cosy tea.

  Dudley:

  Speak for yourself, I’ve had no trouble. If the only way you can get them into bed is by saying, ‘You’re a cunt’––

  Peter:

  Not the only way, it’s the quickest.

  Dudley:

  Speak for yourself, dear.

  Peter:

  Who else would I be speaking for?

  Dudley:

  Well, you’re speaking to me about it, you’re saying it takes me until four in the morng, star signs and telling them about my psychiatric treatment, I don’t know where you get all this fucking––

  Peter:

  Private detectives.

  Interviewer:

  Let me ask you about something else.

  Dudley:

  No, no, why? The atmosphere is thickening like the gravy.24

  The partnership was becoming strained to breaking point.

  The tour ploughed on through Chicago, where Peter woke alone in his hotel bed to find two black men going through his luggage. ‘I was fully armed with one soiled Kleenex,’25 he explained later. He remained calm, let them escape with his valuables, then fainted with fear at five o’clock that afternoon. The experience crystallised his dislike of America. Unlike Dudley, he had become desperately homesick. He devoured English newspapers, any English newspapers, wherever and whenever he could find them. He missed going to the football terribly, and on one occasion pretended to be ill, cancelled a performance of Good Evening, and flew to London in order to go to White Hart Lane with Sid Gottlieb. He brought with him a magnum of champagne, to toast Tottenham’s victory. The magnum still sits, undrunk, on Gottlieb’s windowsill, in memory of a Spurs victory that never took place. Peter had tried to fill the long American days by writing a film script about Queen Victoria’s gynaecologist, which he hoped to direct himself in due course, entitled Dr Jekyll and Mrs Hyde. The inspiration came from Richard Ingrams, whose grandfather actually was Queen Victoria’s gynaecologist. As he explained in a letter to his mother and father, ‘Instead of turning into a monster he changes into a woman. The female role will not be played by WENDY.’ It was never finished.

  Finally, the tour reached its grand finale, with a six-week run at the Schubert Theater, Cen
tury City, Los Angeles, from July to August 1975. Judy and Tuesday were reunited with their respective partners. ‘The drinking had got much worse,’ remembers Judy. ‘It had finally become a way of life, it had got under his skin and he was trapped by it. Day had become night for Peter. He would sleep all day and eat just before he went on stage. By the time he got to LA he often couldn’t remember what he’d done the previous evening, and kept having to apologise to me. He started promising not to drink, and breaking those promises. Peter wasn’t in control any more.’ In a final, extravagant gesture he rented a huge mansion on Roxbury Drive. The children came out for the summer, and he stirred himself to sober up long enough to be a good father. ‘The house was an absolute palace,’ remembers Lucy. ‘We were just blown away. It was in one of those streets where Lucille Ball lived, just so wealthy, and everywhere a limousine. He took us to Disneyland and we went on all the rides and everything; the one he enjoyed most was a pirate trip, into a dark tunnel with all these pirates and silly, jolly music.’