What Fresh Lunacy is This?

by Robert Sellers

  Winner, who had sensed this star quality very early, placed the actor right in the centre of his film, bestowing on him a memorable establishing shot. As a train pulls into the resort station, crammed with new holidaymakers and gullible girls ready for plucking, the camera pans along the platform at a series of expectant faces until it rests upon one in particular, staring out at us with a pair of doleful eyes as deep and as mysterious as a lake at midnight, a straw hat deftly tilted on his head – Oliver. At the time of the film’s release David was in the Middle East on army duty and remembers going to an outdoor screening. ‘When that train pulled in and you got this first sight of Ollie you could hear an audible reaction from all the women in the cinema.’ At last a director and a role had captured what Oliver Reed was all about, magnetic charisma and, most importantly, something that you can’t create, screen presence. You can be a supremely accomplished actor but screen presence is something you can’t be taught or cultivate – you either have it or you don’t – and Ollie had it in spades.

  ‘Screen acting is hugely about charisma,’ says director John Hough, who worked several times with Ollie. ‘That’s what you’re looking for when you’re casting someone, you’re looking for on-screen charisma. And you couldn’t overpower Oliver Reed in a scene. If Oliver was acting alongside, say, Marlon Brando, it would be like a tennis match, you’d be switching attention between the two of them. Stars like Brando, Paul Newman, Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, I’d put Oliver Reed in amongst that lot because he had the capability, he had the screen presence to be in that company, he had the charisma.’

  The System was a modest box-office success, but its value is perhaps greater now as a document of Britain’s sixties mod culture, beautifully captured, like a firefly in a bottle, by the stunning black and white cinematography of Nicolas Roeg. Ollie got noticed, though, that’s for sure. ‘The role was so perfect for him,’ says Julia Foster. ‘Which is why it sort of made him, it’s what catapulted him to the next level. It’s always interesting when an actor plays a role that is close to himself because you never know when the acting starts and when it finishes.’

  Over the next few years Julia would occasionally bump into Ollie. And she has never forgotten the time he escorted her to the White Elephant restaurant in Curzon Street, one of the favourite showbiz rendezvous of the sixties, the place to go and be seen. As the years went by Julia began to see less and less of Ollie and then not at all; her only contact with him was the tabloid accounts of his misdeeds. ‘My heart did ache when I read stories about the dreadful things he did and the way he treated people and everything, because I used to think back to that rather innocent and joyful young man who did The System. He lost his way, didn’t he, and I’m glad I wasn’t around.’

  Reg

  The System was an important film for Ollie in another way, too, as it saw the beginning of what would be an extraordinary relationship with a man named Reg Prince that was to last over twenty years. So close did Ollie and Reg become, so intertwined in each other’s lives, that they were almost like brothers; blood brothers, in fact, once cutting themselves and sharing blood. ‘They were like Siamese twins those two,’ recalls David Ball, who worked with them in the seventies. ‘It was as if they were joined at the hip.’

  Oliver and Reg first met on the set of The Party’s Over when Reg, then twenty-six, was a movie extra and they just seemed to hit it off right from the start. ‘Presumably it comes from the fact that they both lived in and came from Wimbledon,’ believes David. ‘Years later Ollie loaned Reg the money for him to buy a house down by the football stadium.’ It was decided that Reg would work on Ollie’s films as his stand-in and occasional stunt double, though it took a year or so to amass the kind of clout to force production companies to hire Reg all the time, starting with The System. After that they were practically inseparable on film sets. ‘Whenever I was with Oliver on location,’ says Jacquie Daryl, Ollie’s girlfriend throughout the seventies, ‘people used to say to Reg, you must be the contraceptive, because all three of us were always together. But it was a real love/hate relationship, even though there wasn’t anything Oliver wouldn’t have done for Reg and vice versa. They would have fought to the death for each other. Oliver loathed his wife, though, and Reg’s wife loathed Oliver.’

  Another of Reg’s jobs would be to go on ahead to check out a film’s location or turn up at any prospective hotel to check that the room, and most importantly the bar, matched Ollie’s standards. Perhaps Reg’s most valued job was to watch Ollie’s back. If things kicked off in a pub or restaurant, as they had a habit of doing, Ollie was secure in the knowledge that Reg was there to sort things out. According to Johnny Placett, Reg saved Ollie’s life on at least two occasions. ‘Theirs was a strange relationship,’ admits David. ‘Reggie was able to cope with Ollie and Ollie saw Reg as his bodyguard just as much as his stand-in, and he was very dutiful in that regard and very protective of Ollie. And Reggie was tough: you wouldn’t want to meet him on a dark night, no way.’

  Just how tough Reg was is perfectly illustrated by this story from David Ball, who was production accountant on a western Ollie made in Mexico with Lee Marvin. Ball and a couple of the crew were relaxing in a cantina one evening when Ollie and Reg showed up. Ollie was holding a small, heavy stone, about nine inches by four inches; it was rounded, washed and smooth. ‘Reg is going to break that.’

  ‘Fuck off, Ol,’ said David Ball. ‘He’s going to hit it with a sledgehammer, is he?’

  ‘No, he’s going to break it with his hand.’

  ‘Oh, Ollie, come on.’

  ‘Look, Dave, you do the book and get the money off the crew. Reg is going to break this stone with his hand.’

  The word quickly spread and the bar filled up with American stunt men, crew members and locals. As the wine flowed, people laid bets and Ball found himself with a bag full of thousands of dollars. ‘Ollie, you’re going to have to pay out an awful lot.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Reg will do it.’ Clapping his hands, Ollie asked for silence. It was show time.

  An area was cleared and suddenly all eyes were on Reg. ‘And he just looked at this stone,’ recalls Ball, ‘and made this guttural noise and then he did it and it was like a hot knife through butter. One chop of his right hand and this stone went perfectly in half and I have never ever seen so many jaws drop in my life, mine included. I went, “We won, Ollie.” He went, “Yeah, I told you we would.” He was so unassuming. ‘Well done, Reg. We’re up at six tomorrow morning, so good night everyone.’ And off they went. Unbelievable. That was the most awesome thing I’d ever seen in my life and I will never know how they did it. Anyone was allowed to study and examine this stone before they made their bet. I don’t know how so much mental strength can turn itself into so much physical strength. It’s not something I will ever see again.’

  What was so inspiring about Reg was that he wasn’t particularly imposing physically, he was shorter and of a lesser build than Ollie, which of course made it slightly ludicrous that he was his stand-in. ‘Reg was probably five foot five and stocky, with a beer belly,’ says Ball. ‘He was a black belt, but if you looked at Reg you would not have given him for being strong. But he was lethal. He was a killing machine.’

  Exactly where Reg came from before he met Ollie, his background and past history, no one really knew. What is certain is that he must have had some kind of military training, but precisely what and where was never revealed, in spite of stories that he’d worked for British intelligence or the SAS. ‘There was a bit of a mystery about Reg,’ confirms Ollie’s brother David. ‘And that lent itself to this sense of, you better be careful, it was very much quasi-underworld.’ Oliver liked to intimate that Reg had done time, and whether true or not, rumours that he was associated with the criminal fraternity persisted throughout his time with the actor. ‘And that’s why Ollie respected Reg because he knew what he was capable of,’ says friend Michael Christensen. ‘I saw Reggie take care of three people single-handed in this
pub one night.’ Ollie was in there drinking and these guys weren’t going to be placated. Usually Reg was very clever at being able to talk any situation down. ‘Look, have a bottle of champagne on the man,’ he’d say and that would be the end of it. But these guys didn’t want to know and it kicked off. ‘One bloke hit the deck straightaway,’ says Christensen. ‘Then before the second guy could even walk out the door he was down and the third one didn’t want to know.’

  In pubs people always wanted to try it on with Ollie. It was like the fastest gun in the West: there was always someone who wanted to prove themselves against him. ‘I’m really a pacifist,’ he once said. ‘Yet I’m the most scarred, kicked, beaten-up person I know. The only reason I get into fights is that I’m terrified of violence. The one thing that terrifies me more than violence is my fear of it, so I just have to go out and face it.’ Mind you, Ollie did provoke people when he was boozed up. A bloke might come over and say, ‘I loved your last film,’ and Ollie would give him a withering look and say, ‘Fuck off, I’m talking.’ And then the guy would get the hump and want to do something about it and Reg would then step in. ‘Come on, give the man a break, he’s been working, he’s an actor, he’s an artist. If you want a fight I’ll fucking fight you.’ Nine times out of ten the bloke would back down. ‘If he didn’t, Reg would knock him out,’ says Christensen. ‘Or Sir Percy would come out. He used to keep a cosh in his back pocket. He called it Sir Percy.’

  Sod’s law, the one time Ollie really needed Reg he wasn’t there. The Crazy Elephant was a nightclub in Jermyn Street, in the heart of the West End. Ollie went there one night and, passing a table occupied by a group of rowdy young men, he heard one of them shout, ‘Look out, here comes Dracula.’

  ‘Watch it,’ Ollie said. ‘Or I’ll bite your jugular vein out.’

  Forgetting the incident, he sat down with his drink. A couple of minutes later one of the men approached him. ‘Did you mean what you said?’ Ollie suggested he go play with himself and went into the gents’ toilet. The man followed. ‘Come to help me have a piss, have you?’ Ollie said. The next instant a broken glass was thrust in his face and he dropped like a stone. As he lay prone on the floor five blokes started laying into him; feebly he lifted his hands for protection against a volley of fists and boots. Managing somehow to get outside into the street, blood spurting from his face, he hailed a cab. ‘St George’s Hospital,’ he said, unnerved that he could feel shards of broken glass in his mouth.

  ‘What about my cab, mate?’ said the driver after taking one look at him. ‘You’re going to fuck it up, aren’t you, with all that blood?’

  ‘Fuck your cab, what about my face? Get me to hospital.’

  During the journey Ollie fainted twice and the driver had to stop to prop him up and stem the bleeding with a handkerchief. The glass had gone right through his cheek and shredded part of his tongue and he’d already lost several pints of blood by the time they reached Casualty. Oliver knew it was bad when a nurse caught sight of him and fainted. As he was having thirty-six stitches put in, the police arrived, but Ollie refused to press charges. ‘That wasn’t going to get me my face back.’

  A very meek Oliver arrived late back at his flat and poked his head round the bedroom door as Kate was stirring from sleep. She took one look at him and hollered, ‘You stupid bastard.’ In pain and feeling groggy, Ollie still attempted the love act that night. ‘I had been badly beaten and wanted to prove I was still a man by getting on top.’ Kate wasn’t entirely struck by the idea, especially when blood started dropping over her face. ‘You’re bloody kinky,’ she said, and pushed him off.

  In the morning Ollie looked at his appalling reflection in the mirror. ‘Christ, that’s it, there goes my career.’ Except perhaps for more horror films, this time without the make-up. To drown his sorrows he went out and bought a bottle of whisky and drank half of it, through a straw because he could hardly move his mouth. Next he took the straw with him on a crawl round his local boozers. Mick Monks caught up with him at lunchtime in the South Wimbledon Club and was horrified by what he saw. ‘There were these great scars down his face and it was all weeping because it was so cold. “Look what they’ve done to me, tractors.” Then Kate came in, furious that he’d got out of the house because he wasn’t supposed to go out for a few days.’

  According to Monks, the culprit was eventually uncovered. ‘And a couple of heavies said to Ollie, “If you want us to go and sort it out, we’ll sort it out.” And Ollie said, “No, if I want to do anything I’ll do it myself.” But he wasn’t that sort of person, he didn’t want retribution. But there were people quite prepared to go up and do damage to this guy, there were plenty of volunteers. I think he had to move off somewhere in the end, just in case.’

  In a funny sort of way those scars became something of a trademark, like Kirk Douglas’s dimple. ‘And I have to say, it was lovely when it was red and livid,’ says Jacquie Daryl. ‘But then it slowly settled down and faded, so you hardly noticed it in the end.’ Even so, especially in close-up shots, those scars never truly went away. ‘Even in Gladiator,’ says Jacquie, ‘there are moments when you see it.’

  According to Mark, Ollie was extremely conscious of the scarring because it couldn’t have come at a worse time. ‘When you’re just starting to climb up the ladder and the next minute you’re maimed; it was a real blow to him. But on the positive side it gave him that difference, it made him look moodier and real for the parts he then went on to play.’ In the immediate aftermath of the incident, however, Oliver feared that no one would hire a disfigured actor. ‘It was an impediment,’ says David. ‘And he was out of work for quite a bit because of it.’ Little did he know that his saviour was just around the corner.

  The Enfant Terrible

  What Oliver described as the turning point of his career arrived when he made the acquaintance of a director later branded the enfant terrible of British cinema: Ken Russell, who died in November 2011. For years Oliver had battled against the mean and moody looks that had typecast him as Hammer monsters or ‘Teddy Boys in leather jackets who whipped old ladies around the head with a bicycle chain and stole their handbags’. Ken Russell changed all that when he cast the actor in his television film about the French composer Claude Debussy.

  By a stroke of good fortune Russell happened to be watching television one Saturday evening and caught Ollie as a guest on the panel of Juke Box Jury. Russell didn’t have the first clue who he was, nor that he had been out of work for months and was currently driving a minicab to make ends meet, but he was knocked out by the actor’s striking resemblance to Debussy. On Monday morning Russell called Oliver’s agent to arrange a meeting. It took place at the cramped office at the BBC, where Russell had established himself in the past few years as one of the corporation’s most original and creatively subversive directors. Pouring Oliver a cup of coffee, Russell asked how much he knew about Debussy; not a lot, came the reply. Russell began to talk passionately about the composer and the film he intended to make about his life and music for the prestigious arts programme Monitor. Finished, he stared long and hard at Oliver before offering him the part. Ollie was by far the best candidate. ‘He struck me as vivacious, cheeky, and not run-of-the-mill. I remember him being very moody and glowering. I liked his spirit – everyone else I’d auditioned seemed to fade into insignificance.’

  But all Ollie could think about were the angry scars on his face and that it was highly unlikely Debussy was ever glassed in a pub. ‘You won’t employ me with these scars,’ he said meekly. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Russell, and the deal was done. It was the beginning of Ollie’s most important and creative relationship. ‘Ken was great for him,’ says Mark, ‘in having that early faith in him when a lot of people would have been very frightened or put off.’

  Co-written by the young Melvyn Bragg, Russell’s portrait of the French composer switches between his troubled life and a fictionalized account of a film crew trying to capture the ess
ence of his personality, and thus Oliver is both Debussy and the actor playing him. The conceit works brilliantly as we glimpse this group of actors trying to recreate portions of Debussy’s life amid their own dramas and love affairs.

  Some of the film was shot in the French town of Chalon-sur-Saône and this is where one suspects Ollie and Ken bonded, recognizing each other as kindred spirits. After a successful first day, Russell invited his cast for a meal at a restaurant. One look at the prices on the wine list prompted Ollie to sneak out to a local shop and smuggle back several bottles of cheap plonk down his trousers. Drunk, Russell took pity on the intended fish course, displayed live in a tank, and handed them through a window to Ollie, who then released them in a nearby stream. Alas, they were discovered and made to pay for the lot.

  Another evening, after an equally inebriated dinner, Ollie, Russell and a few others decided to visit the town’s famous outdoor light and music show. The place was fenced off and patrolled by security guards stopping people getting in without tickets. ‘They behaved like storm troopers,’ said Ollie. ‘And didn’t like the look of us because we were foreigners and drunk.’ Russell had a plan to get inside that necessitated the requisitioning of an official BBC staff car. With the car perched on a hill, everyone jumped inside and hid under a blanket, then the handbrake was released and off they went, picking up speed all the time. The guards scattered as the seemingly driverless car smashed through the gates and careered to a halt. Never one to miss a grand theatrical moment, Ollie stepped out, bowed, and said, ‘Bonsoir, messieurs.’

  ‘Qui êtes-vous?’ asked the guards.

  ‘I’m the BBC,’ said Ollie with a smile.