What Fresh Lunacy is This?

by Robert Sellers

  The reason for Ollie’s lengthy presence in LA was that film offers had all but dried up in Britain and he now had no choice but to go where the work was. David had managed to get mega-agency ICM to put one of their best agents on to the job of looking after Ollie. ‘And bless her, she came home with the goodies.’

  Ollie’s first Hollywood-based movie was Burnt Offerings. Shot early in 1976, this adequate haunted-house chiller did modestly well at the box office and was from writer-director Dan Curtis, best known for his cult TV series Dark Shadows. Ollie was teamed with Karen Black, a hot actress at the time after roles in The Great Gatsby (1974) and Nashville (1975), and the legendary Bette Davis. His admiration and respect for Miss Davis were unqualified, and on screen it’s a joy watching them bounce off each other and share some choice barbed dialogue. Off set, things were a little different, with Miss Davis declaring Oliver ‘possibly one of the most loathsome human beings I have ever had the misfortune of meeting’. An overreaction for the press perhaps, since at the close of filming she presented him with a signed pen and ink drawing of herself which he proudly displayed in his study. What’s true is that Ollie did send her round the bend a few times. Miss Davis used to have her evening meal sent up to her hotel room on a food trolley. Returning from a drinking session one night, Ollie deployed the trolley as a skateboard, hurtling down the corridor and waking her up. She also complained to the producer about his nightly drinking ritual and said that he would arrive on the set in the morning the worse for wear. ‘That man seems to be perpetually on a hangover,’ she blasted.

  Karen Black refers to Oliver as ‘a guy’s guy’ and remembers one morning having to do a scene where his character is attempting to drive away from the house during a torrential rain storm. ‘And these rain machines can drench you in thirty seconds. I don’t think Ollie had slept all night, so there he was in the car completely drenched with the wind machines howling outside and he was shaking, he was visibly shaking. But he kind of used that for the scene: his character was supposed to be distraught. It was very bewitching to watch, it was quite brilliant.’

  Often before scenes, Karen remembers, Ollie would ‘get seriously wired-up’, but she also found that sometimes when he fluffed a line he’d very subtly and nervously chastise people for standing in his eyeline. ‘But the truth was, in my perception, he just forgot his lines and he didn’t want to say, sorry, let’s do that again, so he would blame the first person he saw standing there.’ That insecurity again: Oliver was desperate to make a good impression on his first American movie. Karen saw it more as being childish, a trait that jockeyed for space with his chauvinism in her estimation of Ollie. Her description of a chauvinist is a man who can’t tolerate it when a woman takes a point of view and can’t be moved off it, not because she’s stubborn but just because that’s her position. Karen remembers one scene with the two of them swimming in an outdoor pool and Ollie had placed his face on the camera side of hers. On the next take she said she was going to put her face at the forefront of the camera this time. During the shot Ollie did everything he could to prevent her. ‘But I held my position, and he got up right out of the swimming pool and he had to take a very long walk because he was so infuriated. But I must say I liked him, he made me laugh. But I don’t think he paid much attention to me at all. I think if I asked him the colour of my eyes he never would have known.’

  That chauvinism reared its head in spectacular fashion during a memorable appearance on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show. Carson had steered Ollie on to one of his favourite subjects, women, and good ol’ Ollie didn’t hold back, going into misogynist overload and elaborating on his theory that, underneath all the political beliefs and talk of equality, women really wanted to be in the kitchen with their pots and pans. Fellow guest Shelley Winters, a staunch women’s libber, could contain herself no longer and poured her drink over Ollie’s head. It’s a great television moment and Ollie handles it perfectly, not rising to the bait but behaving like the perfect English gentleman. Carson’s face throughout is a picture.

  Reporters always knew they could get good copy out of Ollie by asking him to discuss his attitude towards women, because invariably he came across as a male chauvinist pig of the Jurassic era. Of course, most of the time he knew exactly what he was doing by suggesting that a woman’s proper place was on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor. ‘In return I feed them, wine them, make them laugh and give them a punch on the nose and a good kicking when they need it,’ he wrote in his autobiography as if it was some kind of manifesto. Such statements were nearly always intended to get a reaction, and to his mind it was great if at the same time they also pissed off the dreaded women’s libbers, a breed he genuinely despised. ‘I don’t like to sit around listening to these stupid women’s libbers, who are anyway eventually going to be fucked to death by some big marine, and enjoy every moment of it.’ But, as Simon admits, this horseplay wasn’t wholly an act. ‘I think fundamentally this chauvinism was there and then he would use it as a weapon to shock.’ Jacquie agrees. ‘As far as women were concerned he genuinely thought he was superior.’

  At Broome Hall Jacquie time and again wished she could join in the fun with the boys more often, but instead she was usually consigned to the kitchen with the other women drinking Blue Nun round the table. ‘It really was quite Victorian when women disappeared while the men went to smoke their cigars in the drawing room.’ Ollie was old-fashioned in other ways, demanding Jacquie give up her dancing career, which she did. ‘His mentality was, you don’t work, you’re here twenty-four hours for me.’ She was also forced to drop some of her friends or he made it awkward for her to see them. ‘My father was quite controlling,’ admits Sarah. ‘He did tend to control the women in his life and he did like to control his children.’

  This level of control reached absurd heights during Jacquie’s time with Ollie. On holiday, for example, she wasn’t allowed to wear a bikini: it had to be a one-piece. All this derived no doubt from Ollie’s own insecurity. Often he was guilty of misinterpreting situations, especially when he was drunk. ‘I might be talking to someone,’ says Jacquie. ‘And it could be a friend, a person he knew, and they’d make a joke or something and I’d laugh. Well, that was like a red rag to a bull. He’d go, “Leave her alone” or “Get out!” And the poor guy hadn’t done anything. He was very, very possessive. He had to possess someone completely.’

  It’s amusing to discover that Ollie once confronted Carol Lynley, complaining that he’d been referred to as a misogynist in a magazine article. ‘You don’t think I’m a misogynist, do you?’ He seemed genuinely surprised by the notion. This in spite of the fact that he regularly came out with gems like: ‘Clever women make me apprehensive. Women are not thinking vessels. They are vessels for a man’s sex and his children.’ Or this description of his ideal woman: ‘A deaf and dumb nymphomaniac whose father owns a chain of off-licences.’ The BBC was once bombarded with angry phone calls from housewives after he took part in the Radio 4 chat show Start the Week and suggested a woman should behave like a nun by day in the kitchen and a whore at night in bed.

  Such trivializing of women appears at odds with the impeccable manners he always displayed when in their presence. ‘I may be a bastard but I’m a polite bastard,’ he once said. If a woman came into the room he always stood up, always, and that was with him right the way throughout his life. ‘His manners, when he was deciding to act in that way, were outrageously correct,’ says David. ‘He would exaggeratedly get up, he would make an absolute feature of getting up.’ It was the same if a woman left or returned to a table at a restaurant. ‘And if it was a table of twenty people he was standing up every five minutes, a bit like a yo-yo,’ jokes Mark. Sometimes he would open a door and a woman would walk through and he’d say, ‘I beg your pardon,’ and she’d say, ‘I didn’t say anything,’ and he’d reply, ‘I’m so sorry, I thought you said, “Thank you.”’

  These gentlemanly characteristics and good manners, harking back to a
bygone age, added immeasurably to Oliver’s personal charm and were part of what Mark believes made him so endearing to the opposite sex. ‘Women like a naughty boy, but Ollie had that very smooth, gentlemanly veneer that had a naughtiness underneath it which crackles, which is exciting, which is attractive.’

  It’s undeniable that Ollie was far more comfortable in the company of men than of women, but he was capable of both affection and great love for a woman. ‘He certainly loved me,’ says Jacquie. ‘Women as a whole, though, I don’t think he liked them as a species. But, in a funny sort of way, he needed a companion of the female kind, both physically and emotionally.’ Carol Lynley believes it runs much deeper and that, rather than a general dislike of women, he felt anger towards his mother. Certainly Oliver blamed Marcia for the break-up of her marriage to his father. ‘And he held a score against her all his life,’ says David. The fact that she was never around much during Oliver’s childhood may also have contributed to his insecurity and to his lack of trust of women. Carol Lynley remembers only a few instances when Oliver brought up his mother in conversation, and when he did the anger was tangible. ‘I got the impression he didn’t seem to like her very much. So I don’t think Ollie disliked women, I think he was still angry at his mother and it came out like that.’

  Madness in Budapest

  Straight after Burnt Offerings Oliver made another American film, The Ransom, but this was a distinctly average thriller in which he played a law enforcer brought in to capture a renegade native Indian threatening to wipe out the well-heeled residents of a town unless he is paid a million dollars. The cast met up for the first time for a read-through of the script in their hotel in Arizona, where the film was shot. Paul Koslo, hired to play the deranged Indian, arrived early and was astonished to find Ollie already resident in the bar. ‘He had this goblet, as big as a fish bowl, full of booze. This was, like, six o’clock in the morning.’ The read-through was scheduled for 10 a.m. and Koslo was in for another surprise. ‘Oliver didn’t know just his own lines, he knew every character in the film by heart. To me, that was totally amazing. I’ve never seen a man drink so much and still be rock solid. He could drink a gallon of gin or whatever and you wouldn’t even know that he’d had anything. We don’t know how he did that. Everybody said, you’ve not only got one hollow leg, Ollie, you’ve got two hollow legs.’

  The sheer amount of drinking that Ollie was doing was as troubling as it was impressive, and he didn’t care who saw it. ‘He did it out in the open,’ recalls Koslo. ‘And the director, Richard Compton, he was a young guy and this was a big movie for him, he got real concerned about it. But after the first few days, once he saw that Ollie was a total professional, he dropped his concern a little bit. But Ollie was so out of left field sometimes, he was so unpredictable that his behaviour definitely kept the director on the edge.’

  The heat was intense too, as it was summer, with the temperature soaring. Unbeknown to Ollie, Georgina Hale was staying in the same hotel as a guest of Koslo and was in the habit of relaxing beside the pool in the afternoon. ‘All of a sudden Oliver arrived and he just picked up the sun chair I was in and was about to throw me in the swimming pool when I screamed, “Oliver!” He looked at me and suddenly recognized who it was and immediately put the chair down. It was great to see him again but he was drinking and always you felt like you had to join him. In the end it was like one of those movies where, every time he filled up my glass, when he wasn’t looking I’d throw it over my shoulder. I was very fond of him. But he loved his drink, loved to be at the bar with the guys. And that was his life.’

  Ollie must have known when he read the script of The Ransom that it was garbage, but he still approached his role with dedication and enthusiasm, particularly when it came to the accent. He prided himself on his American accent, a skill many of his fellow British actors couldn’t master. He had it perfectly and could do different pitches and different dialects. ‘And he was so riveting that you knew you had to be at the top of your game because he could play a scene five different ways and every one of them was brilliant,’ says Koslo. ‘Obviously he always played Ollie Reed, but he had so many facets to him that he could actually make anything believable and compelling.’

  The Ransom proved to be Ollie’s last American movie for several years. He and Hollywood hadn’t really taken to each other and the top ICM agent assigned to look after him, in David’s words, ‘didn’t know how to cope with him’. It had nothing to do with Ollie the actor: it was his behaviour, perceived or otherwise. ‘The Americans are terribly cautious about drinking and rudeness,’ says David. ‘They’re quite puritan about it actually. You go out to dinner and if you take more than one glass of wine you’re looked upon as a drunkard.’

  As a place Los Angeles didn’t excite Ollie, either. It was bearable when Moonie was around and he could lark about at the Beverly Wilshire, but as somewhere to settle down or to work in for long stretches, forget it. ‘I don’t think he actually disliked Los Angeles as much as he was so very English that he was just like a fish out of water,’ believes Carol Lynley. ‘He didn’t really want to fit in and always wanted to go home.’

  Admittedly Oliver had lost his best chance of succeeding in Hollywood by not succumbing to its overtures a few years before. Now the impetus was lost and the big offers that had been available to him were no longer on the table. For the next few years he actively sought films well away from Hollywood, working in Canada, South Africa and back in Britain. But first stop was Budapest, for The Prince and the Pauper, another all-star costume drama, brought to the screen by the Salkind brothers in the hope of trading on the success of the Musketeer films. ‘And like with Athos,’ says producer Pierre Spengler, ‘when we talked about who should play Miles Hendon, the film’s swashbuckling hero, Ollie was the obvious choice. He was perfect for the role: all the nuances and the depth and the humour was there.’

  In the 1937 version of Mark Twain’s famous historical tale about a prince and a pauper who are virtually identical and decide to exchange places, the role of Miles Hendon was taken by Errol Flynn, so Ollie was delighted to be stepping into the shoes of one of his screen heroes. In fact he’d been wearing the man’s shirt for some time. Oliver claimed that he was dining in a restaurant when an American approached him and said, ‘Like to make a swap? Your leather jacket for my shirt.’ Ollie laughed, ‘You must be joking.’ The guy took the shirt literally off his back and revealed the laundry label with Flynn’s name just about legible and the studio number. The deal was done. Remarkably, given Ollie’s forty-six-inch chest, the shirt fit snugly enough and he began to wear it regularly. ‘Although Errol seemed to slow me down, or perhaps his ghost couldn’t stand the pace.’

  World-weariness and outstanding swordsmanship weren’t the only similarities between Athos and Miles Hendon. Hailing from the landed gentry, both are also street brawlers and supreme quaffers of ale, and in both cases Ollie’s portrayal trades heavily on his gentleman-thug image. In both films he is seen drunk or waxing lyrical about the virtues of the grape. And drinking is what Ollie did a lot of on location in Budapest, nearly getting himself deported and killed by eastern European gangsters in the process. According to George MacDonald Fraser, who’d written the screenplay, Oliver was installed at the luxuriant Gellert Hotel with the rest of the cast and crew but after making a continued nuisance of himself was sent, in disgrace, to the Intercontinental. ‘Apparently he changed hotels, not by taking a taxi across one of the bridges, but by wading and swimming the River Danube in the middle of the night, arriving in the Intercontinental lobby clad only in mud and waterweed. It says much for his persuasive powers that the management allowed him to stay instead of throwing him back.’

  The Prince and the Pauper reunited Ollie with his Oliver! co-star Mark Lester, now all grown up, and also Murray Melvin. When Melvin flew into Budapest a couple of weeks into shooting, he walked into the lobby of the Gellert Hotel holding his suitcase and there, sitting on a sofa, were Ollie and Reg, ‘l
ooking like two naughty school boys who’d been found out’. Murray greeted them from across the foyer, and Ollie looked up. ‘Oh, Murray.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Ollie?’

  ‘Umm . . . well . . . I’ve . . .’

  ‘Oh no, Ollie, what have you done?’

  It had started out as a pleasant evening in a local restaurant, but then the Bull’s Blood began to flow. ‘A few bottles, I think,’ says Murray. ‘And there had been a Hungarian family who were obviously celebrating something and were rather boisterous. Ollie took exception to this and threw a bottle of Bull’s Blood at this man’s head, which hit him and put him on the floor. Pissed as he was, good shot. Ollie was arrested and his passport taken away. Now he was about to be deported and had been ordered back to the Gellert to await the verdict. All the producers were there with the hierarchy, the police and the immigration service making this decision; and they still had a lot of filming to do.’

  Ollie’s little indiscretion having been smoothed over, filming carried on without too much disturbance. That was, until the night of Mark Lester’s eighteenth birthday, a seminal moment for any young man, and, to celebrate, the producers laid on a huge dinner. All the cast and crew showed up save for Ollie, who made his grand entrance later in the evening, much to everyone’s shock and horror. ‘He’d brought me a present from the streets of Budapest,’ Lester recalls, with all the affection of someone reminiscing about their first tooth extraction. ‘It was a Hungarian hooker.’ There she stood, wearing a tight T-shirt that barely kept control of her ample knockers, with the words ‘Mark Lester – Private’ emblazoned across it. ‘Ollie, who was completely paralytic, dragged in this poor girl, who took one look at everybody, gasped in fright and then legged it. Fortunately for me, because Ollie didn’t have the best taste in women. I think he had his beer goggles firmly on at that time.’