What Fresh Lunacy is This?

by Robert Sellers

  For Sarah, the passing of her father left a huge gap to fill, for it goes without saying that the bigger the personality the bigger the gap, and Oliver’s personality was the size of a small moon. ‘Speaking for myself, when he died I was grieving a lot for the man that I didn’t have, for what I felt we missed in our relationship rather than what we actually had, because it was so awkward. He wasn’t a bad father, he just wasn’t always the best father. But you can only do the best you can do with the tools you’ve been given, that’s all you can do. Somebody said to me years ago, you have to let them back in again to be able to let them go, and there was a bit of that for me.’

  Perhaps the tragedy of Oliver Reed is that he created a persona for himself that he felt obliged constantly to act out in the public arena. It was part of his creative life. ‘He loved acting Oliver Reed, whoever that was,’ says actor Stephan Chase. ‘He probably didn’t know either. All he knew was that he’d cottoned on to something that worked and played it extremely well.’ If he’d gone around kissing babies and doing good, the public wouldn’t have been at all interested, Oliver often claimed. ‘That’s not what they expect from Oliver Reed. They want him to fall off the edge of a dustbin, get into fights and get drunk and do all the things you read in the papers.’ Mick Monks remembers being in a restaurant with Ollie one night and there was a chap in the corner sitting quietly with a pen and paper. ‘See that guy,’ said Ollie. ‘He’s been bloody following me around for weeks, drives me mad.’ As they walked out Ollie casually knocked a chair over and said to Monks, ‘Wait and see.’ The next day a newspaper story was headlined: ‘Oliver Reed Wrecks Restaurant’. It was his own fault, of course, all this. ‘In a way,’ says David. ‘Whilst good directors were directing him his career was ascending, but alongside that his notoriety was increasing and one overtook the other. So by the end, far from the press manufacturing events, they were self-generated by Ollie, which led to his downfall because he was always living up to it.’

  Oliver had always had a great imagination and a keen sense of the ridiculous, not taking things too seriously, but one wonders whether in later years he did always enjoy playing the fool, or did it become a little stale for him? His antics, which had been so inspired, now seemed all too obvious and staged, like going on a chat show pissed. Spontaneity isn’t the same the second time round.

  There was a contradiction in his character, no doubt, which can easily be put down to the difference between Oliver Reed sober and Oliver Reed drunk. As many people have observed, he was in important ways two people, ‘because sober he was the shyest person that you could ever wish to meet,’ says David. ‘And that was the real Ollie. The real Ollie was shy.’ And vulnerable. It’s something Glenda Jackson picked up on during the times they worked together. ‘Certainly that was my reading of him, a very vulnerable man. But he would never, ever, ever have shown that. He had great belief in himself when he was in front of a camera which may not have been there in real life.’ Perhaps that’s why so many people found it easy to forgive his frailties and look upon him with fondness: because they understood this split personality. ‘It was something that one couldn’t really hold against him,’ says Barbara Carrera. ‘Because, even though his behaviour was sometimes scary, it was not intentionally malicious. As a person he was so complex, so mercurial.’

  For a good few years after Ollie died there was a steady procession of people who came to visit the grave and sup a pint at O’Brien’s, but in recent years it has tailed off. Even the family’s pilgrimage to Churchtown has somewhat faded, with not everyone able to make it every year. Jacquie has never been back since the funeral and finds it strange that he’s lying in the sod in Ireland at all. ‘Why did they stick this man in the ground? I’m a great one for cremation and just scatter him and then he can be everywhere, on the wind, in the sea, everywhere. But in that grave in Ireland, what’s he doing there? He must be so lonely, so lonely there.’

  Josephine visits the grave whenever she’s in the area. The last time she went someone had left an empty bottle of vodka next to the headstone. ‘People frequently go there to sit and have a drink on the grave; they go to have a drink with Ollie.’ Withdrawing to Castle McCarthy after Oliver’s death, Josephine continued to live there. After all, it was her home, she had friends locally, and she wasn’t ready to leave. Her life was on hold. But Ollie had always been conscious of the fact that in all likelihood he’d die before her. ‘So he’d say to me that if he died, to go out and find myself a nice young man and not to sit around and mope.’ In 2001 Josephine remarried and moved away from Churchtown, but not too far: she still lives in County Cork and has two lively boys. Ollie would have loved them.

  By a coincidence Sarah has two boys and it’s perhaps her biggest regret that her father isn’t alive to revel in their company and in their innocence, and feed their imagination. ‘I always said about my dad, he became a father to become a grandfather. He would have been a sensational grandfather. My children would have had amazing times with him. I can imagine them pottering around the garden, planting things and learning how bees make honey! Buzz, buzz, buzz. Their lives will be paler not knowing him.’

  Can one sum up a man like Oliver Reed? Many whose lives he crossed and touched have tried. ‘What was so incredible for me was that he was able to have a sense of dignity and fairness and justice and had an incredible personal human etiquette that I’ve never experienced in anyone else,’ says actor Paul Koslo. ‘He was a gentleman’s gentleman. They broke the mould when he passed. There’ll never be another Ollie.’

  ‘Larger than life’ is a phrase often used to describe him; ‘an artist’ is another, and also ‘one of a kind’. ‘Ollie was so many things,’ says friend Maria Rohm. ‘Fiery, yet detached, he exuded a very positive energy and it just felt good to be around him. Of course, these qualities go hand in hand with eccentricity. I don’t know that it is possible to have one without the other. Never understood why some people don’t seem to understand that.’

  Why the public liked and responded to Oliver is easy to grasp: because he was one of them. He appealed as a person, not as a film star. ‘He had no airs and graces,’ says David. ‘And I think his appeal endures because of this, that he was noted more for the pranks he got up to and being a man amongst the people. Whereas film stars tend to live a tinselled lifestyle, above the ordinary man, Ollie drank in his local pub and things like that. He was perceived as very much a down-to-earth sort.’

  He also didn’t give a fuck, and therein lies much of his appeal. In life it’s rare to find a person who has that sense of fun and madness and is also brave enough to go out and just do it and damn the consequences. And yes, get away with it, because he had that presence and personality. ‘He was such an extraordinary person,’ says Nora Friday. ‘He had an enormous zest for life and had such enormous charisma as a person that, even if he had not been a film star, you would have still noticed him when he walked into a pub or a room.’

  Some of the stuff Oliver did was hideously unfair, but there was never any malice in his actions. He didn’t know venom and spite, he knew how to be a pain in the ass, he knew how to be awkward and horrid, but he didn’t know how to be evil: it wasn’t in his make-up. He didn’t go out to maim and hurt. It was almost ruffian crap, it was gesticulating, it was puffing out his chest. ‘Ollie was not a hell-raiser for any vindictive reason,’ claims colleague David Ball. ‘He didn’t have an ounce of hate in his body. He was the eternal naughty boy.’

  And a naughty boy capable of almost ridiculous heights of insensitivity. When his old friend Mick Fryer gave up the booze, Ollie did his damnedest to get him started again. ‘He came into the Dog and Fox one day,’ Fryer relates, ‘and stuck a bottle of Rémy Martin and a bottle of champagne on the bar and said, “Right, we’re going to stop all this bollocks. Let’s get at it.” I wouldn’t have any of it.’ Reckless in the extreme, but done for no other reason than that Ollie wanted the old Mick back, the mad Mick, but he wasn’t there any more.

/>   Out of some of this chaos came an almost innocent care and sense of protection for his friends. Johnny Placett was known as a gambler in the seventies. During one visit to a London casino, as Placett was rolling some dice, Ollie picked up this bunny girl who was the croupier and laid her flat across the blackjack table. Of course all the punters leaped out of their seats and their chips went flying. ‘Ollie!’ Placett yelled. ‘You’re out of order there.’ The girl was trembling with fright and the manager was doing his nut. Ollie just looked at Placett and said, ‘I’ve seen you lose so much money in these casinos, I thought I could get you barred, do you a favour.’ It’s a story that perhaps sums Oliver Reed up better than most: behind the debris, the screams and the madness was a man whose heart was nearly always in the right place. ‘There was always a drama,’ says Placett. ‘He loved a drama, something always had to happen. He loved excitement in his life.’

  It was never easy for anyone living with Ollie, but then the other side of that coin was that it was magical. And that juxtaposition lay at the heart of what it was like to be around Oliver Reed. When he was good he was very, very good, and when he was bad he was horrid. ‘Am I proud of him?’ says Mark. ‘Yes, I am. Am I proud of everything he did? No, of course not. But he was my dad and I loved him. It wasn’t always the easiest ride but at the same time it was probably one of the most magical, amazing mystery tours that one could have ever taken. Looking back on it, I wouldn’t have missed any of it. But it really was the big dipper, it really was the funfair, and all the lights were flashing. He was well loved and he was lovable. Of course, there were sides to him that were challenging. But he was an amazing person. His like don’t come along often.’

  Filmography

  Hello London (1958)

  Director: Sidney Smith

  Cast: Sonja Henie, Michael Wilding, Dora Bryan, Roy Castle, Robert Coote, Eunice Gayson, Stanley Holloway, Dennis Price, Oliver Reed (extra).

  The Square Peg (1958)

  Director: John Paddy Carstairs

  Cast: Norman Wisdom, Honor Blackman, Edward Chapman, Campbell Singer, Hattie Jacques, Oliver Reed (extra).

  Life is a Circus (1958)

  Director: Val Guest

  Cast: Bud Flanagan, Teddy Knox, Jimmy Nervo, Charlie Naughton, Jimmy Gold, Eddie Gray, Chesney Allen, Shirley Eaton, Lionel Jeffries, Oliver Reed (extra).

  The Captain’s Table (1959)

  Director: Jack Lee

  Cast: John Gregson, Peggy Cummins, Donald Sinden, Maurice Denham, Richard Wattis, Joan Sims, John Le Mesurier, Oliver Reed (extra).

  Upstairs and Downstairs (1959)

  Director: Ralph Thomas

  Cast: Michael Craig, Anne Heywood, Mylene Demongeot, James Robertson Justice, Claudia Cardinale, Sid James, Joan Hickson, Joan Sims, Daniel Massey, Oliver Reed (extra).

  The League of Gentlemen (1960)

  Director: Basil Dearden

  Cast: Jack Hawkins, Nigel Patrick, Roger Livesey, Richard Attenborough, Bryan Forbes, Kieron Moore, Terence Alexander, Norman Bird, Oliver Reed (young actor).

  The Rebel (1960)

  Director: Robert Day

  Cast: Tony Hancock, George Sanders, Paul Massie, Dennis Price, Irene Handl, John Le Mesurier, Liz Fraser, Oliver Reed (artist in café).

  His And Hers (1960)

  Director: Brian Desmond Hurst

  Cast: Terry-Thomas, Janette Scott, Wilfrid-Hyde White, Joan Sims, Kenneth Connor, Kenneth Williams, Oliver Reed (poet).

  The Bulldog Breed (1960)

  Director: Robert Asher

  Cast: Norman Wisdom, Ian Hunter, David Lodge, Robert Urquhart, Edward Chapman, Eddie Byrne, Michael Caine, Oliver Reed (Teddy Boy).

  The Angry Silence (1960)

  Director: Guy Green

  Cast: Richard Attenborough, Pier Angeli, Michael Craig, Bernard Lee, Alfred Burke, Geoffrey Keen, Laurence Naismith, Brian Bedford, Oliver Reed (Mick).

  The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll (1960)

  Director: Terence Fisher

  Cast: Paul Massie, Dawn Addams, Christopher Lee, David Kossoff, Francis De Wolff, Oliver Reed (uncredited).

  Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960)

  Director: Terence Fisher

  Cast: Richard Greene, Peter Cushing, Richard Pasco, Sarah Branch, Niall MacGinnis, Nigel Green, Derren Nesbitt, Oliver Reed (Lord Melton), Desmond Llewelyn.

  Beat Girl (1960)

  Director: Edmond T. Greville

  Cast: David Farrar, Noelle Adam, Christopher Lee, Adam Faith, Shirley Anne Field, Peter McEnery, Oliver Reed (Plaid Shirt).

  The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

  Director: Terence Fisher

  Cast: Clifford Evans, Oliver Reed (Leon), Yvonne Romain, Catherine Feller, Anthony Dawson, Richard Wordsworth, Warren Mitchell, Peter Sallis.

  The Pirates of Blood River (1961)

  Director: John Gilling

  Cast: Kerwin Matthews, Christopher Lee, Glenn Corbett, Marla Landi, Oliver Reed (Pirate), Andrew Keir, Peter Arne, Michael Ripper, Marie Devereux, Dennis Waterman.

  Captain Clegg (1962)

  Director: Peter Graham Scott

  Cast: Peter Cushing, Yvonne Romain, Patrick Allen, Oliver Reed (Harry Cobtree), Michael Ripper, Martin Benson, David Lodge, Derek Francis, Milton Reid.

  The Damned (1963)

  Director: Joseph Losey

  Cast: MacDonald Carey, Shirley Anne Field, Viveca Lindfors, Alexander Knox, Oliver Reed (King), Walter Gotel, James Villiers, Kenneth Cope.

  Paranoiac (1963)

  Director: Freddie Francis

  Cast: Janette Scott, Oliver Reed (Simon Ashby), Alexander Davion, Sheila Burrell, Maurice Denham, Liliane Brousse.

  The Scarlet Blade (1963)

  Director: John Gilling

  Cast: Lionel Jeffries, Oliver Reed (Capt. Tom Sylvester), Jack Hedley, June Thorburn, Duncan Lamont, Suzan Farmer.

  The System (1964)

  Director: Michael Winner

  Cast: Oliver Reed (Tinker), Jane Merrow, Barbara Ferris, Julia Foster, Harry Andrews, David Hemmings, John Alderton.

  The Brigand of Kandahar (1965)

  Director: John Gilling

  Cast: Ronald Lewis, Oliver Reed (Eli Khan), Duncan Lamont, Yvonne Romain, Katherine Woodville, Glyn Houston.

  The Party’s Over (1965)

  Director: Guy Hamilton

  Cast: Oliver Reed (Moise), Clifford David, Ann Lynn, Katherine Woodville, Louise Sorel, Mike Pratt, Eddie Albert.

  The Debussy Film (1965)

  Director: Ken Russell

  Cast: Oliver Reed (Claude Debussy), Vladek Sheybal, Annette Robertson.

  The Trap (1966)

  Director: Sidney Hayers

  Cast: Rita Tushingham, Oliver Reed (La Bete), Rex Sevenoaks, Barbara Chilcott.

  The Jokers (1967)

  Director: Michael Winner

  Cast: Michael Crawford, Oliver Reed (David Tremayne), Harry Andrews, James Donald, Daniel Massey, Michael Hordern, Gabriella Licudi, Frank Finlay, Warren Mitchell, Edward Fox.

  The Shuttered Room (1967)

  Director: David Greene

  Cast: Gig Young, Carol Lynley, Oliver Reed (Ethan), Flora Robson.

  I’ll Never Forget What’s‘isname (1967)

  Director: Michael Winner

  Cast: Orson Welles, Oliver Reed (Andrew Quint), Carol White, Harry Andrews, Michael Hordern, Wendy Craig, Marianne Faithfull, Frank Finlay, Lyn Ashley, Edward Fox, Mark Eden.

  Dante’s Inferno (1967)

  Director: Ken Russell

  Cast: Oliver Reed (Dante Gabriel Rossetti), Judith Paris, Andrew Faulds.

  Oliver! (1968)

  Director: Carol Reed

  Cast: Ron Moody, Shani Wallis, Oliver Reed (Bill Sikes), Mark Lester, Jack Wild, Harry Secombe, Hugh Griffith, Peggy Mount, Leonard Rossiter.

  The Assassination Bureau (1969)

  Director: Basil Dearden

  Cast: Oliver Reed (Ivan Dragomiloff), Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas, Curd Jurgens, Philippe Noiret, Warren Mitchell, Beryl Reid.

  Ha
nnibal Brooks (1969)

  Director: Michael Winner

  Cast: Oliver Reed (Stephen ‘Hannibal’ Brooks), Michael J. Pollard, Wolfgang Preiss, John Alderton, Karin Baal, Peter Carsten.

  Women in Love (1969)

  Director: Ken Russell

  Cast: Alan Bates, Oliver Reed (Gerald Crich), Glenda Jackson, Jennie Linden, Eleanor Bron, Alan Webb, Vladek Sheybal, Michael Gough.

  Take A Girl Like You (1970)

  Director: Jonathan Miller

  Cast: Hayley Mills, Oliver Reed (Patrick Standish), Noel Harrison, John Bird, Sheila Hancock, Aimi MacDonald, Ronald Lacey, John Fortune, Imogen Hassall, Penelope Keith.

  The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun (1970)

  Director: Anatole Litvak

  Cast: Samantha Eggar, Oliver Reed (Michael Caldwell), John McEnery, Stephane Audran.

  The Devils (1971)

  Director: Ken Russell

  Cast: Vanessa Redgrave, Oliver Reed (Father Urbain Grandier), Dudley Sutton, Max Adrian, Gemma Jones, Murray Melvin, Michael Gothard, Georgina Hale, Brian Murphy.

  The Hunting Party (1971)

  Director: Don Medford

  Cast: Oliver Reed (Frank Calder), Candice Bergen, Gene Hackman, Simon Oakland, L.Q. Jones.

  The Triple Echo (1972)

  Director: Michael Apted

  Cast: Glenda Jackson, Oliver Reed (Sergeant), Brian Deacon, Anthony May, Gavin Richards.

  Zero Population Growth (1972)