Peter O'Toole

by Robert Sellers

  Then one Saturday lunchtime Barbara noticed that O’Toole wasn’t there. When he failed to show up the following week she asked Waterhouse what had happened and was told that having turned eighteen he’d gone off to do National Service. Barbara wouldn’t see O’Toole again for another ten years and when she did got one of the shocks of her life.

  Not fancying the army very much, O’Toole had opted for the Royal Navy to see out his military obligations to the nation, gamely bullshitting that he came from a long line of Irish salty sea dogs. ‘I preferred the sea and I vomited over every square inch of it.’ His first port of call was Victory Barracks, Portsmouth, arriving with a ragtag assortment of other recruits. After a fearsome encounter with the barber and collecting an ill-fitting uniform, next on the agenda was an intelligence test. Before him was a collection of wooden pegs, some round and some square, which the naval bigwigs wanted fitted into the relevant holes. O’Toole spent ten minutes doing the exact opposite. Other officers were called into the room to watch this farce, wondering if they had a nut on their hands. The only one smiling was O’Toole.

  Next came a series of questions to ascertain whether the recruit was officer material. Asked, ‘How would you lift a heavy barrel over a thirty-foot wall using only two ten-foot lengths of rope?’ O’Toole replied: ‘I’d call the chief petty officer and say to him, “Get that barrel over the wall!” ’

  Following six weeks of basic training and a signalling course, O’Toole was posted to HMS Montclare, a submarine depot ship on patrol around the North Atlantic and the Baltic. For the most part though it was anchored in Rothesay harbour on the Isle of Bute, where on his days off O’Toole commandeered a dinghy to take some of the local girls on picnics around the loch.

  It didn’t take him long to start kicking against the pricks, insisting on calling the deck the floor, portholes were windows, and as for funnels, well they were chimneys. Fibbing to the ship’s doctor about a hereditary in-growing toenail he became the only member of the crew not to have to wear regulation boots. Having got away with that one, O’Toole next acquired an imaginary curvature of the spine and was allowed to sleep in a camp bed rather than the conventional hammock.

  It did look as if the navy and O’Toole were an ill-matched pair. ‘I would stand alone on deck at night talking to seagulls for hours.’ When he was arrested for taking extra rations of rum, his reason was it was a cold day. Most of his thoughts turned to fixing some grand scheme to get out. ‘What was I doing marching to the left and marching to the right? What was I doing darning socks? It was a bloody nightmare. Once, I drank about eighteen bottles of wine, took a lot of aspirins and a drug that was supposed to turn me grey, but it didn’t work.’

  Hating the system was one thing, as for his fellow sailors O’Toole had nothing but respect. Many had fought in the war, knocked out German destroyers, been torpedoed in the Battle of the Atlantic, watched their comrades machine-gunned in the water. These were tough men, real men and O’Toole grew up pretty quickly in their company.

  As a signaller, one of O’Toole’s duties was to decipher weather forecasts sent in code by a Wren ashore. Like most of what happened in the navy, O’Toole couldn’t fathom this at all and saw the ninety minutes it took sometimes to carry out the decoding a complete waste of time. Why not simply telephone the woman and get her to read it out in plain English, which is what ended up happening. When the ruse was discovered, however, the Wren was dismissed and O’Toole was thrown in the brig. Even worse was the occasion HMS Montclare sailed to Stockholm where it received a hero’s welcome as the first British warship to enter the harbour since the Second World War. Various admirals were required to walk ashore to greet the Swedish king, but when a fog descended the fleet got lost and couldn’t find the correct place to dock. As the story goes, a group that included O’Toole was hurriedly sent out in a boat with a walkie-talkie to locate the exact position of the king. O’Toole accidentally dropped the radio into the sea. He was thrown in the brig, again.

  A few days later they docked in Copenhagen. Besides patronizing the local breweries, O’Toole played in a naval rugby team against a bunch of thugs from the Swedish police force. Falling gallantly upon the ball, he was kicked full on the chin, slicing his tongue almost in half. He was rushed to hospital where doctors closed the wound with clamps, which left him with a slight lisp that was only eradicated at RADA by the endless reciting of the tongue twister ‘Two ghosts sat on posts and drank toasts to their hosts’.

  There is a bizarre end to this story. It may or may not be true, but it has gone down in the O’Toole legend. Once discharged from hospital he caught a train to get back to his ship before it sailed. He was on it for half an hour before discovering it was going the wrong way, and he eventually arrived at the harbour just in time to see the fleet on its way back to Scotland. O’Toole later swore he hired a funfair boat and paddled out until it came alongside the supply ship and they threw a rope ladder down to him.

  Life in the navy wasn’t all bad, really, he enjoyed the male camaraderie, played the drums in the ship’s band and had time to read the complete works of Shakespeare. But there were long periods of isolation, and a lot of time to think. One morning he was halted on the deck by the captain, who asked what he wanted to do when his National Service was up.

  ‘Well, I’m trying to be a journalist.’

  ‘Is that going to be your life?’ asked the captain.

  ‘I think so, sir.’

  ‘You don’t sound convinced. Have you any unanswered calls inside you that you don’t understand or can’t qualify?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I quite fancy myself either as a poet or an actor.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t at least give it a try, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.’

  When it was all over O’Toole described his National Service as ‘a total waste for everybody, particularly His Majesty’. As a grand gesture, and to purge the navy out of his system before resuming civilian life, O’Toole took his uniform and threw it in the Thames. But he was never to forget that conversation with the captain.

  Back in Leeds, O’Toole returned to his job at the newspaper, ‘where it soon became clear to those who knew me that I would not be staying there for long’. He had reached a crossroads in his life. His early ambition of becoming an editor of some fancy rag like Picture Post or Life had faded, superseded by a notion that rather than being a chronicler of events, ‘I wanted to be the event.’

  As a young man O’Toole had scribbled an oath into his notebook, words that must have found some resonance with him. In 1952 an American politician called Dean Alfange wrote a statement entitled ‘My Creed’, which was published in the Reader’s Digest: ‘I will not be a common man because it is my right to be an uncommon man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony. I seek opportunity, not security. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence, the thrill of fulfilment to the stale calm of utopias.’ Looking back at this period from the comfortable position of his seventies, O’Toole ruminated that there seemed to have been an inevitability, call it fate if you will, to every step that he was taking. ‘But that had not been the case when I was falteringly taking them.’ Something was driving him on.

  It was around this time that O’Toole made the acquaintance of a man that was also determined not to travel along life’s common pathway. A colleague of his boss at the Evening News was having difficulty with his son, a gifted and intelligent boy but a little wayward and rebellious. In fact, in manner and attitude he could very well have been O’Toole’s twin. It was decided that the two of them really ought to meet up to see if they shared any common ground. It turned out that in Patrick Oliver, O’Toole was in the company ‘of a delinquent fellow spirit’, and a friendship was formed that lasted until Oliver’s death in 2009. No one, O’Toole insisted, outside his own immediate family, had a greater or more timely influence on him.

  Described by h
is new friend as ‘two yards and more of long bones and wild un-weeded hair’, Patrick Oliver was a budding painter who sporadically attended Leeds College of Art. O’Toole liked his work, his figures and portraits; Oliver had yet to make the transition to the bold, intense landscapes that prompted Barbara Hepworth to call him one of the finest painters of his generation. He’d also return to Leeds College of Art as an inspirational teacher between 1964 and 1993 where one of his pupils, Damien Hirst, recalled how his critiques made him laugh and changed the way that he looked at art for ever.

  Soon after their first encounter the two young men began to patronize an arts centre; there were pottery and painting classes for Oliver, while O’Toole was leaning towards being a playwright. He’d written a few short plays already, some so bad he’d thrown them in the fireplace in disgust. He loved the arts centre, its bohemian ambience spoke to him much more than the hurly-burly world of the Yorkshire Evening News, where he was appearing less and less now. He felt a little guilty about his absences, the paper had done its best for him and here he was letting it down. It wouldn’t be long before he quit altogether.

  In Christmas 1952 the arts centre staged its annual pantomime. O’Toole volunteered his services and had a ball playing Idle Jack. A few weeks later, the producer of a semi-professional drama group that put on productions at the centre asked if he could have a quiet word. By a quirk of fate the leading man of their next production, Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken his leg; O’Toole never did forget the unfortunate man’s name – Gordon Luck. This producer, Ben Awad, a Turk by birth but raised in Yorkshire, had caught his performance in the panto and thought he displayed considerable promise. Did he fancy taking over? O’Toole thought the man had flipped, the panto had just been a bit of fun and the only time he’d ever seriously acted, discounting the obligatory school play. ‘Why don’t you give it a crack?’ Considering the offer, O’Toole reached the conclusion that he didn’t really have anything to lose. While the idea of acting or some career in the theatre had played across his mind from time to time he’d never given it much weight. Now here he was, learning lines and shaping a proper performance for the first time. Rehearsals at first were strained: ‘I had been awkward, self-conscious and desperately unsure of myself.’ Awad noticed this and was able to calm O’Toole and in time build up his self-confidence.

  The production lasted two weeks and O’Toole enjoyed it enormously; the excitement backstage before curtain-up, the thrill of the performance, the buzz of a live audience, it was a heady brew. Edith Evans once said of acting, ‘You catch it, like influenza.’ Well, O’Toole was a willing victim. He began to see more plays and to study books on drama. He was already a huge fan of George Bernard Shaw, having since aged sixteen ‘read aloud to myself every wise and comical, choice and cracking syllable of the plays’. He also took private lessons from a dowager former actress. The next step was to write off to local repertory companies for work, but he was repeatedly turned down for lack of experience.

  Having given up journalism, O’Toole worked for a time as a steeplejack and demolition man. ‘Blowing things up and knocking things down with a bloody great hammer. Nobody gave a flying shit for health and safety in those days. It was glorious.’ Saving some of his wages, O’Toole planned a trip to London. Patrick Oliver and he hitchhiked their way to Birmingham and then Stratford-upon-Avon, where they kipped in the bus station. In the morning they walked to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre to buy a pair of tickets to see Michael Redgrave play King Lear. Before curtain-up they took in a tour of the town, visiting Shakespeare’s house and Ann Hathaway’s cottage. Alone, O’Toole took a stroll along the river that snakes past that grand old theatre, watched as people fed the swans and occasionally glanced up at the shifting figures in the windows of the dressing rooms, wishing one day he might be one of them.

  After the performance the pair downed a few pints in the famous Dirty Duck pub, followed by a rather rapid search for a convenient bed for the night. It turned out to be a bale of hay in a farmer’s field, but as they comfortably nestled themselves O’Toole made the stark discovery that the hay was merely a soft covering for a very large heap of manure. ‘Did you ever find yourself in the dark up to your shoulders in hot shit?’ O’Toole was able to say years later with some authority.

  After cleaning up as best they could in the biting cold river next morning, O’Toole and Oliver took breakfast at a roadside cafe, making a bolt for it without paying when the waitress wasn’t looking. A few years later when he was the toast of Stratford, O’Toole made a point of hunting down that very cafe, this time leaving a generous tip.

  Cadging a lift in the back of an open-top lorry, keeping several empty beer barrels company, the boys jumped out at Euston station and made their way to the YMCA in Tottenham Court Road. Cutting through Gower Street, about halfway down O’Toole stopped in his tracks. There in front of him was the most famous and accomplished drama school in the world, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art or RADA. ‘That’s your shop, isn’t it, Pete?’ said Oliver. The nondescript stone entrance wasn’t nearly as imposing as he’d thought it might be for such an august institution, so he decided there and then to case the joint, as it were. This in spite of the fact that the windswept journey down had done little to erode the odour of fertilizer.

  Trudging round the entrance hall, looking a bit lost, O’Toole was approached by a scholarly gentleman who asked whether he was a student. ‘Indeed not,’ said O’Toole. ‘But I fully intend to be one.’

  The man introduced himself as Sir Kenneth Barnes, who had run the academy since 1909. With impeccable timing, O’Toole had arrived on the very week the auditions were being held for the new term; alas the candidates for these highly sought after places had already been carefully selected. O’Toole wondered whether the rules might be bent ever so slightly, just this once. Barnes looked at his watch. It was 2 p.m. ‘Be at my office at four forty-five this afternoon.’

  With a hearty thank you O’Toole raced out into the street where Oliver was leaning against the entrance, smoking. ‘Some interesting customers coming in and going out of this shop,’ he said. ‘Did you get your shitty foot in the door?’

  At the hostel O’Toole took a quick shower, shaved and arrived on the dot at RADA. Barnes welcomed the eager youngster into his office and explained that he’d be required to perform two speeches before a panel of judges. ‘Choose something from that,’ he said, passing over a sheet of typed paper. ‘The other speech you can select yourself. The audition is set for two days’ time.’ O’Toole’s nerves ran riot, forty-eight hours wasn’t a very long time to decide one’s future. Scanning the list, his heart sang when he saw Professor Higgins from Shaw’s Pygmalion, a speech he already knew by heart. Things suddenly didn’t look so bad. For his other piece O’Toole went with ‘O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I’, from Hamlet.

  Before the audition O’Toole and Oliver took a quick tour round the West End and Soho. What happened next Oliver enjoyed recounting many times and is remembered by his son Richard. ‘Peter decided upon a whim to climb up onto Eros in Piccadilly, strike an archer’s pose identical to that of the statue and release a timely and comical fart. Unfortunately, relaxation of the sphincter resulted in the expulsion of more than merely gaseous matter. Trousers were rendered, in the short term, unwearable. This is why Dad spent several hours in a cubicle in a public lavatory (or was it the YMCA?), after he had loaned Peter his trousers to attend the RADA audition.’

  With his new trousers, O’Toole presented his two speeches as best he could, then was told to wait outside. After several agonizing minutes the panel was pleased to offer him a place at the academy. Further good news followed: he was to be awarded a scholarship and a grant of £5 a week. ‘So there it was. My life had completely changed.’

  THREE

  It was 1953 and O’Toole’s very first morning at RADA saw him standing in the foyer doing his best to listen to instructions about where to hang
his donkey jacket, what forms to fill in, all that stuff, while a constant parade of women went up and down the staircase, a beautiful Indian girl in a sari, a blonde bombshell in tight slacks; his eyes were on stalks.

  In his first lesson O’Toole watched as the students rehearsed a scene from As You Like It. There was one particular chap he couldn’t keep his eyes off who ‘buzzed with a confident energy’. His name was Albert Finney, the Salford-born son of a bookie. O’Toole ended up in the same class as Finney right through till the end of the course and they acted in numerous productions together. It wasn’t just Finney that radiated talent, that year’s intake was the most remarkable RADA had ever known: Alan Bates, Peter Bowles, Roy Kinnear, Ronald Fraser, James Villiers, John Stride, Julian Glover, Richard Briers and Frank Finlay, every one of them going on to enjoy substantial careers. ‘Though we weren’t reckoned for much at the time,’ recalled O’Toole. ‘We were all considered dotty.’

  Inevitably there was keen competition amongst everyone; excellent training for the harsh realities of the theatrical profession. ‘It was because we all knew we had potential,’ said Peter Bowles. ‘Finney, O’Toole and Bates were all swaggering around. They threw down the gauntlet. They said, “There, that’s my Macbeth – beat that!” ’

  O’Toole though had an uneasy, difficult first year finding his feet. It was all very disciplined, a bit stifling and lacking emotion and freedom. ‘RADA was a fairly conservative and traditional school,’ remembers fellow student Bryan Hands. ‘But it did provide a good basic grounding in theatre techniques.’ The school’s criteria reflected very much the personality and vision of Kenneth Barnes, an attitude entrenched in a kind of theatre that had already disappeared, typified by grand-standing actor-manager types of the nineteenth century like Henry Irving. ‘That was the sort of theatre Kenneth Barnes represented and believed in,’ says ex-student Keith Baxter. ‘But even we knew that that had gone. And we also knew that what we were being schooled in was not right.’ According to another RADA alumna of the time, Sheila Allen, Barnes wasn’t progressive in any way, ‘But I think he knew talent when he saw it.’