Peter O'Toole

by Robert Sellers

  Petula rarely saw O’Toole again, living and working as they did in different spheres of the same business. The last time they met was in the early eighties when O’Toole was appearing on the London stage in Man and Superman. ‘That was the real Peter because he was in total command of the stage. That seemed to be his place, the theatre.’

  After the curtain came down Petula made her way to his dressing room. He had just come off the stage and was exhausted. ‘I don’t think he was in great health and looked extraordinarily thin. He would push himself to the limits, in many ways. We hardly spoke, we just both sat on these hard little chairs, sitting opposite each other, knee to knee, and wept. I don’t quite know why, maybe they were such wonderful memories of our time working together and he had a feeling we wouldn’t have that experience together again. It was just a moment between us that only we could share.’

  FOURTEEN

  Since the mid-sixties O’Toole had been taking Siân across the water to visit the town of Clifden in Connemara, real O’Toole country, with hundreds if not thousands of people bearing that surname dotted about the place. He first arrived there alone on a cold October evening in 1964. Billy Foyle was with some of his friends in the smoke room of the Clifden Bay Hotel, as it was known then, when this knock came at the door. ‘And this big, tall, lanky stranger was standing there with an English accent and he wanted to get a room for the night.’ Although they were closed Foyle invited him in. With not one cinema in Clifden nobody had seen Lawrence of Arabia nor had the first clue who Peter O’Toole was. ‘He came in and my friends were having pints of Guinness and I introduced him and we got talking and we got drinking, and drinking, and drinking perhaps more than we should.’

  O’Toole wanted some cigarettes so he and Billy Foyle walked to the pub across the street. There had been a funeral that day and the place was heaving with mourners and the drink was flowing. ‘We stopped to have a few pints and Peter got to know everyone and he bought drinks on the house. As the revelry started they all sang rebel songs for all the people that died for Ireland. You could almost hear the bullets going into the wall. And Peter was delighted and egging them on.’ Somebody then suggested Peter have a go at a song. He made a few grunts and then got up on a table. This bar had a very low ceiling and he was almost bent over. ‘And it sticks in my mind forever this day,’ says Billy Foyle. ‘Now, to appreciate what he did, the atmosphere in that pub that particular night was heated, these were all Irish rebels dying for Ireland every five minutes. And I heard this song coming across and I was certain I knew it but I thought it was an out of tune Irish ballad he was singing. It must have taken about ten seconds before I realized the song he was singing was “God Save the Queen”. I grabbed Peter and yanked him off the table and he hit the floor with a moan. Then I bundled him out of the door and into the street. “For Christ’s sake run, Peter,” I yelled, because they’d have beaten me up more than they would have beaten O’Toole up.’

  Both men ran back to the hotel and into the safety of the smoke room. Inside O’Toole delighted in telling everyone what had happened and suggested to Foyle an encore the following evening. ‘I’m sorry, Peter, I’m very busy tomorrow. But if you do go out, for God’s sake don’t sing that song again.’ He did go out, starting off in several pubs before going to a private house party, where he brought all the drink, bottles of whisky, gin and vodka. Sometime in the night there was the obligatory singsong and O’Toole was asked to have a go. ‘Of course, what did he do,’ says Billy Foyle. ‘He sang “God Save the Queen” again, only this time I wasn’t there to save him and they kicked seven kinds of bejesus out of him. The next morning I was going across the road to get the newspaper when I saw this image come up the street. He said, “William, old boy.” I said, “Peter, is that you? What happened?” I thought I’d saved him once. And he was so proud, he had a broken nose, his eye was black and blue and there was congealed blood. I don’t know where he slept that night. He didn’t sleep at my hotel. I took him in and cleaned him up and then sent him on his way.’

  A few months later O’Toole was back, saying he wanted to trace his ancestors. Although for all the time he knew O’Toole, Foyle can’t recall him ever managing to locate a single one. ‘I think he was probably hoping he wouldn’t find any. But when people asked, what are you doing over here, he’d say, I’m looking for my relations.’ What did happen was that O’Toole fell in love with the wild and desolate beauty of this piece of Ireland, battered by the torrents of wind that sweep off the Atlantic. He told Billy Foyle that he wanted to build a house for his family there and to let him know when he’d found the perfect plot of land.

  It was partly by accident, partly by design that O’Toole’s next film was made in Ireland. He’d seen James Kennaway’s play Country Dance at the Hampstead Theatre and become fast friends with the author. When Kennaway tragically died in a car accident, driving back from O’Toole’s home, the actor was determined to bring some kind of permanence to the work and make it into a film, changing its Scottish locale to Ireland. In it he plays a crazy alcoholic who has an incestuous relationship with his sister, played by Susannah York. It was a controversial premise and on the first day of filming O’Toole told producer Robert Ginna, ‘You know we’re not going to make a buck on this, don’t you? But let’s have a bloody good time.’

  Bringing his usual diligent research to bear upon a role, O’Toole got regularly smashed. It was not uncommon for him to be absent Monday mornings in order to sleep off the exertions of the weekend’s festivities. Filming at Ardmore Studios, county Wicklow, he often drank at the nearby Harbour Bar and donated a large moose head (a prop from What’s New Pussycat) as a gesture of gratitude to the owners for making sure he was returned in one piece to his hotel each night.

  One evening O’Toole took some of the crew out on one of his customary pub crawls through Dublin which ended in a restaurant at 3.30 in the morning. When things got a little too boisterous for the owner he asked them to leave and when they refused brought out his Alsatian dog to reinforce the point. When O’Toole demanded more drinks and was bitten for his trouble he punched the landlord in the face. It just so happened that an off-duty policeman observed the whole incident and O’Toole was arrested. In the end the landlord refused to press charges, though O’Toole still humbly accepted a fine of £30 the next morning in the Magistrates’ Court.

  Another night in Dublin he got into a fight and arrived on the set the next morning sporting a black eye. ‘We had to rejig the shooting in order to hide it,’ remembers co-star Michael Craig. ‘He didn’t seem to take much notice of it really, it was just one of those things that happened in his daily life.’ Craig went with O’Toole one afternoon to the Curragh Racecourse in nearby Kildare, where they met up with a whole gang of film people who had been in Ireland for months working on Ryan’s Daughter. ‘I remember I lost £700 on the day and I never saw a horse race because we were in the bar all the time. Then we went back to our hotel in Dublin and Peter insisted on staying up all night and carrying on.’ After that experience, and a couple of others, Craig decided not to go out on the booze any more with O’Toole. ‘I knew there would come a point when the pub would shut and he’d be looking for somewhere to make on to, and I’d be thinking, I should get my head down because I’ve got a call at six in the morning, but that didn’t bother him.’

  O’Toole’s drinking was yet again a cause for concern and the effects it was having on his general health. He’d taken to recording his morning cough for posterity, so impressively repulsive was it. Siân told of one distressing incident when her husband turned up at the theatre where she was performing only to pass out drunk in the corridor backstage requiring the actors to step over his crumpled form in order to get on the stage. Medical opinion was once again sought and the same advice delivered, lay off the drink, which prompted the same reply as before – he wouldn’t, despite a recurrence of his stomach pains.

  That October, Burton and Liz Taylor saw O’Toole quite by chance in
the paddock of Longchamp Racecourse outside Paris. In his diary that night Burton did not paint a very flattering portrait of his old friend: ‘We were standing there when suddenly a tall man appeared emaciated and ill and stubble-faced and smiled a lot and was quite incoherent, and had a right hand which was burned to the bone between the index finger and the next. It was Peter O’Toole.’ Other friends and colleagues were equally concerned. Phyllida Law, who had acted with him at Bristol, was one: ‘To be quite honest, at one point in his life I seriously didn’t think he’d live. I’d see him about looking as white as anything and thin. He did look so ill that I used to think, he’ll never make it, he can’t live.’

  When Country Dance finished filming in the autumn of 1969 (it would eventually meet with an uninspired reception in cinemas), O’Toole and Susannah York remained in Dublin since both had been invited to appear in a production of Shaw’s Man and Superman at the Gaiety Theatre. O’Toole was reprising the role of John Tanner that he had played years earlier at Bristol. Directed by his old mentor Nat Brenner, it ran for only fifteen performances and demand for tickets was extraordinarily high. ‘The finest thing I’ve ever seen,’ remarked fellow cast member Nigel Stock. Brenner remembers being alone in his office one night and the telephone ringing. It was the Irish Prime Minister trying to get tickets.

  There was talk of a London transfer but O’Toole had already committed that December to appearing in a production of Waiting for Godot at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, once again playing Vladimir. Appearing opposite him was another Irish drinking pal, Donal McCann. When in London, McCann was a regular visitor at Guyon House. Siân remembers one extraordinary episode when McCann, on his second bottle of vodka, fell asleep in an armchair in the drawing room and somehow managed to set fire to his hair with a cigarette. Calmly, by now used to such eccentricity, Siân walked over to the drinks cabinet, picked up a soda siphon and drenched his head with it. McCann merely blinked, then held out his empty glass for a refill.

  Godot lasted just eighteen performances, since O’Toole was due to start shooting a new movie. An offer had arrived to appear in a film directed by Peter Yates, then a hot talent after helming the Steve McQueen classic Bullitt. The location was South America, a part of the world he’d never been to before and was keen to explore. The money was good too, a quarter of a million dollars. He quickly accepted.

  Murphy’s War was based on a novel by Max Catto about the sole survivor of a British merchant ship sunk by a German U-boat who becomes obsessed with sinking the submarine to avenge his companions, shot as they floated in the wreckage. When the film rights were snapped up by Paramount, producer Michael Deeley and Yates were handed a list of ten actors and told to make their choice. Amongst the usual suspects were a couple of left-field choices, chief amongst them O’Toole. A Sean Connery or a Lee Marvin would have given a perfectly fine bravura performance, but Yates was aiming for something a bit more quirky than your regular war movie. In that regard O’Toole was the perfect fit, though after reading the script he insisted on playing the part as an Irishman, necessitating a slight rewrite.

  Deeley and Yates had hired O’Toole fully aware of his reputation, but came up with a cunning plan to keep him under control. In a film that was distinctly macho, there was just the one female role, that of a nurse who befriends Murphy. ‘Because of one’s fear that Peter might be unreliable, pissed out of his mind or something,’ says Deeley, ‘we decided to cast Siân to play opposite him. Of course she’s a great actress, but stuck in the jungles of Venezuela, we thought she would be our insurance. In the event it was totally unnecessary. Actually, he was the glue that held that film together.’

  For Deeley, Murphy’s War remains a particular favourite, it was fun and challenging but also the most hazardous film he ever worked on. The location was an absolute killer. Shooting on the Orinoco River, the unit were miles from any kind of civilization and surrounded by hazards – piranha fish in the shallows and poisonous snakes everywhere else. ‘It was a dangerous location because if you fell into the water you’d be dead.’

  To make matters worse the Belfast to Liverpool ferry that had been converted to accommodate the film crew, having crossed the Atlantic, got stuck on a sand bank as it approached the mouth of the Orinoco, a mile short of the location site, demanding the use of small flat-bottomed boats to move everyone back and forth. One morning a party that included O’Toole and Siân, along with Deeley and his wife, were halfway across when the weather turned bad and the sea began to cut up rough. ‘The fella who was driving the boat suddenly had hysterics and got down on his knees and started praying,’ Deeley recalls. ‘The boat was now completely out of control. Luckily our stunt arranger Bob Simmons knocked the guy out, seized the wheel and took over. But it was very nasty for a moment.’

  This, as everyone soon discovered, was par for the course on Murphy’s War; if something could go wrong it invariably did. O’Toole, at times non-communicative and grumpy, due to more stomach problems, persevered, indeed flourished in the hostile surroundings, living it like some kind of adventure. ‘Peter was the absolute soul of the picture,’ confirms Deeley. ‘And I’ve never seen this with an actor before.’

  After a couple of weeks O’Toole and Siân were re-housed in a hotel in the town of Puerto Ordaz and a helicopter took them into the rainforest for filming. The chopper was manned by a French stunt pilot called Gilbert Chomat and on weekends O’Toole would command Chomat to pilot him round the area, landing on mud banks to search for pre-Columbian artefacts. O’Toole was determined to explore the region, having read up on Eldorado, pre-Columbian art and the revolutionary Simón Bolívar.

  One weekend they passed near the famous Angel Falls, the highest waterfall in the world. It was a spectacular sight and when the pair met later in the hotel bar they began a long discussion about the possibilities of landing the chopper directly on the falls, on a flat-topped plateau just above where the water flows out in a huge gush and drops for about a mile; an aerial feat so far as they knew never attempted before, probably for good reason. ‘We had a few more drinks,’ remembered O’Toole. ‘And it became infinitely more sensible.’ They decided to do it the following weekend.

  Chomat had the chopper stripped down, leaving just the skeleton, and O’Toole brought along Siân and the photographer Bob Willoughby. Once at Angel Falls the helicopter began its ascent up this sheer wall of water until Chomat had it hovering over the top. Carefully he eased the machine down until it gently but uneasily settled on what was little more than a smooth patchwork of rock. Everyone got out, save for Chomat who kept watch for any sudden change in the weather that could spell disaster. Willoughby took some pictures for posterity, Siân collected a few wild flowers, while O’Toole lay prostrate on the ground, looking over the edge, down at this mile of water. It could only have been minutes when Chomat urged everyone back in the chopper. It was time to leave, clouds were coming in.

  While the landing had been tough enough, their exit was white-knuckle stuff. Chomat couldn’t start the engine for fear the helicopter might shudder off the rock out of control. The trick was to fling the craft off and as it hurtled down like a rock the rotor blades started and Chomat piloted them all to safety. It was a masterful piece of flying.

  Following the river for some distance they came across a compound owned by a former German officer, ‘who clearly decided not to hang around after the war was over for fear of his record emerging’, says Deeley. ‘The crew often went there. It was amazing. My wife and I were walking down to his hut one night when a huge anaconda wound its way out of a tree into one’s path.’ It was that kind of place, and the man himself a genial host, despite being eaten away by leprosy. This was where Chomat landed and O’Toole and his party spent a riotous evening. ‘We drank every single drop the man had had stored for over a year,’ the actor reported. ‘And then we had a shooting competition.’

  When location filming wrapped, O’Toole and Siân had some spare time before they were required for studio work back
in England. O’Toole had made his mind up to track down some Yanomami Indians, which entailed a long and deep trek into the jungle. Siân was once again game, Willoughby too. Chartering a boat, and hiring a couple of guides, off they went up the Orinoco, into the wilds of the Amazon basin, the land of head-hunters and goodness knows what. After just a couple of days’ travel, one of the guides refused to go any further, and nerves were tested again when a Greek missionary working at a small settlement they passed through advised them all to go back. Still they ploughed on, up river, in blasting heat and then torrential rain.

  After another day O’Toole spotted a young child playing on a beach and they pulled in. Far from displaying shyness or fear the girl ran up to O’Toole, took his hand and pulled him into the jungle. They ran further and further inside as Siân and Willoughby tried desperately to keep up, arriving eventually upon a large encampment. They’d found their Indians. It was a once in a lifetime experience as they were invited to eat, play and rest with the tribe and exchange gifts. O’Toole even embarked on a spot of archery, his sheer ineptitude drawing merriment from the men of the village. It was only after making it back they learned they’d managed to get four hundred miles further up river than a recent BBC documentary team who travelled in a hovercraft with armed guards.