Peter O'Toole

by Robert Sellers

  Lisa broke down again as she told him that she was pregnant and was no longer with Sam. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ she sobbed, her make-up running.

  ‘Lisa, you don’t need a man, you don’t need us. You’re perfectly capable of doing this yourself. You’re a strong, good woman. Just love the child and get on with it.’

  It took a few seconds for the words to hit home, but when they did it gave Lisa pause. O’Toole then gave her a huge kiss and that was that. ‘He didn’t have to do that. He could have left me wallowing, but he saved me. I’ll always love him for that.’

  Of course, now O’Toole knew Lisa was pregnant she never heard the last of it. ‘I would walk on stage and he used to hit me in the belly and say, how’s the baby, and I’d be going, oh God, Peter, don’t do that.’

  By a strange coincidence, O’Toole went on stage every night aware that his girlfriend Karen was pregnant with his child and that he was going to be a father again, at the age of fifty. The birth occurred, serendipitously, on St Patrick’s Day, 17 March 1983, in Dublin, of course. Delighted, he called his friend John Standing, announcing loudly down the phone in the early hours of the morning: ‘A boy. On St Patrick’s Day! I shall call him Lorcan – Irish for Lawrence.’ When Standing’s wife Sarah asked, ‘Were you there at the birth, Peter? What was that like? Bit gory?’ O’Toole replied, ‘A piece of cake, baby. Piece of cake. To be honest, I’ve seen far worse things come out of my nose.’

  O’Toole wholeheartedly embraced late fatherhood, after two daughters he was overjoyed with the birth of a son and told friends in Clifden: ‘The only thing I want more than life itself is to have him raised an Irishman.’ But Karen had not taken to the lyrical isolation of the Connemara coast. ‘Karen was a lovely woman and always very charming,’ says Paul D’Alton. ‘But she just wasn’t part of the “craic agus ceol”, as we say, the craic and the music kind of thing in Ireland. She was very softly spoken and quite reticent and reserved so she didn’t really take to life in Clifden, it was just completely removed from her world. She didn’t understand it, she didn’t feel that she was accepted, which was true, not because people were snobby or cliquey, but if you’re not part of the culture there, then they are going to turn their back on you.’ When she was staying with O’Toole at Clifden, Karen tended to stay in the house and not mix socially in the town.

  Other fractures were beginning to open up in their relationship, too, and by the middle of the year they had separated. Perhaps they were never truly suited to each other, although Karen did share many similarities with Siân Phillips. Both women were beautiful and charming but also quite reserved in their nature, neither was a roaring, laughing, screaming, drinking Irish country woman for example. As Paul D’Alton observes, ‘It’s strange that for such a gregarious, when he wanted to be, and flamboyant man, the two women that Peter had the most important relationships in his life were very different to him, they were reserved women, quite studied. I don’t know whether he got that from his mother, but he was attracted quite obviously to that kind of solid, quite reserved woman. He wasn’t going for the fiery type.’

  When Karen returned to her home in New Jersey with the infant Lorcan, O’Toole was furious and desperate to get the child back. His desperation, however, clouded his judgement and with ruthless cunning and precision he plotted to kidnap his son. What he was contemplating was a criminal act and those helping him knew it. ‘There was a slight Irish/mafia streak to Peter where if you crossed him you got two barrels blazing at you,’ says Paul D’Alton. O’Toole arranged to take Lorcan on a few days’ holiday, with the hidden intention of smuggling him back to Ireland. There was even talk of father and son stowing away on a fishing vessel and landing in secret on the Connemara coast. Instead, O’Toole and Lorcan, with a nanny in tow, ended up in Bermuda.

  Karen’s first reaction was that Lorcan had been taken by professional kidnappers and that a ransom note might be pushed through her letterbox at any moment. On learning the truth she alerted authorities to prevent O’Toole taking the child off the island. Police and officials arrived at the hotel just as O’Toole was preparing to leave for the airport and he was forced to hand Lorcan over.

  O’Toole always denied that he was trying to snatch his son. All Karen said on the subject and of her former partner was, ‘Let’s just say that he is not a predictable man.’ Heartbroken, O’Toole returned home alone, the son he had always craved was thousands of miles away, more out of reach than ever.

  On the professional front 1983–1984 turned out for the most part to be rather dismal. There was a poorly conceived performance as an Indian monk in a television adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s classic story Kim and an erratic cameo in the box-office turkey Supergirl.

  He also courted controversy at the gala re-opening of the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin. Asked to do a reading, O’Toole chose Jonathan Swift’s satirical essay of 1729, ‘A Modest Proposal’, in which he suggested that the Irish should eat their children to avoid starvation. O’Toole said the piece had ‘a little something to offend everybody’, and so it proved when the cat-calls began, followed by a mass walk-out of dignitaries. Congratulated by a reporter on the mayhem he caused, O’Toole laughed heartily. That’s what he enjoyed about it – challenging the stuffy audience and the constraints of convention.

  The only bright spot of this period was a well-made Canadian television version of Pygmalion, which saw O’Toole as Professor Henry Higgins opposite Margot Kidder as Eliza. It was a role he would soon be asked to perform on the London stage by playwright Ray Cooney, famous for his Whitehall farces, notably Run For Your Wife. Cooney had recently created the Theatre of Comedy Company, together with thirty leading actors, directors and writers. They took out a lease on the Shaftesbury Theatre just off London’s West End with the ambition to present the very best of British comedy writing. Many discussions took place about what plays should be done and the type of actors recruited. Pygmalion came up as an option and Cooney believes it was John Alderton who put forward the suggestion that O’Toole and only O’Toole should play Higgins. Everyone agreed the idea was a splendid one and negotiations began. Immediately O’Toole wanted to know who was directing. ‘Ray would love to direct you in it, Mr O’Toole.’ Big problem. Of course O’Toole knew who Cooney was, and indeed was impressed with his résumé, but was nevertheless extremely apprehensive that he hadn’t done any of Shaw’s works before.

  Cooney pleaded his case, that he had read the play now three or four times and loved it. ‘The thing that really impressed me with Peter,’ remembers Cooney, ‘was that not only did he know Pygmalion backwards, but he knew everything about every play Shaw had ever written. He was so knowledgeable about it all.’ The meeting was a success and O’Toole signed on. As rehearsals began Cooney believes that O’Toole quickly realized that although they heralded from different theatrical backgrounds, they essentially spoke the same language and ended up getting on well. Although Cooney did make the mistake of asking if he was happy with his dressing room. Very sweetly O’Toole replied that he’d actually like everything to be crimson, and if possible by the first preview. ‘Over the following weekend my wife Linda and I slept overnight in the theatre while she hung these huge red curtains she made herself and I laid the crimson carpet! There was also a divan in the dressing room which we covered in about twelve red cushions.’

  As Cooney remembers, it was a happy atmosphere for the two-month run that spring and early summer of 1984 and O’Toole the glue that keeps a company together. ‘He was very much like Donald Sinden in that respect. Donald would come into the theatre and go round every dressing room every single night and go, “Hello darling, how are you, we’re going to have a great show tonight, never mind the bloody weather, it’s going to be fantastic.” So when the curtain went up you felt great. And Peter had that same effect with a company.’

  Pygmalion played to packed houses and was well received by the critics. ‘Peter was terrific as Higgins,’ says Cooney. ‘He had this wo
nderful rapport with the audience. He was a brilliant comedy actor. And he and John Thaw, who played Doolittle, got on like a house on fire.’ O’Toole also took immense pleasure in appearing opposite Joyce Carey, who played Mrs Higgins. By that time Joyce, who’d had a wonderful career appearing in many of the West End hits of Nöel Coward, was eighty-six and suffering from early Alzheimer’s. However, she was absolutely delightful, except that she did have trouble remembering her lines. ‘Peter was amazing with her,’ recalls Cooney. ‘Whenever she dried he would gently put his arm round her and give her a warm gentle smile. If Joyce could still not recall her lines Peter would ad-lib and, still smiling, lead her back to the script. The scene was supposed to last about four minutes. It usually went on for nearly ten with Peter looking gently into Joyce’s eyes and never losing his loving smile.’

  Again, O’Toole’s dressing room became a haven for friends and admirers, wishing him well and full of congratulations. His Stunt Man co-star Steve Railsback happened to be in London at the time and managed to catch a performance, bringing along with him the actor Patrick Stewart, who was keen to be introduced to O’Toole. ‘It was a breathtaking performance. Peter was at home on a stage. Every time I would see Peter it would always be open arms and that laugh, that wonderful laugh he had.’

  That August, O’Toole heard the terrible news that his old friend Richard Burton had died. He was just fifty-eight. It was a genuine shock, although theirs had been a rather distant friendship since Elizabeth Taylor’s severing of it in that Rome hotel way back in 1972. ‘Richard lost touch with a lot of people when he was married to Elizabeth Taylor,’ says Sally Burton, Richard’s widow. ‘Yes, there were some rollicking times in the fifties and sixties but there was no friendship towards the end of Richard’s life. I think had they happened to be in the same restaurant at the same time they would have fallen upon each other with great amusement. I do know that Peter O’Toole did not attend the funeral in Switzerland.’

  Not long after Burton’s death, O’Toole and Richard Harris met up in a London pub and talked into the night about their recently departed friend. ‘Burton once told me,’ Harris said, ‘that we spent a third of our lives drunk, a third with a hangover and a third sleeping.’ There they sat quietly in a corner, two of the biggest hell-raisers of all, sipping their rancid tonic water. ‘What I wouldn’t give for one glass of red wine,’ pined Harris, himself now off the booze. ‘Just one.’ A friend was sharing the evening with them and O’Toole picked up the man’s glass of Muscadet, held it to his nostrils and took in the bouquet before replacing it untouched back on the table. ‘Aaah,’ he moaned, in fond remembrance of drinks past.

  Burton’s sudden death had also brought their own mortality into stark question, that and the realization that perhaps both of them were lucky to be still alive. There had been long periods during their hell-raising heyday when they made a deliberate choice not to see each other, ‘Because if we did, we’d kill us both,’ said Harris. ‘We always brought out the worst in each other.’ Elizabeth Harris remembers an occasion at a rugby match in Wales where O’Toole was with Ronnie Fraser in the hospitality room, ‘And Richard told me afterwards, “No, I didn’t speak to him. I just didn’t feel in the mood.” Richard wasn’t drinking then and he knew that if they got together they’d be off for weeks. And they didn’t want that, neither of them wanted that.’

  Curiously this reluctance to see each other carried through into the eighties as well, when both were on the wagon. Johnnie Planco knew Harris and always thought it odd how they would always ask after each other: How’s Peter, how’s Richard, did he say anything about me? And yet Planco could never get the two of them in a room together. O’Toole called Harris ‘The Mixer’, since he was the type who’d turn up at a social do or dinner party and say, ‘So you’re William, you’re the one who doesn’t like Louise, right.’ He would set people off at each other and that would drive O’Toole crazy. ‘Peter loved Richard,’ says Planco. ‘He said he was one of his best friends – “If I don’t see him.” If he saw him it had the potential to go downhill.’

  O’Toole was on the David Letterman Show when Harris decided he was going to walk out in the middle of the interview and surprise him. Planco showed up at the studio to see O’Toole in his dressing room. ‘Listen, Harris . . . ’

  ‘I know,’ said O’Toole. ‘They told me. He’s not going to show up, you know.’

  ‘He’s going to meet me here, we’re going out to eat afterwards, he’s coming.’

  O’Toole shook his head. ‘Have you any English money on you?’

  ‘No,’ said Planco. ‘Why would I, I’m in New York.’

  ‘I’ll bet you five English pounds he doesn’t show up.’

  ‘OK, you’re on.’

  The Letterman team were well organized and had a walkie-talkie link-up with Harris’ limo. In the dressing room, Planco and O’Toole listened in as it made its progress through the Manhattan traffic. ‘Harris has got in the car,’ a voice crackled. ‘He’s on his way.’ O’Toole looked nonchalantly over at Planco. ‘He’s now on 60th Street. He’s on 55th Street. He’s turning west.’ O’Toole sat there listening, while Planco rubbed his hands, I’m going to win this. Suddenly a raised voice came through. ‘Wait, Harris just jumped out of the car. He’s running down the street.’ O’Toole just smiled. ‘He didn’t say anything,’ remembers Planco. ‘He just looked at me like, you lose.’

  Following two poor film choices, Creator, about a neurotic university scientist who yearns to clone his deceased wife, and the Robin Williams comedy Club Paradise, O’Toole must have felt back at home at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in another George Bernard Shaw play, The Apple Cart, at the start of 1986. His co-star was Susannah York, who experienced a couple of his eccentricities. ‘Onstage, Peter lay back and closed his eyes just as I was about to make a speech. I was utterly enraged. I forced his eyes open and screamed the speech in his face. Another time, he closed his eyes and opened his mouth as if he was about to snore. I was so furious I went over and poured a glass of champagne straight into his mouth!’

  That August, O’Toole was approached to appear in a mammoth international co-production charting the extraordinary true-life story of Pu Yi, the last Emperor of China. The role on offer was relatively small but pivotal, that of Reginald Johnston, a diplomat, a scholar and most famously tutor of Pu Yi, who later wrote a book about his experiences inside the Forbidden City. He was a remarkable man, and director Bernardo Bertolucci and producer Jeremy Thomas knew he was a vitally important element of the story. In essence Johnston was the Western link into the film, being the only Western character who appeared. After briefly considering Sean Connery, the filmmakers zeroed in on O’Toole. ‘Peter was really the obvious choice,’ says Thomas. ‘He was the symbol of Western style, in a top hat and tails, and very statuesque with a great clarity of speech. And he loved the character and was very enamoured with the idea of working with Bertolucci, who he called Bert O’Lucci.’

  Before O’Toole landed in China to begin work, his dresser arrived with a large trunk of effects, things O’Toole liked to have around him on location. Other duties included checking out the accommodation and where he was going to be working, just making sure that everything was in proper order. ‘Peter had been unwell,’ recalls Thomas. ‘I think he had had some surgery a few months before so he was quite delicate and frail but he got much stronger during the movie. He used to stride around the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. He became extremely engaged with being in China, enjoying the food and the jasmine tea. He loved all the different makes of teas.’

  There was very definitely a lack of star treatment on the film, no Winnebagos, no nothing, in fact everyone stayed in the same hotel, simply because there wasn’t another one in Beijing. O’Toole was given the best suite, luxurious by Chinese standards but fairly basic as seen through Western eyes. Still, O’Toole coped, after years of expertise he knew all about making a film location a bearable experience. There were barely any cars ar
ound either, only bicycles. ‘Now, outside that hotel there is an eight-lane highway,’ reveals Thomas.

  On each floor there was a houseman to look after the guests, though Thomas assumes this person was most likely a government official. ‘He knew everything that you did, checked your room the moment you went out, and maybe photographed anything that looked suspicious. Definitely everybody was under surveillance.’ A strange situation since the authorities had given Thomas and Bertolucci permission to shoot in the country, extremely keen for the story of Pu Yi to be told, this man who was the Emperor, son of heaven, lord of 10,000 years who died happily as a humble gardener; there can be no better example of ‘the way’ than that. ‘And they helped us from a government level down,’ says Thomas. ‘To get into the Forbidden City, to shoot in the Hall of Supreme Harmony, to go into Manchuria to shoot where Pu Yi’s palace was, built by the Japanese, to do everything with ease, rather than putting up barriers. We shot with complete freedom.’

  The incredible logistics involved, however, meant that the unit was always under huge pressure and strain. Thomas admits he wouldn’t dream of tackling such a production today. Being a predominantly Italian crew, it was all very sociable, everyone would have their meals together, with Bertolucci and O’Toole at the head of the table. During these meals Thomas doesn’t remember O’Toole talking much about filmmaking. ‘We would talk culture. I think probably the theatre was more of a love of his than movies. I think movies were just a means to an end, and that his heart was in the theatre.’ In the evening O’Toole was invariably the first to go to bed. ‘He was a very private man,’ says Thomas. ‘A will-o’-the-wisp sort of character. He didn’t really want to be known.’

  Michael Gruskoff, who produced My Favorite Year, remembers being in a New York restaurant around the late 1980s with Albert Finney and Roger Moore when O’Toole came in with a young lady and they sat at a table. ‘Then he saw us and came over to say hi. We had a little chat and Albert asked, “Where are you staying?” And Peter said, “I’m staying privately.” And he went back to his table. We got such a big laugh out of that.’