Hellraisers

by Robert Sellers

  This endless drinking – at the time Harris was consuming two bottles of vodka a day as well as a bottle of port and brandy – and mad behaviour was finally too much for Elizabeth. Drunken rows were growing more and more violent. ‘Richard had success and fame,’ she later said. ‘We had money, we had three healthy kids. Yet my only thought was how I could keep out of his way.’ Driving back from one Hollywood party Harris began hurling abuse at some invisible demon in the night. He then set about destroying the inside of the car, tearing up the upholstery, ripping his hands until they bled. Finally Elizabeth flew back to London and filed for divorce.

  It was the height of irony that just when Harris had cracked Hollywood and was earning the big bucks there was no one to share it all with. In July 1966 a Daily Mirror headline screamed, ‘Star’s wife says: I am scared of him.’ Elizabeth had gone to the extraordinary lengths of putting out injunctions to stop Harris molesting her and to stay away from his own children. ‘I am frightened of him,’ she declared in her sworn statement. ‘I seek the protection of the court from him.’ Her solicitor said it was a matter of grave urgency. Yes he acknowledged Harris was a man of success and talent. ‘Unfortunately his wife alleges he drinks regularly to excess and when he is drunk he goes berserk with whoever is in sight, and she is the victim.’ When the court agreed to the injunction Harris was devastated. Later he came to accept the situation. ‘I gave Liz hell and I’m glad she gave me the boot. Life is strewn with compromises and scars. In Elizabeth’s and my case we needed more Band-aids than most people.’

  After their divorce Elizabeth sent Harris a bird in a silver cage, with the message: ‘Here’s one bird that will never get away.’ In turn, he sent her an antique cowbell saying: ‘Wherever you go, I’ll now be able to hear you.’ They maintained this fond bantering right up until Harris’s death, developing probably a more meaningful and closer relationship as friends than they ever managed as man and wife. At one get together in the late 80s Harris, in a candid moment, asked his ex-wife, ‘What was it like being married to me?’ Elizabeth thought for a while before replying, ‘It was magic until you had that one drink too many and then a veil dropped over your face.’

  After a couple of frothy comedies O’Toole took on the more testing role of Henry II in the literate historical drama The Lion in Winter (1968). He also took on the challenge of a quite formidable co-star in Katharine Hepburn. Many felt that O’Toole had met his match in the Hollywood legend. She’d boss him about and he’d meekly obey, much to the crew’s amazement and amusement, more used to his tyrannical, mad ways on a film set. ‘She is terrifying,’ he told the press. ‘She has been sent by some dark force to nag and torment me.’ Hepburn relished sparring with O’Toole, 24 years her junior, and their relationship quickly developed into a kind of bantering, affectionate warfare. ‘Peter and Kate had a wonderfully funny relationship,’ recalls the film’s director Anthony Harvey. ‘Kate would jokingly call him “Pig” and he’d call her “Nags”. One afternoon I was doing a scene with Katie and she needed the make-up man, but he was away playing poker with Peter. “I bloody need him!” she yelled. So off we went looking for this guy and found him with Peter and Kate got in a right rage. “We’re supposed to be making a film,” she hollered at O’Toole and brought out her handbag and swiped him; she was really furious. We went back to the set and about an hour later O’Toole arrived, in the most enormously dramatic entrance, wrapped up in bandages and carrying crutches. “Look what you’ve done to me.” Of course, everybody fell about. That’s the sort of thing that happened between them. She had huge affection for him, and he for her. And the chemistry on a film is so important and they had real chemistry as people.’ O’Toole told friends that he simply adored Hepburn, ‘Even if she does hit me.’ Katharine was quick to defend herself: ‘I only hit people I love.’

  The filming of The Lion in Winter was notable for a number of bizarre accidents involving O’Toole. Shooting a scene on a lake Katharine was on a boat and O’Toole paddled out towards her to talk about the scene but caught his finger between both vessels. ‘Bloody agony it was, took the top right off.’ There were no doctors around so O’Toole carried the tip of his finger back to shore, dipped it into a glass of brandy for safe keeping and then stuffed it back on, wrapping it in a poultice. Three weeks later he unwrapped it and there it was, all crooked and bent and frankly disgusting. ‘I’d put it back the wrong way, probably because of the brandy which I drank.’

  Another time he awoke at four in the morning to discover his bed was on fire. For a moment he thought it was all a dream, then reality kicked in. ‘At first I tried to put the thing out myself, but I couldn’t read the small print on the fire extinguisher. By the time the first fireman arrived I was so glad to see him I kissed him.’ But fires and O’Toole were no strangers. As well as burning down the kitchen in the Welsh cottage when making toast for Siân, during his season at Stratford he managed to set fire to his dressing room – twice.

  Amongst the cast of The Lion in Winter were a couple of young actors making their film debuts, Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton. For the first time O’Toole no longer felt part of the new breed of British acting talent and was aware of a fresh and hungry new generation coming up fast behind him. Ironically he became something of a father figure to the younger members of the cast, once remonstrating with them about a crackpot dare to swim across a river. ‘The problem was keeping a straight face. I’d done exactly the same thing when I was their age. Playing Man and Superman in Switzerland I’d swum across one of the lakes. In evening dress, as I remember.’

  Dalton, of course, was destined to become James Bond, while Hopkins went on to achieve massive fame, but not before a drink problem that almost cost him his life. Hopkins’s drinking spiralled out of control when he walked out of a National Theatre production of Macbeth in 1973. After his move to Hollywood his drinking increased and peaked when he was putting away a bottle of tequila every day. ‘I went around for years thinking I was some kind of fiery, Celtic soul,’ Hopkins explained, ‘but I wasn’t – I was just drinking too much.’

  For years Hopkins feared that his heavy drinking would one day cause some disastrous consequences. ‘I used to space out and hallucinate. I was a lunatic, very hyper and manic.’ He’d go on long car journeys, driving over the prairies and canyons of the mid-west, and black out, not knowing where he was going. ‘In the mornings I would wonder – did I kill somebody? – and would check the front of the car.’

  After waking up in a Phoenix hotel room with no recollection of how he got there, Hopkins realized that his destructive lifestyle would eventually cost him his career and his wife. In 1975, he quit drinking.

  O’Toole had high hopes for The Lion in Winter. ‘If this one doesn’t come off, then I shall hang up my jockstrap and retire.’ The film turned out to be a success both critically and commercially, although he had to sue producer Joseph E. Levine when his full fee wasn’t forthcoming. Levine retaliated by claiming that O’Toole’s ‘disgraceful conduct’ had added to the film’s costs and that he’d been booted out of two hotels on location when he became ‘excessively drunk’. O’Toole won his case.

  The Lion in Winter made quite an impression on a young would-be director, Roger Young, who would cast O’Toole in 2003 as Augustus Caesar in an epic TV movie. ‘It was an amazing performance. I asked Peter how he arrived at that character because it flies all over the emotional map but never for one second is it melodramatic or overdone. Peter replied to my question: “It was in the script, my boy, in the script.” I doubt that any script could be that good. Peter made that film into something beyond film; beyond theatre. It was a combination of the best of both. Peter is the only actor I can think of who has the ability to combine the best qualities of theatre and film into one performance. Richard Burton came close, but he always had a feeling of arrogance about him. Peter is always swallowed up by the character. Sometimes, as in Venus, the character is Peter, but even then there is vulnerability in the charac
ter which Peter O’Toole the man never unveils. Peter is truly one of the very, very few great treasures of film and theatre we have ever seen in either art.’

  In 1968 Oliver Reed landed his breakthrough role, that of Bill Sikes in the musical Oliver! It might have been a case of nepotism, since his uncle Carol Reed was directing, but his moody and disturbing performance brought him plaudits and recognition and frightened the kids in the cast half to death. Cast as the Artful Dodger Jack Wild’s abiding memory of Reed was one of total intimidation. ‘As kids we were all terrified of him because he was this giant of a man and the only time we ever saw him was when he was in costume and made up for the part.’

  Reed didn’t truly let his hair down until the end of filming party, as Oliver himself, Mark Lester, recalls. ‘He got Jack Wild and me completely drunk on vodka by spiking our Cokes. I remember getting home and my mother put me in the bath with all my clothes on. I think I was violently ill, but other than that, yes, it was quite amusing looking back on it.’

  While working on Oliver! Reed met Jacquie Daryl, one of the dancers, and by the end of the film they were lovers. Reed had indulged in casual affairs before but this was different and was the death nail in his marriage to Kate. It was a marriage already close to collapse; Kate could put up with her husband’s perpetual boozing, but not his perpetual womanizing. When she learnt that Jacqueline was pregnant with Reed’s child Kate walked out, angry and bitter that after years of living together almost as paupers when Reed was an out-of-work actor, he’d now taken up with a ‘younger and prettier’ model once fame had arrived. They divorced in 1970.

  Reed’s womanizing was quite staggering; he truly loved women, certain parts of their anatomy more than others. Surprisingly breasts were only his second favourite part of a woman. His main preference was eyes, not the shape, but the expression. ‘Eyes and what they say are a constant surprise. Breasts have expression, too, not as much as eyes perhaps, though I have never suckled an eyeball.’

  Reed also happily proclaimed himself to be a male chauvinist pig. By his own admission he liked to see women in their proper place, and that was on their hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen or dusting the house. ‘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. A woman should behave like a lady – a nun by day in the kitchen and a whore at night in bed.’ When Reed espoused similar thoughts on womankind on an American TV chat show fellow guest Shelley Winters emptied a jug of bourbon over his head. Later quizzed about the incident, Reed stated: ‘My row with Shelley Winters was caused by her abominable lack of manners. She is getting old now and I think she is quite crazy.’ On another occasion, with his gob on full chauvinistic mode, and sounding uncannily like Richard Harris on the same subject, he described his ideal woman as ‘a deaf and dumb nymphomaniac whose father owns a chain of offlicences’.

  Reed enjoyed working with his uncle on Oliver!, remained close to him until his death and happily attended a celebration of the director’s life at the National Film Theatre. A prior meeting with a film producer took Reed to the Dorchester where he liberally partook of the bar, so by the time he arrived at the tribute, loaded as he was with gin and tonic, he was quite unprepared when the presenter asked him to say a few words. Bounding upon the stage, standing in front of a packed audience comprising the director’s relatives, friends and admirers, Reed dried. He managed to garble some words about how humble he was and then fell off the stage. He was upset at the thought of ruining the evening, but friends said, ‘Don’t worry, Oliver, they all loved it because that’s what they expected you to do.’

  By the late 60s Richard Burton and Liz Taylor were still the most glamorous couple on earth and boy did they flaunt it. Burton bought her diamonds, only for her to wear them once and then dump them. Liz’s fourth husband, Eddie Fisher, said that a $50,000 diamond could keep her happy for approximately four days. They owned a jet, houses around the world, his and her minks and a luxury yacht that frequently cruised around the Mediterranean with friends visiting all the time. One trip included Rex Harrison and his wife Rachel Roberts as guests. One night everyone got drunk, but Rachel uncontrollably so. She lay on the floor barking like a dog, her usual pissed as a fart party trick, but it reached new sordid heights this time when she started to masturbate her basset hound, a sloppy old thing called Omar. How poor old Harrison put up with her Burton for one couldn’t imagine. ‘She wouldn’t last 48 hours with me,’ he noted.

  The Burtons also had their own canine troubles. On these yacht trips the couple were always accompanied by several pet dogs, but they were incontinent and Burton had to fork out close to a thousand dollars a month for new carpets. Visiting London the dogs couldn’t come ashore because of the quarantine laws so while Liz and Burton Rolls-Royced it to their usual suite at the Dorchester the dogs were kept on board. Tour guides on river cruises, aside from pointing out the Tower of London and Big Ben, would also say, ‘And on your right ladies and gentlemen is the most expensive bleeding floating dog kennel in the world. It belongs to Elizabeth Taylor.’ One day Burton was on deck and on about his fifth vodka when he stood up and bellowed back, ‘It bloody well does not. It belongs to me.’

  The Burtons were also mixing with the cream of high society: the Rainiers, the Rothschilds, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. At one party Burton, quite sloshed, told the Duchess, ‘You are, without any question, the most vulgar woman I’ve ever met.’ Hours later he picked her up and swung her round to such an extent that Liz thought he might drop and kill her.

  In between all this jetting about Burton found time to make the odd movie, though sometimes he really shouldn’t have bothered, like Staircase (1969) in which, bizarrely, he along with Rex Harrison, the two most heterosexual men one could meet, played a gay couple living in Brixton. Harrison later admitted he should never have made the film, ‘even to pay for my villa and vineyards’. It was done almost as a dare after Burton phoned Harrison saying, ‘I’ll do it if you do it.’

  Adding to the surreal nature of the project was the fact that although set in London the whole film was made in Paris to protect the tax position of the two stars. In the studio next door Liz Taylor was shooting The Only Game in Town and Burton paid intrusive set visits, threatening to punch her co-star Warren Beatty for getting too familiar with his missus in their love scenes.

  The director of Staircase was Stanley Donen, infuriated by Burton’s habit of not learning his lines. The crew ended up pinning his dialogue on pieces of paper littered about the furniture. ‘Then at six o’clock he would start to drink,’ Donen later recalled. ‘After that, you could forget about working with him.’

  At the end of one week Donen cornered Burton. ‘Richard, your big scene is coming up, it’s a long speech, and you’ve got to learn it.’ Burton left for the weekend and on Monday morning strutted onto the sound stage towards Donen. ‘I’ve learnt it,’ he said proudly. ‘Stanley, do you want to come into my dressing room to hear it?’ Donen did and Burton performed the scene. Donen couldn’t believe it. ‘Richard, you learnt the wrong fucking scene. We shot that weeks ago.’

  At last for Richard Harris Camelot was ready to go before the cameras, but it didn’t take long for the production to descend into arguments and difficulties. Richard Harris insisted on cutting Lancelot and Guinevere’s love scene, played by Franco Nero and Vanessa Redgrave, real life lovers at the time, as he felt it reduced the dignified aspects of the King. Jack Warner refused to comply so Harris burst into the mogul’s office and started pounding on his desk. Unfazed Warner stood up, took Harris by the arm and led him towards the studio gates. Harris panicked, thinking he was about to be thrown off the lot. ‘What does that say?’ said Warner pointing to the sign above the entrance. ‘Warner Brothers,’ Harris meekly replied. ‘Right,’ said big Jack. ‘And when it reads Harris Brothers, you can rewrite Camelot any way you want. But not till then.’

  But Harris’s boisterous behaviour continued. At a celebrity ba
sh Camelot co-star David Hemmings began playful sparring with his fellow guests. Harris took exception to this and, demonstrating his own boxing prowess, landed a punch on Hemmings’s jaw that split his lip. Watching the fracas Vanessa Redgrave burst into tears and announced she’d never act with Harris again. She didn’t.

  Actually Harris and Hemmings got on rather well, boozers both of them. With Warner being a dry studio the two actors resorted to smuggling in alcohol in the prop van. The problem was getting rid of the empties. As luck would have it two portaloos had been installed outside their dressing rooms and it didn’t take long for one of them to fill up with discarded bottles. One afternoon Jack Warner was personally showing a group of distinguished Japanese visitors around the studio when one lady was suddenly caught short and rushed to Harris’s portaloo. As she opened the door the sound of crashing bottles echoed around the sound stage. Harris grabbed the woman and hurriedly carried her over to the other toilet leaving Hemmings alone with a suitably embarrassed Jack Warner. When Harris returned, Warner ordered the crew to clean the mess up and as he left with his guests whispered out of the corner of his mouth towards the two actors, ‘This bar is now closed.’