To help him quit the booze O’Toole chewed gum. ‘Now at least they make it sugarless so your fucking teeth don’t rot out.’ The wild boy had gone too, at least the drunken one. ‘Only ninnies make booze the excuse for their wild escapades. I can still make whoopee, but now I do it sober. I no longer anaesthetize myself into unconsciousness. That makes the escapade pointless.’ So the hellraiser was dead. ‘The time has come to stop roaming,’ he lamented. ‘The pirate ship has berthed.’ Or had it?
Oliver Reed consolidated his fame in the mid-70s by appearing in a succession of films. The Sellout (1976) was directed by Peter Collinson and co-starred Richard Widmark. One evening Reed asked a few of the crew to come and have a drink with him in his hotel. Widmark wisely refused, but the rest went up to his suite. ‘It was about eight o’clock in the evening,’ recalled production manager Tom Sachs, ‘and Ollie asked for the drinks to be sent up, but when the waiter brought them, he also brought the bill for signing. Ollie saw how much it was and said, “I’m not paying that!” I thought – this is going to be a short evening. Ollie rang his driver from the bedroom, and 15 minutes later, in came the driver with eight “flunkies” behind him, each of whom carried a box. He had gone out and bought eight boxes of booze. It wasn’t just wine; it was spirits – the place was like a pub! When we woke up next morning, still in Ollie’s suite, half the boxes were empty and Ollie had drunk as much as the rest of us put together! He hadn’t been to sleep. He went straight onto the set and into make-up – stone-cold sober. I don’t know how he did it. He was unbelievable.’
When Oliver Reed agreed to appear in the western The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday (1976) he faced the challenge of sharing the screen with a man whose hellraising and boozing matched his own, Lee Marvin. By the mid-70s, however, Marvin was an ailing alcoholic who was at that stage in his illness, according to one of the film’s executives, ‘when just unscrewing the top of a whiskey bottle and sticking his nose in made him fall over’. When Reed arrived in Mexico the director said, ‘You know Lee enjoys a drink. Please don’t encourage him.’ Reed was happy to comply, only to hear later from Marvin that the director had said exactly the same thing about him.
The stars were also warned about the town they were shooting in; Durango had a reputation for violence. That first evening the cast and crew met up in a local cantina. The instant the director and producer left for their hotel Marvin looked across at Reed, a twinkle in his eye. ‘Bourbon, large, on the rocks,’ he barked at a waiter. When the man returned with a treble Marvin looked at it incredulously. ‘I said large!’ Not to be outdone Reed snapped his fingers. ‘Bourbon, large, two.’ The challenge was on. After a few rounds it looked like Marvin was wavering as he staggered to his feet and joined in with the Mexican cabaret, telling them how to play their instruments before crashing to the floor. Reed tried reviving him by stuffing ice cubes down the back of his shirt, worried the director might return and see they’d reneged on their promise not to booze – on the first night! Shaking his comatose co-star Reed spied an evil looking Mexican take out his revolver and fire three times into the ceiling. Reed ignored it and carried on trying to resuscitate the now snoring Marvin. Another none-too-civilised looking Mexican got up and approached them. ‘Hey gringo,’ he said. Reed pretended not to hear and dug Marvin violently in the ribs. ‘For Christ’s sake Lee wake up before we all get a bullet up our arses.’ The Mexican tried again. ‘Hey gringo,’ and followed it up by firing into the ceiling. One of the other actors, Strother Martin, was getting anxious too. ‘We’ve got to get Lee outta here.’ And together they somehow managed to carry the hulking Marvin out of the club, much to the amusement of the locals.
The next morning Marvin appeared at breakfast looking as if nothing had happened. ‘Know any good bars, Strother,’ he asked. Reed hoped the answer would be no, as he’d a bugger of a hangover. But Strother Martin did indeed and they got pissed all over again. Not surprisingly Reed and Marvin became great friends and the American star presented his British colleague with what he called his drinking cloak in recognition of the night he was outdrunk.
Years later the pair met again in Tucson, Arizona. Marvin phoned Reed at his hotel and invited himself round for Saturday night. The hotel switchboard were listening in and the manager hired two private security guards, armed with riot gas, loaded guns and night sticks to be stationed at either end of the bar come Saturday. Marvin never showed, but when he did a few days later Reed told him of the manager’s precautions. ‘Fuck ’em,’ he said. ‘We won’t drink here.’ Reed suggested a restaurant he knew, but warned that it was a bit on the posh side. When they strolled in Marvin was instantly recognized and a gaggle of middle-aged women flustered round him asking for their menus to be signed. ‘Later, sweetheart,’ he said. Eight bottles later Marvin decided it was time to fulfil his promise and lurched over in the women’s general direction. As they held out their menus Marvin collapsed and fell full length across their table. Three of the women screamed, one fainted, and another fled in hysterics while the rest burst out laughing. Trying to rectify the situation Marvin hauled himself back up, but fell heavily again against the table, banging his head, this time spraying the place with blood. The horror show prompted the remaining women to scream uncontrollably and join their friends in running out into the night.
Out in Durango, Reed was quite capable of getting into drunken mischief without any assistance from Marvin. One of the crew had been foolish enough to invite his wife over to the location, the only one to have done so. The couple were having a quiet meal one night in a restaurant when Reed approached their table. ‘Good night Dave,’ he said. ‘Are you going to bed, Ollie?’ the crewman asked. ‘No, you are.’ The poor man assumed he’d offended the star in some way and began apologizing profusely. Ollie leaned forward. ‘Dear boy, nothing of the sort, only I’m going to smash this fucking place up in ten minutes and I wouldn’t want your lady to get hurt.’ As the couple left and were crossing the courtyard outside they heard the sound of two dining tables being hurled through a window.
A few days later a rather young and pretty production assistant came to collect Ollie from the hotel restaurant. ‘Sit down and have a drink.’ The already nervous girl obliged, sensing that her charge had been drinking heavily throughout lunch. Suddenly Reed leapt to his feet. ‘Well, this isn’t much of a party,’ he said and balanced a full ice bucket on his head and danced through the crowded restaurant showering fellow diners with ice cubes and freezing water.
Reed’s close encounter with another Hollywood legend didn’t pass off so smoothly. Burnt Offerings (1976) was a substandard horror movie but the real nightmare was the relationship between the two stars. Bette Davis detested Reed, referring to him as ‘that man’ and only speaking to him when they shared screen dialogue. During filming, Miss Davis used to have a food trolley sent up to her hotel room carrying her evening meal. One day when Ollie, his stand-in Reg Prince and a few friends were returning from an evening out, they saw this food trolley and Ollie turned to Reg with a grin and said, ‘I bet I can ride it farther than you.’ The bet was on. Taking it in turns the gang would take a run and a leaping dive on to the trolley and go careering down the corridor, the remnants of Miss Davis’s evening meal going all over the place. Not surprisingly, after filming Miss Davis declared that Reed ‘is possibly one of the most loathsome human beings I have ever had the misfortune of meeting’.
In London Reed got a phone call from old friend Michael Winner offering him a small role in his all-star remake of The Big Sleep (1977), jockeying for space on the screen with the likes of Joan Collins, Sarah Miles and James Stewart. Reed also shared a couple of scenes with the film’s main star, Robert Mitchum. ‘Now there was a wonderful man,’ says Winner. ‘But he was a pain in the arse when drunk. I wouldn’t call him a heavy drinker, but occasionally he’d go over the top. Mitchum wasn’t particularly nice when drunk. Reed was jolly and stupid when drunk, Mitchum became quite antagonistic to people. But he was drunk very se
ldom.’
Winner hadn’t worked with Reed for almost ten years and noticed that his old friend was drinking more than before. He was still never drunk on set but sometimes would have been so drunk the night before that he’d arrive for work a bit wasted. They were filming at a sumptuous London house and Reed, Winner and Mitchum were all sitting in the garden resting between set-ups when Ollie suddenly stood up and said, ‘You know, Bob, last night I was playing this game where two people have their legs astride a pole and they’re naked and they hit at each other to see which one can knock the other off the pole. It completely did in my bollocks. Would you like to see them?’ Mitchum pulled an unpleasant face. ‘Not really,’ he said. Oliver was having none of that. ‘I’d like to show you,’ and with that unzipped his trousers to reveal red raw bollocks, not just to Mitchum but a few members of the public who were watching over a low wall. Finally Winner had had enough. ‘We really could live without this Oliver. Honestly, we could.’
So Richard Burton was back with Liz, but not for long. On a skiing holiday he spied 27-year-old blonde former model Susan Hunt. ‘She could stop a stampede,’ he said. At the time Susan was in the process of divorcing her husband, the motor racing champion James Hunt. Instinctively Liz sensed danger, and she was right. Burton asked for a divorce, he wanted to marry Susan. Liz was livid, although her daughter went public blaming the split on Burton’s drinking: ‘His binges were a problem. There are no half measures. Either he doesn’t touch a drop or he drinks until he can’t stand up.’
The divorce from Liz when it came was painful. The settlement all but cleaned him out; she took the jewels, their house in Mexico, the yacht and their paintings. Some friends said that the only reason Liz had married Burton a second time was because she had failed to get all the jewels in the first divorce. No wonder Burton blindly accepted the $1 million on offer to star in Exorcist II (1977), rightly hailed as a turkey of the first order.
Burton married Susan in August 1976 and he often said that it was Susan who saved his life. She certainly took an active part in it, not just as a wife, but as a nurse and personal assistant. She didn’t hide the bottles of gin and vodka that always lay around the house; instead she helped him in his resolve to fight alcoholism, although Burton hated the word alcoholic, preferring ‘drunk’. There was a difference in his mind: alcoholics can’t give up the booze, Burton knew that he could and often went on the wagon, always falling off though. He had the odd glass now and then, or several, but his recent punishing illness had left his system with a much lower tolerance level than before. People later commented that even a small brandy would turn him from a sober man into an utter wreck.
This new resolve also had a lot to do with his impending return to Broadway, the first time since his appearance as Hamlet brought New York to a virtual standstill 12 years before. The play was Equus and Burton was set to take over from Anthony Perkins in the role of a psychiatrist trying to find out why a teenage boy blinded several horses. Rehearsals were tortuous. Officially Burton was on the wagon, but everyone knew that Brook Williams was smuggling in bottles of booze wrapped up in brown paper for him to consume in his dressing room. Onstage he staggered through the role, often stumbling over his lines, covering up the fact with a joke. With just a week to go before Perkins left the production and Burton took over on the Monday performance director John Dexter had to face the fact that his new leading man didn’t know the part at all. His plan to save the show was radical; he intended to put Burton on the Saturday matinee when audiences wouldn’t be expecting it. ‘I won’t be ready on Saturday afternoon,’ Burton said. ‘You’ll be ready on Saturday afternoon and you’ll go out on stage and you’ll do it,’ Dexter hit back. ‘On Monday night the press will be in and there’ll be no excuses. On Saturday, you’ll be able to get away with murder.’
Burton wasn’t happy but he persevered, only for rehearsals to get worse. He was stumbling over lines again and again. Suddenly Dexter’s patience evaporated and he exploded in anger. ‘Richard,’ he blasted, ‘you’re disgracing yourself in front of your compatriots. You’re a lazy, drunken fool.’ Burton stood there in a daze. ‘Well, it’s very difficult,’ was all he could muster. The Saturday matinee came and Burton was a disaster. He was shaking, looking down on the floor for the first half hour of the play, fluffing lines. The rest of the cast helped him through when he dried, saying things like, ‘Excuse me doctor, I think I should tell you that…to help bring him back to the plot. But most of the time Burton was inclined to say, ‘Well that’s all I have to say to you,’ and leave them flummoxed. He looked like a man who’d never set foot on a professional stage before. It was heartbreaking stuff.
Burton returned to his hotel in disgrace, staying there for two whole days, but when he emerged again he gave a performance on Monday night that garnered him a standing ovation and rave notices. When he appeared in the film of Equus (1977) he was quite rightly handed his 7th Oscar nomination for Best Actor. The bastards still didn’t give it to him though.
Burton claimed that appearing in the play Equus was the first time in his life he’d been on stage without a drink. ‘I’ve never been so bloody scared. I shook and shivered.’ Jim Backus, a friend since they’d made the awful Ice Palace together in the 50s, saw Burton in Equus and afterwards they dined together. Burton decided to have a double martini to celebrate. ‘One drink and he was absolutely blotto,’ said Backus. ‘I’ve seen one glass of alcohol turn him into a gibbering wreck. Two drinks and I’ve had to put him to bed.’ Age had certainly hampered Burton’s ability to drink. He now suffered bad hangovers and his powers of recovery had lapsed. ‘I just can’t drink as I used to in the good old days.’
Richard Harris was still having trouble finding decent product. Orca Killer Whale (1977) was an OK piece of escapism about a killer whale wreaking revenge on the fishermen who had slain its mate, but hardly up there with This Sporting Life. At least it reunited the actor with the director who gave him his first break in movies and his first taste of Hollywood, Michael Anderson. ‘By this time Richard had this great reputation for boozing and he said to me before shooting, “I promise ya, when we’re working together Mike, I’ll not touch a drop.” And he didn’t. He said, “I’ll be as good as gold.” And he was, all through the picture and it was a difficult picture to make physically. He was absolutely wonderful. For me he was a joy to work with.’
Having not made a movie with Harris for almost 20 years Anderson detected a change in the man, not surprisingly, especially the way that his boozing reputation preceded him wherever he went. ‘His career was on a downward trend when we made Orca and this was a major part and he was very conscious of the fact that he had this reputation so he went out of his way to really be at his best on this movie, which he was, in both performance and behaviour.’
It was a reputation that Harris could never truly escape from. The producer of the film Golden Rendezvous (1977), told reporters that the movie lagged 44 days behind schedule because Harris was often too drunk to act, allegedly drinking a bottle of vodka a day. The producer even tried to get Harris arrested for breach of contract. Not only did Harris deny the accusation but also believed it to be ruinous to his reputation and sued for £14 million.
Orca was shot in Canada and Malta and Harris stayed in touch with his wife Ann, back in Hollywood, by telephoning her every day, resulting in an astronomical phone bill, over $10,000 a week. Once they were on the phone for four hours straight. After hanging up the operator called to tell Harris, ‘I just wanted to let you know that you’ve beaten Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor’s record on the phone.’
Despite Ann’s benign influence on Harris, the actor was still capable of getting dangerously hammered. One morning he woke up and there was blood all over the pillow. Then Harris realized that he could only see out of one eye. Scrambling out of bed he stared at himself in the mirror, noticing one eye weeping and closed and stitches in his face. Incredibly he had no recollection of how he’d got into such a state. Going
downstairs he hoped Ann or his brother Dermot who were breakfasting might be able to illuminate him. ‘What happened?’ he asked. Both stared back at him. ‘What happened! God, there’s a restaurant in Santa Monica and you’ve wrecked it. And you wrecked it laughing – you weren’t even angry.’
After his illness Peter O’Toole appeared in one of the best films of his career, Rogue Male (1976) about a man out to assassinate Hitler. It was made for BBC television by his old What’s New Pussycat? collaborator Clive Donner. Ironically it was due to be shown in the same week as the first episode of the drama series I Claudius starring Siân. Both shows vied for the prestigious cover slot on the Radio Times – O’Toole won. When he visited the I Claudius set to see Siân he remembers being ‘as popular as a pork sausage in a synagogue’.
O’Toole had kept in sporadic touch with Siân since the split but when they finally divorced at the close of the seventies all ties were severed and they never spoke to one another again. Years later they bumped into each other in Piccadilly, ‘and she didn’t even recognize me. Hadn’t the faintest idea who I was. I said, “Hello,” and she looked up and said, “oh!”’
O’Toole had no regrets about his marriage failure and was quite philosophical about his own inadequacies that helped consign it to the waste bin. ‘Ooh, I was a hopeless husband. Hopeless. I’m a loving man, but not a particularly well-behaved one.’
In the middle of 1976 O’Toole appeared in Caligula, a film that wouldn’t see daylight until 1980. It was an epic based on the debauched life of the Roman emperor, financed by Bob Guccione, the proprietor of sex magazine Penthouse. O’Toole was in prestigious company. In the title role was Malcolm McDowell, a heavy boozer himself who was in such a drunken haze throughout shooting that little if anything of it was retained in his memory. Also there was Helen Mirren and poor John Gielgud who paraded around the set as grandly as he could trying not to notice that the girls flanking him in most scenes had their tits out. ‘We both enjoyed ourselves enormously,’ said O’Toole. ‘We started off looking at all the naked bodies and then after a while compared our operation scars. Half the cast went round wearing four-foot rubber phalluses strapped to them and Malcolm had a nice little gold lamé number. I called him Tinkerbell.’
Hellraisers Page 24
