Hellraisers

by Robert Sellers

  Curiously it wasn’t the booze that destroyed Richard Harris’s marriage to Ann Turkel, just a gradual parting of the ways. God knows she’d felt like walking out years before. Life became an exhausting round of picking up the pieces after him: flying to a film set in Montreal where he’d walked off because he didn’t like the script; breaking up a fight at their home in the Bahamas. Such incidents might have drawn them closer, instead they spent less and less time together and Ann finally decided to leave. ‘My health couldn’t take it any more.’ Inevitably in 1981 the couple divorced, but they never severed their relationship, often meeting up in New York or London and chatting on the phone most days. ‘It was like we were still married,’ Ann said.

  Harris blamed divorce number two on nobody but himself; he knew it was his behaviour that had driven away the women he most loved in his life. Harris was never going to be the type of husband who did the washing up, played with the kids, put his feet up and watched the telly on the couch. Ann and before her Elizabeth knew this; their mistake was to think they could ever change him. ‘I have made 70 movies in my life,’ Harris once confessed, ‘and been miscast twice – as a husband.’

  Harris also knew he’d failed pretty miserably over the years as a father, too. Only much later did he come to realize how hard it must have been for his sons to read of his exploits in the newspapers while still at school. Many a time they’d ring up home and say, ‘Mum, what’s dad doing? He’s in the papers again. He was in jail last night and who was that woman he was with?’ Although he later developed a close friendship with his children Harris felt guilty for the remainder of his life at being an absent father.

  Arguably Harris’s nadir as a film performer was his execrable turn in the infamous Bo Derek Tarzan movie. Bo first encountered Harris on the set of Orca Killer Whale and never forgot him. ‘We’d go out for dinner or to a bar, and you wouldn’t want to go to sleep at night, you’d just want to sit and listen to his stories. On the set, he’d tell stories right up to “Action!” then give some incredible performance and then go back to his story.’ She also saw the darker side of the Irishman. ‘Richard would often end up punching one of his drinking buddies. I’d find out because they’d come in the next day with a black eye, but they’d be buddies again and go drinking the next night.’ This didn’t deter Bo from casting Harris in Tarzan the Ape Man (1981), as Jane’s father, lost in deepest Africa and tracked down by his daughter.

  He was still hitting the bottle, and the production was held up several times when Harris overdid it and collapsed. He also behaved rather eccentrically on location in Sri Lanka, where the heat was unbearable. Not giving a stuff for convention Harris would turn up minus trousers and sans underpants at the lunch buffet with his undercarriage swinging about, saying, ‘Excuse my balls, it’s just such a lovely day.’ His larking around concealed a growing malaise about making movies; the whole process now annoyed and, worse, bored him. Tarzan was a 44-day shoot and on his first night Harris opened his diary and wrote: ‘43 days left.’ He was seriously considering jacking acting in altogether.

  While Harris endured his film nadir Peter O’Toole was about to embark upon the most controversial and embarrassing episode of his entire career, and also one of the all-time great theatrical disasters. Not for nothing do actors say that productions of Macbeth are cursed. At a preview of Laurence Olivier’s 1937 stage version his sword broke during a fight routine and a fragment flew off into the audience, striking a spectator who promptly died of a heart attack. When Alec Guinness took on the role in the 1940s he fared little better when the entire set caught fire. O’Toole’s efforts, characteristically, were to eclipse everything before it.

  Returning to the stage after a 17-year absence O’Toole was aware that the role of Macbeth was a killer for any actor and required great physical stamina. Having only recently undergone major surgery and describing his current career as ‘tepid’, O’Toole was out to prove himself again. He also believed totally in the theatrical superstition that Macbeth brought bad luck to companies who staged it and refused to refer to the play by any name other than ‘Harry Lauder’. He’d rush around touching wood whenever someone mentioned Macbeth and at one point curled himself into a moaning foetal ball on the stage imploring, ‘Say Harry Lauder, please or we’ll all die.’

  The play was put on at the Old Vic in London, run by actor Timothy West. But O’Toole was to have total artistic control over the production. It soon emerged that the two men were poles apart both in temperament and in their approach to theatre. It didn’t help that O’Toole always addressed West as Eddie Waring, the famous rugby commentator. Their relationship was akin to a warring husband and wife living under the same roof but ripe for divorce. It didn’t bode well for a happy working arrangement.

  An already nervous Bryan Forbes, hired by O’Toole as director, was beginning to harbour grave misgivings too, particularly over his star’s obsession with making this the bloodiest Macbeth on record. ‘Do you know how many times the word “blood” appears in the text, old darling?’ O’Toole said to Forbes one day, volunteering the information that, ‘If you stab a living man, blood spurts seventeen feet.’ He also proudly proclaimed that he was having a double-handed sword made of the finest Toledo steel for his duel with McDuff and when this fearsome weapon finally arrived at the theatre the actor playing McDuff visibly paled. Oddly HRH Princess Margaret paid a visit to one rehearsal and during a break the subject of blood came up yet again in conversation. ‘What you need is some Kensington gore,’ the princess told O’Toole, meaning the stuff deployed in the old Hammer horror films. ‘We use it all the time in St John ambulance demonstrations. It’s very realistic.’ Forbes saw O’Toole’s eyes light up.

  As the opening night loomed relations between West and O’Toole went nuclear. They spoke only through intermediaries. O’Toole hated the posters and tore them all down, and when West complained that the production was going over budget O’Toole had him barred from final rehearsals. Poor Forbes was caught in the middle. West defied O’Toole and secretly watched the last dress rehearsal and was appalled by what he witnessed. He pleaded with Forbes that radical changes had to be made to avert a full-scale disaster but the director felt that to confront O’Toole ‘would provoke an explosion that could destroy us all’.

  Worse was about to happen. On the opening night as the audience took their seats Forbes went into O’Toole’s dressing room and was stunned to find him stark naked except for a Gauloise in his mouth. ‘Peter, old son, aren’t you leaving it a bit late to get into costume?’ he said, trying to remain calm. ‘Can’t wear them, darling,’ replied O’Toole. ‘They’re hopeless.’ ‘Ah!’ Forbes exclaimed, panic taking over him. ‘We don’t have much alternative, do we? But let me see what I can do.’

  Outside Forbes grabbed fellow cast member Brian Blessed, a close friend of O’Toole’s; he was Forbes’s only hope. After hearing the sorry tale Blessed said, ‘Do you think his bottle’s gone?’ The thought was too hideous to contemplate for Forbes. ‘God help us if it has.’ Blessed shook his head: ‘Leave him to me. Can’t promise what he’ll look like, but I’ll get him on.’

  By some miracle Blessed dragged him onto the stage that night, haphazardly dressed though O’Toole was, including for some bizarre reason jogging trousers and gym shoes. ‘There was madness in the theatre that night on both sides of the curtain,’ Forbes later said. Several journalists tried to get Forbes to admit that O’Toole was drunk, but Forbes knew that since surgery the actor had not touched a drop.

  There was also O’Toole’s much promised bloodbath. One of the stage-hands had been sent on a shopping errand to purchase several gallons of fake gore and O’Toole was slapping it on with wild abandon. Traditionally for the scene in which Macbeth returns after the off-stage killing of the King the actor soaks his hands in ‘blood’, not O’Toole, he immersed himself in a crimson-filled zinc bath. The effect produced a mixture of horror and hysteria throughout the audience. Forbes wrote later, ‘From that
moment onwards the play was doomed.’ During the same scene on another night, as O’Toole came down the stairs, dripping with blood, an ambulance howled all the way up Waterloo Road. ‘I got the giggles,’ O’Toole later confessed. ‘The audience got the giggles. It was bloody marvellous.’

  The first intimation that a full-blown public disaster was on the cards was when a reporter turned up in Bryan Forbes’s kitchen the next morning and a TV news crew parked itself outside the door wanting reaction to the news that West, and by implication the Old Vic, had publicly disowned the production. Perhaps for the first time ever a play took over the front pages of the national press, while the critics lambasted the production, principally O’Toole’s performance, in a way few in the business could ever remember. ‘The performance is not so much downright bad as heroically ludicrous. The voice is pure Bette Davis in her Baby Jane mood, the manner is Vincent Price hamming up a Hammer horror,’ said the Daily Mail, while The Sunday Times critic called it, ‘A milestone in the history of coarse acting. Mr O’Toole’s performance was deranged.’

  O’Toole took the abuse unbowed, despite his Hampstead home being besieged next morning by reporters. His housekeeper had told him the bad news that the reviews were stinkers and that there were a couple of journalists outside the front door. ‘When I opened it, there were about 100. What could I do? My shaver is electric so I could not cut my throat.’ That evening O’Toole fought his way into the theatre through crowds besieging the box office for tickets that had already sold out. The production had transcended awfulness and, like a car crash, everybody wanted to see it. ‘It’s all wonderful,’ he said, by way of greeting his bewildered cast. ‘This is what the theatre is all about.’ Katharine Hepburn agreed, phoning O’Toole with the advice, ‘If you’re going to have a disaster, have a big one.’

  When Burton heard that O’Toole had taken a pasting he called him up from America while still touring Camelot. ‘I hear you’ve had a bit of stick from the critics.’ ‘Yes,’ O’Toole replied. ‘How are the houses?’ Burton asked. ‘Packed,’ said O’Toole. ‘Then remember, my boy, you are the most original actor to come out of Britain since the war and fuck the critics.’ ‘Thank you,’ said O’Toole. Burton went on, ‘Think of every four letter obscenity, six, eight, ten and twelve letter expletives and ram them right up their envious arses in which I’m sure there is ample room.’ ‘Thank you,’ said O’Toole, no doubt touched. ‘Good night, Peter. Don’t give in and I love you,’ declared Burton. ‘I won’t,’ said O’Toole. ‘And it’s mutual.’ ‘Good night again,’ Burton finished. ‘Good night Richard and thank you.’ It was like the bloody Waltons.

  Things went from bad to worse on the third night when a bomb scare halted the performance temporarily. After a quick search it was deemed a hoax and the audience was let back in. Then as the curtain was about to be raised a second bomb threat was received. ‘You didn’t take me seriously, did you,’ said an ominous phone voice. ‘It’ll go off in the interval.’ The performance was cancelled. This merely added to the play’s notoriety and tickets started to change hands at incredible prices; the West End had seen nothing like it. Macbeth went on to sell out its entire London run and played to capacity crowds during its subsequent six-month tour round the provinces.

  Months later, as the scandal died down, O’Toole was able to look back more philosophically on the event and recognize it for what it was – a total fuck up. ‘The opening night was a fiasco. When I think of it, my nose bleeds.’ O’Toole admitted that banging into scenery, forgetting his lines, and wearing trainers was perhaps not the best way to approach Shakespeare.

  Oliver Reed could only dream of the sort of headlines O’Toole was getting. His career was in the mire, with appearances in movies nobody wanted to see like Venom (1981), actually quite a suspenseful little thriller about an escaped snake inside a house where a hostage situation is being played out. Directed by Piers Haggard, taking over at short notice from Tobe Hooper (he of Texas Chainsaw Massacre notoriety) who left the production under mysterious circumstances, the film was chock full of larger than life personalities (polite terminology for eccentrics or drunks), including Sarah Miles and Nicol Williamson. And there was Ollie, of course. ‘Oliver was one of the finest film actors that we had,’ recalls Haggard. ‘He had enormous power. But he was a handful. And he would test you all the time. When I met Oliver for the first time in the canteen at Elstree studios he played a trick on me, pretending that he was going to walk out and leave the film because I’d insulted him by saying something completely spurious. But it was just a hoax. He was just testing me.’

  Reed’s co-star was the equally outrageous and near psychotic Klaus Kinski. The two actors, according to Haggard, detested each other on sight, ‘which was a bit difficult because they had most of their scenes together.’ By the close of shooting Haggard thought the black mamba was the nicest person on the set. ‘Oliver used to amuse himself by going to Klaus Kinski’s trailer and shaking it. Don’t forget Oliver was as strong as an ox. So he’d shake Kinski’s trailer and shout, “You fucking Nazi bastard!” And then Kinski would come out trembling with rage and swearing back as best he could.’ Actually Kinski was born in Poland and was an immigrant to Germany, ‘But he passed for a Nazi in Oliver’s eyes,’ says Haggard.

  The film was funded by the Guinness family and one day some of its more auspicious members arranged to visit the set. This of course coincided with a major slanging match between Reed and Kinski that was taking place on the top of the set. ‘I was on the studio floor,’ Haggard remembers, all too vividly. ‘And you could hear – “You fucking Nazi bastard” and “You fucking English cunt.” They were effing and blinding. Oliver was clearly goading Klaus, who unfortunately had no sense of humour. Oliver, on the other hand, had a fabulous sense of humour, very wicked, but he definitely liked a laugh, and he definitely liked a laugh at Klaus Kinski’s expense. Anyway, just at the point where the Guinness family, led by our producer Martin Bregman, walked in the door, Oliver and Klaus came hurtling down the stairs; you thought bloody murder was going to be done. And Martin turned round and said to the family, their nanny, the children, Lord this and Lady blah blah, “I think we’ll go and have a look in the other studio,” and led them all out as quick as he could.’

  Next Reed was stuck in Iraq making the forgettable The Great Question (1983) in what was essentially a war zone; at the time Iraq and Iran were at loggerheads and occasionally sending missiles over the border, but that didn’t stop Ollie having a good time, especially since he’d only recently discovered that in his forties his capacity for booze was going up, not down.

  One night Reed joined the crew for numerous drinks in the hotel bar and, looking in the nearby restaurant, saw a Texas oil billionaire whom he knew. Jumping up, obviously drunk as a skunk, he rushed upstairs to his room. ‘When he came back down he was wearing a western shirt and cowboy boots and walked John Wayne style into the restaurant to see his buddy,’ recalls stunt man Vic Armstrong. ‘Inside he gave this guy a Texas handshake as he called it, which basically means lifting your leg up and smashing your cowboy boot down on the table. So Ollie walked up to this guy’s table, surrounded by women and other dignitaries, and smash, all the cutlery and glass went flying in the air. Suddenly Ollie looked at the guy and it wasn’t his mate at all, it was some Arab with his harem, deeply offended that this westerner had come stamping on his table and upset everything. The police were called and Ollie was arrested. He didn’t go to jail thank God.’

  Back home Broome Hall continued to be a huge burden on Reed’s finances, but he adored the place. A regular guest was snooker ace Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins. Reed had taken up the sport and turned the chapel into a snooker room. Higgins came over to play a match there one day and was mightily impressed by the fine décor, especially an installed lemon tree that allowed him to pick his own fruit to freshen up his drinks. After the match, where Reed was annihilated, Higgins was invited to the private bar, on whose walls no framed picture was intact,
for a drinking challenge. Higgins drank like he played, fast, and soon got very drunk and rather nasty and was thrown out. But Reed remained impressed by his snooker skills. ‘Hurricane smashed out of his mind could beat me stone cold sober.’

  The pair remained friendly for years. During another drinking session Reed put some Chanel No. 5 perfume in a glass and told Higgins it was a gorgeous malt whisky. ‘Wow Alex, it’s wonderful. Try that.’ Higgins replied he couldn’t drink whisky. ‘Fucking chicken,’ taunted Reed. Higgins grabbed the glass and downed it in one. His face screwed up in pain and he spat out what he could. Higgins was ill for two days. He had his revenge though by treating Reed to a Fairy Liquid crème de menthe. ‘Ollie was burping bubbles for weeks.’

  Famous for his own terrifying behaviour, Higgins has admitted that Reed often frightened the shit out of him. After a particularly hectic afternoon in the pub Higgins passed out in an armchair back at Ollie’s home. He was rudely awoken by a real sword jabbed into his ribs. ‘Get up,’ growled Ollie. ‘How dare you fall asleep in my company. For that insult, sir, I require satisfaction.’ Higgins was thrown another sword. ‘Now, sir, prepare to die.’ Reed attacked with a series of mighty blows and Higgins did all he could to defend himself. ‘I was genuinely scared for a moment that he had at last flipped,’ said the snooker star, ‘and was going to kill me.’

  Higgins made the mistake of falling asleep again in Ollie’s presence and this time was hunted down with an axe. He ran into his room and bolted the door but that didn’t deter Reed who started chopping at the solid oak like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. It took him just a few minutes to weaken the wood and Higgins saw the tip of the axe peek through the door. ‘I was terrified. I honestly thought I might be about to breathe my last if he got through.’